LETTERS B 50342 1 FROM INDIA AND KASHMIR DS 413 .D87 ILLUSTRATED FOM ARTES 318173 SCIENTIA LIBRARY VERITAS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SCPLURIOUS RUM TUEBOR SI-QUÆR:S-PENINSULAM-AMENAM CIRCUMSPICE { DS 413 D87 &&& * в зи India & 19. 7. Dugund 5 އ + I * *** $ LETTERS FROM INDIA AND KASHMIR. : 产 ​1 N OF MICKY JUMPING WELLS OF DELHI. [Frontispiece. NEOPTERAPKAN | AGARI SABRIN LETTERS FROM INDIA AND KASHMIR: WRITTEN 1870; ILLUSTRATED AND ANNOTATED 1873. THE KUTUB MINAR. LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS. 1874. ... PREFACE AND DEDICATION. TO MY FATHER. I FEAR that in attempting to give a value to the letters which I wrote to you from India, by illustrating them with notes on the subjects they referred to, I have produced but a hybrid narrative, combining neither the freshness of the originals nor the importance of the works from which I have too liberally drawn. But it is now too late to alter or re-arrange them; and I shall only add that I hope they may serve the object of their re-compilation—namely, to help you to wile away an hour or two. LONDON, 13th December, 1873. ; " Pol. Scicuce George 1-26·44 47463 ADEN TO BOMBAY BOMBAY BOMBAY TO MATHARAN CONTENTS. LETTER I. Page 1 LETTER II. 8 LETTER III. 21 LETTER IV. MATHARAN TO MAHABULISHWAR AND BOMBAY 29 LETTER V. BOMBAY TO OOTACAMUND LETTER VI. OOTACAMUND TO BEYPOOR LETTER VII. • 39 44 BEYPOOR TO COLOMBO, KANDY, AND POINT DE GALLE 54 X CONTENTS. LETTER VIII. POINT DE GALLE TO MADRAS MADRAS TO CALCUTTA • LETTER IX. LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELHI . DELHI TO SIMLA • SIMLA TO LAHORE LETTER XI. Page 73 . : 88 102 122 LETTER XII. 140 LETTER XIII. LAHORE TO KOHÁLA • LETTER XIV. KOHÁLA TO SRINUGGUR LETTER XV. SRINUGGUR TO AITCHABUL 153 • 165 175 LETTER XVI. AITCHABUL TO GULMURG 188 GULMURG TO MURREE • LETTER XVII. 204 CONTENTS. xi LETTER XVIII. Page 214 MURREE TO PESHAWUR AND LAHORE LETTER XIX. LAHORE TO BOMBAY 228 244 • · BOMBAY TO GOA LETTER XX. A .3 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. [The illustrations are by MR. H. R. ROBERTSON, and engraved by MR. W. J. PALMER, principally from the writer's Sketches.] ABYSSINIANS AND JEWS Page 3 RESERVOIRS OF ADEN 10 5 BOMBAY HINDU BOOK-KEEPER • 8 10 • TODDY DRAWERS DIAGRAM-INTERIOR OF A TOWER OF SILENCE CASTE MARKS ISLAND OF ELEPHANTA THE TRIMURTI MARRIAGE OF SIVA AND PARVATI SIVA LOUISA POINT KULI GIRL, MATHARAN POLICE STATION, MAHABULISHWAR CHUPRASSIE • 12 15 17 21 23 24 25 27 30 • 35 36 CALICUT 41 NIAR GIRL PUNKAH BOY TODA GIRL TERMINUS OF RAILWAY, BEYPOOR COAST OF MALABAR 42 44 48 55 56 Ե xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. JAK TREE AND BRAHMIN BULLOCK Page 58 FISHING NETS, COCHIN 59 HINDU IDOL 63 • GOVERNOR'S BUTLER, COLOMBO 66 BOY DAVY, KANDY 67 CLERK OF O. B. CORPORATION, KANDY 70 • BARBER OF POINT DE GALLE 72 CITY OF BALI, OR MAHABALIPUR DRAWERS OF WATER, MADRAS POOR HAKER, SIR 74 78 79 TUMASHA WALLAH 80 IN THE LALBAGH, BANGALORE 83 NOSE RINGS 101 THE TRAVELLER'S BUNGALOW AND FORMER PALACE OF THE RAJAH BEERBUL 113 MARBLE PANELS OF THE TAJ-MAHAL 120 THE JUNTER MUNTER 125 ITS SOLE INHABITANT 125 ANSWER TOMB OF SUFTER JUNGH. 126 TOMB USED AS A STABLE, KUTUB 129 THE KUTUB MINAR 130 TOMB OF MUHAMMED TOOGLUCK 132 PATIO AND AZOLEA OF KIRKEE MOSQUE AND FORT OF KIRKEE JEHANARA'S TOMB STONĘ ELEPHANT AT GATE OF PALACE, DELHI SIKH WOMAN OF AMRITSER 133 134 136 • 137 144 · THE KHANSAMAH 165 SUSPENSION BRIDGE, OOREE, KASHMIR STREET IN SRINUGGUR *. 168 • 171 • KASHMIRI 174 • C MUHAMMEDAN WOMEN OF KASHMIR • RUINED BRIDGE OVER THE SCINDE AT GANDERBUL 178 180 1 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XV Page RUINED QUADRANGLE OF MARTTAND 183 MIRZA BARBER OF SRINUGGUR 189 GUARD AT THE MAHARAJAH'S PALACE 195 • BALKAN SOLDIER 198 SHAWL MERCHANTS 205 DAWK BUNGALOW, NAOSHERA, KASHMIR. PANIC OF MURGHIES ON THE ARRIVAL OF TRAVELLERS 209 • AFFGHAN 219 FORT OF DOULATABAD 239 VISCAVARMA'S CAVE, ELLORA 242 RUTNAGHERIA 244 TABLET IN THE CHAPEL OF SANTA CATARINA 247 RUINED MONASTERY OF ST. AUGUSTINE. 248 MAUSOLEUM OF SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER 249 PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. Facing Page JUMPING WELLS AT DELHI Frontispiece. TOWER OF SILENCE, MALABAR HILL, BOMBAY 14 CAVE OF ELEPHANTA-THE LINGA CHAPEL 22 MATHARAN 28 • THE BANYAN TREE OF MUSWAH ABORIGINES AND INTRUDERS, OOTACAMUND A TODA MUND-ON THE NILGIRIS 38 44 45 IDOLS BY THE ROADSIDE-METAPOLLIUM TO COIMBATOOR 52 CATAMARAN, MADRAS 75 HOUMAYUN'S TOMB, NEAR DELHI 127 MUHAMMEDAN TOMB, TRANSFORMED TRANSFORMED INTO A PROTESTANT CHURCH.- SUNDAY AT LAHORE 147 TOMB OF RUNJEET SINGH, OF HIS FOUR WIVES, AND EIGHT LADIES OF THE ZENANA, LAHORE 148 TOMB CONVERTED INTO A POLICE STATION, NEAR LAHORE 156 • xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. D Facing Page BRIDLE ROAD TO CASHMERE-MURREE HILLS 159 HUTTIAN, KASHMIR 167 • • TOWING UP THE JHELUM 172 THE CURVES OF THE JHELUM, THE ORIGIN OF THE SHAWL OR PINE PATTERN, AS SEEN FROM THE TUKHT I SULIMAN, KASHMIR 176 LAKE MANUSBUL, KASHMIR 179 RUINS OF MARTTAND RESTORATION OF MARTTAND--BIRD'S-EYE VIEW 182 184 PICKNICKING AT GULMURG 202 DEHRA DUN AND HILLS OF MUSSOORIE AND LANDOUS 231 MARBLE ROCKS OF THE NARBUDDA 237 • ge gen gende LETTER I. ADEN TO BOMBAY. THE Straits of Bab-el-Mandel-the gate of death-between the rock-bound island of Perim, with its lighthouse and fort, and the desolate coast of the land of frankincense were passed at midnight by the light of a full moon. The passage between the island and the Arabian shore is a mile and a half wide, but the opposite coast of Africa is nearly thirteen miles distant, the straits between the two continents being about fourteen and a half miles wide. Perim, the island of Diodorus of the Periplus, the Santa Cruz of the Portuguese, the Mayoon of the Arabians, was first garrisoned by the British in 1799, when it was taken on behalf of the East India Company, in consequence of the French invasion of Egypt; but the impossibility of obtaining water led to its abandonment the same year. Pierced for water to a great depth without success by pirates, it was never permanently occupied till 1857, when a French vessel of war, despatched to take the island, stopped at Aden. Her mission thus disclosed, the governor ordered its immediate reoccupation, so that when the French captain arrived he found he had been forestalled. The French have lately purchased a piece of land opposite Perim, called Shaik Seyid, which they are to fortify, cut a canal through, and so shorten the passage to the Arabian Sea. Their position commanding D 2 LETTER I. ADEN TO BOMBAY. Perim, will, in a strategetical point of view, neutralise both advanced posts, as neither can affect the wide part of the straits on the African side, the safest outlet from the Red Sea. "That see," quoth Sir Johu Maundeville, Kt., writing thereof in 1366, "is not more reed than another see; but in some place thereof is the gravelle reede and therefore men clepen it the Red See." According to Dean Vincent the name comes "from Edom, Red, the sea of Edom or Esau, the Idumæan Sea." A hundred miles distant on the southern coast of Arabia is Aden, a small peninsula lying lengthways along the shore, and joined to it by a narrow strip of soil. The bay thus formed is the only safe harbour on the coast;-its sandy shore, backed by dark volcanic hills, is picturesque, but not inviting. Sharks abound; neverthe- less a crowd of amphibious youths surround the steamer and dive for coins; such is the power of backsheesh. The town is four miles distant from the port. Situate in the crater of a volcano, under a tropical sun, with every disadvantage, excepting its harbour and geographical position, Aden has been a commercial entrepôt from immemorial times. "It is a large town," wrote Ibn Batuta in 1324, “but has neither corn, nor trees, nor fresh water, except from reser- voirs made to catch the rain water; for other drinking water is at a great distance from the town. The Arabs often prevent the townspeople coming to fetch it until the latter have come to terms with them, and paid them a bribe in money or clothes." And thus Linschoten in 1585: “Aden is the strongest and fairest towne of Arabia Felix, situate in a valley compassed about on the one side with strong mines, on the other with high mountains; there are in it fine castles laden with ordnance, and a continual garrison kept therein because of the great number of shippes that sail before it. The towne hath about 6,000 houses in it, where the Indians, Persians, Æthiopians, and Turques doe traffique, and because the sun is so extreamme hotte in the day time, they make most of their bargains by night. About a stone's cast from the towne there is a hill with a great castle standing thereon, wherein the Governor dwelleth. In times past this towne stood upon the firme land; but now by the labour and industrie of man they have made it an island." LETTER I. 3 TOUTERS. It is surrounded by precipitous hills, rent in two places: one a narrow gorge, through which alone access by land is obtained, the other towards the sea, where the side thrown out, possibly in some eruption of nature, forms the island of Seerah. We drove from the port, where our steamer remained taking in coal till near midnight, to the first of these entrances along a macadamised road. At the gorge, fifteen feet wide, which is defended by outworks and a drawbridge, a guard of Sepoys is stationed, bright turbaned, black featured, with scarlet uniform and beards dyed to correspond. They present arms; and proceeding a short distance, the valley is seen, with its barracks, hospitals, mosque, church, market, graveyard, bungalows, stores, and collection of whitewashed huts, arranged in squares and streets, that shelter the motley popu- lation of an Eastern city. The Arab, in white bornous and head- dress of tasselled handkerchiefs, deals in "lambs, rams, and goats." 'Arabia and the Princes of Kedar purchased the fabrics of Tyre, and brought in return 'lambs, rams, and goats.' ABYSSINIANS AND JEWS. - The Abyssinian, with shaggy head dyed red, leans on his staff and stares superciliously. The Jew, in skull-cap, and long slender curls of hair hanging down his breast, importunes you to buy, "Cheap ostrich feather," "Cheap ostrich egg." The Parsee, in oil- cloth mitre, and airiest of light muslins, invites you to a seat in * Dissertation on Ezekiel xxvii., in Vincent's Periplus. - LETTER I. ADEN TO BOMBAY. his restaurant: "Temperance Hotel, honour." (( What have you to drink?" Brandy, rum, whiskey, beer." "Any water?" "No, sahib; no water, only soda-water." They are the principal mer- chants, agents, and dealers; and a large trade is carried on by them, as most of the exports of Yemen and Abyssinia pass through Aden, including the broad-tailed sheep, with black head, white body, and smooth hair, described by Marco Polo nearly six hundred years ago. From Mokha comes the celebrated coffee, also the growth of Malabar, to be exported as the more famous variety. The following is the legend recorded on the discovery of the use of coffee. A Kadi of Aden, in the middle of the fifteenth century, having occasion to visit Abyssinia, observed that some of his countrymen there were addicted to drinking coffee; this he took no particular notice of at first; but on his return to Aden, finding his health impaired, and remembering the coffee he had seen drunk in Africa, he sent for some in hopes of obtaining relief from the use of it. The Kadi not only recovered his health, but soon perceived other virtues in the new beverage, especially that it dis- pelled all heaviness of the head, cheered the spirits, and kept people wakeful without producing any evil effect. "His example and authority giving a reputation to the coffee, all the inhabitants of Aden soon fell into the habit of drinking it." * The population of Aden, numbering thirty to forty thousand, does not seem so large. Several wells yield brackish water, which is drawn day and night by Arabs; but the town depends on condensing apparatus for its supply. The reservoirs, only remains of the time when "Aden was the strongest and fairest towne of Arabia Felix," and but part of a large series for supplying it with water, were discovered under the scoriæ of centuries, when the place fell into the hands of the British in 1839. From the gullies and angles of the mountainous sides of the crater, elaborately-made watercourses carry the rain to these deposits, which are built in a connected series from midway up the mountain to the base of the valley. The creeks and basins of the descending slopes, secured by massive walls, form separate * Playfair's History of Yemen. LETTER I. 5 RESERVOIRS. 10 reservoirs, joined by communicating channels. When the lowest is filled, the passage to it is closed, and so on to the uppermost. A series of bridges and steps lead from one to the other, which in size and shape vary as the curves of the hills that form them. RESERVOIRS OF ADEN. Nine of these elaborate works repaired, cleaned, and coated with cement, are ready to be filled; but rain seldom falls. The last shower of duration occurred a year ago, when three million gallons of water were secured for a short time; but the cement failed, and the supply was lost by leakage. The discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope gave the coup de grâce to the commerce of Aden, which was then on the decline, as the Arabian navigators took their cargoes up the Red Sea, and with them the carrying trade of the East would have remained, to use the words of Dean Vincent, "if no Gama had arisen to effect a change in the whole commercial system of the world at large." 6 LETTER 1, ADEN TO BOMBAY, "Long time had Afric's interposing mound Stretching athwart the navigator's way, Fenc'd the rich East, and sent th' adventurer's bark Despairing home, or whelm'd her in the waves. Gama, the first on bold discovery bent, * * * * * > Through the breach All Lusitania poured. Arabia mourned, And saw her spicy caravans return Shorn of their wealth. The Adriatic bride, Like a neglected beauty, pined away. Europe, which, by her hand, of late received India's rich fruits, from the deserted mart Now turned aside, and plucked them as they grew.”* The last event in the history of Aden occurred in 1839, when it was taken by the East India Company, to terminate questions arising out of the loss of one of the Company's vessels on the neighbouring shore. Indispensable now as a coaling-station for steamers passing through the straits, with the opening of the Suez Canal its former prosperity may return, and the “Adriatic bride," no longer neglected, become again the cynosure of Eastern trade! We became possessed of it in this wise. A Madras vessel with a valuable cargo and numerous pilgrims bound for Jedda went on shore on the Koobet Sailan, a few miles distant from Aden, on the 4th January, 1836. She was boarded by crowds of Arabs from Aden, who plundered her of everything that could be removed. The passengers, amongst whom were several ladies of rank, landed on rafts, in doing which fourteen perished. The survivors were seized by the Arabs, stripped naked, and the females subjected to the most brutal indignities, and only saved from being carried off into the interior by the intercession of the Seyid of Aidroos, an in- fluential family in Aden, who supplied them with food and clothing. The Government of Bombay despatched a sloop of war to demand redress for this outrage, and to endeavour to obtain possession of the peninsula by purchase, and a demand was made for the resti- * Cumberland's Historical Fragments. LETTER I. 7 CAPTURE OF ADEN. tution of the stolen property, or in default the sum of $12,000 "Goods to the value of $7,808 were restored. The sultan penned a bill for the remainder, $4,192, and he delivered a written bond dated 23rd January, 1838, that he would cede the peninsula to the British in the following March, in consideration of an annual pension of $8,700." But none of these stipulations were carried into effect. The sultan refused to allow the stolen property, which had been formally restored, to be removed from Aden, much less to complete the stipulated agreement for the delivery of the place. After numerous delays, therefore, on the 16th January, 1839, a force consisting of H.M.S. Volage, 28 guns, under the command of Captain Smith; H.M.S. Crozier, 10 guns, with 300 European and 400 Native troops, commanded by Major Baillie, arrived at Aden ; the town was bombarded and taken by assault. The garrison consisted of 700 soldiers from the interior, and the remaining population did not exceed 600, of whom a great proportion were Jews. The sultan, his family, and a number of the chief people of the city effected their escape to Lahej. Thus Aden fell into the hands of the British, being the first capture in the reign of H.M. Queen Victoria, and from this period the process of its restoration was not less rapid than had been its decline.* * Playfair's History of Arabia Felix. COAST OF ADEN. LETTER II. BOMBAY. BOMBAY, 1st December, 1869. WE arrived yesterday evening. At noon, we were thirty-seven miles from the outer lighthouse, but some time elapsed before it could be distinguished or the spire of the memorial church, which are the first prominent architectural objects in the low-lying land, covered by the great city of Bombay. The only marine curiosities of the voyage were numerous sea-snakes lying on the top of the water, and about two yards long. The bay, a wide expanse, almost landlocked by islands, though not so beautiful as that of Bahia, reminds one of it. It has, however, a fine feature in the background of mountains that run down this side of the peninsula. Their remarkably-shaped peaks · had been visible all day. Night closes suddenly, and by six it would be dark but for the red glow on the western horizon left by the sun, set behind the wave. Custom-house officers make no difficulties, and the luggage is soon in a boat having a covered cabin aft large enough for half a dozen passengers, and lighted by a lamp which its Parsee owner keeps religiously burning there. In fifteen minutes we are alongside a flight of granite steps, the first clean and commodious landing-place seen since leaving England, and, glad to jump out of the bunder-boat, are in India. Clusters of gas-lamps like those facing Buckingham Palace LETTER II. 9 BAZAARS. throw light on seats, trees, loungers, white dressed Europeans and almost undressed natives. The Parsee boatman, from the Adelphi Hotel, Bycullah, a suburb of Bombay, puts his passengers into buggies and follows in a cart drawn by two Brahminee bullocks. A wide macadamised road, lighted, and flanked with trees, leads at a distance of a mile to a native bazaar, through which it extends for two more. Much as a stranger may be interested in Turkey and Egypt, with the novel customs and characters then seen for the first time, he would be quite unprepared for those through which we now passed. If, there, the effect is in a measure due to variety of dress and colour, here, the absence of dress is still more surprising. For the first time you realise that your Indian fellow-subjects are really Indians, and differ, physi- cally at least, in no material points from their brethren of the new world. Bazaars are streets or arcades of shops of dealers and workmen, sometimes roofed, as in Constantinople or the Palais Royal, some- times open, as here. Each dealer has a compartment ten feet front by fifteen deep, and wonderful is the quantity of goods they stow in them. But they take up the least possible room themselves. Before a child's table the Parsee, Hindoo, or Muhammedan mer- chant, squatted on the ground, is making up his accounts for the day. His book, held lengthways, long and limp, is written in the Persian, Mahratti, Hindi, or other character, to which he may be native and to the manner born. Next him is a dealer in copper and brass vessels used for carrying water or culinary purposes, which are sold by weight. The vendor would be naked but for the least imaginable of coverings. The front of his head is shaved, and the rest of his black, shining hair is gathered into a top-knot, to which his child clings, straddle-legged on his shoulder. It is a girl, as you can tell by the numerous silver armlets, bracelets, and anklets. The father's only ornament is a ring depending from the upper lobe of the ear; but the mother wears hers, which is large, and set with jewels, through the left side of her nose; on the other, she has a stud inserted. Ears, fingers, and toes, arms, ankles, and nose are covered with silver rings. Well moulded C 10 LETTER II. BOMBAY arms, small hands and feet, are characteristics of the race here, in Mexico. as Shops full of pugris, the Indian's turban, made to suit all HINDU BOOK-KEEPER. ན་་ སཀས་ tastes, in different forms and colours, of muslin, turkey red or cloth spun with gold. The stuff is narrow, but its length sometimes twenty yards; and it is wound round a block, not like the ortho- dox Turkish turban, but into peaked, oval, round, lozenge-shaped, or even Spanish sombrero-like forms. Many a poor native wears more cloth in his pugri than composes the rest of his clothing. Tavernier relates that "Muhammed Ali Beg returning into Persia out of India, where he had been Embassador, presented Chah-Sef the Second with a coca-nut about the bigness of an Austrich egg, all beset with pearls, and when it was opened there was taken out of it a Turbant that had sixty cubits of Calicut in LETTER II. 11 PUGRIS. length to make it, the Cloath being so fine that you could hardly feel it in your hand. For they will spin their thread so fine that the eye can hardly discern it, or at least it seems to be but a cob- web." The Hindu and Muhammedan merchants that crowd the omnibuses inside and out, dressed in white, have nothing but their pugris of bright colour about them. In contrast, follow groups walking together of gaily-dressed women with scarlet shawls thrown over their heads and twisted round their waists, white bodices, and crimson and yellow petticoats, faces, arms, hands, ankles, and feet tinkling with silver ornaments. No man, woman, or child, however poor, but has some silver trinket, a stand-by for a rainy day. Many are the sweetmeat-stalls, gaily ornamented, the vendors of betel, with the mixture of lime and areca nut rolled in a bright green leaf, the toddy shops, jewellers, money-changers, opium, rice, curry, and tumacko dealers, herbalists, and horse bazaars with rows of Arab riders not unlike the guachos of La Plata. The streets are crowded. Each shop is lighted; and rows of gas- lamps render everything bright and strange. Saying "the world is a great raree-show," we alight at the hotel, and are received by Mr. Pallonjee Pestonjee, the proprietor. Suites of sitting, bed, and bathrooms on the first floor, command the sea breeze; but the weather has been oppressive, and according to a Persian fire-wor- shipper so unseasonable, that he cannot sleep at night; what, then, to the unacclimatised wanderer! You are now doubtless glad to sit round a fire and to keep every door and window closed. Here we reverse that order of things, and shut out, when we can, the overpowering heat from the gaseous mountains of the sun-a state of the atmosphere which does not stimulate to correspondence. The Parsee burying towers occupy a part of the summit of the Malabar Hill, two miles from the hotel; but, if unprovided with a ticket from the secretary, or from Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Baronet (as the attendant Parsee will, with great gusto, explain), you are not allowed to enter. A mist partly obscured the valley, filled with bungalows, huts, 12 LETTER II. BOMBAY. and tropical vegetation. Natives, basking under the trees, or, thirty to fifty feet high among the palms, were collecting the sap which was being carried on the heads of youths and damsels. TODDY DRAWERS. The Indian cuts steps in the bark four feet apart, and, assisted by these, clambers up, having a gourd suspended from his waist, and looking at a distance like an ourang-outang. When he reaches the top and is seated under "the slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,” he cuts off a portion of the frond twelve inches by four, one end of which he inserts into the tree to form a runlet. Above his, stripping a broad slice from the outer bark, he gashes into the stem. Immediately a stream of white juice flows down and is caught in the gourd, which has been carefully wrapped in leaves.* * "The first extraction is usually made when the tree is about eight years old, and the issue, with daily attention, continues regularly twenty to twenty-five years, though generally young trees are only tapped, as the constant bleeding tends to weaken them after some time. The spathe is bound tightly with the pliant leaflets, and bruised along its whole length three times a day for a fortnight with a bone mallet. The mallet is nothing more than the thigh bone of a bison, the marrow cleaned out and its place supplied with ghee, which, oozing through, greases the spathe when struck and prevents its bursting. "The toddy-drawer after tapping proceeds to cut off the apex of the spathe, places a little clay on the wound to prevent the juice trickling through too large a LETTER II. 13 BUGGIES. My host of the Adelphi twice promised to take me to the Towers of Silence, but failed. "Your hanner" was appealed to in such humble terms, with such respectful assurances that "nothing but the unexpected arrival or departure of the packet would have prevented him," that it was impossible not to give way. This morning, however, he had undertaken to be ready by eight. At a quarter past the butler reported "Pallonjee" (they don't "Don" or Mister" their masters here) still tired and in bed. Show me (C to his room." The servant at once led the way to a dirty hall, into which several doors opened, but our friend seemed to have no fixed place of repose, for all the rooms were examined, and in none was he discoverable. Off the side hall was the salle à manger, with punkah, waiting for the gong to set it in motion. Carved chiffoniers and side-tables of Bombay manufacture, more or less rickety and awry, were covered with little dolls representing the races and castes that here abound. Everything was dirty and Eastern. At last, finding we were determined to unearth him, mine host appeared from behind a partition, and soon afterwards we drove to the towers in a buggy. The driver sits beside you, and the vehicle easily accommodates two others, for we jogged on comfortably, and though I am not of immoderate proportions, Pal- lonjee is a fine-looking, and, spite of perpetual badgerings from his numerous customers, a kindly, and corpulent Zoroastrian. Driving down Byculla and Clare Roads, we turn into a street swarming with natives; policemen in blue, with yellow pugris, channel, covers it with a small earthen pot, returns twice in the day to cut off another slice and tap, and the following morning empties the contents of the chatty into one that he wears at his side. As he reduces the length of the spathe, the juice, or toddy, issues with less readiness, so he generally leaves half of it; and though so much bruising and bleeding has been undergone, the nuts sometimes burst out and ripen on the stunted stalk. About one quart of a milky liquor is obtained from each tree per diem (without reference to the presence of fruit on any other branches); this the drawer waters into nearly four pints, retailing it in the diluted condition to small farmers of the beverage, who also increase the quantity of fluid; and at length the consumers gulp it down with supreme satisfaction. It is sweet, cool, and refresh- ing before the sun has risen, and, as a mild purgative, beneficial to Europeans. It is almost generally employed in India for yeast in making bread. The poorest natives often take nothing day after day but half a shell full at noon, and a quarter of cunghee (a very thin rice gruel) in the evening."— Lawson's British and Native Cochin. ་ 14 LETTER II. BOMBAY. salute us at every step, and a guard of native troops, having charge of a deserter, promptly obey the order: "Eyes right—pre- sent arms,” to the Englishmen. We pass cobblers', tinkers', and toddy stalls, all about three feet from the ground, with steps leading to them. The last, without exception, have a rope hang- ing before, not as a respice finem, but to assist the ascent and descent of their unsteady frequenters. The inscriptions on sign- boards are generally in Mahratti or native dialects; but to some are added an English translation. "Yezdar Perest, or the Worshipper of God." "Backery and superior qualities of Pastery." Ladies and Gents Showes Maker." Hormusjee Framjee, Manager of Law Suits, and General Com- mission Agent." "Soudah Mochie, Harness leather for make and rep and covering chair, jhumpan pad and stitch unite crokery and glass." "Hoosain Bux, merchant, West-end hotel, first-rate horses and ice soda water lemonade for sell." "Mr. Cheap John, wonderful rooms upper bazar. Reaching the foot of the hill on which the cemetery is placed we alight and walk, as there is, at present, no carriage-road. The summit commands a view of the groves beneath, of the low-lying city, and harbour and islands beyond. At the entrance a policeman was stationed to keep out strangers; but, escorted by Pallonjee, we are admitted. From a temple built like an oven rays of light are reflected to fall on the towers. Scented woods, burnt within, dis- pense odours perceptible to a distance, and in sheds or chapels on either side the priests pray while the bodies are carried along a pathway to the towers. There are five, each twenty feet above the ground, seventy-five in circumference, and two hundred deep within. Rows of steps lead to the bottom, where the corpses are deposited without covering, sexes apart, and children separate, all in circles. Each tower has space for one hundred occupants, and through wells in the centre descend the last remnants of humanity not consumed by the vultures that congregate here. “But I thought there was a grating to keep the birds away." OF 3 *** TOWER OF SILENCE, MALABAR HILL, BOMBAY. [Page 14. LETTER II. (( TOWER OF SILENCE. 15 No, sir, only in one rich tower. It is better to let the birds come, they prevent effluvia." Each tower, kept open three 1 • 3 ་ DIAGRAM : INTERIOR OF A TOWER OF SILENCE. months, is closed during twelve. Hundreds of vultures throng the parapets, or are seen now to drop down, now to rise heavily from the abyss. (( Except the body-carriers, no living human being passes the portals of these towers of silence. "Do you attend the funerals?" 'Yes, honour, I like them much; I am always very happy to come." "Where do the vultures come from?" He questions the attendant in Mahratti, who can give no more satisfactory reply than "From a distance;" but adds, "sometimes they break their eggs and have children." Returning we passed a bungalow surrounded by a grove of trees. Over the entrance was a tablet, painted in Arabic characters, and beneath it an English translation, commencing, "In the name of God! Amen." Several poor people sat under the verandah, and one of them, dressed in white and wearing a Persian cap, invited us to enter. It was a Dhurmsala, refuge "for indigent 16 LETTER II. BOMBAY. C persons, members of the Zoroastrian community arriving from Iran," erected and endowed by Cursetjee Ardaseer Daddyseth in the era of Yerdazurdeer 1222, Vicurmajeet 1909, and Christian 1853. On the day of arrival no questions are asked ; but on the next the casual receives a ticket, and must give correctly," the name of his or her father or grandfather." Rule No. 6, is one that would be approved by housekeepers nearer home: Persons residing in this Dhurmsala will be provided with meals at 6 A.M., 12.30, and 7 P.M. They shall partake of whatever is laid before them, and those who come after the fixed meal shall go without it." The other rules refer to the maintenance of order. (( The precepts of Zoroaster, in his book the Zandavesta—the book of life, the living word,-form the law of religion professed by the descendants of the Persians who inhabit the western coast of India. The records of the Muhammedans concerning them commence in the ninth century, and state that he wrote his revelations upon twelve thousand cow skins-in twelve tomes—each of which formed a bullock's load. Descendants of the Guebres, fire worshippers, they worship not fire exclusively, but all the elements, though the sacred flame is kept alive on a table of silver in their churches, fed by sandal and scented woods. "We turn toward the sun," said my informant, "only in the morning and evening, when we pray." Changing the conversation, "It is strange that so few Indians understand English. Spain and Portugal, in their conquests, brought both their language and their faith." "Quite true, sir; I was in Paris last year, and was surprised to notice the same. I had to employ an interpreter." (( They did not, possibly, understand your pronunciation of French." “I mean English. I was obliged to employ an interpreter to make the French understand me." "That is scarcely a case in point. We cannot expect the French to learn our language; here it is different. Then as to religion, our rule seems to have had no influence in suppressing the idol worship of India." * LETTER II. 17 PARSEES. "Exactly so. Quite true. I remarked the same thing in Paris. They were all Roman Catholics there." "But, sir, referring to the Indians of India, surely in a material point of view it would profit them to learn the language of their governors." 'Oh, sir! you mean these men," pointing to the coachman and syce; "sir, they are all fools!" Either there was an obliquity of comprehension about our Parsee friend, or his visit to Paris had turned his head. Two sects of Parsees, not sufficiently exclusive to prevent in- termarriage and life in common, are in death divided. A charit- able and peaceful people, they pace about the streets, full of business, actively as any brokers of the Stock Exchange. Round faces, dark complexions, good-natured looks, bright eyes. The fashionable Parsee dresses in a tight-fitting, single-breasted, black frock coat, irreproachable linen, scarlet silk trousers, and patent leather boots; the head-dress is invariably the oil-cloth Persian tope. Thus will you see them standing toward the setting sun, prayer-book in hand, gazing on the luminary they adore. The women, fond of bright colours, coquettishly cover their faces with a muslin veil. Handsome barouches pass with many distinguished CASTE MARKS. parties of them, and here is a landau, with English coachman and Europe hat complete, occupied by a stout Hindoo in white robes, pugri of crimson and gold, and nothing about him to remark; but assuredly you would have asked if you had seen aright, for on his forehead was a mark painted scarlet, in shape a flame, not to indi- D 18 LETTER ff. BOMBAY. cate, like the victims of Vathek, that his heart was the receptacle of eternal fire, but that at his birth he was doomed to an eccen- tricity of caste, of which this emblem was the outward and visible. sign. Foreheads marked with yellow, red, or white-stars, bars or stripes, are one of the novelties that strike a stranger. Occasionally the bands of the British or native regiments play at the stand on the Esplanade, and rows of carriages with native drivers and footmen draw up alongside. Few Hindus, but a fair proportion of Parsees, in gorgeous broughams of double roofs and venetian blinds, mingle with the Europeans. There is a Rotten Row and riders. Groups of Parsees, seated on carpets, each with its lamp, play at backgammon. Muhammedans are praying; and beyond, an English croquet party is surrounded by native servants, who carry the lamps and follow the balls. Night is the only time when the fashionable world of the third city of the British Empire-it has a population of six hundred and fifty thousand—can take the air. Bombay was, in 1662, given by the Portuguese in part of a dowry, together with Tangier, in the Straits of Gibraltar, to the Infanta of Portugal upon her marriage with King Charles II., "whereby the English thought to have got a good booty from the Portugueses, whereas they are in effect places of no considerable traffic.” * The Western Presidency was constituted in 1668, when the King finding Bombay "unproductive made a grant of it to the Company on condition of their paying him a yearly rent of 107. in gold." It was in this year that "the Company sent out their first order for the purchase of 100lbs. weight of the best tea." In the more than two centuries which have passed since that time the consumption of tea in England has risen to 123 millions of pounds annually, and in the last ten years the new ex- port of Indian tea has grown to upwards of eighteen millions." + Gold is always at a considerable premium here, and at present sovereigns obtain twenty-one shillings, excepting those coined in Australia, which are disliked by natives for melting, from the lighter colour of the metal. Bank notes of the Indian Govern- ` ment issued at the several presidencies pass at par generally in the Philip Baldæus, 1672. +Annals of Indian Administration, Serampore. LETTER II. 19 CURRENCY. circle to which they belong; but though a legal tender, they are only easily negotiable in the principal cities. At any out-o'-way place, native bankers charge a heavy discount on them.* It will take time to convince the public that this currency, not liable to depreciation, is a secure convertible medium at the Government banks; but, at last prevailing, it will be the greatest innovation in our Eastern Empire. The notes are of 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, and 1000 rupees, or from 17. to 1007. value. The circulation of them * Attempts to introduce the use of paper-money by Eastern sovereigns have been recorded by numerous ancient writers. Marco Polo gives a quaint account of the paper currency of the great Khan of Kambalu, Kublai Khan, the Moghul monarch of Northern China, in 1260. Ibn Batuta refers to it in his "Travels," though he gives no account of the copper coinage of Mahommed Toghluck, under whom he served at Delhi. From an article by Mr. E. B. Cowell, in vol. xxix., p. 183, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal," I take the following translation of Ferishta's account of the issuing of copper-gold by that despot :-"When the king desired, like Sikander, to conquer the seven regions, and his pomp and treasury would not suffice to meet all his demands, in order to attain his object, he invented a copper currency, and issued orders that, just as in China a paper-gold is current, so, too, in Hindostan they should coin copper-gold in the mint, and make it pass current instead of silver or gold money, and employ it in all buying and selling. "In consequence of this measure, every Hindu's house became a private mint, and crores of copper pieces were coined, with which they paid tribute and gained immense fortunes, with serious detriment to the empire, and the treasury became filled with these coins. At last, the copper money became so depreciated that it was reckoned like shingle, and the value of the old coins was increased fivefold. When such ruin everywhere fell upon commerce, and the copper tokens became viler than bricks, and were of no use whatever, Sultan Mahommed repealed his edict, and issued a new order, though with the fiercest wrath within his heart, that every one who had the copper coin might bring it to the treasury and exchange it for the old gold money. Forth- with thousands of men from different quarters, who, utterly sick of these tokens, had tossed them into holes with the pots and pans, brought them to the treasury and re- ceived gold and silver money in exchange. In such quantities was the copper carried that there were heaps of it in Toghlakabad like mountains, while immense sums passed out from the treasury in exchange for it, and this was one great evil which fell upon the state from this measure. And, again, since the Sultan's edict had failed in bring- ing the scheme to pass, and the copper tokens had only absorbed a large portion of the revenue, the heart of the Sultan became more alienated from his people. "Note :-Though not strictly bearing upon the question, I cannot refrain from alluding to the history of the water-carrier (bheestie) who saved Humayun's life at Chousa. He was rewarded by sitting on the imperial throne for half-a-day. He em- ployed his brief reign in providing for his family and friends; and, to commemorate it, he had his bheestie's skin (which was used as a water vessel) cut up into leather rupees, which were gilt and stamped with his name and the date of his reign as sovereign prince." 