The horses were swam across in the customary manner, and after a ride of a couple of miles on the opposite bank over a bare stony flat, we reached Worcester, and I had the satisfaction of finding myself, after a ride of a hundred miles from Wynberg, comfortably established at the Drostdy, with my friend Mr. T————, from whom I had a hospitable reception; and here I lived in clover for some days, accompanying my host's son on some agreeable, but not very successful, shooting excursions in the neighbourhood. Such sport, however, as we had, was amongst pheasants, partridges, and snipes; and I had the pleasure of bagging a brace of that noble bird the korhan.

I have said that I was lodged in the Drostdy. This is the official residence of the commissioner or head of the district, who is also the chief magistrate. This situation, which, with such a thin population, cannot be an onerous one, is worth about £600 per annum. The Drostdy at Worcester is a noble but an unfinished residence, planned and erected by a former ambitious commissioner, under an extravagant administration. Nothing could be more completely out of keeping with the humble and unpretending character of the rising little village it presides over. The occupier of such a mansion should have a salary of thousands instead of hundreds. Worcester may consist of fifty or sixty houses, with a population, perhaps, of 1,200, mostly farmers of a respectable class, who possess and occupy land in the vicinity. Its public edifices are soon told: a church (Dutch reformed), and a gaol, to both of which I was introduced. In the latter place was a Malay, about to be tried for murder, and a ferocious-looking fellow he was. Worcester should, and I believe does, enjoy a salubrious climate; for its elevation above the sea must be considerable; it stands upon an extensive plain, with a gravelly soil, watered by the Breede, Hex, and Hartebeest rivers, and bounded, in the distance, on three sides, by lofty mountains. This part of the colony cannot pretend much to the picturesque, trees, so essential a constituent in a landscape, being uncommonly rare, though shrubs, affording excellent firewood, are in abundance; but it offers, from many causes, every advantage to the sheepfarmers. Here, as elsewhere, it was my endeavour to see what I could of the colonial farmers, and their mode of life: they ever seemed to enjoy abundance in a rude way, and I generally found them hospitable, good-natured, unlettered fellows, certainly not over-partial to their English rulers; mainly, I should say, on the ground of our having abolished slavery, the objections to which they never seemed to comprehend.

On a Friday I began my retrograde march, riding thirty miles to my old quarters at Peter De Villiers', which I reached, hungry and saturated with rain, about dark. On the morrow I reached the toll to breakfast, fifteen miles, raining all the time. Holme, the ex-coxswain, was still very civil, and dear. This morning I fell in with Judge M- and his staff, travelling on circuit. He was bound for Worcester, and I thought of the ferocious-looking Malay I had been introduced to. There was not much of pomp and circumstance about the judge,

whom I encountered in a soaking rain; he, like myself, travelling on horseback, in which humble manner he doubtless made his entrée into Worcester; sheriffs' coaches having not yet found their way to South

Africa.

Leaving the Toll once more in the rear, I crossed the Franch-hoeke pass in the rain; and in the afternoon was hospitably received by a Mr. Victor Hugo, a substantial farmer at Franch-hoeke, and field-cornet of the district. This man, as well as his family, interested me exceedingly; they were Protestants, and evidently pious ones, being descendants of one of those respectable families who fled from the Continent of Europe at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. The Hugos read their Bible, and at the close of the evening they sang a hymn, with a simplicity and harmony extremely pleasing to my ear.

By daybreak on the morrow, the household was on the stir, for it was the Sabbath, and the wagon was soon at the door to take them to church at the Paarl, the principal town in the district; but to get there was a matter of some hours ; indeed, at the Cape, all journeys are calculated by hours. My active little nag was at the door soon after five A.M. I breakfasted in Stellenbosch ; and as the evening was fast closing in, I cantered through the tranquil little village of Wynberg, and pulled up with considerable satisfaction at my humble threshold, after a fortnight's absence, having on that day rode about fifty miles without any extraordinary sense of fatigue.

FROM NI'MAT ULLAH.

