It justified its reputation as a curiosity.

It is on high ground, and overhangs a grand curve of the Ganges.

It is a vast mass of building, compactly crusting a hill, and is cloven in all directions by an intricate confusion of cracks which stand for streets.

Tall, slim minarets and beflagged temple-spires rise out of it and give it picturesqueness, viewed from the river.

The city is as busy as an ant-hill, and the hurly-burly of human life swarming along the web of narrow streets reminds one of the ants.