f them have
been willfully broken, others have mouldered away from atmospheric
exposure. The Portuguese in their day, as we were told by the
custodian,--a superannuated non-commissioned officer of the English
army,--planted cannon before the cave and destroyed many of the pillars,
as well as the heathen emblems, by round shot. One sees here the
singular phenomenon of hanging pillars, the capitals only extant; but as
the whole is carved out of the same huge rock all parts are equally
self-supporting. There are many well-executed figures in bas-relief,
more or less decayed and broken, which is not surprising when we
remember that the antiquarians trace them back with certainty for some
fifteen centuries, and some give their origin to a period nearly ten
centuries earlier.

Though embodying so much that is curious and suggestive as these
rock-cave temples do, presenting such an aggregate of patient labor, the
world will probably remain ever ignorant of their true history. An
American traveler, whom we met in Bombay, had made these Buddhist
temples a special study, and had just returned from a visit to those
interesting antiquities, the Caves of Ellora, some two hundred miles
from Bombay, consisting of several lofty apartments ornamented in a
similar manner to those at Elephanta: in bas-relief. He also mentioned
another excavated temple of the same character at Carlee, between Bombay
and Puna, which in many respects resembled a Gothic church, having a
vaulted roof and colonnades running on either side, like aisles. He was
disposed to give the origin of them, as well as of those in the harbor
of Bombay, to a period prior to the Christian era. However strange and
historically interesting these excavated temples may be to the observant
traveler, he will look in vain among the carvings and basso-relievi for
any just proportions of form or expression of features. There is a lack
of anything like artistic genius evinced, no correctness of anatomical
proportions even attempted. The figures doubtless were sufficiently
typical to answer their original purpose, but are as crude as Chinese
idols. When the Prince of Wales was in Bombay he visited the spot and a
sort of barbecue was given to him within the cave, upon which the stony
eyes of the idols must have looked down in amazement.

Elephanta is also unique in the production of a species of beetle
remarkable for variety of colors and ornamentation of body. We had seen
numerous spe