16 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
spired by the grandeur of the scene around him of 
which he cannot divest himself, for he seems to feel 
as if he were in immediate communication with the 
mysterious agents of the universe. He here., with a 
subdued but gushing heart, “ looks through nature” 
in her most stupendous sublimities “ up to nature’s 
God/’ beholding him in the glorious works by which 
he is himself surrounded, and feeling at once that he 
is indeed a God infinite in wisdom and unapproach- 
able in his omnipotence. Every sentiment seems to 
converge into one focus, every mental association is 
of one tone and complexion — in short, the whole mind 
becomes rapt in one absorbing feeling of veneration. 
We passed several villages as we advanced towards 
Serinagur in which the houses were tolerably well 
constructed, though huddled together without either 
order or uniformity ; they were, however, upon the 
whole, not deficient in accommodation. As in Sa- 
voy and I believe in mountainous regions generally, 
so in these mountains, the side of the hill commonly 
forms one of the walls of the highlanders tenement, 
against which the roof is fixed and supported by two 
strong stone walls projecting at right angles from the 
face of the hill ; the area being closed in by a third wall 
completing the square. These houses are entered by 
a low doorway, through which the inmates are obliged 
to creep, the aperture not being high enough to admit 
a child of more than three years old without stooping. 
Our road now lay up a very precipitous mountain, 
the bleak sides of which had been bared of vegeta- 
tion by one of those conflagrations already noticed 
and not uncommon in these regions. The charred 
