Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/262

224 fortifications have been blown up, for a freer circulation of air. Only a granite wall, some twenty feet in height, with its earthen embankment, circular bastions, and half-filled trench, remain.

Within the fort is a heathen temple, dedicated to the god Siva, with its gates, pagodas, and porticos. Beyond this is the western wall of the fort, over which a line of blue hills, some ten miles distant, rear their heads. Standing on the battlements, you look out on green fields of growing rice stretching away to the foot of the hills, with here and there clusters of trees to mark the place in which their cultivators have gathered into villages. The whole scene is beautiful, and lacks only that praise to God should ascend from every tope and town. You feel that

India will be a glorious land when its idols are abolished and its people serve the living God. Soon may that happy day be ushered in!

On our arrival, we placed our palankeens in the verandah of one of the barracks,—one-story brick ranges of rooms—and sent to the commandant a note from Mr. B. He soon made