s one of the most noted resorts of Hindu pilgrimage, and such visits are now perfectly free, the government pilgrim-tax formerly levied having been abolished since 1840. The place owes its celebrity in this respect to the reputed confluence of three sacred rivers, the Ganges, the Jumna, and the Saraswati; but the third is by no means obvious to the sight, being lost in the sands of Sirhind, upwards of 400 miles to the north-west. The Hindus, however, assert that it joins the other two under ground, and that consequently the same religious merit is acquired by bathing at this sacred confluence as by bathing in all the three separate rivers. In former years instances frequently occurred of devotees drowning themselves in the sacred stream at the great annual meeting of Allahabad; this mode of self-immolation being regarded by Hindus as the most acceptable of all offerings. At the present time this meeting has assumed rather a festive than a gloomy character; and is described as a pretty scene, the platforms for the bathers being covered with canopies as booths in an English fair, and the women dressed in holiday clothes, and shining in coloured scarfs among the crowd. Allahabad was taken in the year 1765 by the British, from the Vizier of Oude, and assigned as the residence of Shah Alam, the titular emperor of Delhi. But the emperor having thrown himself into the hands of the Mahrattas, the place was resumed by the donors in 1771, and again transferred to the Nabob of Oude, by whom it was finally ceded to the British in 1801, in commutation of the subsidy which the vizier had agreed to pay for British protection. Distance from Calcutta 496 miles; The district of Allahabad forms one of the provinces under the jurisdiction of the lieutenant-governorship of Agra; it has an area of 2801 square miles, and a population, composed chiefly of Hindus and Mahometans, amounting to 710,000. The history of the district is included in that of the city of Allahabad.