106 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
We now sailed with a tolerably fair wind, tracking 
with the assistance of our eighteen oars, until we 
reached Patna, asserted by some to have been the Pa- 
libothra of classical celebrity. It presents few vestiges 
of former magnificence, exhibiting no grand ruins to 
indicate its original greatness, if this really be the 
site upon which that ancient city formerly stood ; so 
many other spots, however, have been indicated as 
claiming a similar honour, that I believe the original 
site of the ancient Palibothra will ever remain a 
historical problem still to be solved. 
W e were two days at Patna, having been most hos- 
pitably invited by the Nabob to take up our quarters 
for as long a period as we could make it convenient 
to stay, not in his palace, for palace he had none, 
nor in his family mansion, but in a bungalow which 
his father had erected on the very brink of the river, 
and which Sir George Barlow, when member of coun- 
cil, had repeatedly occupied. The Nabob was a very 
tall, stout, handsome Mahomedan, spoke English with 
considerable fluency, was remarkably intelligent, 
shrewd, and good-humoured, and, though a worshipper 
of the impostor of Mecca, had nevertheless divested 
himself of most of his religious prejudices. An emi- 
nent missionary, who, during one of his missions up 
the Ganges, resided in the same bungalow which 
we now occupied, had, as we were informed by the 
Nabob, been extremely zealous in his endeavours 
to make a convert of him. But although the sturdy 
Mussulman made no scruple of taking his bottle of 
loll shrob,* and of occasionally regaling himself upon 
* Claret. 