20 LETTER 11. BOMBAY • rose to 10,000,000 in 1866, and is rapidly increasing, the principal demand being for the smaller notes. The rupee (two shillings) is the standard of value, and shopkeepers make it the equivalent for. what is sold in England at a shilling. Books, magazines, all articles of which you know the selling price, are marked at the same, but in rupees, namely, double, the dealer gravely assuring you, that breakage and leakage, swallow the difference. The cathedral of Bombay is a spacious building of stone with a vaulted roof. Punkahs are hung down its length in two rows; the seats are of cane, the windows of lattice work. It was built in 1720, and is full of interesting tablets, some dating as far back as 1760. One sculptured monument represents an officer in the arms of Victory, and beneath, a dismantled French man-of-war, lying alongside a smaller British vessel. I close this letter, by copying its inscription. This monument is erected here by the public spirit of Bombay to consecrate the memory of Capt. GEORGE NICHOLAS HARDINGE, R.N. Animated by the example of his great master, Nelson, he acquired an early fame and a hero's death. Commanding the San Fiorenzo, of thirty-six guns and one hundred and eighty-six men, he chased and brought into action, upon three successive days, the enemy's frigate, La Piedmontaise, of fifty guns and five hundred and sixty-six men; bore a high character, and was the terror of the Indian seas. Nobly supported by his first lieutenant, William Dawson, by his officers, and by his crew, he achieved a most brilliant conquest, but fell with glory in the last and critical period of this heroic enterprise, upon the 8th March, 1808, and in the twenty-eighth year of his age. His ardent perseverance and skill in this action were so extraordinary, that, by unanimous vote, the House of Commons raised a monument in St. Paul's Cathedral for a perpetual record of honour to his name and character. Thus it is that Great Britain, by herself and by her colonies, marks her tribute of national recompense, gratitude and affection to heroes, who devote and sacrifice life itself upon the altar of patriot valour. These are tributes that will animate the courage and the zeal of her champions to the latest posterity.' "" ISLAND OF ELEPHANTA. LETTER III. BOMBAY. ELEPHANTA, one of the numerous islands in the bay of which Bombay is the chief, is distant about seven miles from the landing pier-the Apollo bunder. You pass through a fleet of British merchantmen, famous clippers, with double-top, royal, and sky-sail yards, and, as ports and deck-houses tell, "perfect accommodation for passengers," steamers from Marseilles and Glasgow, which have come through the Suez Canal, Navy transports, men-of-war with the blue ensign of the Indian Navy, and a few French and American merchantmen. Steaming through them all, we look on the fine background of the Ghauts, Matharan, and Parbul, and passing Butcher Island, stored with coal, arrive at the wooded island of two hills, or of one hill divided by a little valley into two eminences, which takes its name from a sculptured elephant, formerly a prominent object on it, but which fell into decay half a century ago. Landing we discern, through palms and trees that cover the grounds, flights of steps, with balustrades of heavy masonry, which lead by an easy ascent to the caves situate half-way up the hill.* * The ascent to the cave was constructed by Karamsi Ranmat, a Lohara merchant of Bombay, in 1853-4, at an expense of about 12,000 rupees. The stone used was all carried over from Bombay.-Rock Temples, &c., by Mr. Burgess, Bombay. 22 LETTER III. BOMBAY. Imagine a hall cut out of solid rock and surrounded by pillars, more or less destroyed, their carved architraves left unsupported or connected with the basis by a narrow strip of stone; the walls enriched by sculptures illustrating fables of the Hindoo creed in figures from twelve to fifteen feet high, mutilated, but preserving, spite of the ravages of time and the barbarism of man, their original vigour. Pyke, in 1713, says: "The Portuguese now fodder all their cattle there in the rainy seasons, and lately one of their Fidalgos, to divert himself with the echo which is here most admirable, fired a great gun into it with several shots, which has broken some of the pillars." But though the Portuguese were the first to com- mence the work of destruction, this monument has been so much neglected that its irreparable injuries can only be laid in part to their charge. The hill has been cut through on two sides, so that light enters the caves in three directions. Near the entrance a temple contains the Lingam stone, a general object of adoration among Hindoos, and before which they may often be seen per- forming their puja or prayers. The sculptured walls, like the painted windows of our Gothic shrines, are accessory ornaments, and represent the marriage of Siva and Parvati, the gods of Love and Light. The Trimurti, the subject of the illustration, represents the deity in his threefold character of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer. Brahma's head-dress is ornamented with jewelled pieces and pendents of pearls, and a necklace hangs across his breast, passing round behind the ears, which are enlarged, as is still the custom on this coast. The lower part of the figure is mutilated, but a gourd is distinguish- able in his left hand. Vishnu holds, and seems to regard, a lotus, His head-dress is regally decorated. Although the deity is masculine, the features are those of a woman. Here is an Indian description of female charms :- 'Her beauty was like a light in a dark house, her eyes were those of a deer, her curls like female snakes, her nose like a parrot's.' Siva gazes on a cobra, an emblem of death. His head- dress consists of flowers, whose rich odours breathe but agonics,' 10 2 n CAVE OF ELEPHANTA- THE LINGA CHAPEL. [Page 29. ! LETTER III. 23 TRIMURTI. and leaves, 'whose gums are poison.' Cobras lift their heads from among them, and snakes form his locks of hair. His corrugated brow, swollen in the centre, contains the fire that will at last destroy the world. The figures, about fifteen feet high, are sculptured in a recess, supported by colossal statues, of which only the outlines remain. The subsidiary carvings of the principal faces of the temple arc THE TRIMURTI. interesting to a spectator, but would not be so in description. To the left of the Trimurti, there is a tableau of the marriage of Siva and Parvati. Parvati leads his bride, who bashfully draws back, while her mother, a priestess, pushes her on. Another subject is Siva in the character of a two-sexed divinity, leaning on a bull.* In one hand she holds a coil or noose. The * "A gigantic half-male half-female figure represents Shiva as uniting in himself the personification of the two sexes, the union of Shiva and Uma, and is called Ard- 24 LETTER III. BOMBAY. noose was the weapon used by the Thugs to strangle their victims, and in vol. iii., p. 457, "Asiatic Researches," a curious account is given, by which it appears that the lasso as used in MARRIAGE OF SIVA AND PARVATI. South America was common to the ancient Persians and other Asiatic nations.* dhanári. Exactly such a statue as this is mentioned by Porphyry as having been described to Bardesanes of Babylon by the Indian Sandales and his companions, am- bassadors in the time of Elagabalus, about A.D. 220; and what is curious they described it as being of ten or twelve cubits in height, in a large cave in a mountain standing erect, the right side being male from head to foot, the left female; and over the arms a number of angels-particulars that could only refer to something very like what is actually found here. The figure is about 11 cubits (10 ft. 9 in.) in height.”—Burgess's Rock Temples of Elephanta or Ghârâpurî, Bombay, 1873. * With respect to the practice of throwing the noose from a distance, used by the Bongaris in India, I conclude it to be the same as was resorted to in battle (accord- ing to Firdousi) by the ancient Persians and other Asiatic nations for seizing and binding their enemies and dragging them off horseback. The cammand (literally a rope or noose), said to have been formed of silk or of the dried skin or sinews of animals, is mentioned in various parts of the Shah Namah. Thus, in narrating the exploits of the renowned champion Rustum, it is said :— Rustum advanced like a furious elephant, His cammand in his arm full sixty coils. He loosed Aulad from his bonds, And tied his Kyanian cammand to the bow of his saddle, LETTER III. 25 PUJA. Elephanta is still resorted to by good Hindus for puja prayers.* Parties of them come bringing a goat, a ram, or fowl. The animals, SIVA. made to kneel before the elephantine god Gunisha, are killed over a quantity of boiled rice, which is then eaten by the worshippers. For from their saddles with the noose of my caminand I tore them and bound fast their heads and feet. He threw the well-twisted cammand And caught many a horseman on the same spot. Asiatic Researches, Vol. I. * "The materials and instruments required for the complete daily puja are as fol- lows:-(1) A plate with fragrant flowers, bilva leaves, fruit, betel leaves, and one or two copper coins; (2) a small vessel to hold gandha, a paste made of sandal wood, sometimes mixed with saffron, akshata, washed rice, and a powder made of scented woods; (3) a large and a small water vessel with ladle for water; (4) a conch shell on a tripod; (5) a bell; (6) a seat; (7) a vessel with a hole at the bottom, from which to drop water; (8) two lamps with wicks and ghi in them, and a long shallow vessel with a piece of camphor to burn in it; (9) seven small cups containing milk, curds, ghi, honey, sugar, and sweetmeats; (10) a pastile or wick covered with fragrant substances. The ministrant, provided with these requisites, seats himself in the shrine and thrice takes a sip of the water; he then salutes Ganapati, the god of learning, the Veda, and other divinities, performs the sankalpa, i.e. mentions the lunar date, the E 26 LETTER III. BOMBAY. On approaching Bombay some picturesque hills are seen in the distance. Three are remarkable: one, for its naturally castellated top, the second, for its curious peak, and the third, a flat-topped mountain, called Matharan, said to mean, in the Mahratta tongue, "the forest-capped hill." The route from Bombay is by the Great places of the planets, the place where he himself is, the object of his worship; and, that it may not be thwarted in any way, he calls on Ganapati by several of his names. He next purifies himself and his seat by the repetition of mantra formularies, and then engages in meditation. He now salutes the Linga, and places gandha akshata, and flowers on the large water vessel and on the conch, which is also filled with water; then he rings the bell that Shiva may attend and all sprites depart, and worships the Linga by placing gandha rice and flowers on it. The materials of worship and him- self are next consecrated by sprinkling water from the shell upon them with a flower, and again he meditates. He is now ready to proceed with the first part of the puja. This he begins by invoking Shiva, placing a seat for him, and offering to wash his feet; then he pours over the Linga an oblation of water mixed with gandha akshata and flowers, and another that Shiva may cleanse his hands and mouth; next he washes the Linga with water, milk, curd, ghi, honey, and sugar, again with water mixed with gandha, and lastly with water. After wiping the idol with a cloth, he puts some grains of rice on it-this being symbolical of clothing an image-then he applies gandha, rice, and flowers, repeating mantras, and swings round before it a lighted lamp and the arti, and at the same time rings the bell with his left hand and offers naivedya, i.e. raisins, sweetmeats, cocoanut, almonds, or plantains, adding akshata to make up any deficiency. He concludes by asking Shiva to be satisfied with this part of the service, and then removes the stale flowers from the top of the Linga to the north side of it. This part is often omitted; the second is more essen- tial, and is performed by the Gurava as well as the Brahman. It is begun by holding the percolating vessel over the Linga, and allowing the water to drop through it upon the idol; this performance-called snana-lasting longer or shorter according to the mantras the worshipper chooses to repeat. Wiping it with a clean cloth he then applies rice for clothes as before, and, dipping two fingers in the sandal-wood paste, he draws them across the Linga so as to leave on the stone three curved streaks of paste from the edges of the fingers-thus forming the tilaka or sectarial mark on its front. Next he lays flowers and bilva leaves on the top of it, swings a lighted pastile and lamp before it, and at the same time rings the bell with his left hand. Then he offers food before it, after which he sprinkles water with a flower on the Linga, that Shiva may wash his hands and mouth with it, and gandha from a flower, that he may be free from the smell of the food eaten. After this he offers fruit, a roll of betel leaves with condiments, and some coins, and waves round it the lighted camphor. Next, keeping his right side towards it; he performs pradakshiná, or goes round the Vedi, up to the spout, and then returns back, going round to it again-for he may not cross the water from the spout-then he makes obeisance to the image with his eight limbs—that is, touches the ground with his forehead, breast, palm of the hands, knees, and toes, and lastly, placing some flowers on the idol and confessing his ignorance and the deficiency of his worship, he concludes with further mantras.” The Rock Temples of Elephanta or Ghârâpurî, by J. Burgess, F. R. G.S., &c. Bombay. 尊 ​LETTER III. 27 MATHARAN. Indian Peninsular Railway to Narel, fifty-three miles, which occupies two hours and a half; thence by pony or jompon for eight miles by a winding and well-constructed road. Some dif- ficulty occurred in procuring a pony, as the men in charge refused to give one without an order. The station master explained that all they required was a chit to the kotwal, or native policeman at Matharan, and he accordingly wrote, "Pony for Mr. A., Chowk Hotel," with which they were quite satisfied. "Anything will do," said the clerk, “as long as they see written characters." The road to the summit is by easy gradients. Lights were everywhere: below, those of many villages; around, the fire-flies in the thickets; above, the multitudinous stars. Prepared for a delightful vision, you awake to a sea of foliage, dotted with bungalows, and bounded by the lofty peaks of Parbul, the first of the three hills mentioned. Matharan rises in perpendicular crags about two thousand eight hundred feet high, which project into points, or narrow ridges, one of which, a mile long, terminates in a space not six yards wide. LOUISA POINT. From this panoramic point Bombay is seen, with its harbour and shipping, bounded by the sea; in front, the majestic hills, carpeted with foliage at their base, or alive with vegetation trailing down their rocky sides; to the left, a deep plain, threaded by rivulets, and populous with villages; in the far distance, the range of Ghauts. A crag jutting from Louisa Point has a singular resem- blance to a tiger's head. The top of the hill contains eight square miles of table-land. Fifteen years ago, under Lord Elphinstone's Government, the 28 LETTER III. BOMBAY. road from Narel was constructed, and Matharan for the first time, although within easy distance of Bombay, became the resort of Europeans. Bungalows, with wide verandahs have since been erected; and gardens, romantic roads, and croquet lawns laid down. During the monsoon, the fall of rain is so great that for three months, 15th June to the 15th September, the place is uninhabit- able. Let us conclude with a quotation from the guide-book by Mr. Bellasis. “To the lover of Nature, Matharan offers a grand field of study and amusement. To the botanist, the hill is rich in ferns, orchids, and parasitical plants. The wild jasmine, of an evening, literally scents the air with its sweet perfume; and creepers of many kinds climb the loftiest trees, and being able to climb no higher, in very desperation throw their shoots in graceful festoons down again to the earth. To the entomologist, the woods and glades are full of animal life butterflies, moths, beetles, and insects in great variety are to be found; some quite unique to Matharan and the Ghauts of Western India. In birds, too, there is a goodly variety. The nightingale sings as in Southern Europe; and there are several other birds that warble, if they do not sing. Again, humming-birds and sun-birds are plentiful, and may be seen, in all their beautiful metallic plumage, fluttering, like a butterfly, over some gay flower, and extracting its honied store. Nothing is more charming than, at Matharan, to watch the dawn of day lighting up the lovely scenery and foliage of the hill, and to listen to the warbling and chirping of the birds." . W. PALMER, M OF I !! "My mother Earth! MATHARAN. And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains, Why are ye beautiful ? * And thou the bright eye of the universe Art a delight К ร That openest over all, and unto all And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge I stand, and on the torrent's Srink beneath Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs In dizziness of distance; when a leap, * * * * A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed To rest for ever Beautiful! How beautiful is all this visible world!" MANFRED. [Page 28. LETTER IV. MATHARAN TO MAHABULISHWAR AND BOMBAY. CAPITAL ponies are hired at Matharan, and you may canter down the hill all the way, while the kulis with luggage, and girl with smaller impedimenta, making short cuts, turn up now and then on the road, and receive their payments at Narel. Thence the rail- way ascends the Bhor Ghaut, two thousand feet by an incline sixteen miles long, and in many places carried along the edge of precipices, presents magnificent views. Four hours' travelling brings you to the city of Poona, in a wide plain surrounded by hills. A curious native bazaar, separated from the European quarter, con- tains many temples and lingams painted vermilion, by the road- side, an ancient fort, and at its extremity a conical abrupt hill, ascended by a flight of wide granite steps, and crowned with temples. Conspicuous in the plain, and almost as numerous as the idolatrous shrines, are handsome stone churches consecrated to the various forms of Christian worship. While admiring the prospect, a young man with no clothing but a cotton shawl round his waist, advanced, salaamed, and proceeded to state in fluent English that he was the high-priest, an office hereditary among Hindoos, which had descended to him from his father. The centre temple, dedicated to Mahadeo contained an image covered with precious stones. Four smaller, at each corner enclosed the gods of Wisdom and Light, the Creator of the world and the goddess of Love. At the last were worshippers, looking in, and muttering. We pray at each temple in the morning," said the priest," and we hold the bull sacred, because it is stated in our Puranas that God rode on it at the creation of the world.” 30 LETTER IV. MAHABULISHWAR TO BOMBAY. (( Descending the hill we stopped at a grave covered by a small pedestal. Here,” said he, “were placed the ashes of the last Sati. Consequent on Government orders no widow has since been burnt. M. KULI GIRL, MATHARAN. This Sati took place fifty years ago, my father being the officiating priest. The widow was tied to the grave with the dead body of her husband." "Was she willing to be sacrificed?" "Oh dear, no! It was the custom of our religion. We tied them to prevent escape." And did not the cries of the victims horrify the spec- tators ?" "We never suffered them to be heard, but played the tom-tom loud and louder to drown any cries."* "You have seen 'The parents and friends of those women will most joyfully accompanie them, and when the wood begins to burne, all the people assembled shoute and make a noyze that the screeches of this tortured creature may not be heard." LETTER IV. 31 SATI. a Sati?" "No, sir, the custom was abolished before my time, but I had an account of this one from my father." The Hindoos have, however, one observance common to more humane religionists:-the plate. It lay beside the sculptured bull, that stands before and looks into the temples of the deity Krishna, Vishnu, or Mahadeva, and all down the hill you are pestered for backsheesh. * Prodigality or carelessness of life has been remarked as a conspicuous trait in the Hindu character; hence has arisen such an army of martyrs as no religion, perhaps, can outnumber. As well as meritorious suffering for religion's sake, suicide is in some cases legal, and even commendable: that, for instance, of the Sati, or the self-immolated widow. This triumph of priestcraft, the greatest perhaps it has to boast, occurs at Poona, in ordinary and quiet periods, annually about twelve times, on an average of as many years. As this terrible ceremony is generally performed at Poona, at the junction of the rivers, about a quarter of a mile from the skirts of the city, at which junction the English Residency is situated, and as my habitation was as near as possible to the river, on the bank opposite to the spot of sacrifice, and not more distant than two hundred yards, I most likely knew of all that occurred, and, with the exception of one that took place at midnight, attended them all. 'The first that I attended was a young and interesting woman about twenty-five years of age. From the time of her first coming on horseback to the river-side, attended by music, her friends, Brahmans, and spectators, to the period of her lighting the pile, two hours elapsed: she evinced great fortitude. On another occasion an elderly, sickly, and frightened woman, was hurried into the pile in a quarter of an hour. "Of the first of these I took particular note. Soon after I arrived at the pile then erecting, she saw me and beckoned me to come to her; all persons immediately made way, and I was led by a Brahman close up to her, when I made an obeisance, which she returned, looking full in my face, and proceeded to present me with something that she held in her hand. A Brahman stopped her, and desired me to hold my hand out, that what she was about to give me might be dropped into it: to avoid pollu- tion, I suppose, by touching anything while in contact with an impure person. She accordingly held her hand over mine and dropped a pomegranate, which I received in silence, and reverently retired. I was sorry it was not something of an imperishable nature, that I might have preserved it: some ornament, for instance. My wife, who was in the house on the other side of the river, observing the ceremonies through a glass, was also disappointed, and, of course, curious to know what was the article presented in so interesting a manner at such an awful time. "After the Sati was seated in the hut of straw, built over the pile, with the corpse of her husband beside her, and just before the fire was applied, a venerable Brahman took me by the hand and led me close to the straw, through which he made an open- ing, and desired me to observe her, which I did attentively. She had a lighted wick in each hand, and seemed composed; I kept sight of her through the whole of her agony, as, until forced to retire from the intensity of the heat, which I did not, how- ever, until a good deal scorched, I was within five feet of the pile."— Moor's Hindu Pantheon, pp. 318, 319. ་ 32 LETTER IV. MAHABULISHWAR TO BOMBAY. ウ ​From Poona to the Mahabulishwar hills. The village is much resorted to in summer by the élite of Bombay, and stands on a table-land five thousand feet above the sea-level. Leaving in the afternoon for the intermediate stage of Sherwell, at the foot of the hills, through the bazaar with its usual crowd, among which English soldiers and sickly European children are conspicuous, into the country along a macadamised road, and passing through a tunnel, you arrive at the dawk bungalow at 10 P.M. The Khansamagh, in his den asleep, was soon up to the call of the syces, and preparing dinner. Creeping into an oven, he reappeared, a flutter was heard, and a croak or convulsions. It resulted in the famous Indian dish "sudden death," a spatchcock, on this occasion garnished with truffled sausages. At dawn next morning a gang of coolies drag the carriage up the Ta'i Ghaut, but the steepest part surmounted, horses were in waiting for the upper half, and, driving through a wooded road, the travellers' bungalow was reached at 9.30 A.M. A cottage of four rooms, two bath rooms, mud floor, and some brown thatch on the roof, but at least an equal amount of blue sky. The messman, a Madrassee, apologising for a breakfast of ham, eggs, curry, and beer, provided tats, as the hill ponies are called, and a guide. Through once tigerish jungles the village was traversed, a place of sanctity in the eyes of good Hindoos, to which they resort in numbers at certain feasts, but in its work-a-day state a poor and dirty collection of mud-built huts. Natives, half or wholly naked, patching mud walls, stop their work to conduct us to the temple of Krishna. Solidly built of stone, turned to the deepest black by the action of the atmosphere (which here has this effect on all stone buildings), it is surrounded by corridors and encloses two tanks, into which passes a stream of water, issuing from the mouth of a sculptured bull. Women were filling their cans at the tank, and young girls bathing therein. Nothing was imposing or beautiful, and around jabbered and grinned a group of natives. Shown the adjoining temple, which contained a bed. "For the priest?" we ask. "No; it is kept ready for the god Krishna, who, though invisible to mortal eye, here nightly woos his drowsy brother." LETTER IV. 33 PERTABGURH. In a third temple to Diva, the priest had not observed us, but as soon as we came into view, escorted by his reverend brethren, he rushed out, expectant of pice. Specimen temples of Hindoo idolatry, idleness, and folly, they do not make a favourable im- pression. Filth, desolation, and squalid poverty are the features of this sacred nook in the mountains. Thence to Elphinstone Point and Arthur's Seat, which command views of opposite mountains, with valleys intervening, and peaks crowned by fortresses famed in Mahratta story. From Elphinstone Point is seen the castle-topped hill Pertabgurh.* A serrated spur * It was near the base of this hill that the Mahratta Hindu chief, Sivajce, enticed Afzool Khan, the leader of the Muhammedan troops which had been sent to capture him, and who was betrayed, to grant him a personal interview by his follower and councillor Puntojee Gopinat, a Hindu. “Fifteen hundred of Afzool Khan's troops accompanied him to within a few hundred yards of Pertabgurh, where, for fear of alarming Sivajee, they were, at Puntojee Gopinat's suggestion, desired to halt. Afzool Khan, dressed in a thin muslin gar- ment, armed only with his sword, and attended, as had been agreed, by a single armed follower, advanced in his palanquin to an open bungalow prepared for the occasion. 'Sivajee had made preparations for his purpose, not as if conscious that he medi- tated a treacherous and criminal deed, but as if resolved on some meritorious though desperate action. Having performed his ablutions with much earnestness, he laid his head at his mother's feet and besought her blessing. He then arose, put on a steel chain cap and chain armour under his turban, and a cotton gown concealed a crooked dagger or beechwa (the beechwa or scorpion is aptly named in its resemblance to that reptile) in his right sleeve, and on the fingers of his left hand he fixed a wagnuck. (The wagnuck, or tiger's claws, is a small steel instrument made to fit on the fore and little finger. It has three crooked blades, which are easily concealed in a half- closed hand, a treacherous weapon well known among Mahrattas.) Thus accoutred he slowly descended from the fort. The Khan had arrived at the place of meeting before him, and was expressing his impatience at the delay, when Sivajec was seen advancing, apparently unarmed, and, like the Khan, attended by one armed follower, his tried friend Tannajee Maloosray. Sivajee, in view of Afzool Khan, frequently stopped, which was represented as the effects of alarm, a supposition more likely to be admitted from his diminutive size. Under pretence of assuring Sivajee, the armed attendant, by the contrivance of the Bramin, stood at a few paces distant. Afzool Khan made no objection to Sivajee's follower, although he carried two swords in his waistband, a circumstance which might pass unnoticed, being common amongst Mah- rattas. He advanced two or three paces to meet Sivajee; they were introduced, and in the midst of the customary embrace the treacherous Mahratta struck the wagnuck into the bowels of Afzool Khan, who quickly disengaged himself, clapped his hand on his sword exclaiming treachery and murder, but Sivajee instantly followed up the blow with his dagger. The Khan had drawn his sword and made a cut at Sivajee, F 31 1 ETTER IV. MAHABULISHWAR TO BOMBAY. connects it with the table-land falling into valleys on either side, through the centres of which steal rivulets fringed with trees. Scraps of meadow, and at intervals larger trees, follow till they join the steep descent of the mountain covered with brush, but waving and green from the table-land to the base. Hills upon hills, valleys, and slopes succeed to the blue distance. Towards Arthur's Seat the precipices were bare, and one steep spur stood out, black, as if thrown up by a recent volcano. Clouds on the horizon seemed to belie the oft-repeated assertion, "It never rains here at this season." The "buxom air" was appetizing, and the bright logwood fire; while, instead of the pretentious cuisine of the Bycullah hotels, here was a capital soup-the shin of beef had been stewing all day--and a small leg of mutton equal to Clun Forest or Exmoor, flanked by green peas and new potatoes. Curry completed the repast; yet not quite so, for when all seemed finished, “my excellent friend,” reappeared with a plate of anchovy toast thus prepared: “On a hot plate melt a little butter with the yolk of an egg well beaten, cayenne pepper, and a modicum of anchovy. Mix, and let the hot toast soak." It gave a relish to a glass of good wine. Looking at a group of minstrels which, squatted on the ground near a police station, played a mild tom-tom accompaniment to a song sung by one of them, a gentleman, the only European there, explained that they were recounting "the praises of a Mahratta chief; but in general they sing obscene songs, for they are musicians of the lowest caste. These poor people are fond of singing; and although some object to the words of the songs, they are attracted by the music and tunes. I am," he added, "a but the concealed armour was proof against the blow. The whole was the work of a moment, and Sivajee was wresting the weapon from the hand of his victim before their attendants could run towards them. Synd Bundoo, the follower of the Khan, whose name deserves to be recorded, refused his life on condition of surrender, and against two such swordsmen as Sivajee and his companion maintained an unequal combat for some time before he fell. The bearers had lifted the Khan into his palan- quin during the scuffle, but by the time it was over, Khundoo Malley and some other followers of Sivajee had come up, when they cut off the head of the dying man and carried it to Pertabgurh.”— Grant Duff's History of the Mahrattas. The wagnuck used by Sivajce to tear his enemy to picces is in the India Museum. LETTER IV. 35 TAMASHA WALLERS. missionary, and we find that music is our only incans of gathering bearers. In this way we have been very successful, and lately five hundred people have joined in our hymns." Sitting before them was a money-changer, whose change consisted exclusively of old Indian pice and cowries. There are forty-eight cowry shells to one pice, the twelfth part of about three halfpence.* "It is a proof of POLICE STATION, MAHABULISHWAR. the poverty of the people here," said the missionary, “that such change is needed." "And yet they nearly all have silver trinkets?" "These ornaments constitute their all. Whatever trifle they can save, they convert into a ring, or some decoration. This is their * The circulating medium in Sylhet, a small province at the most eastern extremity of Bengal, was carried on entirely in cowries. "Of cowries I had, in my official capacity as resident, to receive from the Zemindars annually to the amount of 25,0007., and it was the custom to send the whole of these cowries to Dacca, where they were exposed to public sale. Four cowries make 1 gunda; 20 gundas make 1 pun 16 puns make 1 eawn; 4 cawns 1 rupee; cawns 1 rupee; 1 rupee 5120 cowries."-Memoir of the Hon, Robert Lindsay in "Lives of the Lindsays.” 36 LETTER IV. MAHABULISHWAR TO BOMBAY. While he was bank, to which they resort only in extremities." speaking a gong which hung between two poles, was struck by a policeman with a mallet, which he wielded with all his force-that the time of day might be known down the bazaar-eleven times. It was not yet that hour. "No," said the missionary, "time is kept by a sand-glass; they only approximate to it." Speaking of banyan trees he referred admiringly to a large one near Wai, which he thought must be a thousand years old, as one planted by him twenty years ago had only attained a few yards' dimensions. Following in the wake of the bungalow Chuprassie, an old servant, CHUPRASSIE. dressed in a scarlet puggery, scarlet coat, black sash, and green slippers, we proceeded to the churchyard, and saw the grave of a young officer who had been killed by a bison on the hills, of many children, and of still more missionaries and their wives. All the older graves had become black like the Hindoo temples. Women at their huts were washing the corridors with diluted dung, universally used by the poor for this purpose. The same, shaped into round cakes and dried in the sun, is their only fuel, the smoke from which has a pungent, disagreeable odour, so that LETTER IV. 37 BANYAN-TREE. to pass a village at cooking time is not pleasant. We drive away from Mahabulishwar, past its handsome bund of water like a lake, with surrounding gardens of strawberries and vegetables culti- vated by Chinese. These labourers, formerly convicts sent here by Government to pass their period of punishment, have pre- ferred, on its completion, to settle down instead of returning to their native land. A lowering sky quickly fulfilled the prognos- tications of a shower; but sufficiently protected in a small barouche, and travelling rapidly down hill, Wai was soon reached. The village lies in a valley, enclosed by picturesque hills, and extends along the banks of the river Krishna, which is lined by Hindoo temples. Opposite to them was the bungalow, and its door opened at six next morning on a novel, even beautiful scene. The temples are of stone, small, and of a pastrycook style of architecture, but excellent in workmanship, and variously sculp- tured. Broad steps of masonry lead to the edge of the river. Women were filling their water-cans; dhobies, washing-men, were hard at work smacking the linen against a flat stone; and children were paddling in the stream. Wai is a place of pilgrimage to the banyan-tree at Muswah, celebrated in that region. Natives have but indistinct notions of distances. Assured that the tree was scarcely six miles from Wai; it turned out to be ten, and starting at seven in a shigram,-from shigram po, to go quickly, a misnomer-a vehicle not unlike a second-rate London four-wheeler, on two wheels, the tree was reached at ten. At a distance it looks like a grove of trees; within, it has the appearance represented in the accompanying sketch; above, the branches are covered with leaves; below, you have "a pillared shade." "Land of the sun, what foot invades Thy Pagods and thy pillar'd shades.'"* * Milton's description of this tree, referred to in "Lalla Rookh," and quoted by many writers, was derived from Pliny, and Pliny's from Theophrastes de Nat. Plant." i. 96.-Note to Tennent's Ceylon. "This tree is called by the Portugueses, Arbore de Rays, that is to say, a Tree of Rootes. Carolus Clusius that hath written verie diligently of this tree, nameth it by 38 LETTER IV. MAHABULISHWAR TO BOMBAY. It is probably not less than a thousand years old, and covers more than two acres. The centre has been destroyed, and the circle thus cleared is ten yards in diameter, so that it is impossible, if indeed still existing, to conjecture which is the original stem. Although the banyan-tree does not attain elsewhere the proportions which it does here, it is not indigenous to this country. The Ficus indica, religiosa, elastica, and nitidu are common on the western slopes of the Sierras of Mexico, and to the tropical regions of America, where the religiosa is frequently met with clinging round a lofty palm over which the waving plumes form a graceful crown. Returning to Poona the weather became sultry, and here the thermometer is steady at eighty in the shade. authoritie out of Plinie, the Indian fig-tree. and saith it groweth verie high, first out of a straight thicke trunke or body, that afterward yieldeth many small and thinne twigges, which being young and tender, are of a gold-yellow colour, and growing downewardes towardes the earth doe waxe againe like young rushes, and so make as it were new trees againe. Clusius, saith out of Curtius Plinnius and Strabo, that these trees were also knowne of the ancient writers. Hee that desireth to know more hereof let him read Clusius in his chapter of Indian Figges.”—John Hughen Van Linschoten. [Page 38. I WIF THE BANYAN TREE OF MUSWAII. "The Fig-tree, not that kind for Fruit renown'd, But such as at this day to Indians known In Malabar or Deccan spreads her Armes, Braunching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended Twigs take root, and Daughters grow About the Mother Tree, a Pillard Shade High overarcht, and echoing Walks between; There, oft the Indian Herdsman shunning heate, Shelters in coole, and tends his pasturing Herds At Loopholes cut through thickest shade." Paradise Lost, book viii. LETTER V. BOMBAY TO OOTACAMUND. LEAVING Bombay on the 21st December by a steamer of the British and India Steam Navigation Company we arrived at Calicut on Christmas-day. This Company almost monopolizes the coasting trade of the Peninsula, the Persian Gulf, and the Bay of Bengal, having a large fleet of screw steamers, Glasgow built, which carry the Indian Government mails, and are comfortably arranged for travellers along these broiling but sometimes tempes- tuous shores. The ports touched at are Vingorla, Carwar-one of the best harbours on the coast, a small village brought into import- ance by a cotton press company-Mangalore, a military station, Cannanore, the land first sighted by Vasco da Gama, Tellicherry, and Wuddakurry, all close to the coast, and, with the exception of Carwar, open roadsteads. Immemorial palm forests fringe the shores, backed by the range of Ghauts. Cotton, coffee, and the products of the coco palm are the principal exports. The first two, cultivated on the high lands, are brought down to the ports to be cleaned and packed. Between Vingorla and Carwar is the Portu- guese settlement of Goa, and between Tellicherry and Wuddakurry, the French station of Mahé, two square miles in extent, and having the reputation of being a nest of smugglers. Landing at Calicut on Christmas-day, the boat, cut out of a single teak stem, and large enough to accommodate a dozen passengers, rowed by two powerful Indians, was pulled up on a shelving sandy beach, extending without visible limit on either side, through which a green sward brightened even the ocean's 40 LETTER V. BOMBAY TO OOTACAMUND. edge. A crowd of aborigines greet you, volunteering to carry luggage, and direct you to the nearest hotel, a bungalow, kept by a pensioner. tr What is there to see here, Morris ?" "Nothing, sir; it be the miserablest place in the world." * There is an interest attached to it, for in May, 1498, “O grande argonauta, Dom Vasco da Gama, Conde de Vidiguiera, almirante das Indias Orientaes, é seo famozo descobridor" coming from Lisbon viá "Mombaza and Quiloa and Melind," first landed here. † * "Disse alegre o Piloto Melendano, Terra he de Calecut,' se não me engano." CAMOENS, Canto vi. s. 92. "Now rising Sol with gold those mountains tips Which Ganges murmuring washes: when a boy From the tall Am'rall's scuttle shews the shipps Land, to the prow; with that (late Storms annoy And halfe their voyage over) each heart skips Repriev'd from its vain feares. For now with joy The pilot (whom Melindians to them put) Cryes if I err not, Land of Calicut." FANSHAW. The city of Calicut, as it was the principal one of India, on account of its great trade since ancient times, was all inhabited by foreign and native Moors, the richest that there were in all India. There were Moors of Grand Cairo, who brought large fleets of many ships, with much trade of valuable goods, which they brought from Mecca, and they took back in return pepper and drugs, and all the other richest mer- chandise of India, with which they acquired great wealth; and the people who are natives of the country have no profit from it, nor income, but only enough to sustain themselves with."