mediæval-looking buildings of the Bhoodwar quarter, with their massive
walls and loop-holes and crenellations, was a matter of four or five
centuries back in a mere turn of the eye; and from these latter to
the Hindu temples here and there, which, whether or not of actual age,
always carry one straight into antiquity, was a further retrogression
to the obscure depths of time. So, too, one's glance would often sweep
in a twinkling from a European clothed in garments of the latest mode
to a Hindu whose sole covering was his _dhotee_, or clout about the
loins, taking in between these two extremes a number of distinct
stages in the process of evolution through which our clothes have
gone. In the evening we visited the _Sangam_, where the small streams
of the Moola and the Moota come together. It is filled with cenotaphs,
but, so far from being a place of weeping, the pleasant air was full
of laughter and of gay conversation from the Hindus, who delight to
repair here for the purpose of enjoying the cool breath of the evening
as well as the pleasures of social intercourse.

[Illustration: HINDU TEMPLES NEAR POONA.]

But I did not care to linger in Poona. The atmosphere always had to me
a certain tang of the assassinations, the intrigues, the treacheries
which marked the reign of that singular line of usurping ministers
whose capital was here. In the days when the Peishwas were in the
height of their glory Poona was a city of a hundred and fifty thousand
inhabitants, and great traffic was here carried on in jewelry and
such luxuries among the Mahratta nobles. The Mahrattas once, indeed,
possessed the whole of India practically; and their name is composed
of _Mahu_, a word meaning "great," and often to be met with in the
designations of this land, where so many things really _are_ great,
and _Rachtra_, "kingdom," the propriety of the appellation seeming to