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The route assigned to his march is obscurely given; but it seems to point out the country from the Hyphasis to the Hysudrus, from thence to Palibothra, at the junction of the Saone and the Ganges, or, perhaps, where Patna now stands. There is no good reason to believe, with some authors, that he reached the mouth of the Ganges.

It gave us the opportunity of touching at a number of places, Ghazeepore, Buxar, Monghyr, Dinapore, Patna, and Berhampore, in most of which we had the pleasure of meeting missionary brethren. Towards the end of January we embarked on the ship Monarch, and after a prosperous, though not a rapid, voyage we arrived in England in May, 1850. The only place at which we touched was St. Helena.

The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre.

Hardly less service did the mission come to render to the manufacture of paper in course of time, giving the name of Serampore to a variety known all over India. At first Carey was compelled to print his Bengali Testament on a dingy, porous, rough substance called Patna paper.

"Haven't been able to get a man that was any good since. It's nothing but worry, worry, worry in business. And where might you have come across him, captain, if it's fair to ask?" "He was the mate of the Patna that voyage," I said, feeling that I owed some explanation. For a time Egstrom remained very still, with his fingers plunged in the hair at the side of his face, and then exploded.

From Shergotty to Gyah, and Gyah to Patna, for instance, the pace is four miles and a half an hour; but then "the road is cutcha, and the slightest shower of rain renders it puddly and impracticable for speedy transit." From Patna to Benares the official account is the same, but the rate increases at one stage to five miles and a half.

"The next morning, as the English army started in pursuit of the Emperor Shah Alam, Major Carnac, from whom, I must mention in passing, I received all possible marks of attention and politeness, sent me to Patna, where in the English Chief, Mr. McGwire, I found an old friend, who treated me as I should certainly have treated him in like circumstances.

Hastings returned from Benares to Calcutta on the 5th February, 1782. At that time I was wholly ignorant of the letter which on the 20th January he wrote from Patna to the Secret Committee of the Honorable the Court of Directors. The rough draught of this letter, in the handwriting of Major Palmer, is now in my possession.

Shah 'Alam the emperor of Dilli, was then towards Patna a tool in the hands of Shuja'u-d-Daula, the Nawwab of Lakhnau, and Kasim 'Ala Khan, the Nawwab of Murshid-abad. Alluding to the confusion which reigned in Upper Hindustan after the assassination of 'Alamgir the Second, and the flight of Shah 'Alam.

In all Indian, Mahomedan, and in fact all countries which are not Christian, it is a very difficult task to obtain anything like an exact calculation of the number of inhabitants, as nothing is more hateful to the population than such computations. I landed with two travellers at Patna, and rode on to Deinapore in the evening, where our steamer anchored for the night.