-J. H. Van Linschoten. + "Before these discoveries the spice was brought to Europe with vast trouble and charge. Cloves, nutmegs, mace, sandal and camphor wood, and all the other richer spices, gums, perfumes, and curiosities of China, Java, Siam, and other kingdoms, were carried to the market of the city of Malacca, in the Golden Chersonese, whence the inhabitants of all the western countries as far as the Red Sea brought them, dealing by way of barter; for no money was used, silver and gold being of less value there than with them that traded thither. "Thus trade was enriched; the cities of Calicut, Cambay, Ormuz, and Aden, adding to what they brought from Malacca, the rubies of Pegu, the stuffs of Bengal, the pearls of Calicare, the diamonds of Narsinga, the cinnamon, and richer rubies of Ceylon, the pepper, ginger, and other spices of the coast of Malabar. "From Ormuz, they were brought to Europe, up the Persian Gulf to Basora, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and thence distributed in caravans through Armenia, Trebi- zond, Tartary, Aleppo, and Damascus, and then at the port of Beyrout, on the Medi- LETTER V. 41 CALICUT. Calicut, named after the goddess Cali, who delights in sacrifices and has been propitiated by hecatombs of human victims, the place A CALICUT. whence cotton cloth was originally exported, gave the name to Calico.* The churches and churchyards contain no records of terranean, the Venetians, Genoese, and Catalonians, laded with them to their respec- tive countries. Such as came up the Red Sea were landed at Toro, or Suez, thence went in caravans to Grand Cairo, so down the Nile to Alexandria, and thence shipped off."-Faria y Souza, Asia Portuguesa. * "The deceits usually put upon calicuts are in fineness, length, and breadth. Every bale may contain two hundred pieces, among which they will juggle in five or six or ten less fine or less white, shorter or narrower, than according to the scantling of the bale, which cannot be found out but by examining them piece by piece. The fine- ness is discerned by the eye, the length and breadth by the measure. But the Indians practise a more cunning way, which is to count the number of threads which ought to be in the breadth, according to the fineness of the scantling. When the number fails, it is either more transparent, more narrow or more coarse. The difference is sometimes so difficult to be perceived that there is no way to find it out but by counting the threads. And yet this difference in a great quantity comes to a great deal. For it is nothing to cousen a crown or two crowns in a piece that comes Ꮐ 42 LETTER V. BOMBAY TO OOTACAMUND. interest. Christmas is a holiday even in India, so the coffee establishments, where the berry is cleaned and sorted, were closed. The population is large, and consists, mainly, of two tribes, the Niars and Moplahs, who hate each other intensely. They all wear knives at their waists, and murders are frequent when the European guard is withdrawn, but a single company of British troops is sufficient to overawe the native population, estimated at one hundred thousand. Sepoys or policemen they are not afraid of. Celebrated for their beauty, the Niars, like the Egyptians, carry everything on their heads, and are thus erect and graceful. Their jet black hair, glossy with ghee, or cocoa-nut oil, combed back à NIAR GIRL. l'Impératrice, is gathered into one knot behind, and they would be comely but for their ears, which are pierced, and the lobes extended to enormous size. "The Nairs and their wives use for a braverie to make great holes in their Eares, and so big and wide that it is incredible, holding this opinion that the greater the holes bee the more noble they esteem themselves. I had leave of one of them to measure the circumference of one of them with a threed, and within that circumference I put my arme up to the shoulder clothed as it was, so that in effect they are monstrous great. Thus they doe make them when they be little, for then but to fifteen or twenty crowns. Those that whiten these calicuts, to save charges of a few limons, will knock the calicuts excessively upon a stone, which does fine calicuts a great injury and lowers the price."-Tavernier's Travels, anno 1664. LETTER V. 43 HER MAJESTY'S MAILS. they open the Eare and hang a piece of gold or lead thereat, and within the opening in the hole they put a certaine leafe that they have for the purpose which maketh the hole so great."* The subject of the sketch was young, and in her case the lobe had not reached the required dimensions, the orifice being kept open by a rolled strip of palm-leaf, to which an addition was daily made. Driving through the solitude of the palm-forest, eight miles to Beypoor, by railway to Coimbatoor, and horse transit to Metapol- lium, you ride up the hills to Coonoor, and Ootacamund, and from a muggy atmosphere averaging eighty in the coolest corners, from punkahs and fearful "bobberies "—Anglo-Indian for grumblings- if the Wenham lake was not instantly forthcoming, are transported to blazing woodfires, from palm trees, rice-fields, and seething jungles, to roses, geraniums, and fuchsias, clustering about cottage windows-a delightful change. This place is a metropolis of the various stations on the Nilgiris, which are hills proper of the Madras Presidency, as Matharan and Mahabulishwar are of Bombay; Darjeeling, Nynee Tal, Dalhousie, Landour, Simla, and Murree of Bengal, the North-West Provinces, and the Punjab. The mail is carried down the hills to Metapollium, by native runners wearing bells on their arms to warn people from the path, and at night are preceded by a boy with a lighted torch for the same purpose. Bearing a bag of letters and newspapers, they run six miles an hour, and are relieved at intervals of from five to six miles. From Metapollium to Coimbatoor, letters are sent by a mail-cart, painted the orthodox red, with the letters V. R. The driver trumpets lustily, and vehicles high or low have to draw on one side as he dashes past. From Coimbatoor all mails go to Madras, and are forwarded to Bombay by rail and post to catch the weekly mail. * Master Cæsar Fredericke, his Eightcene Yeeres Indian Observations. 1563. DR PUNKAHI BOY. WOF LETTER VI. OOTACAMUND TO BEYPOOR. BEYPOOR, 9th January, 1870. No answer yet to the telegram, sent from Bombay on the 1st December. The line through Arabia' is destroyed, as the natives of the desert needed the wire to make bullets of it; so messages have to pass through Persia, Russia, and round the north of Europe, before they reach England, where they arrive in enigma- tical language. This will soon be altered by the completion of the line from Bombay to Aden, Suez, Malta, Gibraltar, and England. Ten months, instead of days, would be necessary to explore the beauties of the Nilgiris. A country lying between the tropics, and with an average daily temperature of 65°,* is one Ffty years since some sportsmen ascended the ghaut, and found at the summit an undulating expanse of for poets to describe. * The mean temperature at 2.40 P. M. ranges from 60° to 68° of Fahrenheit, all the year at Ootacamund, 7300 feet above the level of the sea. OF I ARA BALME A TODA MUND-ON THE NILGIRIS. [Page 45. SR LETTER VI, 45 NILGIRIS. table-land, sparsely inhabited by several distinct tribes. Now sanitariums for troops, and other government buildings, good roads, bridges, hotels, clubs, mansions, in short, all the means and appliances of this luxurious age, have been added to the scene. Only the tribes of the plateau, undisturbed by our in- trusion on their solitude and indifferent to the novel circum- stances which have surrounded them, remain unchanged. On the limited area of the Nilgiris there exist five tribes, each more or less subdivided into castes. The Badagas are approximately nine thousand in number, Khotas two thousand, Erulas one thousand, Kurumbas nine hundred, and Todas eight hundred. The smallest tribe are the aboriginal inhabitants. As such they exact tribute from some of the others, notably from the Badagas, who pay them a percentage of their produce in kind. When the time comes round the old Todas arrange their circuits, and, squatted in convenient localities, watch the harvest and estimate the yield, to the great disgust of the Badagas, and finally, taking good care not to be imposed upon, depart with their rentals. Even the British Govern- ment, deferring to privileges accorded this small but independent race from remote times, recompenses them for the land it occupies, and in other ways acknowledges their rights as lords of the soil. They live in little huts, made after one model, each surrounded by a stone wall, two or three of which constitute a mund. Separated by wide distances, and spread over the hills, the Toda families migrate from one mund to another as far distant as possible from it once a year. The sketch shows also the inmates of the hut, old and young, who scrambled out of the little door that forms the only aperture to their abode, and begged for pice. > Rich or poor-many are well-to-do, and none destitute-the sight of a European stimulates equally in all of them the feeling of avarice. They are importunate as, though less savage than, the peones of Callao, or the waiters at an Inverness hotel. One hale patriarch, who kindly squatted on the wall for his portrait, was said to be more than ninety years old, and availed himself of the opportunity to insinuate a monotonous wail for backshish. Unlike most of the other races of the East, they wear no covering to 46 LETTER VI. OOTACAMUND TO BEYPOOR. protect their heads from the rays of the sun, which at the alti- tude of the Nilgiris are extremely dangerous, and would be fatal to a European; but all have an extraordinary profusion of hair, which the men wear cut straight across the forehead and falling over it in thick curls. Add to this fine eyes, regular features, full beards, and lithe, erect forms clothed in white, or once white, togas, which they throw around them to leave one leg more exposed than the other, as in ancient statues, and you have a remarkable, even a classic, tout ensemble. So they have been said by the learned to be descendants of the ancient Romans, or of the Jews, whose fea- tures are frequently found among them. This small community is divided into five castes, none of which intermarry. Thus each caste must have constantly intermarried among its own limited number of followers, and that without apparently any deterioration of physical development. In fact, the Todas compare favourably in physique, character, and courage with all the other races of the hills. So far the picture is not displeasing, but it has a dark side. Polyandry in its worst form prevails among them, brothers, however numerous, having one wife in common, and female infanticide, of all but the first born, was practised before the arrival of the British. These two strange customs prevailed among all the Hill tribes of India, and both arose from the same cause, namely, the difficulty of procuring sustenance for a large population on the hills. The aborigines of the hills were in fact the aborigines of the plains, who had been forced at different and often very remote periods. of antiquity to take refuge in the hills, from the successive waves of foreign invasion. The hills were sterile, and the fugitives from the fruitful plains adopted the customs of polyandria and female infanticide from the same reason, the want of food, and with the same object, to diminish as far as practicable the number of mouths to be fed, leaving the number of fighting men undi- minished.* Spite of all anomalies the Toda leads a happy life, * Sir Emerson Tennent gives other reasons as the possible origin of polyandry. One of the suggestions is from a native chief :- "When the people attended the palace, besides contributing labour they accompanied their lords on distant journeys; thus LETTER VI. 47 TODAS. ← occupied principally in tending buffaloes, which provide him with milk, his principal sustenance, and form the chief subject of his hopes and thoughts. On the death of any influential member of the tribe entire herds of these animals were formerly sacrificed, in the belief that, admitted to an equal sky, they would not only bear him company but supply him with milk in the next world.* This wanton during prolonged absence their fields would have been uncultivated had they not identified their relatives with their interests, by making them the partners of their wives and fortunes."-Tennent's Ceylon, vol. ii., p. 428. * A buffalo sacrifice is thus described by Colonel Ross King in his "Aboriginal Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills." "A crowd of Todas and Khotas whose unmusical pipes drowned all other sounds, were collected round a cattle kraal in which stood ten splendid buffalos. . . . Crowds of women and children near a temple containing the robe, ornaments, and ashes of the deceased, kept up a monotonous wail. . . . Half-a- dozen young men then advanced towards the enclosure and leaping among the buffalos commenced striking them with their clubs, then seizing them by the horns they endeavoured to fix a collar and bell round their necks. . . . As, one after another, fresh animals were attacked and borne to the ground, those belled and liberated turned on the common enemy so savagely, that, had it not been for the extreme quickness and coolness of the men, some of them must have been killed. . . . The shouts of the male spectators, the hau hau of the combatants, the shrieks of the women, the bellowing of the buffalos, and the writhing mass, formed an indescribable scene. . . . A bag of the deceased's ashes was now laid at the entrance of the kraal, and the high priest threw a handful of earth over them and another amongst the buffalos. One of these lay dead, the rest were dragged out, struggling violently, to a post at the foot of which lay the robe, ornaments, and ashes, brought from the temple, and here the bleeding animals were dispatched by the high priest's sacrificial axe, while the women, who had beheld with interest the torture of these unfortunate brutes, now with clasped hands and streaming eyes addressed them in the most affectionate terms, as, 'Are you happy?' 'Is it well with you?"" Marco Polo, in his 51st chapter on the Customs of the Tartars, gives the following account of a similar superstition:-"Let me tell you a strange thing too. When they are carrying the body of any emperor to be buried with the others, the convoy that goes with the body doth put to the sword all whom they fall in with on the road, saying, 'Go and wait upon the lord in the other world.' For they do in sooth believe that all such as they slay in this manner do go to serve their lord in the other world. They do the same, too, with horses; for when the emperor dies they kill all his best horses in order that he may have the use of them in the other world, as they believe. And I tell you as a certain truth, that when Mongoul Khan died, more than twenty thousand persons who chanced to meet the body on its way were slain in the manner I have told you."-Yule's Marco Polo. From the Observer, August 3rd, 1873, I take the following account by a late resident at Cape Coast Castle of the same custom which prevails at the present time among the Ashantees :-" Persons selected for sacrifice can save themselves from 48 LETTER VI. OOTACAMUND TO BEYPOOR. + destruction has been prohibited by Government, although the sacrifice of one or two animals, to satisfy the religious scruples of the Todas, is still permitted. The women are well proportioned, with features not absolutely displeasing, and, like their lords, are endowed by nature with heads of abundant black hair, which they part down the centre, and wear in long, glossy ringlets on TODA GIRL. either side. They do not disfigure themselves with nose rings, but wear earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and armlets of brass, very large and heavy, of which they are vain, like other daughters of Eve. Most of them carried a baby or two in their arms, and seemed fond of their little ones, so it might be expected that the death by pronouncing the oath at the moment when they are seized. But the exe- cutioners do not fail to provide against this accident, for no man knows when he is to die. So they rush on their victim, and, before he can recover from his surprise, drive a knife through his jaws. The tongue is thus severed, and the faculty of speech destroyed. The knife is left in the jaws, and, while the blood is trickling off the blade down his cheeks, the poor creature will sometimes gaze at you and smile as you pass. When consigned to the tomb, the kings of Ashantee are supposed to live in an unending round of felicity with their Fetishes, and to have at their beck the same barbaric magnificence and luxury as they had while alive in Ashantee. Thence springs the rite which keeps the sacrificing of human beings in perpetual freshness; for no king can go to the other world without a retinue of both sexes sufficient in numbers to announce the advent of a prince laden with earthly distinctions and to administer fitly to his daily wants and pleasures.” བ་་ Of MIC ABORIGINES AND INTRUDERS. OOTACAMUND. [Page 44. LETTER VI. 49 CHINCHONA TREES. suppression of infanticide was already tending to civilise them. It seems, however, that while on the one hand we have introduced humane laws which have been received with reluctance, on the other, the vices of civilisation have been accepted with the greatest alacrity. A taste for arrack has been acquired, and diseases before unknown have been communicated to them, and under these influences the tribe is diminishing in number, and is probably destined to disappear. The Badagas, the most numerous tribe, are Hindus, and worship the emblems of Siva and Parvati, by far the most general form of Brahminism that still prevails in India. Farmers and tillers of the soil, they peaceably accept the dominant position of the Todas, having settled among them in comparatively recent times. They wear large white pugris, a white sheet round their loins, and a white mantle, in which they huddle themselves up during the cold hours of the morning and evening. Travellers are supplied by them with walking sticks, the best being of the wild gooseberry, a plant that yields a yellow berry from which a preserve, Teparry jam, is made. The Khotas, an unclean or pariah race, are the workmen, artisans, and tumasha wallahs, in which capacity they go about in small companies with performing bears, unhappy brutes chained by the nose. Although so dissimilar in all respects to the Todas, they are believed to be next to them in antiquity of origin and occupa- tion of the hills. They possess a few buffaloes, and preserve the meat for future use by drying it in strips in the sun, like the charqui of South America. The Kurumbas inhabit the base of the hills, and are literally wild men of the woods, but they possess an influence over the Badagas, who believe them to be gifted with the science of demon- ology, and propitiate them with food in return for incantations by which their crops are exorcised from blight or disaster. Ootacamund has a special interest in being the first station where the Chinchona tree was planted on its introduction to India from Peru eight years ago. The first plants, brought with much care and enterprise by Mr. Markham, failed, but seeds II 50 LEITER VI. OOTACAMUND TO BEYPOOR. subsequently received in letters were successfully planted and formed the germ of the extensive plantations and forests now thriving there. The climate of the Nilgiris is identical with that of the zone of the Andes to which this invaluable tree is indigenous, and which extends from New Granada to Bolivia, through Ecuador and Peru. Its virgin forests still supply the world-wide demand for Peruvian bark, from the alkaloids in which, by an elaborate chemical operation, is produced quinine. The Government of Madras expends thirty thousand sterling a-year in the purchase of this medicine. According to Mr. Markham, whose work gives an interesting account of the discovery and introduction of the bark into Europe, the name of Chinchona was given to the genus Chinchonaco by Linnæus in memory of the Countess of Chinchon, wife of Luis Geronimo Fernandez de Cabrera, Bobadilla y Mendoza, fourth Count of Chinchon, Viceroy of Peru in 1638. Suffering from tertian ague in the City of Lima in that year, the Countess was cured by using powdered quinquina, which had been sent her by the Corregidor of Loxa as a never- failing remedy. Returning to Spain in 1640, she was the first to introduce to science this valuable specific. There are numerous species of the tree, the barks of which vary in strength, some yielding a better supply than others. One of the most valuable is called C. Condaminia, from the savant La Condamine, who led a scientific expedition to South America in 1742, and was the first to give an accurate description of the tree, and another after Joseph de Jussieu, who accom- panied him.* A work by Mr. Howard of Tottenham, illustrated with coloured plates of the finer species of chinchonæ, is shown at the government gardens. These are laid at the foot and along the sides of a steep hill, up which they ascend in terraces, pre- * Joseph de Jussieu was the first botanist who examined and sent home specimens of the coca plant, the beloved narcotic of the Peruvian Indian. After fifteen years of laborious work he was robbed of his large collection of plants by a servant at Buenos Ayres, who believed that the boxes contained money. This loss had a disastrous effect on poor Jussieu who, in 1771, returned to France, deprived of reason, after an absence of thirty-four years. Dr. Weddel has named the shrubby variety of C. Cali- saya, in honour of this unfortunate botanist, C. Josepheana.—Markham's Travels. LETTER VI. 51 COONOOR. senting, especially from the superintendent's residence, a delightful prospect. The air is sweet with odours of flowers, which however do not attain, from the equability of temperature, the full fragrance of the same in England. Experiments were being made in the elaboration of quinine, castor oil, and jalap. Extending along both sides of a ravine and up the hill is a large plantation of chinchona trees, ten to fifteen feet high, and covered with flowers. They are liable to die from running to seed, and the quantity of flowers and seed they bear renders pruning, which would prevent this failing, impossible, from the cost of labour. At Pycarra, another government establishment, the trees have attained much larger growth, and the plantation the dimensions of a forest. Quinine will therefore soon be produced extensively in this country, probably of all others the most dependent on its healing pro- perties. Coffee, another member of the family chinchonacæ, and tea, are cultivated with success. The coffees from the Wynaad, shipped at Calicut, obtain the highest prices in the English market. Mr. Markham brought seeds of the chirimoya from Peru, but the attempts to raise this finest fruit in the world' have failed. At Ootacamund clear skies, invigorating air, beds of flowers, and the warblings of larks, blackbirds, and other songsters remind you of England. A library and news-room, well supplied with papers, is open to visitors, and after long evening excursions, an English cottage, bright wood-fires, and good cuisine welcome you. The exhilarating contrast between the sultry tropics of the plain which you have left and to which you must return, invests this region with an inexpressible charm. But you will remember descriptions as enthusiastic of Matharan and Mahabuleshwar. Well, perhaps the first impressions on holiday trips do not convey the whole and nothing but the truth. Perhaps if we returned to the same spots we might smile at our former enthusiasm. The scenery of the Coonoor Ghaut is enchanting, and should be enjoyed in the early morning. Detained at Ootacamund later than was intended, the shades of night had fallen before we reached the plain, but a crescent moon shone through a rift in 52 LETTER VI. OOTACAMUND TO BEYPOOR. the clouds, and disclosed the deep shadows of the wooded ravine, from which arose the roar of a mountain torrent. The fascination of the scene was indescribable, when, as the night grew darker, myriads of fire-flies lighted up an illumination in the groves. The colour of the leaves they most affected was made distinctly visible by the lights floating round them, and some of the most favoured trees led you to fancy that the whole fairy court, out on its revels, was celebrating with befitting splendours some royal festival. " To the railway station at Coimbatoor the road is bordered by banyan trees of eccentric forms, by lovely palms, and by aloes in- troduced from South America, with the flower-stalk now about six feet high and bursting up like a gigantic asparagus. Women, bare from the waist upwards, were pounding corn for their daily meal, or were carrying on their heads bowls, balanced one on the other, each filled with different condiments,-in the same way as their sisters of the new world. Little squirrels darted across the road. They are much like ferrets with which men used to hunt, and catch conies, and have a taile like the penner of an inke- horn, a grayish speckled hair; they are pretie beastes to keep and to passe the time withal." So wrote Linschoten three hundred years ago. There is nothing new under the sun, least of all in India. In the villages we see children at school, the teacher listening or expounding, book in hand, his forehead daubed with the sectarial mark of caste, proving that he has bathed and already made his devotion at some of the adjoining temples, for "at everie hil, stonie Rocke, or hole, almost within a Paternoster length wee found a Carved Pagode or rather Devils and monsters in hellish shapes." Or, to quote from "the Voyage of Master Ralph Fitch, merchant, of London, to Goa," begun in the year 1583 and ended 1591, "they have their Idols standing in the Woods which they call Pagodes. Some bee like a Cow, some like a Monkie, some like Buffles, some like Peacockes, and some like the Devill." While making a sketch of a group of pre- sumably equine divinities that occupied a prominent place by the roadside, the priest arrived to perform his mummeries. He CH IDOLS BY THE ROADSIDE-METAPOLLIUM TO COIMBATOOR. | Page 5!!. - ༣ + LETTER VI. 53 BETEL NUT. sprinkled one ugly idol with water to wash, gave it flowers cut off at the bud to adorn it, placed before it on a plate rice to eat, in a brass cup water to drink, and finally betel nut and leaf for its vices; then he rang a bell, grinned approvingly, and the ceremony was complete. Chewing betel is a habit universal on this coast. The nut of the areca palm* scraped and mixed with a small quantity of lime is spread over the leaf of the betel pepper, rolled up in it and chewed.† It produces salivation; and the mix- ture of the three ingredients stains the mouth bright scarlet, and the teeth the same hue, so, when a nearly black man, having his forehead smeared with paint, opens his mouth and discloses its vermilion dye, the sight is startling. * "Dr Hooker likens it to an arrow shot from heaven, raising its graceful head and feathery crown in luxuriance and beauty above the verdant slopes.'"— Mark- ham's Travels. + "There is yet another helpe to comfort the stomacke for such as forbeare Wine, an herbe called Beetle; it is in shape somewhat like an Iuie leafe, but more tender: they chew it with an hard Nut somewhat like a Nutmegge, and a little pure white Lime among the leaves, and when they have sucked out the Iuce put forth the rest. It hath many rare qualities for it preserves the teeth, comforts the braine, strengthens the stomacke, and cures or prevents a tainted breath.” — Terry's Voyage to the Eastern India. The most curious specimens of potter's art that are found in India are in the Coimbatoor district of the Madras Presidency, and probably to the south of that locality. They consist of figures of horses, of terra cotta, soundly made and baked, and by no means inelegant in form in some cases which have been set up round temples as votive offerings. Some of these are the size of life, if not larger, and others very diminutive. In the ornamentation of these strange figures much skill has been employed in the moulding of bells and trappings, decorations for head- stalls, saddles, and the like; and the style of work is much superior as is the quality of the material to anything in use at the present time. Many of these horses are said to be very ancient, and are believed to be votive offerings to Ram, as the deified hero leader of the Ceylon war related in the Ramayum. It is said that the art of constructing them of large size has been lost."—The People of India, by Meadows Taylor. LETTER VII. BEYPOOR TO COLOMBO, KANDY, AND POINT DE GALLE. BEYPOOR is the terminus of the Madras railway, which runs across from that capital four hundred and six miles, with branches south-east to Negapatam, one hundred and sixty-eight, west to Bangalore sixty-two, and north-east joining the Great Indian Peninsula to Bombay. A branch from Trichinopoly to Tuticorin is to be made, and other branch lines are projected to Pondi- cherry, to the foot of the Nilgiri hills, and on account of the Nizam to his capital of Hyderabad. When these lines are completed direct railway communication will connect Cape Comorin with the Khyber Pass. Beside railways, Government maintains a series of roads and bungalows for travellers, at convenient distances along the principal routes. In this the British have but followed the good example of the Mogul emperors. "I ordered," wrote the Emperor Jehangir, "spacious serais to be substantially built at the termination of every eight koss (twelve miles), provided with baths, reservoirs of fresh water, and attendants; and at the passage of every river, convenient bridges to be erected, so that the indus- trious traveller might be enabled to pursue his objects without obstruction, . . . and benevolent individuals have, at different stages, laid out spacious gardens, containing every kind of fruit tree, so that any one travelling through my dominions will find supplies of fruits and vegetables, in so much that he might be led to declare that he is a stranger to the fatigues of travelling.' These facilities of transit are modifying the character of peoples so divided by races, languages, and religions, that to amalgamate ** * Memoirs of the Emperor Jehangir, translated by Major David Price. LETTER VII. 55 BEYPOOR. them would seem a hopeless task, though it is being accomplished by patient counsels. Such, too, is the spread of education through the efforts of government, private benevolence, and missionaries, that it is believed most of the inhabitants of Southern India will within twenty years speak the English language, and thus have a common bond in a national tongue. Other opinions are also expressed, namely, that it would be TERMINUS OF RAILWAY, BEYPOOR. better to follow the policy of the Emperor Akbar, and to let them alone. “Between you there are few sympathies, and you cannot alter the natures of men. Why meddle by teaching them English, or converting them to Christianity?" But it would be absurd to say anything against these pious efforts, particularly in this part of India, where Catholicism received a great stimulus from the enthu- siastic labours of Francis Xavier. The Roman Catholic Church, with its saints and miracles, has been successful in its missions, and substitutes for the untutored Indian a less objectionable. idolatry than his own. 56 LETTER VIL. BEYPOOR TO POINT DE GALLE. Beypoor, which you are still supposed to be looking at from the deck of the steamer, is a port at the mouth of a river closed by a bar, formed by deposits of soil brought down by the annual rains. Checked thus at its outlet, the backwater, forced into other channels, runs a considerable distance parallel to the sea, and is crossed by the Madras railway over a wooden bridge, to be replaced by an iron one, the cylinders of which were sunk to a depth of sixty feet before a good bottom could be found, and passed through strata containing coal, petrified wood, and traces of metals. The railway engineers have observed an increase in the WL PALMIER SJ COAST OF MALABAR. coast-line; the land rising, or the ocean receding from it, and excavating near the sea a stem of teak was found by them fifteen feet below the surface in perfect preservation. The shores of South Western India are easily delineated. Draw an irregular line of grey for the ghauts, a green line for the forests, a brighter shade for the cocoa palms, a pale red strip of sand, a blue dash for the ocean, and add a white or brown dot for a church or fort built by the Portuguese, you have the panorama. It is a verie greene and pleasant land to beholde, full of faire high trees, and fruitfull of all thinges, so is the whole coast of Malabar, all along the shore." The shore is fringed with cocoa palms, which in full bearing are worth twenty rupees each. They come to full perfection only near the voices of men, or within the hearing of the wave. "The LETTER VII. 57 FLYING FOXES. nut is like a man's head, for it has something like two eyes and a mouth, and within, when green, is like the brains; upon it, too, is like hair, from this they make cords with which they sew their vessels together." The liquor extracted from the blossom is like that of the sap of the cactus of Mexico, which, fermented, becomes pulque as palm juice becomes arrack. Both answer the purpose of adding to the revenues of their respective countries. Without recounting the numerous uses to which the nut is applied, the milk expressed from it is an indispensable ingredient in the concoction of a perfect curry. Inland it is less productive, but there other of the species delight the eye. In the Government Gardens of Peridenia, near Kandy, there is now a talepot palm in flower. It attains maturity at forty years, flowers two-and-a-half years, then dies. "Zeilan's giant palm, Whose buds fly open with a sound That shakes the pigmy forests round.” The fronds, often thirty feet in circumference, vary in colour from green in the upper to brown in the decaying circles, and are used for umbrellas, hats, and in the manufacture of paper. The flowers, of light lemon colour, hang in graceful festoons and worthily crown the edifice, which has an average height of seventy feet.* A more curious spectacle is a colony of flying foxes, hanging in prodigious numbers on the branches of indiarubber trees, from which they have eaten the leaves. These animals, largest of the bat creation, measure, when full-grown, four feet from point to point of their wings. At night they hover round the trees on which they feed, or fly in search of novelty to other plantations. * In Knox's account of the Cingalese wars with the Dutch, he refers to the Talipot palm. As for tents, for their armies always lie in the fields, they carry Talipot leaves which are very light and convenient, along with them, with these they make their tents, fixing sticks into the ground and laying other pieces of wood overthwart after the manner of the roof of an house, and so lay their leaves over all to shoot the rains off making these tents stronger or slighter, according to the time of their turriance. And having spent what provisions they carried out with them, they go home to fetch -more, so that after a month or two a great part of the army is always absent. I 58 LETTER VIL BEYPOOR TO POINT DE GALLE. The jâk tree abounds,* fructum cortice mittit ut uno quaternos satiet, thus Pliny quoted from Sir Emerson's work. Underneath it stands one of the little Brahmin bulls, which here, as in India, are the principal beasts of burthen. Yoked in pairs they pull 三 ​JAK TREE AND BRAHMIN BULLOCK. M the country carts from the interior to the ports, and railway stations, or are used in the light traps of the natives, which they whisk along at a smart trot. "They have many fine carts and many of them carved and gilded with gold, with two wheeles which bee drawne with two little Bulls, about the big- * "The seeds when roasted are not inferior to the best chestnuts. In Ceylon, where the tree grows most plentifully, and where the fruit attains to its greatest size, the inhabitants make them a very considerable article of their diet."- Flora Indica, vol. iii. p. 532. LETTER VII. THE CATHEDRAL OF COCHIN. 59 nesse of our great Dogs in England, and they will run with any Horse, and carrie two or three men in one of these carts; they are covered with silk or very fine cloth, and bee used here as our coaches be in England." The steamer touches at Cochin, a port formed, like Beypoor, by the backwater of the sea, but of larger dimensions. Bungalows and white-washed churches of the Portuguese era, amid the palm and jâk trees, diversified the peaceful scene. Along the landing- FISHING NETS, COCHIN. place rows of nets, stretched on canes and suspended like a balance with weights at the opposite ends, were being dropped into and raised from the water, bringing up mullets, sardines, and other fish, for which the place is famed. The same contrivance is used in Italy. A bar prevents the ingress of sea-going vessels, and one of the finest bays in the world is thus lost to commerce, but the back- water navigation formed by the reflux of the rivers along the coast, renders the transport of produce easy and economical. Close to the landing-place are the remains of the Cathedral of Cochin, a solitary tower, now a flag-staff, once the most imposing of 60 LETTER VII. BEYPOOR TO POINT DE GALLE. many great edifices erected by the Portuguese, afterwards a warehouse of the Dutch, lastly destroyed, by order of the Hon. E. I. Company, under fear that the British Government would restore the territory to its previous owners. Here is the Church of St. Francis,* originally, "a Igreja de S. Francisco," in which Vasco * "The date of the erection of the Church of St. Francis, now called the Protes- tant Church,' is not known; but from inscriptions still legible on the pavement, we find it existed before 1546, and knowing for a fact that Vasco de Gama in 1525 was interred in the chancel of the Church of the Franciscans, it may very reasonably be presumed that this is the actual site of his temporary resting place. This is, doubt- less, the oldest European church in India, and very possibly the most venerable relic of Portuguese power to be seen out of Europe. Until the Dutch captured Cochin the Roman Catholic form of worship was conducted in its spacious nave with all possible pomp and glitter; but as soon as that clear-headed people entered, the walls were cleared of saints and relics, and a large screen at the end of the chancel broken down, and threatened with destruction, had it not been for the Wypeen inhabitants, who obtained permission to take it away and rebuild it in their church over the water. "After the Calvinist forms had been unostentatiously kept up for one hundred and thirty years the old church fell into the hands of the English, and, owing to its large size, was exposed to the fate that had befallen the Cathedral. Some barrels of gun- powder had been already placed inside, and everything was ready for its demolition, when, at the eleventh hour, the officer in command relented, and happily this inter- esting pile has no trace of our sad levelling principles. "The church cannot lay claim to any great architectural merit. It has a tall gable towards the west, with arched windows and porch, columns and pinnacles of a very obsolete fashion. The exterior is more or less blackened by wind and storm. Buttresses, six feet square at the base, support the walls, which are four feet thick. The nave, a hundred and forty-two feet long, fifty-one broad, and, to the angle in the strongly-braced roof above, fifty high, is airy, bright, and simple; long benches are arranged right and left of the reading desk and pulpit; the stone pavement is occa- sionally irregular from the deep carvings on some monumental slabs. A broad spanned arch separates the nave from the chancel, extending across which, behind the communion table, is a handsomely carved screen, with tablets, gold on blue, let into alternate panels. "Though the interior is nearly as innocent of ornament as that of a Methodist cl:apel, its historic interest has made the inhabitants of Cochin highly proud of their old church. Many of the inscriptions on the tombs are interesting for their quaint yet charac- teristic style; these are translations of some of the oldest : Here lies Maria Memdes, who begs, for the love of God, one Pater Noster for her soul; died on the 14th October of the Era 1562 anno.' "Here rests the old trading Captain, Baren Hermans, being son of Uchtman Haftencer. Deserves for praise a crown. Vixit 63 years. Obiit 29th April, anno 1673.' "Here rests Mistress Lea Vander Konte, wife of the Honorable Herr Commander LITTER VII. 61 BLACK JEWS. de Gama was buried. We converted the edifice into an orthodox Protestant church, but have not been so successful with the Indian Catholics, who hold by the faith they learnt from the Portuguese, and are governed by their Padres, as the Hindus by their Brahmin priests. Passing through a square, carpeted with green sward and surrounded by trees, at a short distance is the cemetery, but it contains no mementoes of the past; the once white tombs had become black, and their epitaphs were undecipherable. Thence, in jompons with stalwart runners, to the Jewish quarter, which is at some distance from the native town. The bazaar was full of dealers and labourers, many afflicted with elephantiasis the Cochin leg, as it is called in Malabar. Beyond it is the Rajah's palace, and further on, an isolated street occupied by the Jews. Settled on this coast for many centuries, preserving intact their nationality and forms of worship, they dwell apart from the numerous races that congregate around Cochin. Their street is divided midway, one section being occupied by the Jerusalem, the other by the black, Jews. Several white and pretty Rebeccas were visible peeping through their Venetian blinds. In youth these Jewesses are fair to look on. The synagogue, an ancient building, paved with white and blue tiles in landscape subjects, is surrounded by an interior gallery supported on brass pillars. Silver cases inclose the Books of the Law which are shown by the attendant priest. Services in the early morning and afternoon largely attended, and a strict Isaac Van-Dielen, died the 29th December, Anno 1688, being aged thirty-two years, minus a few hours. And Lea Gertruda Van-Dielen, little daughter of both, died 11th November previous, aged three years, five months and seventeen days.' 