142 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
together, into a boat ready to receive him, imme- 
diately crossed to the opposite shore, and proceeded 
with the utmost expedition to Lutteefpoor. The 
square story upon the roof of the Shewallah Gaut 
was added by Sir Charles Wilkins, who occupied 
a portion of that building after Warren Hastings 
quitted Benares. In order to be as cool as possible 
during the hot nights, he had a sloping canopy raised 
upon the roof under which he slept. It was open 
on every side to the full influence of the atmosphere, 
so that from its elevation he enjoyed all the night 
breeze, without being exposed to the noisome visitation 
of those numerous reptiles which always swarm in the 
lower apartments of houses in India. 
I am indebted to the kindness of Sir Charles Wil- 
kins for the following interesting anecdote : Whilst 
he was an inmate of the Shewallah Gaut, and but a 
short time after the flight of Cheit Singh, a fakeer of 
remarkably squalid and grim aspect came one morning 
to wash his dirty body in the sacred waters of the 
Ganges. It bore anything but evidences of recent ab- 
lution, and his hair, which was unusually thick and 
long, was matted with the accumulated filth of half 
a generation. It appeared that he had but recently 
arrived from some distant quarter, where there was 
no sacred water in which to cleanse his hallowed 
limbs, as he impiously considered them, so that he 
had suffered the incrustation of years to gather upon 
them, without any effort on his part to divest him- 
self of the disgusting incumbrance. He descended 
the Gaut, and entered the water with his long hair 
trailing upon the steps behind him, until it at length 
