NATIVE WOMAN OF BENGAL.
"A gentleman who has lived here for some years, and written about the women of Calcutta, says they are very pretty when young, but their beauty fades quickly; at twenty-five they have 'crows'-feet' around the corners of their eyes, and at thirty they begin to stoop and walk like a man of seventy in America. They all wear rings in their noses, and sometimes you will see a pearl in the side of each nostril, in addition to a hoop of thin gold that almost covers the mouth. Of course they have rings in their ears, and the arms and ankles are not neglected; they wear no shoes or stockings when at home, and make up for the bareness of their feet by covering the toes with rings as American ladies cover their fingers. Their hair is thick and black, and combed behind their ears, with a parting in front such as we see at home.
"Women of the middle and lower classes are as fond of jewellery as the richer ones, and when they cannot afford it of solid gold they have it of silver, or of silver or gold plate. Some of them do not wear ornaments in their noses, but they make up for the absence of these things by piercing the ears in many places, and loading them down with jewellery. We saw one woman to-day whose ears were thus encumbered with so many trinkets that they appeared ready to fall off, and it is difficult to understand how she could be comfortable with them. Then she wore a heavy necklace of silver, and a part of her dress displayed some embroidery of gold. She was sitting on the floor of a shop examining a beautiful shawl, and probably wondering whether she would look any prettier with her shoulders covered with it.
PART OF BLACK TOWN, CALCUTTA.
"A remarkable thing about Calcutta is the contrast between the native and the foreign quarters. Where the Europeans live the streets are wide, and each house has a garden around it; in the native quarter the streets are mostly narrow, and the houses are crowded closely together, with not the least attempt at gardening or the preservation of any open spaces around them. The native section is called 'The Black Town,' and some parts of it are so dirty that the wonder is they do not breed a pestilence every summer. None but the natives live there, with now and then a foreigner who has become an outcast from his fellow white men, and prefers the society of natives to a life of solitude. In the outskirts of the city the density of the buildings decreases, but not the dirt and degradation. The huts of the natives are loosely constructed of light frames daubed with mud, and in many places they look as though they had been constructed by a man who never saw a house before he made this effort at building one.