'Here under rests the Honorable Herr Isaac Van-Dielen, Commander and Chief Officer of the Coast of Malabar, Canada and Vingorla. Died 25th December, in the evening, between 10 and 11 o'clock, being aged forty-one years, seven months and twenty days. Anno 1693.' "And this appears to be the most recent : "Here under rests for holy Resurrection the body of the deceased, well born, Herr Reinen Van-Harm, in life Senior Merchant, Second' (i.e., second in rank to the Governor-General of Patavia) ‘and Head Administrator of this Government. Born at Campen on the 12th December, 1734. Died the 16th March, 1789, aged fifty-four years, three months and four days.'"-Lawson's Cochin. 62 LETTER VII. BEYPOOR TO POINT DE GALLE. observance of the seventh day, prove a sincere devotion to their ancient faith. On the celebration of feasts, fasts, or festivals, the dresses worn are of rich materials and ancient fashions. The blacks have a separate synagogue, but the same ritual as the whites, who do not recognise them of their own pure caste. Several of them carrying fish and poultry for sale, were in the roads, tall, spare, clothed only round their loins, full bearded, and with unmistakably Hebrew features.* Cochin would repay a longer stay than that of the two hours allotted. An Eurasian acquaintance had prepared a breakfast of mullet roes, fresh sardines, and Bass' beer, and disinterestedly recommended investments in cocoa plantations. Of incalculable value to the world at large from its numerous commercial products the cocoa palm is absolutely indispensable to the existence of man on the tropical coasts and islands of both hemispheres: "Shelter, meat, clothing, trencher, drink and can, Cable, boat, sail, mast, needle,- all in one.” The houses are of the Dutch period, low-gabled, solidly-built, surrounded by gardens inclosed by thick walls, and each portico surmounted by a stone ball. The Rajahs of Cochin, and a large proportion of their subjects are of the Niar caste. Succession is by the sister's son. The ladies remain in the homes of their fathers, select their husbands at pleasure, but never live with them, nor bring them home. All attributes of royalty surround the Rajah except power, which is vested in Government by a treaty entered into with the Honourable East India Company, Bahadur, in 1809, who engaged thereby "to *"Without the townes and where the Portingals have no commandment the Jewes have free libertie to use their sects and ceremonies openlie, for there the Jewes have made and built very fair stone houses, and are rich merchants, and of the King of Cochin's nearest counsellers; there they have their synagogue, with their Hebrue Bible and Moses Lawe, which I have had in my hand; they are most white of colour, like men of Europe, and have many fair women. “There are manie of them that came out of the country of Palestina and Jerusalem thither, and speake over all the Exchange verie perfect and good Spanish; they observe the Saboth day and other judiciall ceremonies, and hope for the Messias to come.”— Linschoten's Travels. LETTER VII. 63 COCHIN. defend and protect the territories of the Rajah of Cochin against all enemies whomsoever." * The tribute paid for protecting them against themselves, is 20,000l. a year. Travancore, the adjoining state, pays 80,000l. for the same purpose. If approved by the 市 ​HINDU IDOL. Resident, affairs are managed by the Rajah's Dewan, who is judge, minister, and treasurer rolled into one. These officers are some- * Cost of administering the Feudatory Slates.-The forty-eight millions of people in the Feudatory States, and the seven millions of Berar and Mysore, which we administer in trust for the Nizam and the Maharajah, contribute nothing towards the general revenues of India. Their chiefs, who are guaranteed against insurrec- tion and are interfered with only when disloyal or hopeless tyrants, draw their whole revenues from these fifty-five millions. The tribute which they pay under engagements is not equal to the cost of the political establishments maintained for their benefit. A very large portion of our military expenditure, to which these states contribute almost nothing, is necessitated by their existence. The "tributes and contributions from Native States in 1867-68, amounted to £689,286, as follows:- Government of India, Jeypoore, 40,000l.; Joudpore, 21,000l.; Odeypore, 29,0007.; Kotah, 39,0007. Mudras, Mysore, 245,000l.; Travancore, 80,0007.; Cochin, 20,0007. Bombay, Kattywar tribute, 54,000l.; the other contributors are numerous, but of sums under 20,0007., and amount to 161,286.; Total, 689,2867.—Annals of Indian Administration, 1867-68, Serampore, 1869. 64 LETTER VII. BEYPOOR TO POINT DE GALLE. times able men. When not so and affairs get into confusion, or the Government stipend is delayed, a collector puts matters to right, and adjusts the finances. Our possession includes the town, but as it is the port of the territory, business is conducted and duties levied there. Coffee, the products of the coco palm, fish oil, and ginger are the principal exports. The finest coffees are bought for Arabia, and until the ships are supplied and sail to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, no business can be done by other traders. Then when Greek meets Greck there are hard fights between producers and exporters. The former are obstinate and impracticable. They consult their priests, who bind them before images to hold out for terms. From these engagements nothing will shake them, and unless some loop- hole of escape can be found for the dealer, the merchant has always to give in. Coffee, first brought from Abyssinia to Arabia* three hundred years ago, is said to have reached India one hun- dred years later. But in neither country was much attention paid to its cultivation until recent times, when it has become one of the necessaries of life. Even within the present century, the East India Company were the only British subjects entitled to trade with the Red Sea, and coffees for Europe, not forwarded overland, shipped at Mocha for Bombay, were thence transhipped to England. In 1803 an American vessel arrived at Mocha, raised the price from 38 dollars the bale, at which it had been stationary ten years, to 50 dollars, and took 8000 bales against 2000 pur- chased by the Company. Jonathan, as usual, pushing ahead, gave the first great impulse to the trade in coffee, which has since made such gigantic strides. Lord Valentia's travels give particulars of the American and English shipments. The former cost at its destination less than 77. the cwt., the latter more than 107. * Coffee grows neither in Persia nor in India, where it is in no request; but the Hollanders drive a great trade in it, transporting it from Ormus into Persia as far as Great Tartary, from Balsara into Caldea, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and other provinces of Turkey. It was first found out by a Hermite, whose name was Sheck Siadeli, about twenty years ago, before which time it was never heard of in any author either ancient or modern. - Tuvernier's Travels, 1643. LETTER VII. 65 COLOMBO. Expenses, "breakage and leakage," transhipment and commis- sions at Bombay ate up the difference. Coffees raised in the Madras Presidency, of excellent quality are cleaned in establishments which afford occupation to numerous girls of the Niar caste, at Tellicherry, Cannanore, and Calicut, and are thence shipped to Europe. The morning after leaving Cochin we rounded Cape Comorin and entered the Gulf of Manaar. Our chief landmark was a Hindoo Pagoda built on rocks near the shore, while crowds of fishermen standing on their canoes at sea, seemed to be walking on the water. We stopped off Tuticorin; in the distance were the tall chimneys of factories belonging to Bombay and Madras companies, by whom the cotton raised in the surrounding country is sorted, cleaned, pressed, packed, and shipped away. The passage between Ceylon and the mainland is closed, except to small craft, by the reef called Adam's Bridge, which bars the passage to the bay of Bengal, and obliges all vessels to make the détour round the coast of Ceylon. Some Suez Canal enterprise seems wanting here. Next morning, the 12th January, we approached the celebrated island of gems. The sky was clouded, so the prospect was lost which it usually presents of distant peaks and rolling hills. At some distance to the right were seen the white walls of the Governor's palace, built by Sir Edward Barnes. Completed at a cost of 30,000l." then, in a paroxysm of economy, ordered to be dismantled, the building was disposed of for less than the cost of the window frames." * Rounding an old fort we were set on shore at a wooden pier. As this colony is not fiscally connected with its great neighbour, luggage was examined, a practice that, like qua- rantine, commends itself equally to civilised and barbarous nations. The hotels of Colombo, kept by Singhalese, are to be reprobated for everything but their curries. Opposite the "Royal" is the Post Office, the clerks in which work through the night. In the morning merchants drive up for their letters. Natives give way to Europeans, therefore the quickest plan is to go yourself. The * Tennent's Ceylon. K T 66 LETTER VII. BEYPOOR TO POINT DE GALLE. town is surrounded by fortifications built by the Dutch, who lived within them, partly for security, and partly because they feared the sea breeze. We are pulling down the massive walls to admit as much air as possible. They will soon fill the moat that encircles them landwards, supplied with fresh water from a lake near the sea, one of the beauties of the landscape which is seen as you pass through the gateway. Park-like lawns are intersected by carriage drives of bright red laterite. To the left the winding lake is fringed with palms and clumps of trees bending to the water, to the right the land slopes to the sea. The sea is calm and blue; but one long breaker rolls upon the beach, marking a line of foam and spray to the farthest distance. Colombo, a dreary old place, has the governor's palace, the bar- racks, banks, and offices, in the same neighbourhood, within its walls. Wide streets are shaded by beautiful trees. The Singha- lese men brush their hair back; and confine it in a knot by one or GOVERNOR'S BUTLER, COLOMBO, two tortoiseshell combs, the first like those used by children in England, the other of the Spanish form, a fashion exactly described of them by the Greek historians, and proof of the unaltered habits LETTER VII. 67 BOYS. of this unchangeable East, where the people dress, live, and think as their forefathers did, long ages before the Christian era. They wear a white cloth round their loins like a petticoat, a white cotton shirt, and from behind, with combs and back hair, look exactly like women. The women wear no combs, but tie their hair in a knot, and like the Niars, enlarge the lobes of their ears artificially to a great size. A high caste Singhalese, en grand tenue, would figure to advantage in a modern burlesque, and the governor's servants, half Burlington Arcade beadle and half Sin- ghalese, have a singular appearance. The sketch gives a faint idea of one who good-naturedly and gravely stood for his portrait. Another appended of boy Davy is a better illustration of head- dress. BOY DAVY, KANDY. Davy loquitur: "What Massa want for tiffin?" "What have you got, boy?" CC Mulligatawney pomphlet sole seir mullet beefsteak onion tamata sas tamata salad grill chicken jungle fowl corned hump prawn and green curry mango jelly oranges pine-apples Europe checse." The meals of a day in India are as follows:- 6 A.M.: Chota hazri-Little breakfast. 9 A.M. Burra hazri-Big breakfast-Déjeûner à la fourchette. 2 P.M. Tiffin-lunch; and 7:30 P.M.: Khana-Dinner. Most of the servants on the Malabar coast and at Bombay, half caste Portuguese, are called boys. They dress in jacket, waistcoat 68 LETTER VII. BEYPOOR TO POINT DE GALLE. and trousers, but wear no shoes before their English masters, who would consider this a want of courtesy as great as if a Muham- medan presented himself with head uncovered. Dark as the Indian, they have Lusitanian features. A white bearded venerable Goanese rushing to answer a child who is impatiently shouting boy is rather a ludicrous sight. KANDY, 20th January. Leaving Colombo at 2 P.M., you arrive at 6.30 by the government railway. In a distance of seventeen miles the road ascends 1700 feet, and at many points skirts precipices more than 1000 feet high. It runs partly along the course of the old Colombo and Kandy road, of which wrote Bishop Heber: "I was reminded of the opening into the vale of Llangollen and the new road at Wynnstay, and I hardly know to which to give the preference, but the hills are higher and the magnificence of the trees and general beauty of the foliage and flowers far surpass anything in my native land." One place, where the line winds round the verge of an abyss 1400 feet deep, is called "Sensation Point;" to add to its in- terest, rocks from overhanging mountains slide down, and gangs of coolies, native navvies, who on their pay of four annas, sixpence, a day support families and eat better curries than the best chefs of England could supply, are kept on the look out to clear the line from these disagreeable obstructions. The line is a single one, but the possibility of collision on it is avoided by this arrangement. No train is started until the guard has received from the station- master a staff containing a note of the time of starting and a certi- ficate that the line is clear. The staff is delivered by the guard to the next station-master, who gives him in return another, left by the previous train. No train is allowed to pass without * "But to give you a little of their cookery: if people being in the room talking together the woman being ready to put the rice into the pot, bids them all be silent till she has put it in, and then they may proceed with their discourse: for if they should talk while the rice is putting in it would swell.”—Knox's Ceylon. LETTER VII. 69 GARDEN OF EDEN. taking the staff left by its precursor, nor can a special train be otherwise obtained. The line pays eight per cent., due to the carrying trade and to the second and third class passengers, nearly all of whom are natives. First class carriages are used only by Europeans. Powerful engines are attached to every train, one at each end. Wood is the fuel used. Two Americans, a General and a Commodore, attended by their suite, occupied a first class compartment, and attracted great attention along the line. Crowds assembled at the country stations to see them. To obtain a better view of the country, the naval officer was given a seat on the engine, but he would return occasionally to his carriage, and after he had been carefully assisted in, pops would be heard suggestive of soda-water. General and Mrs. Tom Thumb, Miss Warren, and Commodore Nutt, were the names of this distin- guished party. They had been exhibiting at Kandy, and are now going round the world for the second time. In the words of the commodore, "Travel! oh, travel is second nature to us." Although his nose only reached the level of the billiard table, Mr. Nutt, with the help of a long rest, won three games of pool in succession from some coffee planters who might have put him in their pockets. It is said that Ceylon was the Garden of Eden. Adam is supposed to have made his first appearance in the centre of this island, on the top of the mountain called Adam's Peak. "The king said, ask for what you wish; I answered, my only desire in coming to this island was to visit the blessed foot of our forefather Adam, whom these people called Baba, while they style Eve, Mama. The holy footmark is in a stone, so that its place is depressed; the length of the impression is eleven spans. The Chinese came here at some former time, and cut out from the stone the place of the great toe, together with the stone about it; and placed it in a temple in the city of Zaitun, and pilgrimages are made to it from the most distant parts of China.” The foot- print is still exhibited, under the different names that different believers assign to the first terrestrial traveller. And when he * Ibn Batuta's Travels, translated by Dr. Lee. 70 LETTER VII. BEYPOOR TO POINT DE GALLE. was expelled he departed across the reef, called Adam's Bridge, that still connects this island with the continent, and closes the passage to the Bay of Bengal. Perhaps it is true, and this is really the scene of man's first disobedience; but be that as it may, the grand, the gorgeous, the imposing,-mountains wooded to the peak, and deep-set vales of emerald foliage, skies of pearl, and glittering rivulets, the soft, the dreamy, the luxuriant, are here united,—and what was possibly wanting in the primæval garden has been supplied to our age by the British engineer, who has constructed a network of roads extending more than two thousand miles, and connecting the principal towns of Ceylon. Government bank-notes pass at par only in the district where they are issued. Here the hotel-keeper charged five per cent. discount on Bombay notes, but the Oriental Bank took them at two and a quarter commission. The corporation has numerous branches, and issues its own notes. Their native clerks of the Tamil race, wear in each ear four large rings three inches in CLERK OF 0. B. CORPORATION, KANDY. diameter, distinguished by different coloured stones, to which a drop diamond ring is sometimes added. When out of doors they sport a remarkable hat, and are, in pure vernacular, the greatest Guys imaginable. POINT DE GALLE, 23rd January. Returning to Colombo, a twelve hours' drive along a road over- hung with palms takes you to Point de Galle. An agreeable LETTER VII. 71 BARBER. break may be made at a half-way bungalow on the sca-shore. The Governor, on his annual tour of inspection, had lately rested there, and arches of bamboos, in the tasteful construction of which Ceylonese are celebrated, decorated the road. Galle is the inter- mediate port for the great steam ship companies between the Red Sea, Australia, Japan, China, and the Eastern Archipelago. The situation of the ancient Tarshish appears to have been a vexed question with philosophers; its claims were divided between such opposite points as the banks of the Guadalquiver and Point de Galle. It has been decided, however, that both entrepôts were known to the Phoenicians under the same designation, and the stores of gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks, brought by King Solomon from Tarshish to Ebiongeber, on the shores of the Red Sea, were collected in Ceylon and shipped from Point de Galle, which is thus considered by Sir Emerson to be the “most venerable emporium of foreign trade existing in the universe." It is a beautiful and interesting harbour, and shelters not only steamers of the ocean lines, but the varied craft of Indian seas, among which the pattimars of Bombay and Malabar represent a naval architecture probably unaltered and unchanged from periods. antecedent to the most ancient records. A brisk trade is done by the young Muhammedans, descendants of Arab navigators, in the sale of jewels and curiosities to unwary travellers, who are exposed to the pertinacious offerings of every kind of unnecessary article that can be manufactured out of ebony or elephants' teeth. Many of the natives speak English-after a fashion. The following conversation may amuse you. How came you to be a barber?" "Baba!" look of great surprise, "my fader baba, all my people baba. I going be head baba. Govnur give me chit to-morrow, make me head baba. Wear plenty gold lace, gold band, big sword. I teach 150 baba; all baba come to me." << << Are you married ?” Yes, massa. Two wives. I got one thirty, one twenty." "Why marry two wives?" "I keep one wife-my family no like-plenty row make-say 72 LETTER VII. BEYPOOR TO POINT DE GALLE. I marry young wife-rich fader-moder; but I give plenty curry, rice, lamb, house-I all thing give to my old wife-that praper." (C Which do you like best?" "Old wife best-she never crass-never make no word-she BARBER OF POINT DE GALLE alway good. Young wife plenty sassy-that no fret me," shaking his head. “I had plenty of hair, barber.” 'Yes, massa-massa gettin little old now-that nothin.” LETTER VIII. POINT DE GALLE TO MADRAS. MADRAS, 10th February, 1870. THE P. and O. steamer from Suez touched at Galle on the morning and left for Madras on the evening of the 26th, arriving here on the 29th ultimo. Few passengers from Europe now come by these steamers; and when the concluding sections of the railways between Bombay and Calcutta, and Bombay and Madras, are completed, fewer still will take the round sea voyage. But much cargo is shipped by them, and, spite of exorbitant freights, all space, including every unoccupied cabin, is filled with goods from China and Japan, transhipped at Point de Galle for Calcutta. Little land is visible till within thirty miles of Fort St. George, where the "raths" of the seven Pagodas, the rock-hewn city of Mahabalipur upon the sandy shore, beside the verge of ocean, are sometimes seen, "These ruins lie among a cluster of low rocks which project from a sandy spit running down the coast, a distance of about sixteen miles in length, and varying in width from a half to one and a quarter mile. In front dashes the everlasting surf, in rear lies a salt marsh of upwards of a mile broad in some parts, and communicating with the sea on the south and north extremities by two narrow openings in the sand bank at its front. The principal sculptured rocks lie about two and three quarter miles from the south extremity of the bank . . . and in the monsoon are insulated from the mainland by the inundations of the salt marsh in their rear. . . A series of bare granite rocks, naturally of fantastic contour, nearly a mile long, and 120 feet high, has L 74 LETTER VIII. POINT DE GALLE TO MADRAS. afforded the Hindu artist ample scope for the exercise of his chisel, which must have been wrought of the finest tempered steel for which India, since the dawn of history, has been justly celebrated. Quaternary granites compose the great monolith raths of the seven pagodas . . . With regard to the Brahmanical history of the seas overwhelming the ancient city, and rolling over its ruins at the fiat of the God of the Heavens there are few வா CITY OF BALI, OR MAHABALIPUR. facts that can be relied on, except that pieces of pottery, Roman and Chinese coins, are occasionally washed on shore in storms ; and the remains of ruins and sculpture are at a little distance in the sea... One general remarkable feature in these sculptures remains to be noticed, viz., that they have been left apparently in haste they are all unfinished.” * * Capt. Newbold, Journal of the R.A.S. of Bengal, Vol. 15. 1 UN OF FICH CATAMARAN, MADRAS. [Page 75. LETTER VIII. 75 LANDING AT MADRAS. Southey has described the ruined city of Bali in his "Curse of Kehama," xv. 8. "Well might the sad beholder ween from thence, What works of wonder the devouring wave Had swallowed there, when monuments so brave, Bore record to their old magnificence. And on the sandy shore, beside the verge Of ocean, here and there a rock hewn fane Resisted in its strength the surf and surge That on their deep foundations beat in vain. In solitude the ancient temples stood, Once resonant with instrument and song And solemn dance of festive multitude : Now as the weary ages pass along, Hearing no voice save of the ocean flood, Which roars for ever on the restless shores: Or visiting their solitary caves, The lonely sound of winds, that moan around Accordant to the melancholy waves." Ships anchor off the open shore, on which the surf runs heavily, making communication at times impossible except by catamarans, short logs with masts and sails. On these the native fishermen venture, and in a storm are oftener off their craft than on it. They wear nothing in particular excepting a peaked hat, like a fool's cap, in which they carry letters and act as postmen to the ships. An iron pier, a thousand feet long, is a convenience when the sea is calm, but less useful at other times. Accompanying the Madras passengers who here landed in one of the native Masadie or Masulchi, namely, fishing-boats, was a lady. Her determinate voyage was mere extravagancy-namely, to see a country-whereof by parcels she had something heard, but not intentively. So far well; but consider her-delicate, alone, seventy years old, and thus travelling about the world. Other unprotected females are now visiting India with the same commendable object. One has been studying mankind during eighteen years, since the death of her husband, a gentleman who in life was timid, averse to relinquish dulce domum even when accompanied by his placens uxor. An- other, a maiden of fifty, follows in her wake, note-book in hand. 76 LETTER VIII. POINT DE GALLE TO MADRAS. All are impregnate with the spirit of our future legislators, the irrepressible British female. The boats are large and deep. Their unclothed rowers, shouting as they pull through the surf with a yell altogether, run them on shore. "It is a marvellous thing to them that have not seen the lading and unlading of merchandise in Saint Tomé as they doe:-it is a place so dangerous that a man cannot be served with the Boates of the Ships, because they would be beaten in a thousand pieces; but they make certain Barkes of purpose high which they call Masadie, made of little boards sowed to another with small cordes. They lade them on land, when the Boatmen thrust the boat into the stream and, leaping in, make haste all they are able to row out from the shore. And when they come near the shore the bark men leap out of the Barke into the sea to keepe her right that she cast not thwart the shore, and being right the suffe of the sea setteth her lading drie on land without any hurt or danger." Thus Cesare de Frederici, a Venetian who travelled through India in 1563, and his account, exact to this day, will probably remain so to the end of time, as there is no word for change in Eastern vocabularies. Although we have come direct from Ceylon, luggage is examined here: "the law allows it, and the court awards it." Along the shore stand the railway station, custom-house, a row of offices, a park Fort St. George, the lighthouse, flagstaff, and a carriage-drive ex- tending several miles and passing the Church of the Apostle, whom Indians of Madras believe died there, and those of Para- guay, with equal faith, say died in Paraguari, a village at the foot of a rocky mountain, where the cave he made and lived in may still be seen.* * From the time that the Jesuit fathers, Cataldino and Maceta, left the Spanish settlements, in the hope of encountering fewer obstacles to the conversion of the Guaranis, the Indian Cacique Maracana, and other, the principal Guaranis assured them that they had heard from their ancestors of a holy man called Pay Zuma or Pay Tuma, who preached in their country the faith of Heaven, being the expression used. Many of them had followed his directions, and he predicted, on leaving them, that they and their descendants would abandon the worship of the true God, which he taught them; but that other messengers would come bearing a cross like that which he carried, and would establish among their descendants the same worship of God. Some Some years afterwards Fathers Montoya and Mendoza having penetrated into * LETTER VIII. ST. THOMAS THE APOSTLE. 77 Marco Polo, in his chapter on Abyssinia, says: "St. Thomas the Apostle preached in this region, and after he had converted the people he went away to the province of Maabar (as the Coromandel coast is called by him), where he died.” • The body of Messer St. Thomas the Apostle lies in the province of Maabar, at a certain little town having no great population Both Christians and Saracens, however, greatly frequent it at pilgrimage. For the Saracens also do hold the saint in great reverence, and say that he was one of their own Saracens, and a great prophet, giving him the title of Avarian, which is as much to say, "Holy Man." [Note. The title of Avarian is explained by Scaliger to be the Arabic Hawariy (Pl Hawariyun), "An Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ."] Colonel Yule adds, this is the first geographical identification of the position of the shrine of St. Thomas, with which he is acquainted... but the tradition of Thomas's preaching in India is very old . . . St. Jerome accepts. it, speaking of the Divine Word, as being everywhere present in His fulness (cum Thomâ in India, cum Petro Romae, cum Paulo in Illyrici). The city has a population of three-quarters of a million, and covers an extent of plain without drainage, water, or gas. Gardens surround the spacious bungalows of the residents, but that wealth of tropical colour which makes Brazil incontestably the most brilliant of lands, has no counterpart here. All is dreary, flat, and inhospitable. The best shops are of furniture and carpets, in making which Madrasses excel. Water is drawn in the manner the district of Tayati, the Indians received them with demonstrations of joy, and on their surprise at such a welcome, the same legend was related to them which Mara- cana had told, with this addition, that the holy man was also called Pay Abara, or the Father who lived in celibacy. A similar tradition exists among the Brazilians, and adds that the Apostle landed at the port of Saints, opposite the bar of St. Vincent, and that he taught the Indians to cultivate the mandioca root. At a short distance below the town of Assumption there is a rock, on which one seems to distinguish the marks of two human footsteps, and the Indians say it was there that Pay Zuma preached to them the law of God. Certain it is that many Spaniards have given credence to this tradition, and believe that Pay Zuma was the Apostle Saint Thomas.” -Le Père Charlevoix, Histoire du Paraguay, tom. 2, p. 167. * Yule's Marco Polo, II. 290. * 78 LETTER VIII. POINT DE GALLE TO MADRAS. common to Eastern countries, by a leathern bucket dropped from one end of a bar balanced across a high pole having a weight attached to the other end. The bar, instead of being managed from below, is worked from above. One or two men on the top MERCE DRAWERS OF WATER, MADRAS. of the pole running up and down depress it to be filled or raise it when full. Statues of Cornwallis, Munro, and Neill, ornament the wide and sandy roads. Government Hall, a meeting-house style of build- ing, contains portraits of Mornington, Wellesley, and many heroes, a small one of Clive having appropriately the place of honour. LETTER VIII. 79 DRESS. Days pass as we lounge on cane-bottomed chairs under wide verandahs, or in rooms cooled by punkahs, while processions of box-wallahs, hawkers, jugglers, booksellers, jewellers, grocers, and general dealers in turn display their wares. Muslin and calico dresses from Manchester, here effectively braid emboridered, are favourite productions; Dacca muslins are esteemed; the goldsmith work of Trichinopoly is famous; and Madras jugglers and snake charmers are reputed the most expert in India. POOR HAKER, SIR. "There is excellent fair linen of cotton made here of all colours, and woven with divers works of figures very cunningly wrought, which is much worne in India . . . The best sortes are named clothes of Sarasso, some being mingled with threads of gold and silver. . . wherewith they cloathe themselves in very comely manner. The Spanish Saraza, calico, may have been derived from this word. The jugglers ask that but a small part of the compound be 80 LETTER VIII. POINT DE GALLE TO MADRAS. exclusively allotted them, and require no stage accessories for their performance. Over a little mound of earth, in which a mango seed is inserted, three bamboo canes are placed by them, and covered with a shawl. Then follows an exhibition of trained birds, which sing, fly, tumble, or run along the performer's arm TUMASHA WALLAH. at command, to distract the attention of his audience for a time, when, the cloth being removed, the tree is seen already a foot high. Fire-eating, sword-swallowing, ball-throwing, balancing, and tricks of various kinds amuse the spectators, while the tree from time to time exhibited is found always in a more advanced stage of development, blossoming, blooming, and finally bearing the ripened fruit. This and the basket trick are the best of the juggler's répertoire, and only very skilful performers are able to execute them effectively. The tumasha wallahs depart, and another set of wanderers fill their places, laden with a number of round baskets, from which they take their stock-in-trade. The cobra, its eye glistening and hood expanding, listens to the snake charmer's-music. Its poison- ous fangs have been extracted, but the object of the exhibition is to excite surprise at the charmer's immunity from danger, as warning off by-standers he touches the darting tongue, and explains that its deadly venom is still there. Along with his LETTER VIII. 81 BOXWALLAHS. collection of snakes the dealer is accompanied by a mongoose, and for a trifle will allow it to kill a cobra. At the sight of its invete- rate foe, the cobra places itself instantly on the defensive, while the mongoose darts at its neck, and after an exciting duel, succeeds in seizing it, and retains the grip till life is extinct. It is said that the mongoose, on being severely bitten by a cobra, seeks among the grasses, and finds an antidote that neutralises the poison; but this has not been clearly authenticated. Snake- charmers also carry with them a stone, which they say absorbs the poison of a snake-bite, but this, again, is disputed, and as in hydrophobia no specific has yet been found to avert the fatal effects of a cobra's venom. Boxwallahs are itinerant small-ware dealers, who move about from bungalow to bungalow, carrying one or more boxes divided into numerous compartments, and filled with an immense variety of articles, from note-paper, pens and ink, to Rowlands' macassar oil, buttons, needles, socks,-in short, the innumerable little neces- sary and unnecessary articles of daily use, and all, it must be added, supplied at prices considerably under what they are charged in England. This is accounted for by their being composed of goods either damaged by salt water and sold by auction, or old mess stores which have been "sacrificed" by regiments suddenly placed en route, or bankrupt stocks realised at alarming sacrifices. The box- wallahs, like stormy petrels, are always to be found near the scenes of these commercial disasters, and their stock of goods is exclu- sively replenished from them. Some take to collecting books, and one of these bibliopolists produced an odd volume-all his books were odds-of the Quarterly Review, vol. xviii. The "very lowest price, Sahib" (both hands pressed together in form of prayer) was two rupees-four shillings; but he accepted an offer of four annas -sixpence. It contained an anecdote appropriate to this presi- dency. At the capture of Cuddalore from the French, a wounded prisoner was kindly treated by Col. Wangenheim, command- ing the Hanoverian troops in the British service. Many years afterwards when the French army, under Bernadotte, entered M 82 LETTER VIII. POINT DE GALLE TO MADRAS. (( Hanover, General Wangenheim attended the conquerors' levee. You have served in India," said the Marshal; "do you re- member a wounded sergeant whom you protected at Cuddalore?" The General remembered, but not immediately, the circumstance thus recalled to his mind. "I was that sergeant," said Berna- dotte; "and now, how can I testify my gratitude to General Wangenheim ?" The suites of hotel rooms occupied by English families having a verandah in common, a number of pale English children vary the scene; and pleasant it is to notice the patience with which the ayahs tend, and the fund of amusement with which they entertain their charges. Kindness to the young or to the sick of any age is a trait of native character that redeems many short-comings. In the evening, the fashion of Madras drive to the People's Garden, hear the band play, examine its zoological collection, and thence the unvarying round is to the beach, where the European residents linger, eating the air—a native expression-cooled by the sea breeze. Eight is dinner hour at this hotel, announced by a commotion in the rooms above, occupied by a major, peaceful at all but feeding times. At these unhappy periods cries fill the building, while its dismayed proprietors rush about with con- demned or propitiatory dishes, in vain,—the major is dining—or, if not strictly so engaged, is declaiming to the bolder Khansamaghs and Kitmaghars that dare approach within hearing his opinion of the culinary arrangements of mine host, which it must be acknow- ledged are unsatisfactory.