on their succession. The Mahrattas were in possession of the entire west and great part of the centre of the peninsula; while the rich and unwarlike province of Bengal, though governed by an hereditary line of nawabs founded by Murshid Kuli Khan in 1704, still continued to pour its wealth into the imperial treasury. The central authority never recovered from the invasion of Nadir Shah in 1739, who carried off plunder variously estimated at from 8 to 30 millions sterling. The Mahrattas closed round Delhi from the south, and the Afghans from the west. The victory of Panipat, won by Ahmad Shah Durani over the united Mahratta confederacy in 1761, gave the Mahommedans one more chance of rule. But Ahmad Shah had no ambition to found a dynasty of his own, nor were the British in Bengal yet ready for territorial conquest. End of Mogul line. Shah Alam, the lineal heir of the Mogul line, was thus permitted to ascend the throne of Delhi, where he lived during the great part of a long life as a puppet in the hands of Mahadji Sindhia. He was succeeded by Akbar II., who lived similarly under the shadow of British protection. Last of all came Bahadur Shah, who atoned for his association with the mutineers in 1857 by banishment to Burma. Thus ended the Mogul line, after a history which covers three hundred and thirty years. Mahommedan rule remodelled the revenue system, and has left behind fifty millions of Mussulmans in British India. _Early European Settlements._ Mahommedan invaders have always entered India from the north-west. Her new conquerors approached from the sea and from the south. From the time of Alexander to that of Vasco da Gama, Europe had enjoyed little direct intercourse with the East. An occasional traveller brought back stories of powerful kingdoms and of untold wealth; but the passage by sea was unthought of, and by land many wide deserts and warlike tribes lay between. Commerce, indeed, never ceased entirely, being carried on chiefly by the Italian cities on the Mediterranean, which traded to the ports of the Levant. But to the Europeans of the 15th century India was practically an unknown land, which powerfully attracted the imagination of spirits stimulated by the Renaissance and ardent for discovery. In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail under the Spanish flag to seek India beyond the Atlantic, bearing with him a letter to the great khan of Tartary. The expedition under Vasco da Gama started from Lisbon five years later, and, doubling the Cape of Good Hope, cast anchor off the city of Calicut on the 20th of May 1498, after a prolonged voyage of nearly eleven months. From the first da Gama encountered hostility from the "Moors," or rather Arabs, who monopolized the sea-borne trade; but he seems to have found favour with the zamorin, or Hindu raja of Malabar. It may be worth while to recall the contemporary condition of India at that epoch. An Afghan of the Lodi dynasty was on the throne of