MADRAS. 317 
know is the father of Lady Dalhousie) came on board, and invited 
us all to Government-House. He took Lady Dalhousie on shore 
with him, leaving Lord Dalhousie and us, his suite, till the 
afternoon ; for it was necessary that we should land in state, and 
the troops could not be drawn up in the middle of the day. 
I was at first vexed by the loss of a day on shore, which, how- 
ever, I did not afterwards regret, having had no idea what a fine 
thing an Oriental reception is. 
Madras, as seen from the roads, is a long city on an extensive 
flat, without arise of ten feet on any part, and the ranges of 
houses appear scattered and disjointed, from the number of trees 
planted amongst them. The amount of inhabitants is difficult 
to calculate, but there are not less than 5 or 600,000, a very 
large portion of whom had assembled to witness the landing of 
the Governor-General. 
We had anchored at a distance of two miles from the shore, 
and at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, a very large boat came along- 
side, of the only kind fit for landing through the surf. These 
are about forty feet long, very high out of the water, flat- 
bottomed, wall-sided, and formed of planks of soft (Mango-tree) 
wood, sewed together with cord. They are pulled by about 
twenty black paddlers, who keep up a most discordant din by way 
of keeping time with the paddles, which are poles of some twenty 
feet in length, having a small round blade at the end. As we 
approached the shore, the whole beach, for miles, seemed alive 
with people, forming a moving mass of white turbans, black 
heads, white frocks, and black legs. Behind them the cavalry 
were drawn up, mingled with crowds of horsemen and carriages, 
and glittering with the bayonets of the troops. The nearer we 
approached, the more wonderful did this mass of human creatures 
appear; and we never ceased looking and wondering, till the 
motion of the boat told us we were in the surf of the beach. 
. This was another and an equally curious spectacle. The steersman 
watched minutely every cresting wave, putting the boat round 
when any too big to be kept a head of us approached, and 
urging the paddlers, who screamed and yelled all the more discord- 
