The Nautchnees' establishment was a curious building surrounded by a high wall. We entered through a gate, and were at once conducted by a couple of old women across a paved courtyard planted all around with the mohgree, oleander, and tall red and white rose trees. Passing this, we were introduced into a great bare hall, with low seats ranged around the walls, curtained all along the farther end of the room, into which inner chambers seemed to open. Here we took our places. One of the old women stayed by us, while the other went off to announce our visit to the head lady of the establishment. The great slave-markets which we have all read so much about, where tender young girls are bought and sold as if they were cattle, no longer exist in British India, but the amount of traffic of the kind that is still carried on everywhere is incredible, although the fact is vigorously denied by both the buyer and the seller. In many cases these Nautchnees are not bought, but hired for a term of years, for money paid not to the girls themselves, but to parents or friends. In the course of time the parents die or move away, and the girl, after having given her best days to her employers, finds herself without money, friends, or social ties, and is glad enough to spend the remainder of her life in instructing the younger members of the establishment of which, with the fidelity so natural to Oriental women, she considers herself a member, and therefore bound for life to promote its interests. After a few moments Sainah Bebee came in to greet the lady Kesinèh. She salââmed most deferentially to us, and took her place on the floor. She was a woman about fifty and a native of Afghanistan, tall and finely formed. She spoke of difficulty in procuring respectable young girls to fill the places of those who ran away, were sold to certain rich admirers for wives or concubines, or died. It would appear that the lowest, or Cusban, class was largely increasing, whereas that of the Nautchnees was fast diminishing. On my questioning the old lady about the average life of the Nautchnees, she could give me no clear estimate, but intimated very decidedly that they generally died young.