SCENES IN INDIA. 
her shores. We coasted within four leagues of the 
land, under easy sail, with light breezes, passing the 
island of Ceylon, with its thickly-wooded hills and 
broken line of beach, covered with tall palms and 
tufted cocoa-nut trees, until the whole mass dwindled 
into a pale speck in the distance, and was finally lost 
in the shadows of evening. After a most delightful 
sail of four days, we anchored in the roadstead of 
Madras, and a most imposing scene it presents to the 
contemplation of a stranger ! The splendid edifices, 
and at a distance they have an appearance of extreme 
splendour, with their lofty verandas and terraced 
roofs; the tall white columns, which are seen in 
striking relief against a clear blue sky, and these sur- 
rounded by the broad massy fort ; the lashing surf, 
foaming and hissing over a long unbroken line of 
beach, which the eye follows until its powers of per- 
ception are baffled by the distance ; the variety of 
barks dotting the smooth surface of the waters, be- 
yond the influence of the surge ; the groups of dark 
and busy figures gathered at intervals upon the 
strand: — all these are objects not to be beheld with 
indifference by a stranger, pointing, as many of them' 
do, to a new page in the vast and varied volume of 
nature. The extent to which the city, when first 
observed from the offing, seems to stretch beyond the 
w T alls, gives it an appearance of vastness at once sin- 
gularly unexpected and imposing. The low sandy 
beach, over which the violently agitated waters are 
continually chafing and roaring with a din and tur- 
bulence that must be heard and seen to be conceived, 
apparently offering an insurmountable impediment to 
