of the men keep their heads shaven, and wear turbans.

The Gentoos are divided into four great casts, or tribes; and these are subdivided into a multitude of others.

The Bramins, or priests, are the first order, and held in high veneration by all the rest; they live. upon vegetables and fruits, and will eat of nothing that has ever had life in it; nor will they partake of any thing that has been touched by any person of a different cast. The other tribes vary in their diet; some adding fish, and others extending their food to venison and wild fowl. But there is one cast called the Harri, who seem to be outcasts from all the rest, that will eat of any thing whatever, even from an European's table.

The Gentoos worship several rude, uncouth figures; but the cow is the principal object of their veneration; because they believe, that when the first man was created, that animal supplied him with his first nourishment. Notwithstanding the appearance of many absurdities and superstitions, the most enlightened among them have very sublime ideas of the Supreme Being.

After all that is said of the magnificence of the East, it by no means answers the expectations of an European. The houses of the principal natives, and men of rank, are generally enclosed within high walls; and as their custom is to sit upon cushions and mats, there appears a great nakedness in all their apartments, to those who are accustomed

to

to well-furnished rooms. But when these great men go out, they appear in prodigious state, having a multitude of attendants, and their palanquins richly ornamented; or, if mounted on elephants, they are most sumptuously caparisoned.

The ladies are never seen, and their apartments. are quite separate and retired; when they chance to go abroad, it is always in a covered vehicle.

The cottages of the poor in all the villages, are meaner by far than any we see in England; they are chiefly mud and thatch, very low, without chimnies, and only a hole to let out the smoke; a couple of stones serve for a place to cook at, and other materials are simple in proportion; a wooden bedstead, or a mat, is put out generally at the door for them to sleep on, where they lie down as they are, without the ceremony of preparing bedding; or, perhaps, take their rest upon the bare ground. In the rainy and cold weather they wrap themselves in a blanket, and sleep in their hut. Their wants are but few, and their chief luxury consists in smoking, and chewing the betel-nut.

Jengis Khan was the first Tartarian prince who invaded Hindoostan, in 1239. After him, m 1398, Timur, or Tamerlane, made a conquest of it; and, in the year 1519, Baber, king of Firghana, in Tartary, a descendant from Tamerlane, invaded it, gained a signal victory over Ibrahim, the Hindoo emperor, and was proclaimed sovereign in his stead; and his posterity have possessed the throne ever since that period. In 1732, Mahommed Shah submitted to the Persian invader Nadir Shah, on the 4

plains

plains of Karnel; he advanced as far as Delli, where he re-instated the Mogul on his throne, and then returned into Persia. It is computed that no less than 200,000 of the Mogul's subjects were slain during Nadir's expedition, numbers be ing killed in battle, but many more perished in a dreadful massacre that took place at Delhi; and he carried away with him money and treasures to the amount of more than eighty millions sterling..

The late emperor was Shah Allum, who, in the year 1758, made his escape twice, at the hazard of his life, out of Delhi, where his father and hinself where kept close prisoners by the faction of a Persian invader (named Abdallah,) and the vizier, who soon after assassinated the poor old emperor. In 1761, Abdallah laid the capital under such contributions, and enforced them with such cruelty, that the inhabitants took up arms, on which he ordered a general massacre; a great part of the buildings were set on fire, and the city almost reduced to ashes. In the mean time, a number of Mahratta chiefs advanced towards Delhi, with a design to re-establish the Hindoo government; they exercised every species of cruelty on the unfortunate few that had escaped Abdallah's rigour; a famine ensued, and the wretched people were driven to unheard-of distress. Abdallah defeated and dispersed the Mahrattas, and having placed a minor son of the wandering prince on the throne, returned into Persia.

During these transactions the lawful emperor (then known by the name, of Prince Ali Gohar)

had

had made many fruitless attempts to prevail ou some chiefs to espouse his cause. At length he marched from Allahabad, in order to possess hinself of the provinces of Bahar and Bengal; but his expedition proved unsuccessful, and he surrendered to the British arms at Geiah, in Bahar. Soon after, his father's assassination being known, he was proclaimed emperor at Patna, by the English; but nothing more being done for him, he threw himself into the protection of the Nabob of Oude, Sujah-ul-Dowla. In 1764, when Cosim Ali, whom the English had elected Soubadar over their provinces, was by them driven from the government of Bengal, the Nabob of Oude joined him, in order to re-instate him; they were defeated at Buxar, and the Mogul, who had attended the Nabob's camp, being left behind in the hurry of retreat, fell a second time into the hands of the British, who now took him under their protection; part of the province of Allahabad was alloted him, and the East India Company allowed him twenty-six lacks of rupees* annually. Some few years after he returned to Delhi, where this unfortunate sovereign never enjoyed more than the farce of royalty, but was in a manner a prisoner in his own capital, and among his own guards: since which, an insurrection took place, and this unhappy prince, after being treated with the utmost indignity, was deprived of the blessing of sight.

Misfortunes like these, furnish a lesson well calcu

* A rupee is a silver coin, worth about two shillings and three-pence. A lack of rupees is one hundred thousand rupees.

lated to humble the pride of the most ambitious! We here behold a monarch, whose ancestors ruled over such immense tracts, labouring through a variety of distresses, and even owing his subsistence to the pittance granted him, by strangers from a distant quarter of the globe, and who had no other right in his dominions than what they had derived from his forefathers.

The soubadars and rajahs, who were formerly tributary to the emperor, have by degrees thrown off the yoke, and rendered themselves independent; so that the Great Mogul, who assumes also the title of Emperor of the World,' and whose dominions were once so extensive, is now become a mere nominal diguity, with but small power annexed to it.

SECTION LXXIX.

OF CHINA.

THE Empire of China is bounded, on the

North, by Eastern Tartary;

East, by the Pacific Ocean;

South, by the Chinese Sea;

West, by India, and part of Tartary.

It is about 1300 miles in length, and the same in breadth; and lies between 20° and 42° North latitude.

The empire of China is divided into fifteen provinces, contains 4402 walled cities, and 333,000,000 inhabitants.

The