يكي خوانيم نه در دو عالم جز يكي دانيم نه غير آن يكرا يكي گر خیال غیر آید در نظر نقش او بر دیده بنشانیم نه يكنفس بي عشق جانانیم نه عشق جانان روز و شب در جان بود عاقلي را نیک میدانیم نه عشق بازي آيتي در شان ماست مستانیم نه منكر احوال اعتقاد ماست با رندان تمام بر خیالِ غیر حیرانیم نه چشم ما روشن بنور روي اوست

درد دردش همچوستید میخوریم در پي دارو و درمانیم نه

LEGEND OF VÁTHEN AND VIL-VÁTHEN.

On the occasion of the marriage of Siva and Parvati, they dismissed Agastya, sending him to the mountain Pothaiya, in the south. On the road, he came by the residence of the rácshasas Váthen and Vil-váthen, who were accustomed to feast foot-travellers in the following way: Vil-váthen first slew his younger brother Váthen, and then cooked him in pots, out of which he fed the traveller. The meal being finished, Vil-váthen called on his brother by name, who came forth alive, rending the bowels of the guest, who dying in consequence, both of the savages feasted on his body. Agastya (an incarnation of Vishnú) slew the rácshasas. S. section 10, p. 10, Mackenzie MSS.

With fainting step and slow comes a weary traveller
To the grey and lonely hillock of Callipilliyér;

All silent is the jungle-side, e'en the insect voice is still,
Near the grim and evil wizard-shapes that wone beside the hill!

And here, amid the rank long grass and thick entangled brake,
The hyæna and the jackal lurk, and upstarts the hooded snake;
And many a bone is strewn around-in this drear and desert spot;
Heaven speed thee, ancient traveller! that the demons hurt thee not!

Full pensively the ancient man surveys the waste around,
And well, I ween, he knows his foot treads on unhallowed ground.
But say, what grisly form is this that cowers beneath the hill?
What may it be that crouches there so shadowy and so still?

As nearer draws the pilgrim, he beholds the features grim
Of a Jógi, bent in prayer, by the evening twilight dim;
Swart and haggard is his visage, and his form is nude and bare,
Save the girdle round his waist, and his shaggy matted hair!

"O Rishi, can'st thou give to me some shelter for the night,
Till morning sheds abroad again her golden shower of light?"
No answer gave that Jógi, but all suddenly he rose-

He leads the way, and gloomy shades cling round him as he goes.

They reach at length a darksome hut, half sunk beneath the ground,
With broken crags and limbs of trees piled o'er it and around;
As he steps into that narrow den, the pilgrim holds his breath:
Is this a resting-place for men, or a sepulchre of death?

But lo! where embers faintly glow amid the cavern dark,
There silently the Jógi bends and fans the dying spark;
As the rising flame upsprings, you may scan his aspect well,
'Tis the visage of a corpse made animate by Hell!

Still no greeting gives the Jógi, nor looks he to his guest,
Nor speaks he to the aged man of shelter or of rest,
But from a nook within the wall a cauldron vast he brings,
And feeds the flame and still amain fresh fuel on it flings.

Can'st tell what liquid dark is this that boils within the pot?
It may be wholesome food for men, but its colour likes me not.
And ever as that Jógi stirs the liquid round about,

Loud laughter through the forest rings, a yelling, and a shout.

And it seems unto that pilgrim old, that through the cavern dim,
A thousand grisly phantoms flit, and mock and mow at him;
And the scum upon the cauldron's brim seems red, like human gore:
I would not taste of food like this, though my fast were long and sore.

'Tis ready! through the forest dark a tempest wildly sweeps,
On such a night, sure, Ravan's self his demon advent keeps.
Those viands strange the Jógi sets before the aged sire,
He speaks not, but his eyeballs gleam with sparks of lurid fire.

Regardless of those tiger eyes, all tranquil eats the sage,
He dreads not, or his sense, perhaps, is dull from toil and age.
'Tis finished; and that evil host at length his silence breaks;
He speaks, and at his accents dread the rocky cavern quakes.

