HURDWAR. 
243 
when this mart is held, several hundred thousand 
persons take up their temporary abode in the town 
and its vicinity. 
Not far from hence, the Ganges breaks through the 
Sewaluk mountains and enters the plains of India. 
■" This mighty stream,” says Colonel Tod, " rolling 
its masses of water from the glaciers of the Himalaya, 
and joined by many auxiliary streams, frequently 
carries destruction before it. In one night a column 
of thirty feet in perpendicular height has been known 
to bear away all within its sweep, and to such an 
occurrence the capital of Hasti* is said to have owed 
its ruin.” 
The town of Hurdwar is nothing but one continued 
bazar, consisting only of a single long street filled with 
shops from one end to the other, among which sweet- 
meats and condiments of all kinds are exhibited for 
sale in extraordinary profusion ; so that flies swarm 
and buzz around in such countless multitudes as to 
be an intolerable nuisance. The principal articles 
exposed for sale during the annual fair are horses, 
camels, dried fruits, nuts, sweetmeats, tobacco, and 
Cashmere shawls. 
“ There are horses,” says Captain Skinner, u from 
all parts of the globe, elephants, camels, buffaloes, cows, 
and sheep, of every denomination, thickly crowded to- 
gether ; dogs, cats, monkeys, leopards, bears, and 
chetas ; sometimes the cubs of a tigress ; and always 
from the elk to the moose-deer, every species of that 
animal ; shawls from Cashmere and woollen cloths from 
* A city formerly standing on the banks of the Ganges, about 
forty miles south of Hurdwar. 
