poses. The other controlling power used is a large iron hook, about five times the size of that which some Greenwich pensioners wear as a finish to their wooden arms. At the other end of it is a sharp point, with which the animal is prodded in the more vulnerable parts of its tough, encrusted skin. Prods with this instrument mean things which are understood only between the giver and receiver—a sort of pointed language of the arrow-headed character.

On the elephant squatting down, accustomed riders seize its tail, and by that aid alone surmount its hill-like back, and so, scrambling over the rough hide, get to the centrallysituated platform. There is no box-seat to be had beside the driver. This platform is about the size of a square parlour-table top, and is fenced all round, save only its one entrance. A dozen folks might stand here, but it is usual only to squat, for which purpose the floor is spread with a mattress. For those who cannot ascend from the rear, or object to taking such a liberty as it necessitates, a ladder is provided, by which the howdah can be reached from the side. It only wants a flagstaff run up for one to imagine oneself in that "look-out" with which the roofs of modern villas are often finished.

The Hindoostanee elephants are prodigious animals, the largest of their race. Those of Ceylon look like to pups, or pigs only, beside them. The sensation on the immense animal rising is that the earth moves beneath you-so great is the bulk of matter in motion. The mahout is away down a long way off on the elephant's neck, so that as I sit on the mattress I can see only the top of his turban. The height seems great indeed, much higher than when on a camel's back. Camels pass me on the road, and I can look down upon them. The elephant, however, has an endurable walk, and does not serve one's bones in the shambling, shaking, and swinging way that the camel does.

An elephant ride is not a thing to take solus. I felt as if left in an empty house-all alone in that howdah, with the earth, as it seemed, lumbering along below me. A whist party

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would have been quite the thing for the place and the pace. I daresay that I was not the only one who has felt lonely when unexpectedly elevated in the world. But that was all the trouble. On the camel I wished I could have followed the street-boy's usual advice to unhappy riders, to get inside; but there was no fear of falling off here, and no possibility of the elephant falling. An elephant, I should imagine, never did fall accidentally. The look of his legs and their motions preclude that idea. At the shuffling pace of his noiseless feet he goes nearly six miles an hour. They are used here for moving cannon, soldiers' baggage, and other cumbrous camp requisities.

With their war castles on their backs, as seen in the picture-books of one's youth, bristling with armed men, flags, and spears, the elephant must have looked in its full glory. The days of its use in that way may not be over yet. This gorgeous and great land, fought for so often, and so often conquered, may be fought for again whether conquered or not. That which has been shall be. The gates of Afghanistan, through which the Mongol Tamerlane entered five hundred years ago, are being daily neared by those Cossacks who are but latter-day Tartars. Having got to where they are by a long and half-silent course of wars and victories, the Russians may stay their onward march, and may not. The object of all that they have been doing does not seem to lie in what they have yet done in that direction.

CHAPTER XV.

INDIA'S CAVE-TEMPLES.

"DON'T omit, on your way to Bombay, to visit some of the cave temples-they are the great wonders of India."

So spoke my host at Jubbulpore, in consideration for my pitiable ignorance of the country, and obvious desire for information about things worth seeing and knowing. I had heard nothing of what he so alluded to, and got him to enlighten me and give me a note of the localities of these special lions of the land. I learn that they are cavern-temples or templecaves, as also terraced, hewn-out and carved rocks-vast affairs hollowed out of one stone. They are not to be called buildings or structures, as those terms imply the piling up of many stones, and not the honeycombing of one. They originated here with the followers of Hindooism, and the fashion was afterwards adopted by the Buddhists, and later by the dissenting Jains.

Situated in the most secluded places, they may not yet be all known, but there is a large choice for the traveller in what have been already discovered. The best of them lay off the road to Bombay, to which my travel now turns. The Ajanta caves are reached from the Pachora station, from which a cart ride leads to a wild glen in a lonely situation; where, in a ravine, in the side of a perpendicular rock, are some thirty caverns cut by the hands of skilled masons, having piilars and galleries and carved figures projecting from the walls, floors, and roofs. Light is in these temples admitted somewhere,