BEING RECOLLECTIONS OF A JOURNEY BEFORE THE DAYS OF RAILROADS BY Anna Harriette Leonowens Author of "Siam and the Siamese" ILLUSTRATED PHILADELPHIA HENRY T. COATES & CO. 1897 —— Copyright, 1884, BY PORTER & COATES. —— THIS LITTLE VOLUME OF TRAVELS Is Inscribed to MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM W. JUSTICE, IN GRATEFUL APPRECIATION OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP, BY THE AUTHOR....

In the following pages, gathered from voluminous notes of early travel, I have tried to give a faithful account of life in India, as well as of the sights and scenes visited by me, with my husband, before the days of railroad travel. It is well known that the introduction of the railroad into India has in no sense affected the life of the people, and has only very slightly modified the general appearance of the country. India is still what it was in the Vèdic period, a land of peasant classes; s

Calcutta, the City of the Black Venus, Kali.—The River Hoogley.—Cremation-Towers.—Chowringee, the Fashionable Suburb of Calcutta.—The Black Hole.—Battles of Plassey and Assaye.—The Brahmo-Somaj.—Temple of Kali.—Feast of Juggurnath.—Benares and the Taj Mahal. After eight or nine days' steaming from the fair and picturesque island of Bombay our captain announced that we were about to enter the Hoogley, a river made famous in Indian song and story as "the strong arm of the beautiful goddess Gunga,