* * SIR, 10 February, 1870. I beg to bring to your notice that I have strictly ordered my butler and cook to furnish the tables in my hotel liberally and nicely whatever is wanted, without any least complaint. I now learned on the contrary from them and your note that they provided you first day with two different games only, as you ordered, and on being informed it was not sufficient for you, I strictly ordered them to supply you with games and nice joints as you directed. So they were doing to your satisfaction until your going to Bangalore, but on the last day the joint was halfly cooked. Some gentlemen like, some 2, and full done. These should be informed of beforehand, otherwise they will not be able to do satisfaction. If they had received orders, they would not have caused you to be displeased with them. Should the bill is to be LETTER VIII. 83 MYSORE. Leaving Madras by rail, and travelling all night, you arrive next morning (7 A.M.) at Bangalore, the military depôt of the Presidency but in the territory of the Rajah of Mysore. Three thousand feet above the sea level, its temperature is more agreeable than that of the capital, Fort St. George. Quarries here yield a stone in layers which, easily cut, is used for palings, telegraph posts, trellises, and fences. The barracks are palatial in extent, solidity, and architec- tural embellishment. The Lalbagh, purple garden, in which a : IN THE LALBAGH, BANGALORE. mauve-leaved creeper is the chief ornament, and the fort where Sir David Baird, imprisoned by Hyder Ali, was made to draw reduced by Rs. 10 on account of mistake not done intentionally when nothing remains with me to cause the above reduction, I shall only fine them to make up the loss. They are poor people, and the cook is a new man brought in for your sake, and if you are pleased to excuse them they will not undergo this loss, which I beg you will be good enough to do, for God's sake. I remain, Sir, Your most obedient 84 LETTER VIII. POINT DE GALLE TO BOMBAY. water for the garrison, are the principal sights. The 22nd Regi- ment of Infantry had just arrived from Kurrachee (Scinde) reported "unfit for duty," all men suffering from tertian ague. On the death of Tippoo Sahib, at the capture of Seringapatam, the British reinstated on the throne of Mysore the heir of the Hindu family that had been hurled from it by Hyder Ali, and these princes, the descendants of that Hindu, continue to rule under British protec- tion. In a long and complimentary address presented to Mr. Bowring, the Commissioner, who was leaving for England after seven years' administration of the affairs of Mysore, by a deputa- tion composed almost exclusively of native functionaries, many sen- tences occurred to exemplify the peculiar relation in which we stand towards these people. For instance: "On you, Sir, devolved the task of installing our young Maharajah on the throne of his long line of ancestors, and of arranging the preliminaries necessary to his future education, progress, and development." And again : We, who have so many reasons to be grateful, cannot but feel the loss we are about to sustain in the departure of a ruler so deservedly beloved and respected as you are." The Commissioner replied, that he had lately visited the young Rajah, and found him not only attending to his lessons but also exercising himself at cricket and other English games. He looked upon this miniature court as an omen of good for the future, when, as a well-educated ruler, assisted by prudent advisers and under British protection, the prince might largely promote the prosperity of his country. << Dissatisfaction prevailed with the Commissioner's administration because natives were preferred by him for Government offices to the exclusion of European or Eurasian candidates, but this policy is approved by the Secretary of State. "The province of Mysore was created in 1799 by Lord Wellesley, in opposition to the advice of Sir Thomas Munro, out of the débris of Tippoo's territory. Instead of partitioning that territory between the East India Company and the Nizam, as that statesman urged, Lord Wellesley selected a child of the Hindoo family as Rajah, but declared that the nominal kingdom constituted substantially an integral portion of our own dominions.' LETTER VIII. 85 BANGALORE. "In 1811, the Rajah, then 16, proclaimed his majority, and in 1831-2, after repeated warnings, he was pensioned on a great income as unfit to administer the state. In 1834, the joint com- missioners gave place to one commissioner. From that time to the present, Mysore has been governed by commissioners; but on the death of the pensioned Maharajah the Secretary of State directed the Government of India to recognise his adopted son as likely to attempt the administration of the Province when he should prove himself fit for the responsibility. For the last three years, therefore, Mysore has been excluded from our financial arrangements, though no other change has yet taken place in its administration. "There are no natural lakes in Mysore, but there are nearly 20,000 artificial reservoirs, some of which are of considerable magnitude. "The great rock, which may be said to constitute the basis of the whole country, is a kind of granite. The Rajah has an income of 150,000l. Our faithful ally, the Nizam of Hyderabad, whose territories adjoin those of Mysore, enjoys a rental of 2,500,000l. His Prime Minister, Sir Salar Jung, is admittedly the ablest of native statesmen. These rentals are revenues, and must not be considered instances of the poten- tiality of wealth which the gold of Indus or diamonds of Golconda may suggest to imaginative minds-dreams long since dispelled. The pagoda tree has been shaken so effectually, that not only the fruit, but its leaves, sprays, and branches are gone, and in propor- tion to its extent, population, and resources, India is one of the poorest of the nations of earth. Putting aside exceptional cases, the great mass of our Indian sub- jects are paupers, and live from hand to mouth almost exclusively on rice, a grain that possesses little solid nutriment, and of which they too often have barely enough to keep them from starvation. From the Cubbon Hotel, where strawberries and muffins were always present on the breakfast table—a drive of thirty-one miles * Annals of Indian Administration, 1871-2. Serampore, 1873. 86 LETTER VIII. POINT DE GALLE TO MADRAS. 2 > -along a road flanked the whole distance by trees lately planted, each surrounded by a mud wall painted in red and white stripes, takes you to Nundydroog, a granite rock of considerable height, surrounded by battlements, but impregnable and inaccessible excepting by a zigzag pathway five miles long, up which you are carried by coolies. The narrow entrance is defended by three lines of fortification. Held by one of Tippoo Sahib's best officers, it was taken by General Meadows. Arriving at night, it was pleasant next morning to look down from the steep battlements of the droog or hill, as from a balloon, and to watch the sun rise over the wide plains of Mysore. Nestling at the base was the village of Nundydroog,-opposite to it the last spur of a line of rocky mountains, and around many tanks of water flashed the rays like sheets of glass from the red plain, which is lined by roads and dotted with trees. At the summit stands the hotel, once the residence of "the illustrious Sir Mark .Cubbon," who, for twenty-five years political resident, was eminently useful to the country. His memory is preserved by a bronze equestrian statue fronting the officers' barracks at Bangalore, and by many works named after him. The hill has a temple to the sanguinary goddess Kali, devoted not only in remote, but too possibly in recent times to human sacrifices, these temples being generally placed among the mountains or other unfrequented parts, accord- ing to the Abbé Dubois, " as if those awful beings who delighted to see their altars moistened with human gore, and their sanc- tuaries strewed with the carcases, were themselves conscious of the enormity of the crime, and therefore desired to veil the horrid spectacle from the eyes of men. The victim was immolated by decapitation, and the head was left exposed for a time in the pre- sence of the idol." "The first aim of the British Government on acquiring a province has always been to put down such sacrifices; but, in seasons of scarcity, the priests of Lower Bengal still offer up children to the insatiable demon who terrified the forest tribes three thousand years ago. (C During 1865-66 such sacrifices were had recourse to in order LETTER VIII. 87 KALI. to avert the famine. They were few in number, the police being specially on the alert, and the authorities having got warning by the publicity which the press gave to the two cases that were brought to light. The following are the details of a human sacri- fice in 1866, in the Jessore district, one of the oldest settled and most enlightened parts of Bengal:-'A Mahomedan boy, about seven years of age, was found in the scaffold-room adjoining a temple of Kali (the wife of Siva), at Luckipassa, with his neck in the harcat, or wooden scaffold, and his neck cut. The tongue was fixed between the teeth, the eyes open, clotted blood on his body, which was quite exposed, and two cuts of a Khundah were visible on the neck. The sacrifice, it seems, was not completed, for the object is entirely to sever the head from the body. In a late case at Hooghly, the head was left before the idol decked with flowers. Among the aboriginal tribes to the south-west of Beerbhoom, I heard vague reports of human sacrifices in the forests, with a view to procuring the early arrival of the rains.'”* The temples of the Hindoos are everywhere, and their names, like those of the gods they inclose, are legion. But principally, as in the days of Horace, te Priape, et te pater Silvane, tutor finium, are the objects of the husbandman's worship. The consecration of cobras, tigers, and other deadly animals has done much to preserve their existence, and the loss of life thus occasioned, principally from the want of proper precautions, may be partly estimated,—not entirely,-as many deaths are never reported out of dread of extortion from the native authorities,-from a tabular statement just published, which shows that during the last fifteen years, in Bengal alone, 13,400 men, women, and children have fallen victims to tigers, leopards, and other beasts of prey. * Hunter's Annals of Rural Bengal. 1 LETTER IX. MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. CALCUTTA, 20th February, 1870. LEAVING Madras by the Peninsular and Oriental steamer Simla, on the 11th, Saugor Island was reached on the evening of the 14th instant. It was ebb tide, and as the bar is passable only at flood, the steamer anchored till the following morning, close to the wreck of a large vessel, which recently touched the sand near the bar and sank in five minutes. Three hundred government pilots are employed in the navigation of the river; and at the sand-heads, about 130 miles from Calcutta, a ship is stationed, having on board a supply of them to take up inward-bound vessels, the progress of which is telegraphed from station to station, and published in supplements of the Telegraphic News. The banks are flat and destitute of trees, the water thin mud, and on approaching the city three great streams unite, and form so quick a turn up the Hooghly, that, in rounding it, vessels frequently heel half over. A little more steaming brings you to the capital, called by its admirers "The City of Palaces," though some profane people have doubted the propriety of the epithet. It is right that an opposite description should be here recorded, for the fair sights of this world are seen so differently by youthful and hopeful, or by old and jaundiced eyes, that what is one man's paradise is often the inferno of another. But the description of his arrival at Calcutta by the Hon. Robert Lindsay (whose short LETTER IX. 89 THE CITY OF PALACES. autobiographic sketch forms so delightful a chapter in the Lives of the Lindsays), was written after a long voyage round the Cape, and before the banks of the Hooghly had been devastated by the fearful cyclones of later years. "In approaching the town of Calcutta," he says, "nothing can be more beautiful or have a finer effect, than the appearance of the banks everywhere studded with country villas surrounded with beautiful verdure, and re- sembling the best cultivated counties in England, very different from what one would expect to find under a vertical sun. The continual succession of ships from all nations passing up and down enlivens the scene, and gives the most delightful prospect to a stranger after a long and tedious voyage. Fort William then comes into view, its stupendous outworks and bastions over- hanging the river, and forming one of the most magnificent coups d'œil I ever witnessed; nor is the landscape at all impaired in viewing the town of Calcutta from the river or on the side of the esplanade, the houses exhibit an uncommon degree of elegance, giving the town the appearance of a city of palaces, and impressing the stranger with a high idea of the opulence of the inhabitants. There is less attention paid to symmetry than in houses in Europe. Each proprietor indulges his fancy in the style of architecture; but all agree in studying ventilation in that sultry climate, one house projecting, the other retiring, so as to give a free circulation of air; they are in general flat in the roof with an easy access to the terrace, which affords one a refreshing walk in the cool of the evening." The territory that was ceded to the great Clive in 1759, when he was only Colonel Clive, is called the twenty-four pergunnahs. The grant was made by the Mogul of Delhi, in return for the ser- vice rendered him in putting down a rebellion, raised by his favourite son, Shah Allum, who appears to have been a sort of heathenish Absolom, and who met with Absolom's death at Clive's hands; he hanged him—but not by the hair of his head. The quit-rents of these lands were held by Clive at his death in 1774, when the East India Company took them, claiming them under a prior grant, dated December, 1757. Again, some people have ven- N 90 LETTER IX. MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. tured to say that this alleged grant was a forgery, and that the Company robbed Clive's heirs, executors, and assigns. Thereto the present deponent sayeth nought. The extreme length of this district from north to south is seventy-one miles, and its breadth, from east to west, seventy-eight; a nice estate for the gallant Clive. It has been the scene of many famous contests for supremacy in Hindustan. In these pergunnahs there are eight different soils, producing eight different crops; they are all fertile, and all fatal to Europeans during eight months of the year. Eight therefore seems of the district its mystic number. Clive raised Calcutta into the importance of a capital in order to check the growing ascendancy of Chandernagore, a French settle- ment, some few miles farther up the river; and it is the recog- nized seat of government. But the Viceroy and his council are for many months in every year unable to live in it, and a serious question has arisen as to what or where the new capital shall be, since affairs of state cannot be carried on with that prompt energy which in India is especially necessary, while the legislative council is wandering about the burning land, looking for some place where it can draw its breath, and rest at least on this side the grave. Some say Central India, some the North-west, that the supreme authorities may be near the Punjaub, and Affghanistan, and thus better able to ward off the danger threatened by the advance of Russia along the valley of the Oxus. Was the name of the city derived from that of the insatiable goddess, to appease whose vengeance myriads of victims were sacrificed? It is not unlike Cali, but the fact is not established in the records. Its first brick house was built by Job Charnock, an old mariner, whence the lower class of natives to this hour call the city Acharnak. Up to the last century, it was defended by the Mahratta ditch, which gave also to the inhabitants their appellation of the Ditchers. On the other side of the old ditch now stretch the suburban municipality, and the north and south suburban towns; and on the opposite or right bank of the Hooghly, as yet unconnected by any bridge, is the municipality and rail- way town of Howrah, the Southwark of Calcutta. "These three i LETTER IX. 91 POPULATION. divisions constitute the capital, and its population may be roundly estimated at a million. Calcutta 447,601 Suburban Municipality 257,149 North and South Suburban Towns 89,895 Howrah, the Southwark of Calcutta, on the other side of the river 97,784 892,429 "But during the day, thousands of the three-and-a-half millions who sleep in the surrounding district of Hooghly and the twenty- four pergunnahs, flock to the capital. "The jurisdiction of the Old Supreme Court, and now of the original site of the High Court, covering about seven square miles, forms the portion of Calcutta which is under a special municipality. But the city has long since, as in London, out- grown this nucleus, so that, including the suburban municipality and Howrah, the nightly population is 900,000. The day is not under a million and a quarter." "" * The city is a combination of handsome mansions in the Euro- pean quarter, and of wretched hovels in the seething stews of the native town, through which open drains run, exhaling pestilential odours; and over them you see the inhabitants squatting in the attitude of monkeys of larger growth, as if to support the theory of Lord Monboddo, they were intent on the process of getting rid, by continual friction, of their caudal appendages. As a matter of course, cholera and fever are endemic. Fort William, the strongest fortress we hold in Bengal, is situate near the river, on a wide esplanade. Then come the Town Hall, Government House, the Law Courts, statues to Warren Hastings, Bentinck and Hardinge, and a column on the Maidan to General Ochterlony. The public buildings constructed by us in the "City of Palaces," are not the most creditable specimens of architectural genius. * "Annals of Indian Administration," Serampore, 1873. † Calcutta has since been supplied with water by elaborate and extensive works, and the drainage of the city is being completed. 92 LETTER IX. MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. Often before they were completed, the edifices began to settle down, and eventually split up in various directions, the general run of the cracks being vertical. The more extensive and ex- pensive the building, the more rapidly did these splits ramify and extend, and no matter how broad or deep the foundations were laid, the walls cracked spite of precautions and engineering science, the same. The more general the process of splitting, the higher the buildings were raised, until they reached the height of the present Law Courts, the Vice-Regal residence, and the muni- cipal buildings on the Chowringhee road. The last move in the direction of an elevated style of architecture, proved the worst that was ever attempted, as the buildings split up forthwith from foundation to their summits. Everything was blamed by the Public Works department, the bricks, the mortar in particular, and everything appeared to be wrong and in the wrong place, excepting the department itself whose privilege it is to build Law Courts that won't stand, barracks that defy ventilation, bridges that tumble down, and roads that always require repair. In this state of things, it occurred to the authorities, to bore the alluvial soil on which Calcutta is built, to discover if possible a foundation, or the nature of the foundation on which the city rested: when to the general surprise it was found that the sub- stratum was a quagmire, a very slough of despond, over which lay a mere crust, like the crust of a pie baked by intense heat to apparent consistency, but unable to bear without sinking, more or less, the weight of palatial edifices. The greater the weight on any particular spot, the greater naturally the local subsidence of the crust, and the wider the fissures of the buildings resting thereon. Let us hope that no earthquake may ever occur to open this bottomless pit on which the famed capital of Ind is situate. Inquiring of an eminent, if somewhat bilious, authority on these statistical points, what his opinion of the climate might be. "Death, sir, from its morning mists to its mid-day sun, from its mid-day sun to the clammy chills of eve, when the sun sets in the jungly west-nothing but death; but for all that, it's the very best place for a man to die in." You mean the C LETTER IX. 93 CLIMATE. 66 quickest, the most sudden and inevitable?" Not exactly: the case is this; if you're a good and virtuous man, the change will be the more happy, if not;—well, well-I adhere to my opinion that Calcutta is the best place in which to end life's fitful fever." "But I wish to live." "Then surround yourself with precautions, otherwise you have no abiding city here. In that respect it is quite apostolical, and even its bitterest enemies say it's an honest sort of place, for it never keeps you long in doubt as to what it means to do with you." Inquiring of this saturnine authority what he considered to be the uses of India to us, he replied: India is of use to us for the production of opium wherewith to poison the Chinese-there are too many of them—their notions of population set Malthus at defiance, so they must be enlightened and thinned down whether they like it or not; besides we want their teas, silks, and dollars in exchange, the last article espe- cially. Secondly, India produces raw cotton for Manchester; but here again some think that the game is not worth the candle, as to bring that cotton from the interior, railways have been con- structed, and England burdened with a guarantee on upwards of 180 millions sterling sunk in their construction. Finally, India subserves to us that use which Algiers is supposed to subserve France, a sort of safety valve for her enterprising youth who may here let off their fiery energies in the civil or uncivil services, as the case may be. They will not have the sense to fit themselves for some useful trade and emigrate to one or other of our healthy colonies, so let them go to India, toil in its deadly climate, break up their constitutions and die-they will be out of the way; or if they have strength to hold out until an independence has been realised, return to linger, strangers in their own land, a valetu- dinarian existence." These gloomy descriptions coinciding with a somewhat dis- satisfied state of mind, and the depression consequent on a severe attack brought on by imprudent exposure to the mists of morning, we proceeded to consult a medical practitioner. After waiting a few minutes, the Doctor appeared; he was an uncommonly hale, fresh, hearty man of about seventy-five, with a full bright eye, 94 LETTER IX. MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. erect presence, and an air of freshness and bloom about him not usual even in climes more bracing, at his age. After he had prescribed for and explained away the slight causes of indispo- sition, we "presumed he had but lately returned from England?" "No." "You pass doubtless most of your time in the hills?" "By no means." "Or at some other station?" "I have never left Calcutta." And how long have you resided here?" "Forty-five years!" "You like the capital?" "Excessively: the most delightful place in the world and perfectly healthy, if you avoid exposure at improper times, and are moderately careful as to diet." So there are two sides to the question, or, "De gustibus non est disputandum. De gustos no hay nada escrito.” (( House-rent and the cost of living have much augmented of late years, and Calcutta, like indeed every other commercial centre, is an extravagant place of residence, though destitute of those public amusements common to all the capitals of Europe and the west. Society is constituted principally of members of the two services, which include a number of learned, scientific, and literary men, distinguished in arts and arms, while a noble hospitality is gracefully dispensed by the most genial of viceroys and vice-queens. The enhanced cost of living was lately referred to in an almost exhaustive letter on the capital of India, by the correspondent of the Times. In spite of the large number of new houses, the influx of Europeans has been such, that rents have continued to go up steadily, and the American system of living in boarding-houses and clubs is still prevalent and growing. For instance, A, with wife, child, and two friends, pays £1080 a year for one complete flat of one of these houses, with separate table; B, a bachelor on small means, cannot live under £600 a year, though he has only one miserable room; C pays for the house which he got before 1857 at £180 a year, just double that sum as rent. And this far beyond the place where Sir Elijah Impey had his park-a fact still remem- bered in Park Street-now the densest part of the Chowringhee. The city has been lighted with gas, though into many private LETTER IX. 95 BHEESTIES. houses the landlords, who are chiefly natives, refuse to introduce it. But the great works from which so much is expected, are those for water and drainage. At the cost of somewhat more than half a million sterling, lent by Government to the muni- cipality, the Hooghly water is to be filtered, conveyed for 18 miles from Phulta, above Barrackpore, and supplied to the city at the rate of 6,000,000 gallons a day. The works will be finished by this time next year. The water will be supplied to the third story of English houses, and by numerous stand pipes in the native city. The effect of this vast consumption of pure water directly on the people, and indirectly through the drainage, need not be pointed out.” · With water and drainage, a better time is coming, but so far Calcutta is not out of the good old times, and water is only obtainable through the medium of a bheesty who fills his mussuck at the neighbouring tank. Active, good-natured fellows, their life-long business is to carry a large goat or sheep skin full of water, slung on their backs, to water roads or supply cus- tomers. These poor men distinguished themselves during the mutiny by assisting, when they could, the British, who were in hiding or prisoners, invariably carrying them water, and often from great distances. During the day you must drive in a closely- covered carriage. Some streets of the European quarter are wide, almost handsome; at least, the edifices are large. The shops make no show, even the druggists being shaded by verandahs, so that there is nothing attractive to the black loungers who enjoy the heat and dust. But on the other hand, as you pass quickly along, every imaginable article of commerce, that is portable, is thrust or carried alluringly before you by running salesmen; caps, boots, note and office paper, sealing-wax, envelopes, toothpicks, walking-sticks, driving whips, sponges, lead pencils, books, jams, potted meats and pickles, brandy, spurs, albums, photographs. No matter how fast you go, the half-naked salesman runs alongside while you examine and bargain for his wares, or search for change. The native bazaars are narrow, crowded, and tortuous. In them your conveyance soon comes to a stand, and is forthwith sur- 96 LETTER IX. MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. ८८ rounded by a deafening crowd: "Sahib! salam, sahib!" (his hands are pressed together, and he looks at you with a grimace intended to express abject entreaty), "fine dressing-gown, handker- chief, cashmere cap, sahib. Please, honour sahib, come see my shop: very beautiful; most cheap-Bombay boxes, pine-apple, dress." Sahib," here breaks in another dealer, “that man dam liar; you no trust him; he got no shop-he poor broker. Come, sahib, my shop alongside-everything what you like what you want, sahib, price you like; China crape, ivory chessmen, back- gammon, handkerchiefs." "Sahib," solemnly remonstrates an older impostor, “ these men all rogues, they great big cheats, sahib, good sahib ! Oh, sahib! one moment, sahib see my goods, sahib! only look, buy some other day, only look, sahib." But the crowd or stoppage having given way, you manage to get rid of this importunate band, after vainly repeated attempts to assure them that you want none of the articles they thrust upon you. If, how- ever, you are tempted into one of these shops, a chair will be brought, covered for you with a white sheet, and then sweetmeats offered. It is a small place, not more than ten feet wide by, perhaps, thirty deep; but in the back-rooms an endless stock is concealed. As the dealers usually accept about one third of the "ask price," imagine the haggling necessary to arrive at some- thing like real value. An unusually candid one will answer your query of: "Fifty rupees, is that the lowest price?" with "No, sahib; that ask price-lowest price forty-five rupees." "Too dear." "Not too dear, sahib-make offer, sahib." "Give you twenty rupees." Without boring you with the explanations that are sure to ensue, or the vows that the article is worth double the money, the encounter will end in his accepting your offer, and begging you to take as many more as possible at the same price. All this goes on during the heat of the day, for the shops are closed in the morning and evening, with heavy padlocks and chains at the bottom joining both sides to the door frame. The native bazaar, in close proximity to the European quarter, extends to a great distance, and the narrow streets, as a rule, of the most squalid houses, barely allow two vehicles to pass. S LETTER IX. 97 GOVERNMENT. Though Calcutta is called the seat of Government, it has for more than a generation ceased to be the place from which India is governed, and excepting Lord Canning, who was compelled by the mutiny to remain here, no Governor-General has passed in it more than a fraction of his time. The want of a uniform system of administration in India, the oscillations that have cha- racterized its policy during the last thirty or forty years, and the delay in adopting legislative measures indispensable to its pro- sperity, are, no doubt, attributable in a degree to the want of a settled centre of Government. Each successive governor is now frequently separated from his responsible advisers and adminis- trative and legislative departments, the heads of which can alone supply the varied, exact, and prompt information necessary for the satisfactory conduct of public affairs.* Sixty thousand British * The following particulars of the census of 1872 are taken from "Annals of Indian Administration," published annually at Serampore-1873 :— "The whole peninsula contains an area of about 1,582,000 square miles, and a population of 240,000,000, or 152 to the mile. In the first two months of 1872 a census of the Empire was taken, except in those provinces in which the people had been carefully numbered a few years before. The following may be accepted as the general result, assuming that the figures given for the 153 Feudatory States in the parliamentary returns are approximately correct. Province Square Miles Population 1. Bengal 251,768 67,000,000 2. Madras 140,726 31,312,150 3. North-West Prov. 82,565 30,778,000 4. Punjab. 102,001 17,596,752 5. Bombay and Sindhe 131,298 14,000,000 6. Oudh 23,042 11,220,232 7. Central Provinces 111,121 9,250,000 8. British Burmah 93,879 2,500,000 Ajmeer 1,122 333,000 Coorg 2,400 176,000 Paying Revenue to the Viceroy . 939,922 184,166,134 Mysore Berar. 28,449 16,960 5,000,000 2,250,000 The 153 Feudatories 596,790 48,000,000 Paying Revenue to Chiefs. 642,199 55,250,000 Grand Total. 1,582,121 239,416,134 0 98 LETTER IX. MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. troops keep the peace of two hundred and forty millions tax- paying Asiatics. These are the figures; and but a fraction of "Contrasted with the other Empires of great territorial extent and population, if we except China, India still maintains its pre-eminence in both combined. India China without Toorkistan Russia with Toorkistan Netherlands India Turkey • United States Mexico Brazil. Square Miles 1,582,121 Population 240,000,000 1,297,999 300,000,000 7,731,881 95,000,000 445,411 18,000,000 1,812,048 35,000,000 1,486,917 31,445,089 1,030,442 8,000,000 7,677,800 3,100,000 648,000 4,000,000 Persia “British India, feudatory and non-feudatory, is slightly less in area alone than the extent of all Europe without Russia, which is 1,686,117 square miles; but the popu- lation of Europe is only 189,475,968. The whole peninsula of India and a large portion of Burma is governed by Great Britain, with the exception of the smaller territories held by Portugal and France. By the census of 1868 the whole population of the French possessions was 229,000 souls, and their superficial extent is 200 square miles. Name French-Chandernagore, on the Hoogly Karical, Coromandel Coast Pondicherry do. do. Yanaon, on Sea Coast Mahé, Malabar Area 940 Population 32,670 13,515 1,448 171,217 Eight small plots in various provinces Portuguese-Goa, Western Coast. Damaun Concani do. · "" Diu, South Coast of Kattywar • 1,066 369,778 "The languages and dialects of India are even more varied than the races. Apart from the learned languages, Sanscrit, Palee, and Arabic, which underlie all the tongues of Southern Asia, the following are the vernaculars in which the schools are taught, and a literature is being improved or created. Burmese Arakenese Nepaulese or Newarree Kole (two dialects). Kashmeeree Gonde (several dialects). Hindee, Hindostanee. Malayan Bengalee Karen (two dialects) Ooriya Assamese Persian Tibetan. Sonthalee Punjabee Pushtoo. Beloochee Sindhee Arabic Sindhee. Goojeratee Mahratee Malayalum Armenian Tamil Portuguese Canarese. Teloogoo. Hebrew. "The Census.-The work of enumeration was done in the months of January and LETTER IX. 99 CENSUS. the people know anything about their governors, beyond that they are Europeans. They say that the Feringhees are the February, 1872, but to a great extent on the night of the 25th January. Perfect simultaneousness was impossible in such a country and over so vast an area, yet the tests show the accuracy of the results, for all administrative purposes. Take the floating population who live on the waters of the great delta and its thousand rivers and creeks. No fewer than 60,000 boats containing 300,000 souls were counted, not only at every ghaut, but by giving a red ticket to those afloat and by patrolling the streams. Night passengers on the Great Indian Railway were reckoned on arrival. In jungly places, where wild beasts were feared, the people were counted during the day. The convicts of Alipore Jail and elsewhere printed upwards of six and a half millions of census forms and sunnuds in Bengalee, Kaithee, Persian, Nagree, English, English and Bengalee, Ooriya, and other dialects; and we form some idea of what it is to number the sixty-seven millions of Bengal. In Bengal, including print- ing, the total cost of reckoning sixty-seven millions of human beings, scattered over an area of land and water amounting to 250,000 square miles, was only 21,6007. "Under careful supervision the people numbered themselves. The happy idea was hit on of issuing honorary letters of appointment to the most intelligent and respect- able inhabitants, after they had satisfied the authorities of their abilities for the task. So coveted was the honorary office of enumerator that many who were rejected as unfit, or had been passed over as not required, petitioned Government to remove the insult. These sunnuds will in many cases be handed down as heirlooms. Under a brief Penal Act the enumerators counted the country, while in towns the Municipal Commissioners and their friends divided the wards among them. In Hoogly the district officer would not send out his special head constable to select enumerators until the first one had been at work for some weeks in the interior without any complaint from the people. When the other eleven went forth in a Bengal September their work was most laborious, wading in the mud from village to village, under the heat of the sun or in the drenching rain. One of them died after completing his work, and five others have been invalided. The enumerators in Burdwan were heads of villages and landholders' agents; in Bancoorah village punchayets, besides these, in the wilder tracts of Midnopore, the police. In the twenty-four Pergunnahs around Calcutta and its suburbs, not fewer than 1,173 of the 4,732 enumerators were sub- stantial ryots; 587 were small, and 317 large landholders; 117 were students and teachers; and many were priests, pleaders, and doctors. In hilly districts each chief took the census of his own clan or dependents. In Behar the still existing putwarries were employed. In Sonthalistan the village head men knotted strings of four colours, black for male adults, red for female adults, white for boys, and yellow for girls. In some villages three people were told off to keep the reckoning, which was done by so many seeds or small pieces of gravel, one person keeping count of the men, another of the women, and a third of the children. Here it was pleasing to see the pride of the simple village elders in their work. In one instance, in which one male adult had slept away from home and had not been entered in any return, the enumerator walked nine miles to the station to report the missing man. In Orissa the Commissioner preached the census from village to village for months before, so that even the rude hill chiefs were prepared for it. In Darjeeling the Garden Moonshees filled up the returns, the planters supervising them. In Assam the wild frontier tribes alone were omitted. Except in Behar and 7 100 LETTER IX. MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. Sahibs. Of Queen Victoria, the Empress of India, with the exception of the educated few, who are in authority, her subjects here have no idea of her existence; and if you strove to enlighten them by explanation they would probably answer in the words of Mrs. Prig, "I don't believe there never was sich a person.” Government House is a combination of corridors and flights of steps, decorated with a wilderness of Venetian blinds. It stands in a lawn, having wide walks, a few trees, a heavy railing, and no shade, and fronts the Maidan, an esplanade with the Eden gardens in front, containing a temple from Burmah, flanked by four very unmistakable lingams, and a statue of Sir William Peel. In a line with Government House, and running down to the river, is a half-finished vast pile of building, intended for Law Courts, already referred to. On the left, a line of "godowns or merchants' warehouses extends to the English quarter, "Chow- ringhee," where a good deal of formal visiting and dining en grande tenue is done. This runs parallel to the river for about two miles, and consists of rows of large detached, gloomy mansions, the whitewash, if not black, turning to it from grey, and the win- dows covered with heavy matting to keep out the heat of the sun. The river, with its line of vessels, is the only pleasing sight. The ghauts where the bodies of Hindoos are burnt, are at some dis- tance down, and on the opposite side.* Between the river and the the non-regulation districts, the people thus counted themselves, their self-respect and honour having been wisely appealed to. "The total number of human beings counted in the districts which constitute the province of Bengal, in the months of January and February, 1872, was 66,856,859. The population of Mohammedans is nearly one third of the whole population, and there are perhaps, therefore, more of them in the province of Bengal than in any other country, the dominions of the Grand Turk not excepted.” * In 1867 the number of Hindoo bodies burnt on the river side was upwards of 10,000. There are two great ghauts, in which the cremation is confined: Nimtollah for the rich, and Casey Mitter's for the poor. I visited the former about sunrise. Ten years ago it was an enclosed space open to the river, the walls of the racket court- like-structure topped by vultures, adjutants, and other obscene birds, while the pariah dog and the jackal prowled around. The smell was intolerable from the half- charred remains of poor Hindoos, which were being lazily mumbled by the dogs and pecked by the birds. The river was polluted by the refuse. One thought of the well-known lines in the "Siege of Corinth ;" but even Byron never imagined any- thing so repulsive as the sight. Now, thanks to Sir John Lawrence and the Calcutta LETTER IX. 101 MAIDAN. fort is a long circular road, up and down which the official, fashionable, and mercantile world of Calcutta drives for hours with monotonous regularity from eve to night. The band plays in the gardens when the languid fair descend from their carriages and promenade listening to the music. One place is called "Scandal Corner," a name not unusually attached to the favourite point of rendezvous in Indian cities. municipality, all is changed. approached by four entrances. The court is walled in on the fourth side, and One half the enclosure is devoted to lines of rails for the proposed incremators. The bier was to be erected on the top of a flue communi- cating with a tall chimney. After the priestly ceremonies were over it was to be covered by an iron box running on wheels, and the draught of the chimney, it was expected, would carry off the result. But the boxes were not air tight, and the effect was horrible. I see nothing for it but the health officer's proposal to dispose of all pauper and hospital bodies not claimed, by running them into a cold furnace on trucks, lighting the furnace, and allowing the chimney to do the rest. But even as now managed I fail to trace anything offensive. Not a foul bird was there. I stepped over and between the calcined remains of twelve bodies, the pyres of which had been burning during the night. The embers of wood were flickering, and only the most curious eye could discover the traces even of calcined bones. There was nothing, in truth, to show that these were other than ordinary fires. I wish we could assert half of this of one of the millions of burning ghauts which nightly light up the banks of the Hooghly and the Ganges. The whole cost of burning a body at this ghaut of the rich is 6s. 103d. To step from it to one of our English burial grounds, or, still worse, the Chinese and Mussulman graveyards, is to see the immense superiority of cremation in a tropical climate. An Indian churchyard is like an Indian Christmas-destitute of all the beauty and the joy which make them so sacred in England. —Correspondent of the Times, November, 1869. W NOSE RINGS. LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELHI. DELHI, 14th March, 1870. FROM Calcutta, crossing the Hooghly by steamer to Howrah, the East Indian Railway runs to Benares (541 miles, 22 hours), thence to Allahabad (89 miles, 4 hours), to Agra (276 miles, 11 hours), and from Agra here (113 miles, 6 hours). The distance direct from Calcutta is 1019 miles. At the Howrah station the bearer had arranged a sleeping compartment with pillows, rezais (padded counterpanes), books, papers, lamps, ice, and other luxuries that oriental experience makes necessities. Starting at 7:45 P.M., after calling at stations too numerous to mention, the train stops for chota hazri at 7 A.M. The line follows the course of the Ganges, running north about 150 miles, then almost due west to Benares, across an imperceptibly rising plain covered with fields of wheat, poppies, sugar-cane, indigo, mustard, the castor-oil plant, dhal, and gram, native grains good both for men and cattle, and, near the stations, with potatoes (called aloes). As far as the eye can see, bullocks, men, women, and children under the broiling sun,* are drawing from wells, in bags of hide, the water required to irrigate the soil. Birds of brilliant plumage brighten the telegraph wires. Storks stalk gravely about like tall, stout elderly gentlemen thin legged and * A magistrate, a sincere friend to the natives, hearing that one of his farm ser- vants had lost his wife, who used to work with the rest of her family on his grounds, went to express his sympathy. "Ah, yes," said the afflicted widower, "she is a sad loss to me. She could do as much work as a bullock." LETTER X. 103 SACRED APES. dressed for evening parties, and there are vultures, hawks, parrots, and crows innumerable. 