The native town of Cawnpore contained sixty thousand inhabitants. It possessed no architectural beauties worthy to detain the traveller who, from those stately landing-places whence rise, tier above tier, the shrines and palaces of Benares, was hurrying on towards the ineffable glories of Agra. The most remarkable feature was a spacious boulevard, more than a hundred feet in breadth, called the Chandnee Choke, or street of silver. This name, common to the principal avenue in all the great cities of the north west, is a monument of the days of bad government and a primitive commercial system. When banks were few and robbers bold and numerous, men preferred to have some part of their wealth about their persons and in a portable form. A minister at a native court, however rich the harvest he might gather in during the fitful sunshine of royal favour, thought it well to keep a handful of diamonds and rubies in his girdle, as a provision against the day of disgrace and flight. Now, by the help of a bill of exchange and a single trusty agent, he may store up his gains in European stocks and debentures far out of reach of the greediest Nizam or the neediest Maharaja. In like manner, in old times, farmers and shopkeepers were wont to convert their superfluous rupees into ornaments of fantastic design for themselves, their wives, and their children. The unceasing flow of silver towards the east, which affords to political economists a constant sensation of pleasing bewilderment, is attributed in part to the fact that the Indian peasant still continues to invest his earnings on the wrists and ankles, the ears and noses of his family. Cawnpore was noted for the excellence and cheapness of all articles made of leather,--saddlery, boots and shoes, bottle-covers, helmets, and cheeroot-cases. The manufacture was introduced by a colony of Chinese, the frugal and industrious Lombards of India, who settled in the Bazaar many years ago. A subaltern could buy a set of harness for his buggy at something under three pounds, and thoroughly equip his hack for half that sum: and, if he was not very particular about shape and colour, he might pick up a serviceable country-bred horse for a hundred rupee note.