COMING IN OF TIDE OF THE GANGES. 83 



to its banks to die, and piously drowns in it his parents and relations, 

 to secure their eternal happiness. With the converse of the feeling of the 

 Ghiber, who would consider the eternal fire the object of his worship, 

 polluted by the touch of a corpse, the flindoo casts the dead, naked, into 

 the sacred stream; so that those who sail upon the Ganges, have often 

 to make their way through shoals of livid corpses floating down to the 

 sea, in various stages of corruption. This stream rises among the roots 

 of the Hienalaya mountains, on the Indian side of the range. It very 

 soon becomes of considerable depth, and navigable for the light barks of 

 the country; but before the confluence with theJumna,itisfordableinmany 

 places. The depth of the Ganges is not materially influenced by the melting 

 of the snows, though, like all other tropical rivers, it overflows the 

 surrounding plains in some places for more than one hundred miles in 

 extent, at which time nothing is visible but the lofty palm trees, the 

 villages, which are built on elevated sites, and a few mounds, the ruins of 

 former hamlets. Travelling is, at this period, performed in boats, in 

 which the Hindoo skims over his rice fields and gardens, which are then 

 imbibing the moisture necessary to their fertility. The prospect is 

 singular but monotonous, as every field is similar to the next, and the 

 appearance of the country, upon the subsidence of the waters, is any 

 thing but picturesque. At the distance of five hundred miles from the 

 sea, the Ganges is thirty feet deep at low water, and never becomes 

 shallow, until at its mouth, the bars and banks of sand, thrown up by the 

 contending waters of the rivers and the sea, choke its channel, and 

 render it unnavigable to large vessels. At the distance of two hundred 

 miles from the sea, the river separates into two branches, the eastern, 

 which flows towards the south east, retaining the original appellation, 

 and the western branch assuming the name of the Hoogly. Except in 

 the rainy season, the surface of the waters, rarely ruffled by the winds, 

 is as smooth as a mirror. Towards the mouth this tranquillity is twice a 

 day disturbed, by the tide rushing with indescribable violence against 

 the stream, with what is called the mascaret or bore, and endangers the 

 banks which encounter it; but words fail to convey an adequate idea of 

 the awe and terror it inspires, when, bursting as thunder, it shakes the 

 shores like an earthquake. Still less can the calculation of the number 

 of cubic feet of water, which the streams hurl headlong every moment 

 against the opposing waves of the ocean, give any conception of the 

 magnificence of the struggle. 



