_Benares--Cashmere Mull's House--The Chouk--The Bisheshwan Temple, and
Maido Rai Minar--Jung Bahadoor in Benares--A Rajah's visit--The marriage
of Jung Bahadoor--Review of the Nepaul Rifle Regiment--Benares College_.

Whatever may be said of the large salaries of the Bengal civilians, they
certainly deserve great credit for the praiseworthy employment of their
wealth; and making amends as it were for the backwardness of India as
regards hotels, they supply their places to the friendless traveller, in
a way which our frigid friends at home might imitate with advantage. I
look back upon my stay in Benares with the greatest pleasure, and shall
long remember the kindness I there experienced.

There is much to be seen in the Holy City, and the means of locomotion
which I should recommend the sight-seer to adopt are Tom Johns, or chairs
swung upon poles, with or without hoods, as the case may be. Upon
arriving at the Chouk or Market-place, we hired two of these conveyances
and started to see the residence of Cashmere Mull. But first I must make
an attempt, however unsuccessful, to describe the Chouk: it is a large
square, studded with raised oblong platforms without walls, the roofs
being supported by fluted Ionic columns. The Police Court, in which a
Native magistrate presides, forms one side of the square. On the
platforms sit the vendors of shawls, skull-caps, toys, shells,
sugar-cane, and various other commodities; but to enumerate the
extraordinary diversity of goods exposed for sale, or to describe the
Babel of tongues which confound the visitor as he wanders through the
motley crowd, would be impossible.

We turned out of the Chouk down a narrow street about three feet broad,