'Evening comes on: arising from the stream, Homeward the tall flamingo wings his flight ; And where he sails athwart the setting beam, His scarlet plumage glows with deeper light. The watchman, at the wish'd approach of night, Gladly forsakes the field, where he all day, To scare the winged plunderers from their prey With shout and sling, on yonder clay-built height, Hath borne the sultry ray. Hark! at the Golden Palaces, The Brahmin strikes the hour, For leagues and leagues around, the brazen sound Rolls through the stillness of departing day, Like thunder far away." Hawks are used as carrier pigeons in Europe. Taken from the place to which they are to return, their eyelids are closed with gum, which is removed when they are started back. The train stops for breakfast at Dinapore, and for dinner at Mogul Serai, nearly twenty-four hours from Howrah. There leaving it, you take the branch to Benares, some half-hour distant. In the adjoining carriage was an old Rajah, whose arrival was waited by a retinue of servants bearing lighted torches, dressed in scarlet, and the paraphernalia of rank, who formed a circle round the open door; they remained twenty minutes, the time prescribed by etiquette for his Highness to think seriously on the next impor- tant step in his mortal career-that of rising from his seat and leaving his carriage. Not waiting to witness the ceremony, you walk across the bridge of boats over the Ganges and drive to a hotel in the cantonments three miles from the town. Next morning, guided by a native who spoke English, the temple of the Sacred Apes was visited. The way lies along the usual dusty roads, flanked by dusty trees, thronged by the half- naked but wholly dusty and grimy population of a native city, here and there relieved by the wall of a garden belonging to some wealthy baboo. Approaching the building by one of these gardens, stray batches of baboons that had seceded from the temple,—non- 104 LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELH1. conformists,—were seen on the adjoining walls or ensconced in some umbrageous tree. They prepare you for the sight within, where hundreds of monkeys, disporting, tumbling, and rushing round the edges of the tank and walls of the temple, screaın, chatter, and grimace with what might be considered unseemly glee by those who have not seen the Hindoos dancing and shrieking round their idols. The temple, full of monkeys, contains a goggle-eyed god. Flowers, ghee, rice, and small coins cover the idol; and numerous pilgrims, seated with monkeys alongside them, hold plates of similar offerings to be presented at the close of their prayers. There are about 2000 monkeys all of one species, and considering their number and that they have free scope to act as they please, most respectable members of the fraternity. None approach you. They are well cared for by the devout of Benares. When leaving, after tipping the importunate high priest, a man entered with a bag full of cakes sent by some old woman-male or female-to propitiate the sanctified apes, and they seemed to appreciate the attention. At Benares, correctly Banaras, Buddha or Sakya Muni first began "to turn the wheel of the law," and to promulgate the doctrines which have spread over a great part of the Asiatic continent and Eastern Archipelago. "To turn the wheel of the law" is a phrase that has given rise to volumes of criticism. The ultimate object of the practice of Buddhism is to arrive at the beatified state, called Nirvana, and Buddha delivered long lectures to his disciples on this subject, urging them principally to avoid extremes,— extremes dangerous. On the one part, whosoever, he says, seeks for that happiness which consists in the pursuit of pleasure fails in nobility of soul and falls into one extreme;-on the other, whoever applies himself to severe exclusion, soul-tormenting doubts, and self- martyrdom, falls into the other extreme. For your part, he adds, addressing a group of Bhixies (apostles), fall into neither of these extremes, remembering that the middle way is the happy medium which produces knowledge, peace, perfect Buddhism, Nirvana. And so on ad infinitum. Tom Coryat refers to Benares in his amusing letters: "About 400,000 people go to the famous river are LETTER X. 105 BENARES. on purpose to bathe and shave themselves in the river and to sacrifice a world of gold, partly in stamped money and partly in massive great lumpes and wedges, throwing it into the River as a sacrifice, and doing other strange ceremonies most worthy the observation. Such a notable spectacle it is, that no part of all Asia the like is to be seene. This show doe they make once every yeare, comming thither from places almost a thousand miles off, and honour their River as their God. Superstition and Impietie most abominable in the highest degree of these brutish Ethnicks." The bank of the river, bere about eighty feet high, ascended by flights of steps, is covered by a line of castles and palaces, among which the old observatory is conspicuous. On its flat roof charts of the heavens are engraved, and circles and pillars of masonry remain that formed parts of a system for taking the altitudes and observing the movements of the celestial bodies. The river, crowded with votaries and pilgrims from all parts of India, was bright with innumerable white and yellow flowers which floated on the surface, offerings to its sacred waters. Worshippers of all ages and castes bathing or kneeling on the bank, covered their heads with clay, or standing in the water with arms extended, apostrophised the burning sun. Here a withered dame held her hands upwards in prayer, while a stout old Brahmin, paddling in the water, consoled himself with copious draughts of it. Boys, crowned with yellow flowers, dived and swam; while, on the edge, priests bowed and crouched with genuflexions over a corpse, only to be recognised by feet protruding from beneath the faggots already lighted for its incremation. As the flames arose the priest fed them with oil, and then squatted down to windward, while the sole mourner, a few steps above, watched the process in the same attitude, to satisfy himself by ocular observation that the quantity of fuel paid for had been consumed. The skull was previously broken to prevent explosion. "They say if they should be buried it were a great sinne, for of their bodies there would come many Wormes and other Vermine, and when their bodies were consumed those wormes would lack P 106 LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELHI. : sustenance which were a sinne, therefore they will be burned." Close to this group a wretched being lay, brought there to die. "When death," said the moonshee, "has completed its operation, he will be cast into the river. He has no money to pay for a funeral. This, the most sacred part of the river, we believe is only eighty thousand steps from Heaven." Residences of rajahs and princes line the left bank of the stream. One of them, which belonged to Nana Sahib, has been transferred by the British Government to Gwalior of that ilk. The buildings are large, sometimes handsome, but the general effect is mono- tonous, though relieved by the minarets of the mosque of Aurungzebe. The narrow streets of Benares are thronged with pilgrims of all ages. A youth passes holding his arm over his head, in which position it is to be kept through life to fulfil some foolish penance. Staff in hand, with his face besmeared with clay, follows an old man, a coil round his neck, seemingly of rope, but his own hair, which he vowed in youth should "never know the barber's shear." The street is blocked by a devout crowd before the image of his Satanic Majesty, who may easily be less black than he is here depicted. He is a favourite object of propitiatory worship. According to the moonshee, Brahma, the centre of the Trimurti, the author and creator of man, has been deposed by the Hindoo priesthood; and the other two mem- bers of their trinity, Vishnu, the preserver, and Siva, the destroyer, with their incarnations or metamorphoses, are alone worshipped. In your letter of the 2nd February you say, referring to the fact that the Hindoo religion is unchanged since the time of Alexander the Great, that "the dogmas which the Church of Rome is con- tinually forcing on the belief of its followers, seem to draw it nearer and nearer to the heathen mythology," and thus to the deities of the Hindoos.* The metamorphoses of Jupiter into a * And you added in a later letter: "In their different religions, taking the Hindoo as the type of the East, and papistry as that of the West, the latter seems to me to be at least as extravagant in its superstition and idolatry as can be alleged against the former. Amongst the religious vows you mention of the Hindus, there • LETTER X. 107 SIVA. bull, a swan, or a shower of gold, and the stories founded thereon, the favourite studies even in these days of poets, sculptors, and painters, have their parallel in the adventures of Brahma, Vishnu; and their numerous transformations. The golden temple at Be- nares is sacred to Siva, personified by the linga placed in the centre of a round bath. A crowd pressed in worship around the emblem, so dense and eager that the priests had recourse to blows to force a passage before the stone, glistening in ghee and covered with flowers, which they ever and anon dashed with water to clear for other offerings, could be seen. The majority of the votaries were women. In another temple were several bulls, decidedly unclean, but surrounded by worshippers. Wandering about the streets, resting now and then to look at the rich brocades and stuffs manufactured here, which dealers. spread in gorgeous array, cloth of gold, robes of golden tissue, gold- embroidered shawls, caps, and articles of imperial splendour, well to look at, but which few desire to possess, some hours were passed, then we accompanied the moonshee to his house, or to the rooms opposite, where he received his male visitors. His house proper was closed, chained, padlocked, for it contained—his wife. He offered beer and brandy-and-water, but refused to partake of any; “for,” said he, "if my neighbours saw me drink it I should lose my caste. I take it alone, at night." The Rajah of Benares was seated in his impluvium, dressed in white, spoke English, and said he should like to visit England, but that to do so would break his caste; showed his garden, and offered a ride on his elephant, which was gratefully accepted, for, from the elevated situation of its howdah, we were enabled not only to see the town, the streets of which are narrow and its houses low, but also to inspect the is nothing more extravagant than the story of Simeon Stylites, or some of the vows of Knights and Pilgrims of the dark ages and in later times; and even the means adopted by the successor of Mohammed Toogluck to ensure a favorable reception of that Monarch in Heaven, will surely compare favorably with the papal Doctrine of masses for the souls of the dead, which are made a source of large revenue to the church, and which, while it ensures salvation to all who are rich enough to buy the requisite number of masses, reverses the beautiful simplicity of the doctrine of real Christianity, that shews wealth to be less productive of true religion than poverty.” 108 LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELHI, i : internal economy of many native establishments, chiefly consisting of draggle-tail women and children. Cashmere shawls, heavily fringed, decorated the elephant's head, and his howdah was of crimson and gold. At one place a stone-covered sewer crossed the road. The elephant stopped, and, concluding that it would not bear his weight, refused to pass spite of the driver's guiding prong, which he thrust into the animal's head. Crossing the bridge you stop to look back at the sacred river. The stately edifices on its banks were blended by the haze of evening, the minarets of the mosque of Aurungzebe alone pointed to Heaven. Arriving at Allahabad, you drive to the cantonments hard by. In the "cantonments" are the residences of Europeans. It is their town, as distinguished from the native bazaar; and a description of the abode of Allah, answers for all Indian cities. In none is there any amalgamation between the European rulers and the native inhabitants; the former invariably dwell at a distance from the great bazaar. Wide drives, with bungalows inclosed in their own gardens on either side; stores, shops, banks, and mercantile establishments; roads planted with trees and stretching for miles, according to the extent of the population; such is the quarter inhabited by the British. There, are the hotels, parks, promenades, statues, barracks, band-stand, and parade- ground; there, the post-office, and thither come all letters directed to Allahabad. But the geographical Allahabad and native bazaar built and named by Akbar the Great, is three miles distant, with its scantily-clothed inhabitants, market, mosques, and Hindoo temples. It has nothing in common with our Allahabad; and when you have seen one or two Indian cities has nothing of interest in itself. Low-built houses, generally of mud, innumerable hovels, wretched stores, and a wide market, where you may see an elephant securely chained fore and aft feeding under a banyan tree, or a couple of rhinoceroses in the same posture: such is the native town. Except the ever-recurring policeman, there is nothing to show that it belongs to a foreign power, and, as a rule, it has nothing of what you were wont to imagine as of an oriental character. Dusty, hot, redolent of pungent and disagreeable LETTER X. 109 ALLAHABAD. odours, swarming with flies and insectiferous life, a drive through it is quite sufficient to satisfy your curiosity for sight-seeing. Allahabad, capital of the north-western provinces, is situated at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna.* The latter, here more than half a mile wide, is crossed by a railway bridge 3200 feet long. The meeting of the waters can be seen from the battle- ments of the fort built by Akbar, whose former hall now contains 80,000 stand of arms. A journey of twelve hours, from one A.M. to one P.M., brings you to Agra station, whence you drive to the hotel past the fort, built, like that of Allahabad, by Akbar on the bank of the Jumna. Akbar, who founded Agra, called by him Akbarabad, built the now deserted city of Fathpur Sikri, and erected many celebrated monuments, including the tomb which contains his ashes, and which he named Secander, after Alexander the Great. The renowned monarch of the Mogul dynasty inherited the empire of India from his father, Houmayon, near whose tomb without the walls of Delhi, Hodson shot the sons of the last of his line. The fort, a mile and a half in circuit, with walls of red sand- stone seventy feet high, is surrounded by a moat. Faced with stone, it has the appearance of a great stronghold, and in its proportions realises ideas of those fortresses of romance which we read of in youth, and subsequently find exist nowhere but in imagination. Within there is room for an army, and along the river side rise Akbar's palace, all marble and gold, and the Pearl Mosque, finest existing structures of their kind. Akbar's hall, till lately used as an armoury or arsenal, is hung with banners commemorating the British conquests in India, Burmah, and China; but its contents are being removed to Allahabad for economical," the best of all reasons in these days. It still con- tains the marble throne, inlaid with flowers composed of many * In the Ain i Akbari it is said that suicide is sometimes meritorious, and there are five modes of performing it preferable to others: 1. Starving; 2. Being covered with dry cow-dung and consumed by fire; 3. Being buried in snow; 4. Going into ´the sea at the mouth of the Ganges, there praying and confessing sins until the alli- gators devour the penitent; and 5. Cutting one's throat at Allahabad, at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna. 110 LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELHI. brilliant stones, and illuminated in gold and colours, at the foot of which Akbar pronounced his judgments. In form resembling a pulpit, the king's entrance being from the back, it is in good preservation, or has been skilfully restored. Two small marble chairs flank a French couch, gilt and covered with satin, which Lord Ellenborough used when he held his celebrated durbar on the occasion of transporting to Agra the gates of Somnauth; or, the gate, for one, which still stands in the hall, was alone brought from Ghuznee. A large door, made of a wood resembling sandal, curiously carved, it is now much damaged and scratched. The palace, a wonder of marble and mosaic,-corridors, cham- bers, halls, pavilions, still glitters with remains of painted flowers, decorations, inlaid work, and carving. The columns, monoliths of purest marble enriched by inlaid ornaments, are carved into elaborate but always graceful forms. Much of the building is in good preservation, including the bath-rooms-hot and cold ad- joining of the ladies of the Zenana, which are covered with small octagonal mirrors partially gilded, and over some of these, illumi- nated from within, the water for the baths fell. A description of this building is given by Akbar's son and successor, Jehangir, and concludes as follows:-"The lattice work and platform are both of solid gold, and so contrived as to be easily taken to pieces. I shall only add that the quantity of three thousand maunds of gold was expended in the fabrication of this article of the imperial appointments." To which the translator appends the following note:-"At twenty-eight pounds to the maund only, this would make the trifling quantity of forty-two tons of gold!" The great square of the palace is occupied by a garden, embellished with fountains and waterfalls. In the centre on the marble pavement are marked the squares of a pachisi board, an oriental game said to be like backgammon, but in which the pieces were living men, women, and children distinguished by dresses of various colours. On the centre slab, in days remote, sat the great Akbar and watched the game. Leaving the fort, which it would be tedious to describe, the next wonder near Agra belonging to the age of Akbar is his LETTER X. 111 AGRA, tomb, situate six miles from the city, standing in a garden, with ancient trees, and approached by a gateway of red stone and marble. The entrance was ornamented by lofty minars of marble which have been demolished by barbaric cannon. Its enclosure is described by Jehangir :-" Before entering Agra I visited the tomb of my father at Secundra, over which the buildings I had ordered had been completed. It was surrounded by a colonnade affording standing for eight thousand elephants, the whole built on arches and divided into chambers. The principal gate is thirty cubits wide, by as many in height, with a tower erected on four lofty arches terminating in a circular dome, the whole one hundred and twenty cubits high, divided into six stories, and decorated and inlaid with gold and lapis-lazuli from roof to basement. This portico has at each of the four corners a minaret of hewn stone three stories in height. In the centre of the garden is the build- ing, in which reposes all that was earthly of my royal father. (C Completed from first to last its cost was one hundred and eighty lacs of rupees, 1,800,000%.” Terraces of stone lead to the marble platform on which the mausoleum stands, three hundred and twenty feet square, built in arched terraces or open corridors, five in number, which rise to the height of a hundred feet one over the other in pyramidal form, all of red sandstone, except the fifth or topmost story of whitest marble, which consists of a court enclosed by screens of elaborate fretwork. In the centre of the open roof, a tomb, carved with devices and Arabic characters, of the ninety-nine names of the Almighty from the Koran, represents the answer or show tomb. On the ground-floor and in front of the principal entrance, a slightly descending passage leads to the grave in the centre of the building, which contains the dust of Akbar, son of Houmayon, son of Baber, who was sixth in descent from Timur, founder of the dynasty of the Great Moguls. At a short distance from the Secunderbagh is the tomb of the Begum Maria, a Portuguese lady, one of Akbar's wives. Originally a handsome edifice, it is now occupied by a German missionary society's offices, and has lost somewhat of interest thereby. Its 112 LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELHI. tomb and the answer tomb preserve the memory of a lady who exerted a kindly influence towards those of her own faith during the reign of Akbar. His "pietie" is related by Tom Coryat :- Akbar Shah, a verie fortunate Prince and pious to his Mother, his pietie appearing in this particular, that when his Mother was carried once in a Palankeen betwixt Lahor and Agra, he travelling with her, tooke the Palankeen upon his own shoulders, command- ing his greatest nobles to do the like, and so carried her over the River from one side to the other, and never denyed her anything, but this, that shee demanded of him that our Bible might be hanged about an Asse's neck and beaten about the town of Agra, for that the Portingals having taken a ship of theirs at sea in which was found the Alcoran amongst the Moores tyed it about the neck of a Dogge, and beat the same dog about the Town of Ormuz; but hee denyed her request, saying, That if it were ill in the Portingals to doe so to the Alcoran, it became not a King to requite ill with ill, for that the contempt of any Religion was the contempt of God, and he would not be revenged upon an innocent Booke." From Agra to Fathpur Sikri is a distance of twenty-six miles. A drive of four hours along an excellent though dusty road brings you to its outer wall, which is from a distance visible. These ruins occupy the sides and summit of a range of hills containing quarries of red sandstone, the sole material used in the construction of the City of the Kings. The wall, six miles in circumference, decayed in many parts, stands in others perfect, with all its battlements. Entering through a massive gate- way, surprise is excited by the immensity of ruins, mountains of stone, fallen cupolas, domed roofs, broken arches, and defaced sculpture; next by finding yourself in the palace of the Rajah Beerbul, which uninjured, or where injured repaired, is used as a traveller's bungalow. Built on the edge of the hill, here preci- pitous, from the deep alcoves of its windows wide views are ob- tained of the surrounding plain, chequered with clumps of banyan and tamarind trees, fields of wheat and other grain. Through a fieldglass the peerless cupola of the Taj Mahal was visible LETTER X. 113 FATHPUR SIKRI glistening on the horizon's verge. Seated under the wide veran- dah of this palace, cooled by a pleasant breeze, the Khansanagh provides burra hazri; and procures a guide to explore the adjoining edifices. Opposite the compound on the first story was THE TRAVELLER'S BUNGALOW AND FORMER PALACE OF THE RAJAH BEERBUL. Akbar's room, with windows around, from which he saw, on one side the Rajah's palace, now the dawk bungalow, on the other a paved square having a pachisi board in its centre, and surrounded by buildings, of which the most important is an arcade five stories high used by his body-guard, thus always visible; the school- room of his son Selim (Jehangir), the palace of the lady of Con- stantinople, and that of "Hide and Seek," with passages, door- ways, and corridors arranged to excite an irresistible desire for the game even in travellers who have passed the grand climacteric. A hall adjoins, externally two stories, internally one, having in its centre a single column about half the height of the chamber, surmounted by a broad capital, from which narrow pathways of stone diverge to the corners. Seated on the central pillar the Q 114 LETTER X, CALCUTTA TO DELHI. Emperor discussed with his ministers, each in a corner, religious, political, or state affairs. Religious disquisitions were his favourite recreation. Sur- rounded by learned professors, Muhammedans, Parsis, Jews, Christians, and Hindoos, though by birth a follower of the Prophet, he gave a marked preference to the principles of Zoroaster. "He called from Persia a follower of Zardusht named Ardeshir, to whom he sent money; he delivered the sacred fire with care to the wise Shaikh Abul Fazl, and established that it should be preserved in the interior apartment by night and day, perpetual henceforth, according to the rule of the Mobeds, and to the manner which was always practised in the fire-temples of the Kings of Ajem He invited likewise the fire-worshippers from Kirman to his presence, and questioned them about the subtilties of Zardusht's religion; and he wrote letters to Azer Kaivan, who was a chief of the Yezdanians, and invited him to India. He begged to be excused from coming, but sent a book of his own composition in praise of the self-existing being, of reason, the soul, the heavens, the stars, and the elements, as well as a word of advice to the King, contained in fourteen sections, every first line of each was in Persian, when read invertedly it was Arabic, when turned about Turkish, and when this was read in reversed order it became Hindi." * He wrote also several letters to Goa upon the subject of the Christian faith, and missions were sent in return, not only to explain, but to convert him to a belief in its Divine mysteries. † * The Dabistan, or School of Manners. † A letter from the King of Kings to the ruler of the Franks, omitting the exor- dium :- "Your Majesty knows that the divines of all nations, in their opinion con- cerning the world of appearance and the intellectual world, agree that the former ought to be of no consideration in respect to the latter; yet the wise men of the times, and the great ones of all nations, toil much in perfecting themselves as to this perishing and showy state, and consume the best of their lives and the choicest of their time in procuring apparent delights, being swallowed up in fleeting pleasures and transitory joys. The most high God thro' His eternal favour, notwithstanding so many obstacles and such a world of business and employment, has disposed my heart so as always to seek Him, and tho' He has subjected the dominions of so many LETTER X. 115 AKBAR. The Missionaries were invariably received with consideration, and well-entertained, while their crucifixes and images of the Virgin excited outwardly the liveliest feelings of surprise and admira- tion in the sceptic monarch, although the arguments of the Jesuit fathers, if they ever effected a transitory, made no lasting im- pression on his mind. But he was always desirous to have them near him, and to edify himself by listening to their controversies with the learned mollahs. When these discussions culminated in arguments which seemed quite conclusive to the Missionaries, they besought Akbar to embrace Christianity, and to promulgate that religion throughout his empire, but he always requested time for consideration, and put off his final decision. Whether he was balancing in his mind the comparative merits of the creeds, or gave no thought to the subject excepting in so far as that the exercise of spiritual power might be made subservient to practical, governing ends, is a doubtful question. Professor Max Müller describes the Emperor as the first Student "who ventured on a comparative study of the religions of the world:"* studies which ended in his discarding all religions for a creation of his own, or of which he proclaimed himself the centre and guiding spirit, and to which, through the influences which surrounded his position, and miracles and prophecies attributed to him, he attracted the out- ward profession of faith of a certain number of eminent men. The religion of Akbar, the Ilahiah, is thus referred to in the Dabistan :- powerful princes to me, which, to the best of my judgment, I endeavour to govern so as that all my subjects are contented and happy, yet praise be to God, His will and my duty to Him is the end I propose in all my actions. And as most people, being un- chainedly the bonds of fashion, give an implicit faith to that religion in which they were born, and without examining the arguments for it, remain deprived of the excellence of truth, the finding of which is the proper end of reason; therefore at times I converse with the learned of all religions, and profit by the discourses of each. As the vail of a language interposes betwixt, it would be expedient that you would oblige me with such a person as could distinctly relate the above affair. It has also reached my fortunate ears that the heavenly books, such as the Pentateuch, Psalms, and Gospels, are put into Arabic and Persic; should a translation of these or any other books which might be of general benefit be procurable in your country, let them be sent. Always keep open the doors of correspondence and embassy and peace to him who follows the Guide." * Introduction to the Science of Religion. ? 116 LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELHI. "The Emperor Akbar was ordered by Heaven to fix the sentence 'There is but one God, and Akbar is his Khalifah,' to be used. .. The Emperor further said that one thousand years had elapsed since the beginning of Muhammed's mission, and this was the extent of the duration of this religion now arrived at its term." The advent of the Portuguese is referred to by Badaoni. "Learned monks came from Europe who go by the name of Padre. They have an infallible head called Papa. He can change any religious ordinances as he may think advisable, and kings have to submit to his authority. These monks brought the Gospel, and mentioned to the Emperor their proofs for the Trinity. His Majesty firmly believed in the truth of the Christian religion, and wishing to spread the doctrines of Jesus, ordered Prince Murad (then about eight years old), to take a few lessons in Christianity by way of auspiciousness, and charged Abul-fazl to translate the Gospel. Instead of the usual Bismillah, &c., the following lines were used:- 'Ai nám i tu Jesus o Kiristo.' ('O, thou whose names are Jesus and Christ') which means- O, thou whose name is gracious and blessed. Shaik Faizi added another half, in order to complete the verse- 'Subhánaka lá siwáka Yá hú.' (We praise Thee, there is no one besides Thee, O God!') These accursed monks applied the description of Satan and of his qualities to Muhammed, the best of all prophets-—God's blessings rest on him and his whole house-a thing which even devils would not do.” * Such is a part of Badaoni's account of Akbar's wavering faith, and thus the hopes of the Jesuit priests were kept alive by promises never to be fulfilled.† "At last he sent to inform them that an opportunity had now offered of fully estab- lishing the superior claims of the Catholic faith; that a great * Professor Blockmann's Ain i Akbari. ✈ “Akbar built these Jesuits a church at Agra, and allowed the principal of them seven rupeas and the others three rupeas a day. They have license to turn as many to christianitie as they can, and have already converted manye, but alas, it is for money's sake, for the Jesuits give them three pence a daye.”—Coryate's Crudities, LETTER X. 117 MISSIONARIES. Mahommedan doctor was ready to leap into a furnace with the Alcoran in his hand, and that, considering the firm confidence they felt in their own system, they would, of course, have no objection to accompany him with a Bible, when the comparative merit of the two religions would be established in a manner admitting of no dispute. The Missionaries paused at this proposi- tion. They represented that this could by no means be considered a regular mode of deciding a religious controversy; that they had already held long arguments with the Mollahs, and were ready to maintain one still more formal, holding out some expectation if that should fail of having recourse to the fiery trial propounded. The debate was accordingly held, when the arguments of the Missionaries, though they produced no conviction in the opposite party, appeared to themselves so triumphant as fully to acquit them from such a perilous test. The King, however, continued to show an anxious wish for its employment. He at length besought that they would give a formal promise, upon the faith of which he would cause the Mollah to leap in first, in order to see how he would extricate himself, hinting that he would not at all regret to see him fall a sacrifice to his presumption. The fathers, however, positively declined committing themselves in any shape upon such a proceeding. (C From this era the Missionaries do not seem to have felt them- selves much at ease in the Mogul court. The Emperor having satisfied his curiosity, and being disappointed of the proposed exhi- bition, sent for them more rarely, and they were often a month without seeing him at all. Rebellions in Cabul and Bengal, which they hoped were judgments calculated to bring him to a sense of his duty, distracted his attention and made him wholly forget them. Giving up therefore all hopes of success, they solicited and obtained permission to return to Goa.” * From this digression we revert to the living world and to Akbar's palace in his long deserted city. The fourth side of Murray's Discoveries in Asia. 118 LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELHI. C the quadrangle is a wall of arcades, with a portico in its centre leading to a square of equal dimensions, corridors, and a throne, where the great administrator was wont to receive, in durbar assembled, the chiefs and sages of his wide dominions. Overtopping these and other palaces is the gateway that crowns the hill, a hundred and twenty feet high, opening into a large courtyard of marble. One side is occupied by a mosque having three marble domes, another by the tomb of the Sheik Selim Chisti, once "a very holy man," which is surrounded by a corridor of marble screens cut in fretwork of varied designs; the framework is inlaid with cornelian, the floor is of jasper; finally it is said to have cost thirty-seven lacs of rupees, 370,000l. But if the memoirs of Akbar by his son Jehangir are to be relied on, so trifling an amount was as nothing in the imperial treasury. "To furnish some estimate of the prodigious amount to which his treasures had accumulated, I should state that having one day given orders that an account of the gold alone in the imperial de- positories should be taken, four hundred pairs of scales were kept at work day and night during a period of five months in weighing. the coin and bullion at Agra. At the end of that period my father sent to inquire how many maunds of gold had been brought to account. The reply was that although for the five months a thousand men with four hundred pairs of scales had been night and day unceasingly employed in weighing the contents of one only of the treasuries, they had not yet completed that part of the work. On which my father desired that matters might be left as they stood." More might be written of the deserted, once imperial city of Fathpur Sikri, now curious principally as a monument of the tastes of Akbar. A description of its founder has been left by his “magnificent son.” "I shall here consign to perpetual remembrance that in person my father was tall in stature, of a ruddy nut-brown complexion, his eyes and eyebrows dark, the latter running across into each other. Handsome in his exterior, he had the strength of a lion, which was indicated by the extraordinary breadth of his chest and LETTER X. 119 TAJ-MAHAL. the length of his arms. A Mole which he had on his nose was declared by those skilled in physiognomy to prognosticate a career of good fortune, neither could he be considered unfortunate, who sounded the great drum of sovereign power for a period of sixty- five years without a rival.” But let us return to Agra and revisit the Taj. This tomb was erected by the Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of Mumtáz- mahal Táj Bíbí, the lady of the Taj, named also Nur Jahan- light of the world. On her death-bed she is said to have en- treated the Emperor not to marry, that he might avoid dissensions among his children, and to build for her a tomb such as the world had not seen. He fulfilled both wishes; nevertheless, dis- sensions arose in his family. His third son, Aurungzebe, after defeating him in battle, deposed, blinded him, and kept him in prison several years, where he died. Before these misfortunes the Emperor had completed the Taj-Mahal, and placed in it the remains of his queen. He was projecting a tomb for himself to be erected on the opposite side of the river, and connected with the other by a bridge with balustrades of silver. Of these works nothing was executed but the foundations. The Taj is approached through the remains of ancient buildings shattered, destroyed, and covered with dust. Passing a dilapidated compound of sandstone corridors into a larger square, you come on the grand portico entrance, to the garden of the tomb. An arch- way of red sandstone, panelled with white marble inlaid with Persian inscriptions, leads to the dome of the portal, which is traced with marble like a spider's web. But on entering you are brought to a sudden stop, arrested, by the delightful surprise of a new sensation. Not all you have heard has prepared you for, nor has all you have seen anticipated, the charming reality. It stands on a marble platform twenty feet high, which rests on a terrace of sandstone extending the width of the garden,-four hundred yards. At the four corners of the platform, a hundred yards square, stand marble minarets, each two hundred feet high, pillars of ivory. The building, a square, with the corners cut off, thus made oc- tagonal, is surmounted by an oriental dome having four smaller 120 LETTER X. CALCUTTA TO DELHI. domes at the corners, terminating in crescent-tipped gilded spires. The material is marble inlaid with flowers and ornaments in mosaic of the Florentine style, and with texts from the Koran. Its history, the names of its architects and illuminators, and the articles used in its construction-crystal, jasper, cornelian, turquoise, agate, lapis-lazuli, coral, rock spar, loadstone, the philosopher's stone, the plum-pudding stone, onyx, chalcedony, 1 B MARBLE PANELS OF THE TAJ-MAHAL. amethysts, sapphires, and diamonds, are enumerated in the Persian character, inlaid on its walls. "The work as of a Kingly Palace Gate With Frontispiece of Diamond and Gold Imbellisht, thick with sparkling orient Gemmes The Portal shon, inimitable on Earth By Model or by shading Pencil drawn." One flower is pointed out containing thirty-six stones of different kinds. But it is superfluous to add that none of the more precious gems remain, and if they ever formed part of the decorations of Nur Jahan's answer tomb, they have been re- placed by others of less value. A marble passage leads to the vault where, under a plain sarcophagus, she rests with Shah LETTER X. 121 SHAH JAHAN. Jahan Badshah Gazee, Emperor, Lord of Worlds, Protector of the Poor, Taker by the hand of the Distressed, Most learned and Illustrious, by her side. The domed hall in which are the answer tombs, entered from the platform, is of marble, and its sides are carved in relief with lilies and roses. The tombs, covered with mosaic, are enclosed within a marble screen of open work exquisitely carved. Nur Jahan's, the smaller, is placed in the centre of the building; and as the pave- ment of marble and mosaic was arranged to suit its position, the introduction of the Emperor's sarcophagus may mar the general harmony to an artistic eye, but to a less exacting spectator it inspires a remembrance of their history, and tells a story of dis- appointed hopes. The garden-walks are paved, it abounds in cypress, orange, and other trees, and a variety of flowers, so that, irrespective of the poetical tomb, it is a delightful place to wander in. I ! R A LETTER XI. DELHI TO SIMLA. SIMLA, 25th March. SEVERAL days were passed at Delhi, seeing, unfortunately with unlearned eyes, its surrounding ruins. They fill a circumference of more than fifty miles. India is a graveyard, each step touches a ruin or a tomb, and cities have risen and perished, dynasties flourished and decayed, fabulous treasures been won and lost, and heroic battles lost and won in pre-historic as in modern times, near the stately walls of Delhi. It is, however— although the principal city of the Punjab-very badly provided with hotels. The "Prince of Wales "-closed last year-was managed by Wudgeer Singh, who, inheriting four lacs of rupees, took a fancy to hotel-keeping on liberal principles. When customers pleased the worthy Wudgeer he would to his head clerk say, "Those sahibs, are my friends; treat them well, let them pay nothing." It mattered not what extras were incurred, horses, carriages, entertainments, wines-no bill was sent in. Expostulation at this unexpected, undesired hospitality, threats not to return, unless the customary charge was made, all were idle breath to Wudgeer. He had said it-they were his friends, and bon gré, mal gré, should be his guests. Still more profuse, le added gifts of rare value on special occasions, until the state of his banker's account bid bim pause. He is still well off, but no longer acts the part of Boniface before his hospitable hall. The palace of the Great Mogul in the fort has been restored, so that, to some extent, we can form a correct idea of its original decorations. A pavilion of white marble, inlaid with mosaic, LETTER XI. 123 KOH-I-NOOR, * "" forms the hall of audience. Under a ceiling of silver filagree, now supplanted by stucco, it once contained the "Peacock throne, six feet long, four broad, standing on massive pedestals, the whole of solid gold inlaid with rubies, emeralds, and dia- monds, and surmounted by a canopy of gold, fringed with pearls, which was supported by twelve pillars emblazoned with gems. Behind were figures of two peacocks with tails expanded, inlaid with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and stones of colours to resemble their brilliant plumage, and on either side of the throne were placed umbrellas, oriental emblems of royalty, of cloth of gold, fringed with pearls, the handles, eight feet high, of solid gold studded with diamonds. Something like a throne, of which,— the description by Austin de Bordeaux remains. It formed part of the spoils carried off by Nadir Shah, whose individual share in jewels and other effects was valued at eighty- seven millions sterling. Twelve millions and a half fell to his officers and men; and the loss to the Indian Empire, exclusive of buildings, grain, and territory, was a hundred and twenty-five millions sterling, or one "arrib" of rupees. Among the jewels thus transferred to the Shah of Persia was the famous Koh-i-noor. Looking over the stock of a Parsee jeweller-these dealers carry a large assortment of gems and trinkets about them in numerous little boxes and bags; and Mr. Pestonjee said he had with him that morning jewels worth more than a lac of rupees; he particu- larly recommended, or wished to dispose of, a sapphire ring, "because it always brought its owner good luck," and of some loose diamonds for reasons equally disingenuous. On explaining that they would be unprofitable as an investment, and out of place on an old man, unacceptable even as a gift, "though per- haps one might accept the Koh-i-noor." Master," he inter- rupted, seriously; "never take the Koh-i-noor. Koh-i-noor bring bad luck. Look here, sahib Nadir Shah great king, take Koh-i-noor from Delhi, take it to Persia, lose his army, lose his throne, all go wrong till Runjeet Singh get that big bad diamond. Then good luck leave Runjeet Singh. England take all his country, take his Koh-i-noor; send it to England, comes Crimean (C 121 LETTER XI. DELHI TO SIMLA. War. They cut it down; lose no matter how many carats, bad luck all the same. Queen wear it once; Prince Albert die. England never same country since, always going down." "But if you had it you would sell it, and live on the money." No, master! No, my lord!" with an air of great earnestness, "If they give Pestonjee the Koh-i-noor, he throw it in the sea." Mais revenons: the marble terrace, and the arcades that con- tained the throne are there, and have been cleaned, restored, regilded, repainted to imitate the original mosaics, and still sculp- tured and gilt on the walls is the Persian inscription.