In 1809, Maria Graham, a British writer of travel books and children’s books, had arrived in India at Bombay with her father, when he was appointed as head of the naval works at the English East India Company’s dockyard in Bombay. From here she travelled extensively to the caves of Carli, the rock cut Elephanta Caves, Salsette and Poona and from Bombay she went on to Ceylon where she went from Point de Galle to as far as Negombo and then Trincomalee before returning to India at Madras from where she went to Calcutta before heading back for England in 1811. The style of narration, in the writer`s own words, is that of an ‘observant stranger’. She described vividly the customs, topography, the bazaars, art, mythology and other glimpses of the places she visited.