PERFORATED WINDOW, COPIED IN TEAK FROM THE WINDOW IN YELLOW SANDSTONE IN THE BHUDDER MOSQUE, AHMEDABAD. earnest magistrates capable of calmly ordaining that all new house balconies should be of one pattern, prescribed by the municipal engineer, and there are many who think that when they have reared a clock tower in nineteenth-century British Gothic in the centre of a native city they have taken a serious step in the march of civilization. An example of this folly is to be seen at Amritza, where, overlooking the pool in the centre of which the Golden Temple of the Sikhs seems to swim like a swan, pure and bright in marble and gold, is a red brick clock tower whose offense nothing short of dynamite could fitly purge. There is another in the Chandney Chowk, the picturesque main street of Delhi. But in fairness it must be said that this mistaken notion of improvement is giving way to a juster appreciation of the fitness of things. And if zealous civil officers have occasionally done harm, there are many cases in which their strenuous and welldirected efforts have been the means of preserving interesting industries from extinction and noble monuments from decay. At Muttra, one of the ancient Hin du centres, and at Bulandshahr (northwest provinces), may be seen new buildings richly wrought, and rivalling old work in beauty, which owe their existence entirely to the energy and taste of an officer of the civil service, who is also a learned Oriental scholar, and has the sympathetic gift of inspiring natives of means and position with his enthusiasm for indigenous art. The declared and vigorously enforced policy of the government to use native manufactures for its own needs, instead of constantly ordering stores from England, will stimulate native industry, while art in its higher sense may be benefited by the appointment to the Ministry of Public Works of Mr. T. C. Hope, whose researches in the archæology of Guzerat are well known, and who has an enlightened appreciation of Oriental architecture. The people are so ready to follow the official lead, it is of more importance here than elsewhere that government should at least be sympathetic on this subject. In the Punjab, at all events, the tradition of good timber construction, rich and fanciful in design, still survives. In There is no reason why the skill and fancy of Indian wood-carvers should not be known abroad by large work suitable for architectural uses as well as by draw Southern India there is nothing to match the picturesque streets of Northern towns, with their projecting galleries, pretty balcony windows, and elaborately fretted cornices. It would be a curious and interest-ing-room ornaments. A country may be ing inquiry to trace the variations of woodbuilding from the quaint Mongolian temples near Simla southward, the styles changing as dialects and language change. Broadly, the most striking result of such an inquiry would be a conviction of the predominance of the late Saracenic shaft and mihrab, which, like an Aaron's rod, seem to be swallowing up more characteristic Hindu forms, where the square pillar, though chamfered into octagons and cunningly notched and sculptured, virtually remains square. In Northern India Sikhs, Jains, and other Hindus have accepted this soft, half Italian-looking form without reserve, and it is to be found in the purely Hindu towns of Maharashtra, Poona, and Nassick, as well as in Guzerat, where, however, the Hindu sculptor made a harder fight against Mussulman influ ence. The Punjab contains many varieties of the interesting work of the constructive carpenter, as he is called in contradistinction to the village carpenter proper, whose immemorial allotment of labor is to make the agricultural implements and simple furniture of rustic life. But in order to realize its charm it is necessary to brave many evil odors, and to lose one's self in the labyrinthine streets and alleys of native cities, where weatherworn, richly carved timbers nearly meet overhead, where the dyer hangs out his cloths fresh from the dye vat in brilliantly tinted streamers, and the pigeons flutter and perch along the dusty mouldings, while the green parrots shoot like live emeralds from the clear blue of the coldweather sky into the dark shadows under the fretted eaves. rich in wit and wealth and yet inherit no birthright of its own in the great genealogy of artistic style, and need not think it shame to go abroad in search of adornments for its necessarily eclectic architecture. There is much that the Indian craftsman can do which can not, to put it in homely phrase, be done anywhere else under heaven for love or money. The best that he is capable of has scarcely by this generation been asked for. And when, humbly anxious to please, he has, with great pains and labor, produced his copy of European work, we turn round and abuse him for his misdirected industry. But is the fault entirely his? He is the least speculative of mortals, and only makes what will sell. He is innocent of many of the fine sentiments attributed to him, and his whole being is by no means centred in poetry and metaphysics; but he has wonderful hands, and is born heir to fine decorative traditions. In this matter of carven wood-work skillful architects could find many details which might be built into modern domestic constructions with admirable effect. An interesting experiment was tried recently by Mr. Lockwood De Forest, of New York, who, during a recent protracted visit to this country, organized a band of the wood-carvers of Ahmedabad. Among the works wrought by these men may be instanced copies of the beautiful windows in