quick pace to the sound of merry little tinkling bells suspended from their necks; fighting rams, kept for combats, one of the favorite Mahratta pastimes, parading the streets in long rows, now leaping and butting at dreamy Brahmanee cows. Add to all this that almost every day in the week there are crowded markets, religious processions, passing funerals with gayly-dressed corpses seated on the biers, looking ghastly enough on this dancing bubbling current of human life, and some idea may be formed of the sights and scenes to be met with in the capital of the Mahratta empire. At my first arrival at Poonah I remember seeing some Hindoo children at play in the square. They were playing at marbles in all respects like the English game, save that the boys had nothing in the world on but a sacred cord round their shoulders and some gold and silver ornaments. New-born infants could not have been more unconscious than they were. The boy who won, a lad about eight or nine, seemed the least elated of the party. The one who lost had a better time; he clapped the winner on the back and cheered him all the way across the square, crying, "Khoop! khoop!" ("Fine! fine!"). There were thirty or more nude little fellows watching the play with intense interest, and evidently having the most enjoyment out of it, to judge from the wild shouts of applause with which they hailed the victor, screaming at the very top of their lungs, "Marliah! marliah!" ("Beaten! beaten!"). How many English or American boys would behave so well? It would be simply impossible to enumerate all the places of historical interest to be found here. The hillsides are everywhere crowned with forts and religious and military strongholds, where many a battle has been fought and won, and many a treaty formed only to be broken, both by the servants of the East India Company and the contending Mahratta and Mohgul forces, on this debatable land of the Hindoos, Mohguls, and English conquerors. There are Bambura, or Bampoora, whence in former times an enormous gun, the Mahratta curfew, boomed sunset warnings to honest men to betake themselves home; and Dapooree, where Colonel Ford, C. B., built a palatial residence, and raised and commanded a brigade of magnificent Mahratta troops after the European fashion for the service of the Peishwa Baji Rao. At Chinchore, near by, a boy is still worshipped as God by the credulous natives. The originator of this curious deception was one Marâbo, who is said to have restored sight to a blind girl, and who effected a like miraculous cure for the great Sivaji.[63] In order to prove his divinity, this Marâbo caused himself to be buried alive in a sitting posture with a holy book in his hands. His son succeeded him as God. For several miracles performed by the latter, especially the feat of transforming a piece of cow's flesh into roses, the emperor of Delhi, Alamghir, presented to this man-god Narayana eight villages in perpetuity.