We are accustomed to look at hoary ruins with reverent interest, and it is no wonder that the first sight of the historical monuments of Benares made a profound impression on my mind. I felt almost as if transported to a time far back in the misty past, and found it difficult to realize that I walked the same streets, lanes and market places where the Babylonian heralds of war and the ambassadors of Alexander the Great were received by the same people whose descendants still inhabit the same city, and have retained the same civilization and the same institutions through all the intervening centuries. [Illustration: HINDOO TEMPLES.] The sun cast its last rays over the memorable city when I had the pleasure of seeing it for the first time. At a distance of two miles I could see the palaces and temples with their domes, cupolas, and minarets merged into a confused mass, and on the summit of the hill towered the renowned mosque of Emperor Arungzebes with two minarets, the spires of which rise two hundred and fifty feet above the level of the Ganges. It was a beautiful oriental picture, the most beautiful I had yet seen. The next morning at sunrise a Mohammedan dragoman or interpreter took me down the river in a boat, and in the course of an hour we passed, according to the estimate of the interpreter, over twenty thousand bathing Hindoos. Every two miles are built ghats, or broad flights of steps down to river, some of these being eighty feet high. Along the edge of the water Brahmins are squatting about twenty feet apart under large sun shades made of palm leaves in the form of an umbrella. These Brahmins have a certain inherited right to these little spots where they have thus raised their sun shades for the purpose of collecting an offering from every bather. Men and women bathe side by side. They all go into the water in their thin cotton suits, and everything is conducted with order and decorum. After the bath flowers are offered to the river, and oils and fruits to the Brahmin. A short distance above the edge of the water is an open place for the cremation of the bodies of the dead, and on the river close by are scores of boats and barges loaded with wood which is cut into small sticks and is used for the funeral-pyres. We stopped a few minutes here while three corpses were brought on biers. They were covered by a white cloth with a red dye-stuff scattered over the chest. The body was first immersed in the river and then placed on its pyre, which was kindled by the nearest relative of the deceased. After the cremation the ashes were scattered on the river by the Brahmin, who, of course, charged a round sum for these highly important services. We next went up the high steps and visited several temples and other objects of interest of which I shall give a brief description.