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From Tannah we made a pleasant excursion, in palanquins, to 

 the inland mountains, to revisit the excavated temples and singular 

 habitations, formerly described ; and on our returning voyage from 

 Tannah to Bombay, took a last view of the far-famed caverns on 

 the island of Elephanta — scenes which always fill the mind with 

 renewed astonishment, followed by a train of ideas unknown in other 

 situations. Having formerly described these wonderful excava- 

 tions, I shall not proceed again on the same ground ; but as the 

 Hindoo Pantheon illustrates some objects in those gloomy regions, 

 on which it was not then in my power to throw sufficient light, I 

 shall on this farewell visit introduce two or three satisfactory re- 

 marks from that valuable work, which coincides in opinion with 

 almost every intelligent person I conversed with on the spot, that 

 the Elephanta was not always a small island of only five or six 

 miles in circumference, but was formerly joined to the contiguous- 

 islands, and to the continent ; from which it is now disjoined by 

 a channel more than a mile in breadth." In the spacious harbour 

 formed by the islands of Caranjah, Colaba, Bombay, Salsette, and 

 the continent, several smaller rocky islands are scattered, bearing 

 of course different names; but which I deem formerly to have 

 been only one, and probably under one designation ; which might 

 well have been that still retained by Bombay, or by Elephanta, or 

 by a little island, close to the latter, that we call Butcher's Island. 

 Its Hindoo name is Deva-devy, the island of the gods, or Holy 

 Island. It is low ; less than a mile I think from the Elephanta, in 

 the direction of Salsette. The island of Bombay is called by the 

 brahmins Maha-maha-devij, or Maha-maha-deya. Maha is an epi- 

 thet of grandeur, and, as applied to a person, of pre-eminence. 



