because it is surrounded by land, which is the meaning of the word Mediterranean. On this sea there are no

tides, but you may meet with storms; and what is called a white squall is very unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous. You may touch at the island of Malta, which belongs to England, where is made the Maltese lace so much valued here. As you pass near Sicily you will see the burning mountain of Etna. When you arrive at Alexandria you will find a crowd of brown and black people, the boys all screaming to you to give them "Backsheesh!" meaning "a few coppers," for no particular reason, but I do not know that they are worse than those English boys who are not ashamed, though they ought to be, to beg of strangers. In Alexandria you will see a great many one-eyed people, for in this dirty, dusty country there is a great deal of ophthalmia, an infectious disease of the eyes, which often destroys the sight. It is said that often four men rowing a boat will only have five eyes among them instead of eight.

Again into a railway carriage, and on to Cairo.* A queer old town, where the streets are so narrow that no carriages pass, but everybody rides about on donkeys. If it happens that a large party from England meet at Cairo a large party coming from India, you will find a great scarcity of food and beds; but in that climate a mat on the flat roof of a house makes a good enough place for sleeping; and you will be waked in the morning by the news that it is time to go forward to Suez. Going

* Since this was written the Suez Canal, which joins the Mediterranean and the Red Seas, has been opened. Africa, in fact, has by this canal been made an island.

there, you travel through "the Great Desert." You have often read about places looking deserted, but until you are there, you can form no idea what it is to see all around you before, behind, and on each side-nothing but stones and sand, the stones covering the sand. Not a tree, nor a flower, nor even a green leaf, nor a blade of grass, nor a bird to be seen. Nothing but hard, bright, glistening stones; and when the sun shines hotly upon them, you feel almost as if you were surrounded by a sea of flame. Sometimes a sand-storm occurs. If you were travelling on a camel, as was the custom till lately, you would have to lie down flat and cover your head, to prevent yourself being suffocated by the sand. A camel, on account of its peculiar fitness for travelling on sand, is sometimes called the ship of the desert. However, now the raiiway quickly conveys you to Suez. It seems strange to be able to find your train over the Great Desert in Bradshaw, and to see all the stations at which you stop marked there.

From Suez you will embark on the Red Sea, that long, narrow piece of water where Pharaoh and his host were drowned when pursuing the Israelites; and at a little distance you may see Mount Horeb and Mount Sinai. It is said to be the hottest place you can find between London and Calcutta ; and if the steamer is very crowded you will be glad enough to reach Aden, although it is a wretched, barren place. There you will be very much amused by the Somalees. They are Africans, who wear enormous wigs, larger than our soldiers' bear-skins, but dyed scarlet. These head-dresses look, on the Africans' black skins, more ugly than you can imagine. All our

ships take in coals at Aden, and the passengers are glad enough to leave it, and go on their way. You will touch at Madras to land passengers and goods, and you will be frightened when you see the little boats that come out for them, almost swallowed up by the surf, that is, the large waves that dash violently against the coast. Then you

will soon reach your destination, for I will suppose that it is to Calcutta, the capital city of India, that you are

bound.

To arrive there by long sea will cost you about £30. The overland route would be perhaps £50. Travelling by the overland route you will see a great variety of nations—French people, Egyptians, Nubians, Arabs, and Cingalese; all looking strange and queer to you; and you will probably hate many of their customs, and despise them for anything in which they differ from your own country people.

It is said that very young Englishmen just going out to India, fresh from school or college, full of spirits at finding themselves their own masters, some times behave to the natives in a way they would not like themselves, if a foreigner in England did the same things to them. These young men, when asked for Backsheesh, will knock the boys' heads with their umbrellas, pelt the crowds at the stations, speak to "the niggers," as they call the Hindoos, as if they were dogs (not as kindly, indeed, as some people speak to their dogs), and, in fact, they appear to think the natives are born to be their slaves. This bad behaviour is not, of course, universal among the young Englishmen. Many of them feel most kindly towards the natives, and are anxious for their improve

ment in every way, sparing neither time nor money to effect it.

It is true that there are some parts of the character of the Hindoos which make it difficult for us to respect them. We do not like their crouching, submissive manner, which is so different from the upright, straightforward way in which an English labourer speaks. An English clergyman, having turned away a native servant for insolence, stated, that for weeks that man stood at the gate of his compound, ran for miles by the side of his palanquin, and, if he saw him walking, he threw himself on the ground at full length, kissed his feet, exclaiming in Hindustanee, “Oh, great being! Oh, representative of God! have pity on your slave punish me, whip me, but let me be your slave, oh, great king!" He was an old man, with a long beard, and he rubbed it in the dust, and cried and sobbed. His master forgave him, and he became a good servant. But those are not the manners that we like in England; they seem to show so little self-respect and manli

ness.

Now if you will get out the map of Hindostan, you shall learn a little of the geography of this great country. It is bounded on the north by the Himalaya Mountains, which divide it from Thibet; on the south by the Indian Ocean; on the east by Burmah and the Bay of Bengal; and on the west by the Arabian Sea, Beloochistan, and Afghanistan. The southern parts are divided into three Presidencies-Bombay, Madras, and Bengal. We send from England a governor and a bishop to each. Besides these, there is a Governor-General; and he has almost the same powers as our Queen has here, exer

cising them as her representative; but he only holds his position there for five years.

Then we also possess the north-west provinces, including the Punjaub and Scinde.

Besides the capitals of the three presidencies, the principal cities are Patna, Benares, Cawnpore, Agra, Lucknow, Lahore, and Delhi. You will read something about most of these places in this book, so find them out in your map.

The Brahmapootra river is on the east, the Indus on the west, and the Ganges rises in the Himalayas, and falls into the sea at Calcutta. The Ganges is a splendid river, and so the Hindoos must think, for they worship it, and believe that if they die on its shores they are sure to be happy in another world. It is rather dreadful, however, so constantly to see dead bodies floating in it, though the natives drink of the water, and call it blessed.

You will perhaps wonder what business we English have, to be governing a hundred and seventy millions of black people, or how we came to India at all. In the year 1639, a few London traders got possession of a small slip of the coast, near Madras. They prospered, and others joined them, and in time they became a powerful company, called the India Company. Whenever we and the natives had a dispute, we always got the best of it, and they the worst. Our power in India was, however, first firmly fixed by Lord Clive, who fought the battle of Plassey against Sooruj-ood Dowlah in 1757, and routed 68,000 natives, with only 3,000 British. Another great victory was achieved by Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards the Duke of Wellington), over the Mahrattas at Assaye, in 1803. There the numbers were 4,500 British against 44,000