2 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
hallowed mysteries and thus neutralize the potential 
efficacy with which the presiding deity is supposed 
to have endowed it. Immediately beyond are several 
small temples devoted to the mysteries of Hindoo su- 
perstition ; and as the population in this neighbour- 
hood is chiefly composed of the poorer and more ig- 
norant classes which are invariably the dupes of their 
priests, the services of their temples here exhibit all 
the absurdities of idolatry without any of its less re- 
volting features. This is evidently a place of more 
than ordinary sanctity. There is an air of solemnity, 
almost of solitariness about it that renders it unusually 
imposing, bounded as it appears to be by the neigh- 
bouring mountains which project their huge shadows 
over it. 
The ministering Bramins relate strange stories of this 
marvellous tree, to them an object at once of profit 
and of superstition, assigning to it an existence an- 
terior to the deluge ; and they enumerate a greater 
number of souls as having been saved by passing 
through it than the world has contained since the 
period of that awful visitation. There is nothing re- 
markable in the upper growth of the tree, which does 
not cover so large a space as some others on the banks 
of the Ganges ; and though the trunk is tolerably vi- 
gorous and has the remnant of a long life apparently 
yet before it, still does it exhibit evident symptoms 
of having passed the vigour of its time. The wither- 
ing grasp of decay has already fixed upon it. 
We entered the mountains by the Coadu war ghaut, 
meeting several travellers, who gave us the rather dis- 
couraging information that the snow had begun to fall 
