ELLIS ISLAND

a small island in the upper New York Bay. It is an immigrant station to which immigrants are sent while their papers are being examined. People awaiting deportation are also sent to Ellis Island. Its administration and the conditions under which the immigrants are forced to live have been the subject of much criticism and inquiry. (° _ELLO’RA, or ELO’RA, a ruined village, India, Deccan, Hyderabad, 13 miles north-west of Aurangabad, famous for its rock and cave temples excavated in the crescent-shaped 132 ——— —_ nn —v— ELM scarp of a large plateau. They run from north to south for about a mile and a quarter, and consist of five Jain caves towards the north, seventeen Brahmani cal caves at the centre, and towards the south twelve Buddhistic caves. Of the temples some are cut down through the rock, and left open above like isolated buildings, others are excavated under the hill in the manner of caves properly so called. The interior walls are often richly carved with mythological designs. The most magnificent of the whole is the Hindu temple called Kailasa or Cailasa, the central portion of which forms an isolated excavated ma or immense block 500 feet in circumference and 100 feet high. It is surrounded by galleries or colonnades at the distance of 150 feet, in which the whole Hindu pantheon is cut in the perpendicular rock. Another fine temple, much smaller, but cut under the hill, is the Buddhist cave of Visvakarma, the only one excavated with a curved roof. The date of the caves is not certainly known, but they were probably the work of the reigning families at the neighbouring Deoghir, now Daulatabad, which, prior to the Mohammedan conquest, A.D. 1293, was the eapital of a powerful Hindu principality.—Cf. Fergu on and Burge , The Cave Temples of India.