"There is a good deal of uncertainty about the early history of India, as the Hindoo accounts are not to be believed in any way. They make the Hindoos the first people that ever lived here, and give their race an antiquity of millions of years; they talk about kings and dynasties that never existed, and mix their performances with those of their gods. Here is a fair sample of their stories: "'A goddess in Ceylon had a headache, and it was said the only thing that could cure her was a plant on one of the Himalayas, a thousand miles to the north. One of the gods went to bring it, and was gone only a few hours. When he got to the mountain he was not sure which plant was wanted, and so he took the mountain on his shoulders and carried it to Ceylon, and he did it so quietly that none of the inhabitants or wild animals that lived on the mountain were disturbed in the least. Going over a plain of Central India he dropped a few stones from the mountain, and formed a range of hills that stand there to-day. If anybody doubts the truth of the story he can see the hills, and then he must be convinced.' [Illustration: HINDOO GIRL OF HIGH CASTE.] "The Hindoos are thought to have come here, about 3200 years ago, from the north; they enslaved the wild tribes that lived in the country, and traces of these aborigines are still to be found in Central and Southern India. The Persians under Darius conquered a part of the country; and then Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire, and of course took what belonged to it in India. The country was then divided into numerous small kingdoms, which were quite independent of each other; many of them were captured by the Mohammedan conquerors who began to come here eight or nine hundred years ago, and kept coming till within 200 years. The story of their wars, and of their empires and kingdoms, would fill a large volume, but we will skip them all, as even the shortest account would be tedious. "In 1599 a company was formed in London, called 'The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading with the East Indies,' which was afterward shortened to 'The East India Company.' Queen Elizabeth gave them a charter, and a monopoly of all trade east of the Cape of Good Hope, for fifteen years, and they had a capital of £30,000. "The company did so well in the first fifteen years that it had its charter renewed, with more capital, and every fifteen or twenty years afterward, down to the year 1854, it was renewed in one form or another. The capital was increased with most of the renewals until it reached £6,000,000, or $30,000,000, in 1793; it remained at that figure, but the profits were so great that the shares were often held at five or six times their par value. From a very early period in its history the company had the power to govern the country, to make war upon all barbarous people, to administer laws not conflicting with those of England, and to make such laws of its own as were thought necessary.