all the plates on his head and breast fet with rubies and emeralds, being a beast of wonderful bulk and beauty. They all bowed down before the king, making their reverence very handfomely: this was the finest fhew of beafts I ever faw. The mogul himself was fitting cross-legged on a little throne, all covered with diamonds, pearls, and rubies. Before him a table of gold, and on it about fifty pieces of gold plate, all fet with jewels, fome very great and extremely rich, fome of them of lefs value, but all of them almoft covered with small ftones. His nobility about him in their beft equipage, whom he commanded to drink merrily feveral forts of wine ftanding by in great flaggons. On a sudden the king rofe, we retired to the Durbar, and fat on the carpets, attending his coming out. Not long after he came, and fat about half an hour, till his ladies at their door had mounted their elephants, which were about fifty, all of them richly adorned, but chiefly three with turrets on their backs all enclosed with grates of gold wire to look through, and canopies over of cloth of filver. Then the king came down the ftairs with fuch an acclamation of Health to the king! as would have out-roared cannon. At the foot of the ftairs, where I met him,

and

and fhuffled to be next, one brought a mighty carp; another a difh of white stuff like ftarch, into which he put his finger, and touched the fish, and fo rubbed it on his forehead; a ceremony used prefaging good fortune. Then another came, and girt on his fword and hung on his buckler fet all over with diamonds and rubies, the belts of gold suitable. Another hung on his quiver with thirty arrows, and his bow in a cafe, being the fame that was prefented by the Perfian ambaffador. On his head he wore a rich turban with a plume of herons' feathers, not many, but long. On one fide hung a ruby unfet, as big as a walnut; on the other fide a diamond as large; in the middle an emerald like a heart, much bigger. His ftaff was wound about with a chain of great pearl, rubies, and diamonds, drilled. About his neck he wore a chain of three ftrings of moft excellent pearl, the largeft I ever faw. Above his elbows, armlets fet with diamonds, and on. his wrift three rows of feveral forts; his hands bare, but almoft on every finger a ring. His gloves, which were English, stuck under his girdle. His coat of cloth of gold without fleeves, upon a fine femain, as thin as lawn. On his feet a pair of bufkins embroidered. with pearl, the

toes

toes sharp and turning up. Thus armed and accoutred he went to the coach that attended him, with his new English fervant, who was clothed as rich as any player, and more gaudy, and had broke four horfes, which were trapped and harneffed in gold velvets. This was the first coach he ever fat in, made by that fent out of England, fo like that I knew it not but by the cover, which was a Perfian gold velvet. He fat at the end, and on each fide went two eunuchs, who carried fmall maces of gold fet all over with rubies, with a long bunch of horse-tail to flap the flies away. Before him, went drums, bafe trumpets, and loud mufic, many canopies, umbrellas, and other ftrange enfigns of majefty, made of cloth of gold, fet in many places with rubies. Nine led horses, the furniture of fome garnished with rubies, fome with pearls and emeralds, fome only with ftuds enamelled. The Perfian ambaffador prefented him wi:h a horse. Next behind came three palankins, the carriages and feet of one plated with gold, fet at the ends, with ftones, and covered with crimfon velvet embroidered with pearl, and a fringe of great pearl hanging in ropes a foot deep, a border about it fet with rubies and emeralds. A footman carried a

footstool

footstool of gold fet with ftones. The other two palankins were covered and lined only with cloth of gold. Next followed the English coach newly covered and richly adorned, which he had given to Queen Normahall, who fat in it. After them a third, in which fat

his younger fons. Then followed about twenty elephants-royal, led for him to mount, fo rich in ftones and furniture, that they glittered like the fun. Every elephant had fundry flags of cloth of filver, gilt fatin, and taffety."*

To return from this fhort digreffion to the fymbols and monuments remaining in the Eaft plainly allufive to this feftival. It, doubtlefs, arofe from this circumftance, that the ancient Egyptians, as Eufebius informs us, at Elephantine, worshipped the figure of a man painted blue, to mark his celeftial origin, having the head of a ram, and the horns of a goat, which encompaffed a difk, defignating hereby the folar and lunar conjunction in the fign Aries. This, in fact, is the true Jupiter Ammon of antiquity, whofe fymbol was a ram; and he was thus pourtrayed on the Egytian zodiac long before the Greeks arrogated

See Sir Thomas Roe's Journal, apud Harris, vol. 1. p. 644.

to

to themselves the honour of being the inventors of the aftronomical afterisms.

Dr. Stukely, in his Abury, p. 68, is of opinion, that the four folar ingreffes into the cardinal points have been obferved as the feafons of public facrificing from the creation of the world; and, in reality, history acquaints us, that the four grand folemnities or general facrifices of the Druids were at the equinoxes and the folftices. None, however, was celebrated with greater feftival pomp than the vernal equinox, for it was at that period, the first of April, old ftyle, that the ArchDruid, arrayed in ftole of virgin white, to denote unfullied chastity, the facred anguinum, or druid-egg, inchased in gold, suspended around his neck, bearing in one hand the mystical rod or staff, equally used by the Brahmins of India and the Magi of Perfia, and elevating in the other, the golden fickle, iffued forth in folemn proceffion to gather the facred, wonder-working, all-healing MISLETOE from its parent oak; under the expansive shade of whose branches the victims were facrificed, and the festive rites commenced. Knowing the veneration entertained in India for the bovine fpecies, we could fcarcely believe, that a race, defcended, as I contend, from the Brahmins,

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