Heg. 418 (1027).--Mahmood died at Ghizny in the sixty-third year of his age. He reigned thirty-five years, and was buried by torch-light with great pomp and solemnity in the Kesr Firozy at Ghizny. This celebrated monarch was in person about the middle size, but well made, and strongly marked with the small-pox. His son Mahomed succeeded to the throne. The Idol of Somnat. CHAPTER I. Shortly after the sun had risen, a beautiful Hindoo was washing her graceful limbs in the crisp waters of the sea, which gently curled over a smooth pebbly beach, a short distance from the fortifications of Somnat. This town was situated on the neck of a peninsula washed on three sides by the ocean, and fortified with great strength. There was only one approach to it. It was reported that the Ghiznivites, under Mahmood their sovereign, were on their march towards the town in large force, at which the infatuated Hindoos affected to rejoice, proclaiming in the frantic wildness of their enthusiasm, that their great idol, to whom all things upon earth were obedient, had drawn thither the Mahomedans to blast them in a moment and to avenge the destruction of the various gods of India. Upon this vain-glorious boast they appeared to rely. The town was crowded with inhabitants who seemed determined to resist to the last gasp of life the threatened assault of their foes. Nevertheless, they trusted more to the imagined supremacy of their idol, than to their own efforts of resistance. Though the fortifications were strong for the period, when cannon were not employed in sieges, and even the battering-ram was but seldom resorted to, yet, being only of mud, they were not impregnable to the assaults of a brave and resolute foe. They were defended, moreover, by a host of fanatics, thousands of pilgrims, and crazy visionaries who crowded to worship the celebrated idols contained within their walls, forming the uncertain instruments of defence, against which the hardy and resolute troops of Ghizny, inured to warfare and accustomed to conquest, had to contend. The inhabitants of Somnat were confident in their numbers, and this being increased by their expectation of divine interposition through the influence of their stone divinity, they hailed with derision the approach of their foes, observed their festivals with increased acclamations, as if the menaced hostility promised rather to be scenes of pastime than of devastation. The threatened siege did not in the slightest degree interrupt the daily observances of the Hindoos. The women went to the sea-shore to bathe as usual, perfectly unapprehensive of danger from the advancing army of Mahmood.