s at Delhi; but having had some dispute
with the poet-laureate of the Emperor Mohammed Shah, he found himself
under the necessity of retiring to Benares, where he lived in great
privacy. As he was a stranger in the country, was engaged in no
calling or profession, and received no allowance from the Emperor, it
was never known whence, or how, he was supplied with the means of
keeping up the establishment he did, which consisted of some hundred
servants, palanquins, horses, &c. It is said that when the Nawab
Shujah-ed-dowlah projected his attack on the English in Bengal, he
consulted the Sheik on the subject, who strongly dissuaded him from
the undertaking. He died shortly after the battle of Buxar in 1180,"
(A.D. 1766.) The battle of Buxar was fought Oct. 23, 1764; but that
Sheik Ali Hazin died somewhere about this time, seems more probable
than that his life was extended (as stated by Sir Gore Ouseley) till
1779; since he describes himself at the conclusion of his memoirs in
1742, when only in his 53d year, as "leading the dullest course of
existence in the dullest of all dull countries, and disabled by his
increasing infirmities from any active exertion of either body or
mind"--a state of things scarcely promising a prolongation of life to
the age of ninety.

[8] These sacred footmarks are more numerous among the
Buddhists than the Moslems--the most celebrated is that
on the summit of Adam's Peak, in Ceylon.

Resuming his voyage from Benares, the Khan notices with wonder the
apparition of the steamers plying between Calcutta and Allahabad,
several of which he met on his course, and regarded with the
astonishment natural in one who had never before seen a ship impelled,
apparently by smoke, against wind and tide:--"I need hardly say how
intensely I watched every movement of this extraordinary, and to me
incomprehensible machine, which in its passage created such a vast
commotion in the waters, that my poor little _budjrow_ (pinnace) felt
its effects for the space of full two _hos_," (nearly four miles.) The
picturesque situation of the city of Azimabad or Patna,[9] extending
for several miles along the right bank of the Ganges, with the villas
and beautiful gardens of the resident English interspersed among the
houses, is described in terms of high admiration; and the mosques,
some of which were as old as the time of the Patan emperors, are not
forgotten by our Moslem traveller in his enumeration of the ma