The town of Currah, about fifty miles above Allahabad, is situated on the Ganges, close to its banks, and presents to the view a confused mass of mud buildings, buried in the foliage of numerous neem, peepul, and tamarind trees; interspersed with these are several temples, musjids, or mosques, as also some houses of stone or brick, displaying a considerable appearance of comfort and convenience for this part of India. The vicinity is much cut up by deep ravines, formed by the annual rains in their descent, through the loose soil, to the river. A little below the town are the remains of a considerable fort, which from the Ganges has rather a picturesque appearance; its gateway, and some lofty circular bastions, are in a very tolerable state of preservation. Lower down still, on the spot where I moored, are some pretty Hindoo mundils or temples, from which ghauts or flights of steps lead to the river; these are overhung by noble trees, principally the tamarind, shedding a cool and refreshing shade over the spot. Here I planted my chair on one or two evenings, with my friend the sub, beneath the shade of these trees, and, soothed into a state of tranquillity by the cooing of numerous doves, which fill the groves, I gazed on the boats as they glided down the stream, and yielded up my mind to the influence of tranquil and pleasing emotions. I thought of home—my mother—the widow—when I should be a captain—and other things equally remote and agreeable. The tamarind, to my taste, is the most beautiful tree of the East—not even excepting the banyan—the foliage, which is of a delicate green, droops in rich and luxuriant masses, like clusters of ostrich plumes—overhanging a piece of water, or half-enveloping some old mosque, durgah, or caravanserai—with the traveller’s horse picketed in its shade, or the group of camels ruminating in repose beneath it—nothing can be more picturesque. This tree, beneath which no plant will grow, seems to be a great favourite with the natives, but particularly with the Mahomedans; it is almost invariably to be found near their mosques and mausoleums; and amongst them, I suspect, holds the place the yew, or rather the cypress, does with us—an almost inseparable adjunct of the tomb: “Fond tree, still sad when others’ griefs are fled. The only constant mourner o’er the dead.” A nest of Brahmins is comfortably established in and about the ghaut and temple above mentioned, the duties of which latter they perform; these, with bathing, eating, sleeping, and fleecing European passers-by, constitute the daily tenor of their _harmless_ lives. They regularly levy contributions from European travellers who pass this way, and make, I suspect, rather a good thing of it.