The next morning, after breakfast, the cornet and I rode back to Sultanpore, and in a few days I bade him adieu, and in a short time found myself sound in wind and limb, but quite out of _rootie mackun_ (“bread and butter”), and other river stores, in sight of the far-famed fortress of Allahabad, at the confluence of the Jumna and Ganges. The view of this fortress, with its lofty walls and numerous towers, is, as you approach it, very striking; one sees few such imposing masses in England; and as for our feudal castles, few of them are much bigger than the gateways of such places as I am describing. The fort which occupies the point where these two famous rivers meet, though perfectly Oriental in its general character, has been “pointed,” and strengthened in accordance with the principles of European fortification, particularly on the land side. It is impregnable to a native force, and one of the principal depôts of the Upper Provinces. This, as is well known, is one of the _Prayagas_, or places of Hindoo pilgrimage. During the great _Melah_, or fair, which subsequently it was often my lot to witness, the concourse of people who assemble here from all parts of the Hindoo world, from the Straits of Manaar to the mountains of Thibet, is prodigious. The sands below the fort exhibit, on that occasion, a sea of heads, intersected by lines of booths, and here and there an elephant or a camel towering above the congregated mass. The point where the all-important regenerating dip is effected, is covered by the many-coloured standards of the Brahmins and Fakeers, looking at a distance like a dahlia show, or a gaudy-coloured bed of tulips. In crossing over to the fort, in my bolio, I was forcibly struck by the very different appearance in the water of the two streams. The one, the Jumna, deep, blue, and pure; the other, the Ganges, yellow and turbid. It was curious to observe them blending in many a whirlpool and eddy—the flaky wreaths of the dirty old “Gunga-Jee” infusing themselves into the transparent element of the sister river. Here I laid in a store of eggs, bread, poultry, mutton, and the like—of the latter I purchased a magnificent hind-quarter from a bazaar kussai, or butcher, who came staggering on board with it, patting and attitudinizing it, and after pointing out its incomparable beauties, its masses of fat, and the fine colour of the lean, &c., let me have it for four rupees, just three rupees eight annas more than it was worth. A few days brought me to Currah Munickpoor, where I found a sub, on solitary outpost duty, who looked upon my arrival as an agreeable break to the monotony of his life—a perfect Godsend—and treated me with uncommon hospitality. I found him a very pleasant fellow, and his manner of life—smoking, eating, shooting, &c.—so much to my taste, that it did not require any very urgent solicitation on his part to induce me to spend two or three days with him.