take place, the demand for clothes and sweetmeats is really enormous. Dealers in those things make a harvest of profit and "the town becomes a jubilee of feasts." During the night preceding the marriage, the women of both the families scarcely sleep, being busily engaged in making all sorts of preparations for the next day. Very early in the morning, five _Ayows_, or females whose husbands are alive, take with them a light, a knife, a _Sree_, a _Brundala_, containing sundry little articles, described before, a small brass pot, some sweetmeats, _choora_ and _moorkee_, oil, betel, betel-nuts and turmeric, and go to the nearest tank, sounding a conch, and touching the water with the knife, fill the brass pot with water. The above articles being presented as an offering to the brass pot, the females receive a portion of the eatables and return home sounding the conch, which is a necessary accompaniment of all religious ceremonies. What I am now about to describe may be called the _first_ marriage, because it is invariably followed by a second ceremonial when the union is really consummated. But it properly forms the binding ceremony, as constituting the marriage relative between the two youthful parties, with all its legal and social rights, even if they should not be spared to live together as husband and wife. The emptiness and superficiality of the relation, especially on the side of the childish bride, will be but too apparent, and is but too often realised in this uncertain life, in the prolonged misery of a virgin widowhood. On the day of the marriage both the bridegroom and the bride are forbidden to eat anything except a little milk and a few fruits. The father of the bride also fasts, as well as the officiating priests of the two families. About twelve o'clock in the day, the Mowleek family sends presents of clothes, sweetmeats, fishes, sour and sweet milk and some money, say about twenty-five rupees, to the house of the Koolin family, as a mark of honor to the latter, to which, from his superior caste he is fairly entitled. This present is called _Adhibassy_. Both the fathers are also required during the day to perform the ceremony of _Nannimook_ or _Bidhishrad_,--a ceremony, the meaning of which, as said before, is to make offerings to the manes of ancestors, and to wish for the increase and preservation of progeny.