The comfortless interior of that well-remembered place was more than compensated by the situation.  Many of my English acquaintance, who honoured me by visits at Kannoge, will, I think, agree with me, that the prospect from the killaah was indescribably grand.  The Ganges and the Kaullee Nuddee were presented at one view; and at certain seasons of the year, as far as the eye could reach, their banks, and well-cultivated fields, clothed in a variety of green, seemed to recall the mind to the rivers of England, and their precious borders of grateful herbage.  Turning in another direction, the eye was met by an impenetrable boundary of forest trees, magnificent in growth, and rich in foliage; at another glance, ruins of antiquity, or the still remaining tributes to saints; the detached villages; the sugar plantations; the agriculturists at their labour; the happy peasantry laden with their purchases from the bazaars; the Hindoo women and children, bearing their earthen-vessels to and from the river for supplies of water:—­each in their turn formed objects of attraction from without, that more than repaid the absence of ordinary comforts in the apartment from which they were viewed.  The quiet calm of this habitation, unbroken by the tumultuous sounds of a city, was so congenial to my taste, that when obliged to quit it, I felt almost as much regret as when I heard that the rains had destroyed the place which had been to me a home of peaceful enjoyment.

The city of Kannoge has evidently suffered the severities of a shock from an earthquake:  the present inhabitants cannot tell at what period this occurred, but it must have been some centuries since, for the earth is grown over immense ruins, in an extensive circuit, forming a strong but coarse carpet of grass on the uneven mounds containing the long-buried mansions of the great.  The rapid streams from the periodical rains forcing passages between the ruins, has in many places formed deep and frightful ravines, as well as rugged roads and pathways for the cattle and the traveller.

After each heavy fall of rain, the peasantry and children are observed minutely searching among the ruins for valuables washed out with the loose earth and bricks by the force of the streams, and, I am told, with successful returns for their toil; jewels, gold and silver ornaments, coins of gold and silver, all of great antiquity, are thus secured; these are bought by certain merchants of the city, by whom they are retailed to English travellers, who generally when on a river voyage to or from the Upper Provinces, contrive, if possible, to visit Kannoge to inspect the ruins, and purchase curiosities.

There is a stately range of buildings at no great distance from the killaah (castle), in a tolerable state of preservation, called ’Baallee Peer Kee Durgah’.[6] The entrance is by a stone gateway of very superior but ancient workmanship, and the gates of massy wood studded with iron.  I observed that on the wood framework over the entrance, many a stray horseshoe has been nailed, which served to remind me of Wales, where it is so commonly seen on the doors of the peasantry.[7] I am not aware but that the same motives may have influenced the two people in common.