perforated sandstone of the Bhudder, which may be considered as types of the best qualities of Indian design. Such demands made by artists and those who care for art can be fully met, and would do more than anything else to convince the people of the folly of neglecting their own plastic forms. ON THE EDGE OF THE MARSH. IN NOVEMBER. IN JUNE. Fair and green is the marsh in June; The blue-flag fades; and through the heat, CA THE HOME OF HIAWATHA. west. They were Fathers Marquette and Joliet. Their company consisted of five other Frenchmen and some Indians, their means of transportation were two bark canoes, and their provisions a small supply of maize and smoked meat. Passing the posts at St. Mary's and at Michilimackinac, at the exit of Lake Michigan, they met Father Allouez at the Bay of Puans, now Green Bay, and there prepared to go in search of a great river reported by the Indians as existing further west. It does not concern me to follow them in their voyage along the Wisconsin to and down the Mississippi. Some, discarding the semi-mythical story of De Soto, have credited Marquette with being the very first white man to discover this greatest of our water-courses. All honor to Père Marquette, but he left to a less ANADA in the middle of the seventeenth century was surely rough and frontier-like enough, yet it was only the threshold of an unexplored region whose vastness was then inestimable, and whose promises of adventure and wealth were very alluring. The French for a long time after the first colonization on the Lower St. Lawrence had neither energy nor resources for advancing beyond Montreal, the very existence of which was a continuous miracle. Finally, however, a few traders or hunters penetrated westward, and excelled each other in bringing back glowing accounts of a rich region and of hordes of Indians. This fired the adventurous zeal of the Jesuit Allouez, who organized a band of Indian followers, and sailed up to the head of Lake Huron. Here, at the Sault Ste. Marie, he "threw himself boldly among the savages, rely-worthy successor, Father Hennepin, the ing on his powers of persuasion to win their confidence, and the purity of his motives to secure success." This was in 1665. In May, 1673, two other ardent Frenchmen followed his footsteps-men whose names are now immortal in the North first exploration of the region where I wish to take my readers-the Upper Mississippi. When Joliet, leaving Marquette at his prayers and preaching among the Miamis, worked his way back to Quebec, he found igan. Marching inland, a head-quarters named Fort Crèvecoeur was built near where Peoria, Illinois, now stands, and a winter was passed in preparation. there the Sieur de la Salle, a young man of birth and fortune, who was never tired of listening to his tales. La Salle concluded that the Missouri (Pekitanoni, as Joliet called it) would furnish a waterway One of the several expeditions La Salle to the northern ocean, and hence through planned was directed to survey the sources to China and the East Indies. Fired by of the Mississippi, of which nothing was this brilliant hope to attempt the passage, known north of the Wisconsin. To Fahe engaged the help of the Chevalier de ther Hennepin was intrusted its conduct, Tonti and the Franciscan Récollet, Père while La Salle himself went south. agraph holds the 66 SUSPENSION-BRIDGE AT MINNEAPOLIS. There is another River, which falls, forty Leagues above this last, into the Meschasipi; thro' which one may go into the Superiour Lake, by making a Portage from it into the River Nissipikuet, which runs into the same Lake. It is full of Rocks and rapid Streams. We named it the River of the Grave, or Mausoleum, because the Savages bury'd there one of their Men, who was bitten by a Rattlesnake." His next observation of any importance (for he seems to have overlooked the entrance of the great Minnesota River at Fort Snelling, which is hidden by an island) is the falls, to which the name he gave still clings, and which will remain the firmest monument of Hennepin's hard | whole description. I quote it: "The Navigation of the Meschasipi is interrupted, ten Leagues above this River of the Grave, by a Fall of fifty or sixty Foot high, which we called The Fall of St. Anthony of Padua, whom we had taken for the Protector of our Discovery. There is a Rock of a Pyramidal Figure just in the middle of the Fall of the River." A few miles further on Hennepin's party had the misfortune to be taken prisoners by the Issati, or Sioux, and during many weeks suffered untold severities, not so much intentional on the part of the Indians as from the necessary rapidity of their marches, the rigor of the weather, and the scarcity of food. Finally the priest and Picard du Gay, seeing no way to find the sources of the river, nor end to their sufferings, determined to take a canoe and float down to the mouth of the Wisconsin, where they hoped La Salle would have established a post or left a cache of provisions. chel Ako, the other canoe-man," chose to stay with the Indians, "seeing he began to relish the Barbarians' way of living." So, parting in friendly spirit from the red men, who made no opposition, they embarked. Mi It was on this return trip that Hennepin met Greysolon du Lhut (later spelled du Luth, whence the name of the town at the western end of Lake Superior). This man was famous as a coureur de bois"the roving chief of a half-savage crew, trading, exploring, fighting, and laboring with persistent hardihood to foil the rival English traders of Hudson's Bay." Nicolas Parrot was another of them. Du Lhut, anxious to open trade with the Sioux and |