"Brother, come forth! it is the time, the moment of our power,
And e'en as he has fed on thee, so will we him devour!"
Then, as with direful anguish bent, and an agony of woe,
That pilgrim's form is backward bent, and he writhes him to and fro.

And, tearing through his entrails, comes a shape more foul and dread
Than the fiend that to a murderer seems in his midnight-path to tread.
Together turn these brethren foul to the carcase of their guest;
"His blood," quoth they, "shall be our drink, and his limbs a merry feast."

But lo 'tis gone, and where it lay a radiant form appears;
With fourfold arm the quoit it wields, the ponderous mace uprears,
Strains the tough bow, and bears aloft the emblem of the god,
Before whom Indra's heaven shakes, and thy mountains, Kailas, nod.

'Tis Vishnu's self! before him beams intolerable light;
Fast vanish, then, those dreary shades and phantoms of the night;
The lotus perfume breathes around, and the kohil's joyous song
Floats on the night air's rustling wing, the jungle depths among.

But on those evil brethren foul the god his fury turns;
The arrow from his bow, impelled with winged lightning, burns.
Consumed, they fall, and through wide heaven exulting voices ring,
And Swarga hails her conquering god, the lotus-bearing king.

ALPHA.

"JOTTINGS FROM MY JOURNAL."

BY A MEDICAL OFFICER OF THE BENGAL ESTABLISHMENT.

CHAPTER XII. TRAITS OF THE DESERT.

FOR the first five or six marches, after leaving Ferozepoor, our route lay through a country differing little from that in its immediate neighbourhood- the soil, poor clay, hard, unyielding, and inhospitable, saving in the vicinity of the Sutlej, which bounds its western margin. At a town named Bahak Bodla, the frontier of the protected states is gained, after which we journeyed along the verge of the great desert tracts, in which the towns of Bickaneer and Jezulmere form such remarkable oases. Jungle of tamarisk, babul, and acacias here, hills of sand-wild and uninteresting-there; riverward alone was any sign of inhabitants, villages scarce met with, and at long distances, and not unfrequently unroofed and tenantless. Though not yet in an enemy's country, for the khan of Bahawulpore is considered our friend, the line of march was observed, as if we had been, no advance tents being allowed to be sent on overnight. The sun of April and May in the desert blazed, morning after morning, over our heads, for several hours ere any shelter could be expected; and when the rear-guard brought up the lagging tents, each threw himself upon the carpet, sick and exhausted. The days were passed recumbent, but not in sleep; for who could sleep with the thermometer at 120o under the double fly of a tent? The mess hour for dinner in the field was 3 P.M., and those who could eat no breakfast gained somewhat in strength and spirits through the influence of Hodgson's beer and Cockburn's sherry; and thus three hours of each day passed pleasantly, leaving us to live weeks in the remaining twentyAt sunset the mess-party broke up into groups, and these, with a teapoy, round which they sat, drank their cup of tea and smoked their manillas, and talked of home, under the intense blue sky of the desert. Before eight o'clock, and the roll had been beaten, most had sought their pillows, but scarcely to sleep, or if sleep did overtake one more drowsy than others, it was partial and unrefreshing, and was nightly broken in upon by the sandy gale from the desert, that fitfully rose at midnight; the impalpable particles, borne along upon this blast, searched quickly into nostrils, mouth, and ears; the function of respiration became impeded, and ere the first bugle, at 2 A.M., sent its shrill warning through the camp, most were sleeplessly anticipating it. Immediately on leaving the Sikh states, the influence which the proximity of the Bickaneer desert exerts on the Bahawulpore country was apparent : without inquiry, the aspect of the soil alone tells the observer that rain is there unknown; the hoofs of the horse of Hindostan grow brittle, and subject to sand-crack, and without frequent application of oil, quickly become unfit for travelling. At Matta Jaidoo, eleven marches onward, the desert extends to the road, presenting the appearance of hillocks of sand, heaped up by the south wind, and resting on the cold, hard clay soil beneath, possessing but the power of nourishing the Asiat.Journ.N.S. VOL.IV.No.23. 3 U

one.