43 8 Voyage of the Novara. 



prising to see these handsome, tall, brown figures, with their 

 insignia of Vishnu or Siva marked on their foreheads, and 

 dressed in their sweeping plaited togas of pure white, 

 employed on the telegraph, the railway, the arsenal, and even 

 the observatory, all which employments demand the utmost 

 exactness and punctuahty, and thus afford the most gratifying 

 evidence of the adaptability of the Hindoo race to be impressed 

 and to benefit by European civilization. With the exception 

 of Major Jacob, the director of the astronomical and magnetic 

 observatory, the whole of the employes are natives, who are 

 not indeed employed in making the actual observations, but are 

 found perfectly competent to compute the various calculations, 

 and make the requisite reductions. The institution itself is at 

 present of but little importance as a place of scientific observa- 

 tion, in consequence of the small support it receives, but it is to 

 be provided with a meridian circle, similar to that in the Royal 

 Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, when it must become 

 an important station. Strange to say, here, as at the Cape, 

 there are no observations made on the Sundays, which in the 

 course of a year gives rise to lamentable deficiencies, especially 

 when some natural phenomenon of rare occurrence happens to 

 fall upon a Sunday. 



We were greatly surprised at the flourishing condition 

 of the Central Museum, with which is united a Zoological 

 Garden, both set on foot in 1851. In the spacious rooms of 

 this stately edifice are ranged costly Indian antiquities and 

 sculptures, inscriptions in Sanscrit, in stone, oi marble slabs, 