— “If there be an elysium on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this." On one side are the king's baths, on the other his private apartments, all of marble inlaid with mosaics, and bright with gold and colours. Contiguous are the baths of the Zenana and the Pearl Mosque. The greatest mosque in the East is the Jumma Musjid of Delhi, built, as was the city, by Shah Jahan. It is a magnificent pile of red sandstone, the interior faced with white marble flanked by minars of great height. Ascending one of them, and looking on the surrounding city its flat roofs remind you of South American towns. Previous to the mutiny Europeans were rarely admitted, and only without shoes, but the restrictions were then disallowed. Passing through the Ajmere Gate, by a good road-no want of stone, as for miles in every direction the country is a mass of ruined tombs, out of which crop up castles, mosques, towers, and domes in all stages of decay, you may stop to look at the Junter Munter, an ancient observatory, "With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," thus described by General Cunningham.* "In the centre is a staircase leading to the top, and its side walls form gnomons to concentric semicircles, having a certain inclination to the horizon, and they represent meridians removed by a certain angle from the meridian of the observatory. The outer walls form gnomons *Guide to Delhi. LETTER XI. 125 JUNTER MUNTER. to graduated quadrants, one to the east and the other to the west. A wall connects the four gnomons, and on its northern face is THE JUNTER MUNTER. described a large quadrilateral semicircle, for taking altitudes;' a poor maniac--who yells and chatters thence-being its sole inhabitant. More tombs, broken capitals, poor hovels, miserable stragglers, dust, poverty, and the relics of former magnificence.-Wherefore 126 LETTER XI. DELHI TO SIMLA. "} such expenditure on tombs? Because Muhammedans of past times built for themselves pleasure gardens and summer houses surrounded by walls or terraces. In the centre building they feasted during life, and it became the tomb which received them afterwards, when the voices of pleasure ceased. Around its former owner his wives and children took their silent places, in the course of time; and priests or servants guarded their habitations, subsisting on the pittances of curious travellers, or the faithful of their own tribes. Near an inclosure to water the horses, is the tomb of Sufter Jungh. It stands on a terrace, and the walls of red sandstone are surmounted by a marble dome. The sarcophagus, or ANSWER TOMB OF SUFTER JUNGH. answer tomb, which represents the grave, is gracefully sculptured, but the actual tomb, a fresh mound of earth, is guarded by servants, who have succeeded to the hereditary post since the owner was placed there more than a hundred years ago. The sketch of the tomb of the Emperor Houmayon illustrates this explanation. It is the first of the great monumental struc- tures of the dynasty of Great Moguls, and was erected by his widow,* at a short distance from the Purana Keela, old fort or town of Delhi, where he died. * And where she was interred also about six years later. "The king (Achabar), . being stimulated by resentment (at the murder of Abul Fazl by Selim's orders), determined to march against his son, and had already crossed the Semena with an immense army when his mother's illness was announced to him, which brought him back to Agra. She, however, died two days after his return, and was magnificently interred in the monument of Hamayun, her husband, in the city of Delly.”—Johannes de Lact, translated by Mr. Lethbridge, Calculta Review. OF MICH AIND KAWOKERTAWAT HOUMAYUN'S TOMB, NEAR DELHI. [Page 127. LETTER XI. 127 HOUMAYUN. : The following description of it is from the "Journal of the Archæological Society of Delhi,” v. i., 74 :— "The exterior form of the main body of the tomb is a square with the corners cut off, or an octagon with four long and four short faces, and each of the short faces forms one side of the four octagonal corner towers. "The dome is built entirely of white marble, the rest of the building being of red sandstone, with inlaid ornaments of white marble. In this tomb we first see towers attached to the four angles of the main building, forming an important innovation in the Mohammedan architecture of North India, which was gradually improved and developed until it culminated in the graceful minars of the Taj-Mahal. Another innovation is the narrow-necked dome, which was afterwards adopted in all the Mogul buildings.' Houmayun was the first descendant of Timur to establish a dynasty on the throne of India, which in his successors, Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurungzebe, became for ever famous under the title of Great Moguls. At his death he was master of all northern India, including Kashmir and Afghanistan. His memoirs, written in the Persian language by his servant Jouher, and translated by Major Stewart, relate his gallant and adventu- rous life; the "battles, sieges, fortunes, that he had passed." On one occasion, having concluded a peace with an Afghan chief, he passed the night without taking any precautions, "but just as the sun rose the Afghans entered the rear of our encampment amid a dreadful uproar. His Majesty ordered to beat to arms, and in a short time 300 cavalry surrounded him. The enemy's war-elephants approached, whereon, seeing his soldiers hesitate, he seized a spear, spurred his horse, and struck the elephant with such force that he could not draw out the spear again. An archer seated on the animal discharged an arrow which wounded the King in the arm, when one of his followers, coming up, seized his bridle, saying, When friends forsake you, flight is the only remedy.' The King, followed by the elephants, urged his horse into the river, but in a short time sunk. A water-carrier who had distended his mussuck gave it to his Majesty, who by this means reached the opposite 128 LETTER XI. DELHI TO SIMLA. bank. He asked the man his name. He said Nizam. The King replied, I will make it as celebrated as that of Nizam-addin (a famous saint), and you shall sit on my throne."" Soon after, when Houmayun was at Lahore, "The water-carrier, who had enabled him to swim the Ganges paid his respects, and his Majesty, remembering his royal promise, seated him for two hours upon the throne, and told him to ask for whatever he wished.” * His palace in the old town of Delhi, and its marble staircase, in descending which he slipped and fell on the 7th January, 1556, are still there. Quoting from the same work, "He was taken up insensible, but soon recovered his speech. The physicians administered their art, but in vain, for on the eleventh of the month, about sunset, his soul took her flight to Paradise." It was when his three generals, Shah Abu-al-Mualy, Prince Akbar, and the Khan Khanan, among whom disputes had arisen, joined their armies near Lahore; "reciprocal visits were interchanged, and a reconciliation took place, but while the armies were encamped the melancholy intelligence arrived that the King Humayon had drunk of the last cup from the hands of the Angel of Death.” † Quotation from the Korun. "Every soul shall taste of death; death is decreed to every man, and when it arrives he can neither hasten it nor delay it a single hour. From God we came, and unto Him we must return.”‡ Along with Houmayun's are the graves of several of his descend- ants, and of his queen, Nawab Hameda Bano Bagum, surnamed Hajee Bagum, as is stated in the printed list of them that is sold for a penny at the entrance-hall. Also of "Jahundar Shah. He * See note, p. 19. t "The king had hardly spent three mouths in Delly, where also he had com- menced to build a magnificent palace, when he was summoned to depart this life. For as he was descending the steps of the palace after midday, hearing the voice of a certain man who was calling to prayers, he sat down, leaning on his staff. But as he had taken a lot of opium a little before, he was drowsy, and, his staff slipping on the smooth steps, he fell headlong, and rolling down about forty steps, injured him- self so much that after three days he died.”—From the Latin of Johannes de Lact, by E. Lethbridge, Calcutta Review, 1873. 3 Dow's Hindostan. LETTER XI. 120 DARA SHEKO. overcame his brother, and being defeated by Furruck Seir, escaped and was killed; of Furruck Seir, Hoosan Ali poisoned him; and of Alumgeer II., Kooley Khan killed him, by saying of Etma- doolah." Here, too, is interred the head of Dara Sheko, whose JOALHLAS. ብዛ ШИПИТ TOMB USED AS A STABLE, KUTUB. murder by order of his brother, the Emperor Aurungzebe, is related by Bernier, in Delhi at the time*— "Stories of the death of kings : How some have been deposed, some slain in war, Some sleeping killed-all murthered." Arriving at last at the Kutub, eleven miles from Delhi, a cool tomb-the dawk bungalow-offers a refreshing and comfortable * "The charge of the atrocious murder of Dara was entrusted to a slave of the name of Nazir. The prince, apprehensive that poison would be administered to him, was employed in boiling lentils, when Nazir and four other ruffians entered his apartment. The murderers fell upon Dara, and while three of the assassins held him, Nazir decapitated his wretched victim. The head was instantly carried to S 130 LETTER XI. DELHI TO SIMLA. suburban retreat. The tired horses find an equally acceptable stable in a tomb near the centre of the compound. The Kutub Minar, the loftiest minaret in the world, stands in a garden at a short distance from the bungalow, surrounded by numerous ruins. Everything combines to make the first sight of this wonderful tower a life-remembered sensation. It consists of UVENIRER.POHUTUN THE KUTUB MINAR. five stories, ornamented in different styles, the first with fluted columns alternately circular and angular, the second all circular, the third all angular; the fourth, plain, is built of black and white marble; the fifth, also plain, of red sandstone, as are the first three. Around the pillar six bands of inscriptions, in Persian, are said to relate its history. 379 steps lead to the summit, 238 feet 1 inch from the level of the ground, whence there is a magnificent view of Delhi and of all the surrounding ruins and tombs-one of the most extraordinary sights in the world. Among these is an iron pillar, Aurungzebe, who commanded that it should be placed in a dish, and that water should be brought. The blood was then washed from the face, and when it could no longer be doubted that it was indeed the head of his brother Dara, he shed tears and said, 'Alas, unhappy man! Let this shocking sight no more offend my eyes, but take away the head and bury it in Houmayun's sepulchre. LETTER XI. 131 TOOGLUCKABAD. sixteen inches in diameter and fifty feet long, standing twenty-two feet above the ground. An excavation to the depth of twenty-six feet has been made without reaching its foundation. It was con- structed by a certain sceptical Rajah Pithora, at the instigation of the Brahmins, who declared to him that, if he sank an iron shaft into the ground and pierced the head of the snake god that supported the world, his kingdom would endure for ever. The pillar was made and sunk; but after some time, the Rajah, anxious to see whether the snake had been touched, had it dug up, much to the disgust of the Brahmins, when the end was found to be covered with blood. In all haste the pillar was again inserted, but it could not be forced down to its former position; the charm was broken, "the serpent had had enough of cold iron, and the sceptre passed away from the hands of the last of the Hindoo kings." "'* Toogluckabad, another ruined and deserted city, built of massive blocks of stone, so large and heavy, says General Cunningham, that they must have been quarried on the spot, was one of the freaks of the eccentric despot, Muhammed Shah Toogluck, whose attempt to introduce a copper currency is referred to in Letter II. Ibn Batuta describes him as one of the most bountiful and splendidly munificent of men, when he took, but in other cases the most impetuous and inexorable. As an example of the former mood he appointed Batuta to the office of a judge at Delhi, pre- sented him with a dress of honour, a horse, 12,000 dinars, and a yearly income of double that sum of the latter, he banished the whole of the population of Delhi to Deogir, which he named Doulatabad; the consequence was that great numbers perished, and when Batuta was there it was almost a desert. A striking object from the walls of Toogluckabad is the tomb of its founder, built A.D. 1346, by his son, Muhammed Toogluck, who is also buried in it. The sketch, taken from the ruined walls of the city, repre- sents the tomb in its outwork beyond. During the rains it is surrounded by water, but communication is maintained by a causeway six hundred feet long. * Cunningham and Harcourt's Guide to Delhi. 7 132 LETTER XI. DELHI TO SIMLA. "The sloping walls and almost Egyptian solidity of this mau- soleum, combined with the bold and massive towers of the fortifi- MHES החונ いま​!! Hud min aran רות! เก . TOMB OF MUHAMMED TOOGLUCK. WJ Faimer Sc cation that surround it, form a picture of a warrior's tomb un- rivalled anywhere." "There is a stern round tower of other days, Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone Such as an army's baffled strength delays, Standing with all its battlements-alone. * * * * * * What was this tower of strength? within its cave What treasure lay so locked, so hid? A tyrant's grave." General Cunningham agrees in this criticism from Fergusson's "History of Architecture," with one reservation in favour of the situation of the Multan tomb, intended for the remains of the same sanguinary hero. LETTER XI. 133 KIRKEE. "The cruelties of this sovereign (Muhammed) were witnessed by his cousin and successor, Feroz Toogluck, who adopted one of the most curious expedients which the mind of man has ever con- ceived for obtaining the pardon of his tyrannical predecessor. I quote the words of Feroz himself, as given by Ferishta, from the inscriptions of the Great Mosque at Ferozabad :—' I have also taken pains to discover the surviving relations of all persons who suffered from the wrath of my lord and master, Muhammed Toogluck, and having pensioned and provided for them, have caused them to grant full pardon and forgiveness to that prince, in the presence of the holy men of his age, whose signatures and seals as witnesses are affixed to the document, the whole of which, as far as lay in my power, has been procured and put into a box, and deposited in the vault in which Muhammed Toogluck is entombed.' This PATIO AND AZOLEA OF KIRKEE. strange device of placing the vouchers at hand for the dead man to pick up and produce at the last day is as bold as it is original. The tombs are there, and the documents no doubt still in them.”* Four miles across country from the Kutub brings you to the Mosque of Kirkee. The sketch represents one of its eight courts (patios or implu- * General Alexander Cunningham. 134 LETTER XI. DELHI TO SIMLA. viums), twelve of its eighty-nine domes, one of its four towers, nearly fifty feet high, or about ten feet higher than the building itself, and two of its eight abutments. It is a square of two T Wipul merse MOSQUE AND FORT OF KIRKEE. storeys, built of granite, with an outer covering of chunam lime, almost as hard as the stone, and which alone is six inches in thickness. Some history beyond the fact that it was built by Khan Jehan, during the reign of Feroz Shah, A.D. 1380, is wanting to interest the traveller in this ancient fort, village, and Musjid, all in one. At the Kutub, and near Delhi, there are wells of various sizes, but on an average twenty yards square, surrounded by brick walls sixty feet high, of which forty are above the surface of the water. For a backsheesh men and boys-old men down to young boys- collected on the parapet, leap one after another into the air and descend in all kinds of positions. A moment, however, before they touch the water they quickly bring their feet together and their arms over their heads, pointed upwards, so that they enter the water in a reversed attitude to that of a header. The sensa- tion caused by the sight of these men, with their arms and legs outspread and their features distorted by wild grimaces as they leap from the walls,* surpasses any produced by Blondin or Leotard, and could only be equalled by them if they added a tumble to their usual performances. A small backsheesh is suffi- * Frontispiece. LETTER XI. 135 BACKSHISH. cient to induce them to perform, but you are afterwards pursued to some distance by askings for more. And this leads to a word on the wide-spread use of the word "backsheesh." Where its line of demarcation crosses Europe to the north is not clearly ascertained, but in the south it runs eastward by southern Austria to the Italian frontier. In the west you have a medley of " una limosna por el amor de Dios;" "dátemi qualchier cosa;” «bai- occhi, baiocchi ;""quelque chose pour boire," "pour boire" peremp- tory; "summut to drink your honour's health;" "remember the waiter, chambermaid, boots;" in short, endless variations on the well-known theme. But Hungary, Servia, Turkey, Greece, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, and in a broad wave the East, acknowledge one word common to all, amidst their confusion of tongues-the mighty "Backsheesh." The sight of an Englishman at once evokes the unquiet spirit of this potentate, which cannot be laid until the Giaour departs. The word, used also by the North American Indians, proves incontestably a common origin between them and their Asiatic brethren. The grave of Jehanara, near Delhi, surrounded by a marble trellis, is entered through a doorway of the same material; the sarcophagus is open, and the slab which should cover it stands against the railings by its side. In spring time lilies bloom on the uncovered ground; in winter it is strewed with leaves or flowers by the faithful. There rests the daughter of Shah Jehan, who accompanied her father in his imprisonment, but occupies rather a questionable fame in the chronicles of her time. "Let no rich canopy cover my grave; this grass is the best covering of the poor in spirit, the humble, the transitory Jehanara, the daughter of the Emperor Shah Jehan, and disciple of the holy men of CHEEST,” namely, of the Muhammedan saints of that name. This paragraph has been rendered more curious by translating it as follows:-"The humble, the transitory Jehanara, a disciple of the holy men of Christ, supposed to be Roman priests!" Wide streets and rows of trees give a character to Delhi which is not met with in other bazaars. It is the centre of the shawl and jewellery trades. Merinos from France and Manchester, em- 136 LETTER XI. DELHI TO SIMLA. broidered here, are sent back to Paris and London, where they figure in the shops of Regent Street and the Boulevards. Delhi jewellery has a large sale in India, and in the manufacture of glass and the profession of miniature painting many artists and workmen are employed. ୪ سر بعیات کیس لر برد JEHANARA'S TOMB. The latter art, handed down in the same families through several generations, has arrived at extraordinary perfection—of its kind ; and judging from the ability of most of the Delhi painters on ivory in copying photographs, we examine their portraits of the celebrities of former times with more confidence in their fidelity to the originals than is generally inspired by these delicate works of art. The botanical gardens include a drive, band-stand, miniature park, with fine trees, and a small zoological collection, near which LETTER XI. 137 SIEGE OF DELHI. a stone elephant has been placed, admirably reconstructed from the fragments into which it had been destroyed. Bernier, who visited the city in Aurungzebe's reign, refers to the stone elephants standing at either side of the gate of the palace, and this is one of them. MIFAL MER SO This Elephant, A work of considerable but unknown antiquity, Was brought from Gwalior, And set up outside the gate of his New Palace By the Emperor Shah Jehan, A.D. 1645; Removed thence and broken into a thousand fragments By the Emperor Aurungzebe. It remained forgotten and buried underground for more than a century and a half, until having been re-discovered it was set up here, A.D. 1868. The city is surrounded by a wall of heavy red sandstone masonry, entered by numerous gates, which retain the names given to them by Shah Jehan. The ridge on which the British army stood in 1857 is 1200 yards distant. We had 7000 men, including T 138 LETTER XI. DELHI TO SIMLA. Goorkhas, Sikhs, and the Irregular Horse: within the walls were 60,000 mutineers, whom their former leaders were wont to describe and believe in as the best of soldiers, well trained, and supplied with parks of artillery and munitions of war. They kept up so galling a fire on the overworked besiegers that, urged by Nicholson, the Council of War decided on an immediate assault. First in council and first in war, on the 14th September, 1857, he advanced to the Cashmere Gate at the head of a storming party one hundred and fifty strong, followed by the rest of the first column of eight hundred and fifty men. Many as are the tombs round Delhi, this is the only one which touches the hearts of all Englishmen. It is enclosed by a railing, with cypress trees at either end. "The grave of Brigadier General John Nicholson, who led the assault of Delhi, but fell in the hour of victory, mortally wounded, and died 23rd September, 1857, aged 35. "The post of honour and of danger was claimed by General Nicholson. He had been sent down by the Chief Commissioner to 'take Delhi.' It was no disparagement to those to whom rank gave a priority in that army to say that all eyes were turned to him. His arrival in camp gave a new vigour to the troops, a new hope to the Punjaub; even jealousy, where it existed among those whom he superseded, rose into emulation in the hearts of the nobler ones." * “In this assault it was Nicholson-Nicholson of the Punjaub— who was the leading and guiding spirit; he who, struck down by a mortal wound after he had forced the Cashmere Gate, sent from his dying bed the loudest and deepest remonstrances against retiring for retiring was talked of." + "The Chief Commissioner does not hesitate to affirm, that without John Nicholson Delhi could not have fallen."‡ "Anxiety and suspense," wrote Colonel Edwardes, "about Delhi, reached its climax on the 14th September, the day fixed for the storm; and when the telegraph at last announced that + Malleson's Recreations of an Indian Official. Sir Richard Temple. * Browne's Punjab and Delhi. LETTER XI. 139 NICHOLSON, desperate feat of arms, and General Nicholson dangerously wounded, it did not sound like victory. And day by day, as gate after gate and quarter after quarter of the rebel city was mastered by that band of heroes, the question still was, 'Is Nicholson any better?' On the 20th Delhi was completely in our possession, and every English heart thanked God for it. There seemed a hope, too, that Nicholson might live. On the 23rd, that hope was extinguished; and with a grief unfeigned, and deep and stern, and worthy of the man, the news was whispered, 'Nicholson is dead.'”* Leaving Delhi by rail for Umballa, a large military station, and by dawk to Kolka, on the ascent of the Himalayan Hills; thence riding to Kussowlie, a military station, after a night at Hurry- pore, another day's ride brings you here. Simla, 7000 feet above the sea, is about fifty miles from the foot of the Himalayan range. On one side, over the intervening heights, is seen the horizon of the burning plains; on the other, rising over billows of mountains, the magnificent peaks covered with eternal snow. Here, enjoying a delightful climate, in the evenings a wood fire is welcome. * Browne's Punjab and Delhi. 114 1 LETTER XII. } SIMLA TO LAHORE. SIM LAHORE, 15th April, 1870. NOTHING is spoken of here but the distressing heat; yet heat is what we require; when it deserts us, blazing fires are called for, and rooms warmed up to the temperature of the lower regions, namely, the plains. Experience teaches that exercise makes all climates the same, and after a walk of seven miles before breakfast one is almost as well braced up as in the atmosphere of Simla. From your knowledge and study you would appreciate the wonders of the East. For. ""Twixt us thus the difference trims, Using head instead of limbs ; You have read what I have seen. Using limbs instead of head, I have seen what you have read ; Which way does the balance lean ?" Caste, the subject of your inquiry, is an endless theme. Its forms are so multitudinous that no one has yet satisfactorily ex- plained their raison d'être, but perhaps on legitimate deduction they may be proved to end in defining the limits of the law of marriage between any two classes of human beings. Its obliga- tions and restraints, the divisions it maintains, and the fear it instils, are considered by many as advantageous to the well-being of the community. It is, they say, an invisible police, which could not be withdrawn without dangerous consequences; and Chris- tianity, which aims at its destruction, does not substitute an equivalent check. The power of caste is incredible. Returning LETTER XII. 141 CASTE. from Simla by the Thibet road to Kolka, I was carried ´in a jompon by four coolies, with a relay of four more. The first day they walked from Simla to Solon, twenty-six miles, leaving at 11 A.M. and arriving at 7 P.M., with only one stoppage of half an hour. At Solon, for caste reasons, they would not eat the bread made there, and supped on a handful of corn roasted with a little flour. Starting at six next morning, two hours were lost at Durrhumpore, waiting for the servants, who could not keep up with the coolies. Here, for the same reason, they ate nothing, beyond a repetition of their night's miserable meal, then pro- ceeded, though fatigued, and changing their relays frequently, without relaxing speed, until they completed the journey of fifty-six miles. While resting a few moments, the bearer men- tioned their want of food, when, on offering the head man a tin of biscuits, he drew himself up proudly, and shaking his head, said, "Ne, ne, Sahib, sub Hindu hai," "No, no, Sahib, we are all Hindoos." "If it please you to dine with us." "Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you," is what the Hindoo says, and death would be preferable to a breach of this precept, even to the extent of touching any vessel from which one not of his own particular caste had eaten or drunk. Starving as these poor people often are, you might place rich viands before them with perfect security. What exercises so extraordinary an influence? The fear of expulsion, excommunication in its worst form, eternal separation from wife, children, family, friends-a sentence worse than death; to walk about the earth a thing accursed. General G. Le G. Jacob, in his work "Western India," relates having been asked by the regimental doctor to use his influence with a sick sepoy, to induce him to take brandy medicinally. "I found him quite sensible, and glad to see me, but nothing could shake his resolution. The doctor wants me to drink brandy,' 142 LETTER XII. SIMLA TO LAHORE. On my he said; 'tis against my caste, and I wont do it.' earnest warning that death was inevitable unless he took the medicine, the Sepoy replied, 'Sahib, I prefer to die rather than live polluted;' and so he passed away." Caste institutions have a resemblance to trades unions. A command issued by the head of a caste is infinitely more peremp- tory than that of a king; and if any outrage were offered to a particular caste, an order from its priest would at once lead to a strike amongst its members. This institution prevails to a con- siderable extent among Muhammedans as well as Hindoos, and the servants at this hotel, all disciples of Islam, include three distinct classes, none of whom will eat together. The bath-room man, by profession of the lowest caste, the only one among them who can read and write, is very clean and well-behaved; but had he the genius of a Shakespeare, he could never rise above his present position, never be more than a mheter. Resuming the narrative of travel left off at Simla, whence an Oriental despatch was sent to you; that oldest of hill stations is an assemblage of villas built on the steep sides and ridges of the last steppes of the great Himalaya range. Almost every house looks over a deep valley, and across upon another with woods and valleys like its own. Miles of roads, through forests of rhododendron trees full of scarlet flowers, which legions of monkeys shower down, lead to views splendid beyond description; for although the ridge on which the station lies is only 7000 feet above the plains, yet this is but the first of a series of mountain steppes which rise till they reach the bright heights of the snowy range, one peak of which, upheaved into the deep azure 28,000 feet above the sea, stands in silent grandeur, for no storms can touch its towering head, unapproached, unapproachable, alone. Rifts and chasms cleave these majestic mountains, and attempts have for ages been made to effect passes through them, but with little success. The great Thibet road, projected by the illustrious Dalhousie, was surveyed twenty years ago as far as Ladakh, and, if completed, would have opened up new markets to Asia and India, but even the part between Simla and the plains is now neglected. " G+ 2 LETTER XII. 143 SIMLA. Outside the bazaar, for wherever there is a native bazaar dirt and evil odours abound, the atmosphere at this elevation is delicious. The fruits and flowers of the hill stations are those of the temperate zone, and strawberries, grapes, and peaches are in their season plentiful and excellent. From the end of June to the beginning of September the rains are a deluge, and yet, from the absence of reservoirs or deposits, good water is not obtainable. Simla water must be boiled and filtered to be used with safety. It is brought by the hard-worked bheesties from the base of the hills, which, being covered with a herbage of poisonous plants, are supposed to affect its purity. Chief of these is the snake plant, so called by the natives, who consider its juice as poisonous as the venom of a snake. Large tracts of the mountains are covered with this weed. Another reason given is that the porous rocks through which the waters percolate abound in minerals injurious to health. Native shopkeepers keep their places open through the year, but the Europeans migrate with the Court official world. Their advent is heralded by supplies of wines, beer, and tinned provi- sions, and that which costs 1s. in London is 2s. at Calcutta, and 5s. at Simla. Society is divided into the Court, and the Covenanted, the Military, and the Uncovenanted services. Too early in the season to attempt a journey through the hills, we walked the first stage, Mahassoo, a beautiful road, cut in many places along the precipitous sides of the mountain, from which is seen the winding Sutlej far below. To Simla, the Court sanatarium, paradise of grass widows and officers on leave, or Modern Capua, as local papers love to call it, come the official world of Calcutta during the summer months, when it takes precedence as the capital of India. The Honourable East India Company addressed its despatches from Leadenhall Street "to our Governor-General of India in camp," an expression which still correctly conveys an idea of the position of Govern- ment, for although the Raj has changed, the services and the bureaucracy are the same, and good and efficient; for our inten- 144 LETTER XII. SIMLA TO LAHORE. tions have been just and honest, if in governing we have not been. quite so happy as we might have been. "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been.'' From Umballa you proceed by rail to Amritser, the holy city of the Sikhs. Amritser-British-is the usual station of bungalows and avenues of trees; Amritser-Sikh-surrounded by high walls and battlements, is a large city, or nest of houses in narrow lanes, swarming with a dirty but bolder-looking race than that of Bengal. SIKH WOMAN OF AMRITSER. . Regular features, black eyes, Jewish noses, well-formed lips, and flowing beards, met with at every step, seem to mark no degenerate ancestry. But the women are plain-even ugly. Deprived of opportunities to criticise the features of the upper ten, who, excepting in the cool shade of aristocracy, are never seen, among the lower orders female beauty is conspicuous only by its absence; and if a pretty face were to be found, the rings through its ears, LETTER XII. 145 THE GOLDEN TEMPLE. · studs in its nose, nose-rings and pendents are fatal disfigurements. All women, north of Delhi, wear trowsers tight from the knee downwards, baggy to the waist upwards, made of blue cotton, with a red stripe running inside the leg. Both men and women wear a toga, in which they envelope themselves, and as they walk along, at a little distance no difference between them is observ- able. But for the nose-ring you would often take the women for men, though as a rule their legs are somewhat bandier. The town is drained by open sewers running in front of the houses, and cholera is endemic there. Shawls of Cashmere and of other makes are manufactured by workers sitting in shops along the street side. The lion of Amritser is its Golden Temple, a building about twenty yards long by ten broad, placed in the centre of a tank two hundred yards square. The buildings that surround it, Durhmsalas, are full of pilgrims,-during their stay housed, fed, and clothed by benevolent Rajahs, to whom these halls for the poor belong. One side of the square, paved with marble, leads to the entrance to the temple. You are required to pull off your shoes and replace them with woollen slippers as you enter, a privilege, the enforcement of which on their European masters is still accorded the Sikhs, in acknowledgment of the conspicuous part they played during the mutiny, when it was with- drawn from the Muhammedans. Half way up the path a smooth square, paved with mosaics, is flanked by temples, from whose open windows, many priests, there seated, salaam, and invite you to enter. A priest chaunting from a Granth looked up, interposed a "salaam sahib," and proceeded in a style and tone exactly resembling that of an English High Church service. Here were shown the cell and ornamented couch whence the Bible of the Sikhs guarded by night is by day removed to the Golden Temple.* The high priest presents visitors with roses and sugar-candy. Notwithstanding their love of flowers, Orientals pluck them always full blown, without stalk or leaves. The gateway to the path * "The Granth, i.e. the Volume, the sacred book of the Sikhs, though tedious as a whole, contains here and there treasures of really deep and poetical thought."- Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Religion. U 146 LETTER XII. SIMLA TO LAHORE. leading to the temple across the tank is covered with chased plates of silver, twelve feet square, and along it marble pedestals support richly-gilded lamps. The temple is exteriorly two storied, the lower of marble, inlaid in the Florentine style with mosaics of different colours and artistically beautiful, representing birds, vases, and flowers; the upper is surmounted by three domes, round which are grouped many cupolas, all golden, or as bright as gold. Silver doors, embossed and chased with various designs, scarlet curtains, and orange-coloured banners, which flaunt at the gateway from high flagstaffs of the same colour, combine to produce a brilliant scene. A crowd is continually moving in and out of the temple, but makes way for the Sahibs. Upon an embroidered cushion, and under a rich canopy, lay the open Bible. Before it sat the high priest, a young man, who seemed only to watch the proceedings, or to converse with those around him. By his side another chaunted in the monotonous, sonorous, and orthodox style already referred to, while musicians played an accompaniment on the tom-tom. A white sheet before them received the offerings of the faithful, very numerous, but of the smallest value, consisting principally of cowries, among which appeared a few pice. The priest salaamed and sent more sugar-candy with accompanying roses. The sacred tank Amrita Saras, "the fount of immortality," was constructed in 1581. Mrit" is Sanscrit for death, and the "a" is privative like our un or im, thus, mortal, immortal. Hence the name of the city; and the miracle is, that though thousands of filthy pilgrims bathe in it, yet it remains always as pure as such a fountain should be. About two hundred years after its erection, Ahmed Shah, alarmed at the progress made by the Sikhs, came down from Afghanistan, filled up the tank with filth, and, to complete its pollution, slaughtered over it the sacred kine of the Hindoos. This so enraged the Sikhs that they forthwith began a semi-religious, semi-national crusade against the Muham- medans, which resulted in the overthrow of their rule. The desecrated fountain was repaired and purified, and from that day to this the salutary waters have continued to flow, working many miracles, and purifying the unclean to their perfect satisfaction, or 5 UNIF OF MUHAMMEDAN TOMB, TRANSFORMED INTO A PROTESTANT CHURCH.-SUNDAY AT LAHORE. [Page 147. LETTER XII. 147 AMRITA SARAS. at least to the satisfaction of some five or six hundred priests, who are supported in lazy luxury by the offerings of the faithful. In many cases imagination works a cure on the impassioned votary, be his belief or his idolatry what it may. Bathing in sacred waters, and, still more, being plunged into them by one of a priestly order, is a primæval tradition preserved in this unchange- able east, and by the Hindoos is held to be typical of spiritual puri- fication. Runjeet built the fort of Govindgurh outside Amritser, to overawe the crowds of pilgrims that flock to the Golden Temple and sacred tank. Constructed by Italian engineers, it was con- sidered to be impregnable; but we took it, improved its defences, and now hold it for the purpose for which it was designed. During the mutiny, occupied by a garrison of British troops, it was of some use to us. From Amritser to Lahore,* seat of government, capital of the Punjaub, is a journey by rail of two hours. The line runs through a country well irrigated, therefore abounding in fields of grain. Lahore, like Delhi, occupies the site of earlier and larger cities ; but as the soil around it is fertile, their débris are being removed, and only the larger ruins remain relics of splendours that have past. All are covered with encaustic tiles of brilliant colours. Here rises a blue dome in a field of yellow corn, and there, emblazoned with Persian sentences and bright with flowers, a mosque, turned into a police station. Where these monuments could, from their situation, be made available, they have been repaired and occupied by living, to the exclusion of dead, inmates. The Lieut.-Governor occupies a very comfortable tomb. The accountant-general lives in one, and so do the railway officials. The reading-room is a handsome, and the principal English church, a spacious tomb; and * “Thence we arrived at the goodlie citie of Lahor, in India, one of the largest cities of the whole universe; for it containeth at the least sixteen miles in compasse, and exceedeth Constantinople itself in greatness.”—Coryat's Letters from India in 1561. "From the famous citie of Lahor I had twentie days' journey to another goodly citie called Agra, through such a delicate and even tract of ground as I never saw before. No less memorable, a row of trees on each side of this way where people do travell, extending from the towne's end of Lahore to the towne's end of Agra, the most incomparable show of that kind that ever me eies surveyed.”--Coryat's Letters. 148 LETTER XII. SIMLA TO LAHORE. + its beadle endowed with the traditional husky voice and cough, is a Mussulman. The city is surrounded by walls and numerous gates, which, closed at night, are opened about 8 A.M., when an impatient crowd is gathered on either side. The fort within the city walls contains also the Mootee Musjid and tomb of Runjeet Singh. Arriving early, the gates still shut, were opened for the "sahib," and then a simultaneous rush took place, only stopped by the policeman's staff, wielded effectively. Like Amritser, the city walls enclose nests of dirty houses, and contain a dense popu- lation of unwashed. In its fort are two state prisoners, sons of the late Ameer of Kabul.. Adjoining is a partially-decayed, but magnificent mosque, standing at the end of a quadrangle two hundred yards square. Built of red sandstone, inlaid with marbles, in designs of roses and lilies, the whole of the interior, one hundred yards long by thirty wide, is encased with sculptured marble. Within were many followers of the Prophet. Four lofty minars occupy the corners of the quadrangle. Descending from it by a flight of steps into a garden, you enter a pavilion of the mixed style of architecture, carved with grotesque designs, pea- cocks carrying necklaces, fruits half cut with the knives through them, and flowers, vases, and birds: Round the platform are the apertures through which fountains once played; within, are seats, on which models of beauty and fashion once reclined; and above, still fixed in the ceiling, are the mirrors that once reflected them. Pass the garden and enter the pavilion and tomb of the Lion of Lahore. A Hindu sovereign, he was burnt in great state, and with him, four wives and seven of his eight concubines.* The " * “At Lahore I saw a most beautiful young widow sacrificed who could not, I think, have been more than twelve years of age. The poor little creature appeared more dead than alive when she approached the dreadful pit. The agony of her mind cannot be described. She trembled and wept bitterly; but three or four of the Brahmins, assisted by an old woman, who held her under the arm, forced the un- willing victim toward the fatal spot, seated her on the wood, tied her hands and fcet lest she should run away, and in that situation the innocent creature was burnt alive. I found it difficult to repress my feelings and to prevent their bursting forth into clamorous and unavailing rage, but restrained by prudential considerations, I contented myself with silently lamenting the abominable superstition of these people."― Bernier's Travels, vol. ii. p. 18-19. t 4.4 RNWAY TOMB OF RUNJEET SINGH, OF HIS FOUR WIVES, AND EIGHT LADIES OF THE ZENANA, LAHORE. [Page 148. 10 OF MICH F LETTER XII. 149 INFANTICIDE. tomb, six feet square, with columns in the four-post style, supporting a cupola and canopy, is all of marble. In the centre the king's cenotaph, like a soup tureen, has ranged around it so many bowls,- mementoes of his four wives-gracefully carved, and seven of other ladies plainer in style. Alone, in a corner, is that of the eighth lady who wept, but declined to be incremated. Although this rite was long since made. criminal by the British government, it is occasionally practised, and is said to obtain in the dominions of some native princes. A case occurred in the Punjaub last year, when the offenders were tried and banished. My informant added, he had heard of six cases during his residence in the district, and that the practice would be resumed if our rule were relaxed. In the cathedral of Bombay a handsome statue to Governor Jonathan Duncan records, as the great act of his administration, in- fanticide abolished. Yet you have seen in the newspapers that, far from being abolished, female infanticide prevails over Rajpootana to a great extent. All efforts to grapple with it, and with its perpetrators, have been unsuccessful. In many districts no young girl has been known to be born. Females, imported from other parts of the country, are sold for wives, and as marriages are contracted in childhood, the kidnap- ping of children is easily accomplished. Six miles from this city are the Shalimar Gardens, full of mulberry, orange, and mango trees, flowers, terraces, tanks, and fountains. Water to cool the perfumed air, shade to invite to meditation deep, or light as the case may be, are what the soul longs for in a burning land, and you have them to perfection in Shalimar. The fountains, long neglected, do not now rise higher than seven feet. They were in full play, as Lord Mayo, on his way through Lahore, paid the garden a visit. The deficit in the Indian budget is to be filled up by raising the income-tax to 3 per cent. This measure was adopted on the score of necessity—that all-powerful god-but it has been universally reprobated. Discontent prevails not only among 150 LETTER XII SIMLA TO LAHORE, the natives, but among the European servants of the crown, on whom it really presses more directly than on the other inhabitants. The Emperor Jahángír's* tomb is four miles from the city on the opposite side of the river Ravee, and stands in the centre of a garden, the Shadra Bagh. Near to it, but in ruins, is that of his far-famed bride, "the light of his harem, the young Núr Mahall," a princess who exercised unusual political influence in her time. "Before I married her," said Jahángír, “I never knew what marriage really meant. I have conferred the duties of government on her, and shall be satisfied if I have a seer of wine, and half a seer of meat a day." Born on a journey which her parents made from Persia to Hindustan, in which they suffered great extremities of poverty, and nearly abandoned the burden destined to be Queen of the Eastern world, she was called Mihrunnisà (the sun of women), a name forgotten in her subsequent title of Núr Jahán. Her father, Ghias Beg of Tehran, rose to a high position at the court of Akbar, where she was seen by the youthful Selim, who fell in love with *"This present prince is a very worthy person, by name Selim. He is fiftie- three yeares of age, his nativitie day having been celebrated with wonderful pompe since my arrival here; for that daie he weighed himself in a paire of golden scales, which by great chance I saw the same day (a custome that he observeth most inviolablie every year), laying so much gold in the other scale as countervailath the weight of his body, and the same he afterwards distributed to the poore. He is of complexion neither white nor black, but a middle betwixt them. I know not how to express it with a more expressive and significant epitheton than olive an olive- colour his face presenteth. He is of a seemlie composition of bodie, of a statue little unequall (as I guess not without grounds of probabilitie) to mine, but much more corpulent than myself. His revenues are fortie millions of crownes of sixe shillings value by the yeare; and it is said that he is uncircumcised, wherein he differeth from all the Mahomedan Princes that ever were in the world. Hee speaketh very reverently of our Saviour, calling him, in the Indian tongue, Isazaret Eesa, that is, the great Prophet Jesus. The king presenteth himself twice every daie without fail to his nobles, at the rising of the sunne, which he adoreth by the elevation of his hands, at noon, and at five of the clocke in the evening; but he standeth in a room aloft by himselfe, and looketh upon them from a window that hath an embroidered sumptuous coverture, supported with two silver pilasters, to yield shadowe unto him.”—Jahángír, described by Tom Coryat. LETTER XII. 151 NÚR JAHÁN. her. It does not appear why Akbar had her suddenly married to Sher Afkan Khan, but on Selim's accession to the throne that chief was immediately murdered. It is related that he was not killed but wounded, and managed to get to the door of his house with the intention of killing his wife, whom he did not wish to fall into the Emperor's hands. Her mother would not let him enter, and said that Mihrunnisá had committed suicide by throwing herself into a well, when "having heard the sad news, Sher Afkan went to the heavenly mansions." She was thirty-four years of age when Jahángír married her, an age when women in the East are looked upon as old. These particulars are from Professor Bloch- mann's edition of the Ain-i-Akbari, and the following is from Jahángír's Memoirs. 'Ettemaud ud Dowlah is the father of my consort, Nurjahan, who is the superior of the four hundred inmates of my harem. In the whole empire there is scarcely a city in which this princess has not left some lofty structure, some spacious garden, as a splen- did monument of her munificence. She was betrothed to Sheer Afkan, but when that chief was killed* I sent for the Kanzy and contracted a regular marriage with her, assigning for her dowry seven coore and twenty lacs of rupees † (or 7,200,000l.) which sum she requested as indispensable for the purchase of jewels, and I granted it without a murmur. I presented her, moreover, with a necklace of forty pearls, which had cost me sixteen lacs of rupees. Of my unreserved confidence this princess is in entire possession, and I may allege, without a fallacy, that the whole fortune of my empire has been consigned to the disposal of this highly-endowed family; the father being my dewan, the son my lieutenant-general, and the daughter the inseparable companion of all my cares." The hotel accommodation of Lahore is on a par with that of other Indian cities. There are "the Victoria," within sight of "the New Victoria," which again commands a prospect of "the Royal Victoria" Hotels, all unutterable-a board and lodging house- * Notoriously by the contrivance of the worthy monarch himself.” + "One of those enormous sums which startles belief.”—Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangir, translated by Dr. Lee. Notes by the Translator. 152 LETTER XII. SIMLA TO LAHORE. dreadful name-kept by a fat but respectable female, who, im- pressed by the array of servants, stores, and baggage, proffered her own particular boudoir and family four-poster-declined with thanks—and the dâk bungalow-full, of course-but here strong recommendations urge onwards to yet another hostelry, this time not the Victoria, but the Railway Hotel. Hot rooms, swarming with flies, and redolent of curry, offer that "warmest welcome" popularly ascribed to Inns. Taking the landlord into our confi- dence, "Is there," we say humbly, "no hotel here frequented by the "-we pause meditating for some modest phrase by which to express the upper class of sahibs, but are solemnly and conclu- sively interrupted. "Sir, this is the only 'igh class hotel in Lahore." Mr. William Stewart "hotel proprietor and railway contractor," takes possession of bag and baggage; moreover, he recommends a cook—two are already engaged. If, then, the celebrated valley of Kashmir is reached at last, the advanced guard will, on this occasion, consist of three professed cooks. The new chef is an artist, and might almost reconcile one to the startling character of this abode, very startling, in an entomological point of view. To-morrow for Rawul Pindee and Murree. LETTER XIII. LAHORE TO KOHÁLA. KonÁLA, 1st May, 1870. FROM Lahore the Punjab and Delhi Railway (348 miles from Delhi) takes a south-casterly turn to Mooltan (208 miles) on the Jhelum), whence the river is navigated by the Indus Steam Flo- tilla Company to Kotree; thence the Scinde Railway runs to Kurrachee, where there is constant steam communication with Bombay. The Punjab and Delhi line, now in course of prolongation-on Government account-to Peshawur, has Lahore for its northern terminus. The Post Office authorities forward mails by mail carts, and employ a large number of gharries-Government express dâwks-for passengers to Peshawur and in other directions, but these conveyances are generally engaged long in advance by officers of both services. Dâwk gharries are heavy cabs, seven feet. long, with sufficient space between the seats for luggage, which, covered by a rezai, forms the traveller's bed. The sides, supplied with shutters, all more or less gone at the hinges or straps, have sliding doors. They appear to have been constructed in bygone ages, and are in the last stage of decay, which even a scarcely dry coat of vermilion paint, cannot conceal. The springs are bound with hide, the wheel boxes thatched with straw; and they are horsed by unfortunate animals who, knowing from fearful experience the tortures in store for them, generally elect to be beaten while standing to moving at all. Averse to fires being lighted under them, this primitive manner of getting up steam used to be adopted; but it is now only resorted to in cases of X 154 LETTER XIII. LAHORE TO KOHÁLA. emergency, when the animals are said to dash off at an astonishing pace, considering that they are literally nothing but bones, with no flesh or hide remaining of any consequence to speak of. The fare for a single seat by these conveyances is at the rate of sixpence a mile, in, and twopence, outside. The journey from Lahore to Rawul Pindee (160 miles) was accomplished in forty hours, including the time lost in the passage of the Ravee, Chenab, and Jhelum rivers,* which now very low, with wide margins of sand, render it necessary to employ bullocks to drag the dâwks across their bridges of boats. The bearer sat on the roof crosslegged, opposite the bobbichi, who dozed in the same attitude. Between them was a large basket of ice, and although, beyond doubt, the "eastern Bernier's Letters on his journey to Kashmir in 1616, in the suite of the Em- peror Aurungzebe, amusingly describe his sufferings along this route :— • • · Every day is found more insupportable than the preceding; and the farther we advance, the more does the heat increase. True, I crossed the bridge of boats over the Chenab at noon while everybody else was resting and waiting to the close of day, when the heat is less oppressive. Perhaps I owe my escape from some fatal accident to my foresight, for no passage of a river. has been attended with such dreadful confusion. The entrance of the bridge into the first boat, and the going out from the last boat, were rendered extremely difficult and dangerous on account of the loose moving sand which it was necessary to pass, and which, giving way under the feet of such crowds of animals, was carried off by the current and left cavities into which numbers of them were thrown down and trodden under foot, while blows were dealt about without intermission. Officers, attached to Omrahs to clear the way for their masters, make an active use of their canes. My Nawab has lost one of his camels, with the iron oven it carried, so that I fear I shall be reduced to eating the bazar bread. "The sun is but just rising, yet the heat is insupportable. There is not a cloud to be seen, nor a breath of air to be felt. My horses are exhausted; they have not seen a blade of green grass since we quitted Lahore. My Indian servants, notwith- standing their black, dry, and hard skin, are incapable of further exertion. The whole of my face, my feet, and my hands are flayed. My body, too, is entirely covered with small red blisters, which prick like needles. Yesterday one of our poor cavaliers, who was without a tent, was found dead at the foot of a tree, whither he had crept for shelter. I feel as if I should myself expire before night. All my hopes are in four or five lemons still remaining for lemonade, and in a little dry curd which I am about to drink diluted with water and with sugar. Heaven bless you! The ink dries at the end of my pen, and the pen itself drops from my hand. "My parched and withered body is become a mere sieve; the quart of water, which I swallow at a draught, passing at the same moment through every one of my pores, even to my fingers' ends. I am sure that I have not drunk to-day less than ten or eleven quarts. Amid all our sufferings, it is a great consolation to be able to drink as much water as we please with impunity, provided it be of good quality.” LETTER XIII. 155 JHELUM. world has seen many cavalcades more superb;" 'twere well they had been as completely provided with the necessaries of life. But the cost of living is not so cheap now as in Coryat's time :- "I will now mention as a matter verie memorable: I spent in my ten months' travels betwixt Aleppo and the Mogul's Court but three pounds sterling, yet fared reasonable well every day. Victuals being so cheap in some countries where I travelled that I often- times lived competentlie for a penny sterling a day; yet of that three pound I was cousened of no less than ten shillings sterling by certain lewde christians of the Armenian nation, so that indeed I spent but fifty shillings in my ten months' traivailes. And I do enjoy at this time as pancraticall and atheleticall a health as ever 1 did in my life." We passed through the town of Jhelum* at eleven P.M. It was * "Jhelum. The town, consisting of about 500 houses, is the head-quarters of the civil station, and hence is looked upon as the chief town, although the fourth or fifth in comparison with the other towns of this district. A mile to the west is the mili- tary cantonment once occupied by a large force of native troops, but since the mutiny all but left to ruin. Water is obtained at little cost and labour from wells all worked with the Persian wheel, which yields a plentiful supply. The Rubhee crop, sown by the zemindars about the end of October, is collected during April, and consists of wheat, gehun; barley, jhow; gram, chunna; rape, surson; linseed, ulsee; safflower, kusoomba, and a great variety of the melon tribe. The Khureef crop is sown in June and collected in September-October, and consists of millet, bagree and jowar varieties; cotton, kupas; Indian corn, makee; sugar-cane, gun- nah; oilseed, til; Indian hemp, sunn. Where irrigation may be resorted to throughout the year, tobacco and rape are raised during the whole hot season in the Goojrat district. Of pulses, moth and mung--botanic name of latter, Phaseolus mungo—the split peas of which constitute the varieties of dahl. Rape, linseed, and flax yield oil by simple expression. Tobacco, tumbakoo is cultivated more as garden produce. Indigo is cultivated strictly for home consumption, and is used principally for dyeing the beard of the cultivator. Sugar-cane is also only a garden product, not to have its juice extracted for the preparation of sugar, but to be sold in the bazar in the cane, and thus eaten by the natives. Close to the villages there are generally one or two small plots of garden ground in the vicinity of the wells, from which they are watered, surrounded by fences of kækur, acacia arabica . and other trees, not unfrequently the ficus religiosa, pipul, and ficus indica, bore burgot or banian tree. The principal vegetables are moolies, variety of radish; piaz, onions ; baingous, egg-plant; shalgam, variety of turnip; poluch, variety of spinach ; gauger, variety of carrot, besides great varieties of melons. As condiments there is lalmirch, capsicum putescens . . . . and various others. The buchyan, Persian lilac, melia azedaract, is very general, and its ripe fruit is eaten by goats and sheep." —Dr. Aitchison, &c., in Journal of R. A. S. • 156 LETTER XIII. LAHORE TO KOHÁLA. illuminated—with lighted wicks stuck in earthen saucers full of oil—in honour of the Viceroy, then passing up country to visit the outlying stations of Rawul Pindee and Peshawur. The whole of this tract is under irrigation, and extensive fields of grain make it difficult to believe the statement that a season of scarcity is impending. But what is one fertile district here or there, to an arid country with its millions of people? The remains of tombs and mosques abound, especially in the neighbourhood of Lahore, where this sketch was made to show you the brilliant colours of the encaustic tiles, which were the favourite medium of mural embellishment in Akbar's and Jehangir's reigns, although the employment of them does not appear to have extended beyond the region of the five rivers. The back of the building is destroyed; its front, comparatively uninjured, is now converted into a police station, having a garden of mulberry trees behind. Muhammedan fanatics in Aurung- zebe's time destroyed many Hindoo structures, and these monu- ments offered an easy means of retaliation, or of gratifying iconoclastic zeal during the later rule of the Sikh Hindoos. The lion of Lahore was a bitter enemy of Muhammedans. Sir Henry Lawrence, when attempting to convince the doubtful regiments of native troops that the British Government had no intention of interfering with their religion, said "Many here present well know that Runjeet Singh never permitted his Muhammedan subjects to call the pious to prayer; never allowed the muezzin to sound from the lofty minarets which adorn Lahore, and remain to this day a monument of their magnificent founders. The year before last a Hindoo could not have built a temple in Lucknow ! All this is changed. Who is there now that would dare to interfere with our Muhammedan or Hindoo subjects?" But this truthful appeal had no effect on the troops to whom it was addressed, who broke into open revolt immediately after- wards. Rawl Pindee, a military station, cantonment, and bazaar, was reached on the morning of the twentieth. The Viceroy was expected, and, at most of the stations, troops of horse were drawn POLICEST Setapa). WJPALMERS TOMB CONVERTED INTO A POLICE STATION, NEAR LAHORE. [Page 156. LETTER XIII. 157 DULIS. up to receive him, men of Hodson's, Fane's, and Probyn's irre- gulars, since converted into regiments of Bengal cavalry. Their uniform is a blue and white turban, a scarlet coat with blue facings, white breeches, and jack boots. The Afghans, handsome, martial men, are, or might be, an inexhaustible source whence to recruit our army; but they must be kept on the move. It has been said that were they employed to garrison the colonies, Malta, Gibraltar, West Indies, and elsewhere, they would probably return with a lasting impression of the Feringhee people, and with a prestige of their own, serve to form a nucleus of loyal influence, which is and must be the ultimate object of our endeavours, namely, to establish among these people a sentiment not now existing, of respect and attachment to the British crown. Many of them wore the Lucknow medal. A large force of British and native troops is stationed at Rawl Pindee and at Peshawur, the head-quarters of the Punjab, opposite the Khyber Pass. The Ameer of Cabul claims the Khyberees as his subjects, and they allowed him to pass through without molestation, when he went, last year, to arrange a treaty of alliance with Lord Mayo; but upon his return with the Viceroy's gifts, which included a park of Armstrong guns, they came down and levied black mail. A night journey of about twelve hours, easily made in a dhooly, carried by eight or ten men kuhars,* takes you from Rawl Pindee to Murree. An up-country duli is a frame with canvas top and sides, and a tightly-drawn netting below on which the rezai and pillows are placed. You get in sideways and lie * "They form a class of foot-servants peculiar to India. They carry heavy loads on their shoulders, and travel through mountains and valleys. With their palkis, singhasans, chaudols, and dulis, they walk so evenly that the man inside is not in- convenienced by any jolting. At court several thousands of them are kept. The pay of a head bearer varies from 192 to 384 d. Common bearers get from 120 to 160 d."--Professor Blochmann's Ain-i-Akbari. • The coins referred to were dáms. "The copper standard of value continued to prevail in Akbar's time, and the revenues of his empire were assessed in dúms, a copper coin weighing about 324 grains. The total demand of the State, A.D. 1596, is given as 3,629,755,246 dáms. The payments in kind in the province of Kashmir were reduced into equivalents in dams, the only exceptions being the trans Indus Sirkar of Kandahar, where the taxes were collected in Persian gold, tomauns, and dinars.”—Mr. Thomas, in Journal of R. A. S., vol. xxxiv. 158 LETTER XIII. LAHORE TO KOHÁLA. down. The men push on at a fair pace with the gasping sing song peculiar to their race, and by which they keep exact time. Occasionally the mate who leads calls out capperdar, or bhort capperdari (take great care), not that there is the slightest reason for extra caution, but that the sahib may be impressed with their anxiety on his behalf, and perchance reward them with a larger backsheesh. The road winds up the mountain by an easy ascent, and is good all the way. Where the sides are precipitous, parapets have been erected, and as you approach the summit of the range the views are extensive and sometimes beautiful, while the woods become thicker and the foliage more varied. Trees of forest growth, in many places spring out of crevices of rock to a great height. Oak, elm, horse chesnut, pine, and hawthorn are inter- spersed with wild peach and mulberry trees, and later in the season a variety of flowers abound, but the rhododendron, with its mantle of crimson and rose, is not seen. Assured at Lahore, and afterwards at Rawul Pindee, that everything necessary for the journey to Kashmir could easily be obtained at Murree, difficulties occurred in the way of obtaining anything. In fact this summer station, which is almost entirely locked up during the winter months, was only just beginning to open its doors for the approaching season. Detained longer than was desirable, the exercise of walking up and down the Khuds, and the views of the snowy range, compensated for any temporary disappointment. Although the natives of the Hazara district, to. which Murree belongs, are nearly all Muhammedans, and at the time of the mutiny could not have forgotten the advantages they had gained by our rule, or the liberation which it established from the tyranny of the Sikhs; yet they had almost matured a revolt against us, and the destruction of Europeans which had been concerted would have been carried into execution if the assault and capture of Delhi had been longer delayed. But the successful issue of that heroic enterprise crushed the bursting buds of disaffection throughout India, and of waning prestige beyond its borders. In Dr. Bellew's journal of "A Mission to Afghanistan," he relates - JO WPALNER TO CASHMERE TO KOTLETUD BRIDLE ROAD TO CASHMERE-MURREE HILLS. | Page 159. LETTER XIII. 159 MURREE. how the news was received at Kandahar: "As soon as the Sardar heard of the calamity (the death of Nicholson) he stroked his beard and devoutly ejaculated 'God forgive him!' He then dis- coursed on his great qualities, and declared that our success at Delhi must have been owing to him, 'for,' said he, 'who can with- stand the Nikalsain Sahib ?"" At Murree warnings were received from friendly chiefs, and watch-towers were erected for the pro- tection of residents, in case of emergencies, which fortunately never occurred. Placed on eminences to be within sight of signals, these towers are still conspicuous objects and significant reminders of those anxious times. The mountains yield an excellent sandstone, which is quarried for building purposes, and many handsome mansions occupy every selected spot of level ground. The majority of these are built on speculation, to let for the season at rents varying from £50 to £150. Government House, pleasantly situate, contains large and handsomely appointed rooms. There is a Pro- testant, a Wesleyan, and a Roman Catholic church, a cricket ground, several execrable hotels, and a sufficient collection of stores, as the shops are called. Kashmir Point, 7500 feet, is the highest in the station. Below it a bridle road leads to Kashmir, and a sign-post in the English style points with the hand and finger in that direction. Murree has its asylum for soldiers' chil- dren, an extensive building called, like others about India, after Sir Henry Lawrence. Partly supported by government, they depend also on public subscriptions, which cannot be more worthily made. The children are taught the rudiments of a good education—the girls domestic duties, the boys a trade, and a number of useful articles are made by them. Brought up under a climate as severe in winter as that of the north of Scotland, and with healthy exercise, they become strong and hardy subjects. Murree has also a brewery, producing a very fair beer, which is bottled and sold in the plains. During the season the bazaar is supplied with all sorts of comestibles, though at extravagant prices, from the expense of carriage. No idlers are allowed to remain in it, or in the European quarter, but are expelled whence they came. 160 LETTER XIII. LAHORE TO KOHÁLA. A price current of the articles of daily consumption, kept at the magistrate's office, is the reference in cases of extortion, or of trying it on. Having purchased your tents, tables, carpets, chairs, beds, baths, crockery, glass, ponies (bread, to last a fortnight), beef, vegetables, preserved provisions from Crosse & Blackwell or Moir of Aberdeen (who supply most of India with soup), Bass's beer, bottled by Fosters of Brook Street or Ihlers & Bell, wines, in short, everything you can imagine; and having engaged about seventy kulis, including six to stagger under a canteen, you start off the cooks with their batteries de cuisine, and prepare by a good breakfast for the hardships of a journey to the famous valley. Leaving Murree yesterday, we marched twenty miles to this bungalow in six hours. Through forests of oak, birch, and other trees, along the side of a mountain presenting wide views across a wooded valley, the road, almost a continuous descent, is rocky, and not pleasant in walking, while the heat during the middle of the day was decidedly oppressive. The last do kos seemed intermin- able-a koss is from a mile and a half to three miles, according to your informant's bump of locality, and do like dos two. At last we arrive at the right bank of the Jhelum, 'rolling rapidly,' dark brown in colour, like a Scotch spate, with huge logs of cedar and pine borne on its billows or caught here and there in the projecting rocks. They are sent to the plains for the use of the railway and other companies. Arrived, the chef was ready with a petit diner, including a soup that would have done credit to Gunter's, and a plate of salmon with sauce tartare that would not have disgraced Phillipes. By faith a Muhammedan, his features proclaim unmistakeably a Hebrew origin, and his ways are those of a high caste Jew. Dressed in snowy white, he cooks in the open, brings in the last dish himself, and receiving a sign of approbation salaams grate- fully. Peas are cooked in an air-tight jar, with a little butter to prevent their getting dry, a tablespoonful of water, pepper, salt, and mint, then fastened and boiled. In this way the flavour is preserved, and they keep hot to the last, being served in a jar with a napkin folded round it. The bearer, engaged in Calcutta, walked LETTER XIII. 161 KOHÁLA. the whole distance guarding the box that contains the rupees, here of necessity in specie; and the bheestie has been all day attempt- ing to catch fish for the Sahib in the classic waters of the Jhelum. This river, about seventy-five yards wide, is spanned by a rope bridge a couple of feet broad, which swings about and has not an inviting appearance; but after having crossed it once or twice, your nerves not only become more Irish and less nice, but you enjoy standing in the middle of it and looking into the rapids. Luggage and heavy articles must be ferried over. The boat, as it touches the outer edge of the whirlpool, is immediately swung round in a circle by the force of the water, and the men take advantage of the moment the opposite turn is reached to pull it The following caution, suspended over the fireplace of the dawk bungalow, warns adventurous travellers :- across. NOTICE. KOHÁLA FERRY. On the 18th and 24th June, 1868, two accidents occurred, resulting in the loss of two boats and many lives. The river Jhelum at this point from the 15th May to the 15th August (1) runs full and very strong, and the passage during this period is always more or less dangerous, and in certain years (2) when the snows have not melted at the proper time (3) this danger is increased by the greater volume of the torrent later in the season. The boatmen enjoy half the proceeds of the ferry tolls. Possibly (4) maný travellers are unaware of the extent and cause of the danger, and of the interest of the boatmen in keeping the ferry open, besides the preservation of their own lives. (5) Travellers are therefore informed that the Police Stations at the Ferry have received strict orders to prevent, firstly, the overloading of a boat, and secondly, its passage across the torrent whenever the boatmen protest; and it is hoped that however inconvenient and apparently needless the delay, the knowledge (6) of the danger and (7) the interest of the boatmen to ply as often as they can, will prevent any Traveller from using any pressure on the police or the boatmen. An accident, on inquiry traceable to pressure exerted in defiance of an order, and warning of the police, will subject the Traveller to prosecution according to Law. (8) THE DEPUTY COMMISSIONER, (9) HAZARA, 1st January, 1868, Y 162 LETTER XIII. LAHORE TO KOHÁLA. Impatient tourists have covered this official document with uncomplimentary criticisms:- (1) How painfully accurate as to dates, and yet what poetic licence there is in the general wording of the notice: (2) or uncertain years: (3) or when they melt at improper times: (4) in fact probably: (5) Anglice what? (6) that there is: (7) that it is the: (8) especially if the traveller is drowned : (9) and instructor in orthography and syntax to the residents of Kashmir and the Punjab. Bad luck to your lingo! Queen's English, by jingo, Was ne'er a dead language till murdered by you; I mean no offence; but such syntax and sense As yours would disgrace a Bengalee baboo. This, the last dâwk bungalow on British ground on the Murree route to Kashmir, is the only pass where any delay can occur on the journey thither; but a suspension bridge is being con- structed by government to replace the rope fabric where it now hangs, which will make tourists independent of the ferry, and indifferent to the rise of the Jhelum, or Phat (as it was called by Mr. Edward Terry), in after times: "Its chief city is called Seri- naker, the river Phat passeth through it, and so creeping about many Ilands slides to Indus." The opposite bank is the boundary, in this direction, of the territory of Casmir, Chishmeere, Kescie- mur, Keshmir, Cashmere or Kashmir, as by different writers its name has been written, a country which fell into our hands in 1846, and was sold immediately afterwards to the late Golab Singh (described by his contemporaries as a monster of iniquity),* * An insurrection had taken place against the authority of Gulab Singh, which he succeeded in suppressing. "Some of his prisoners were flayed alive under his own eye. The executioner hesitated, and Gulab asked him if he were about to operate on his own father or mother. He then ordered one or two of the skins to be stuffed with straw, the hands were stiffened and tied in an attitude of supplication. The corpse was then placed erect, and the head, which had been severed from the body, was reversed as it rested on the neck. The figure was then planted on the wayside, that passers by might see it; and Gulab Singh called his son's attention to it, and told him to take a lesson in the art of governing. The heads of two of the prisoners I saw grinning from iron cages over the path at Ada Tak, by way of affording a wholesome lesson to all travellers."-- Vigne's Kashmir. * LETTER XIII. 163 GOLAB SINGH. by the British Government for 750,000l.; but with this condi- tion, that he should acknowledge our supremacy, and in token thereof present annually "twelve perfect shawl goats of ap- proved breed, and three pairs of Cashmere shawls" (at which rate we have received to date two hundred and eighty-eight goats, and six dozen of shawls); one of those political mistakes that we make in a hurry to appease the demons of economy, or of Exeter Hall, and repent at our leisure; or regret the fatality of the national tradition, that we throw away by diplomacy what we win by the sword. As Kashmir contains six hundred thousand inhabitants, they were estimated at twenty-five shillings a head, the most extensive transaction in the slave trade of modern times. Golab maintained a treacherous inactivity during our contest. with the Sikhs, until he saw that their superiority of numbers was unavailing to avert defeat, and that the Punjab must suc- cumb, when he sent nine thousand men to our assistance at Chillianwalla, and through this act obtained a favourable recep- tion from the Indian Government, which ceded Kashmir to him, of which country he then was Governor, for the consideration named. Kohála is a native hamlet or collection of mud huts, straggling along the side of the mountain. Here the kulis from Murree are paid off, and you must arrange with the Kotwal in the Maharajah's territory opposite for a relay. So many officers and other officials are now pushing into the valley, that difficulties occasionally arise in procuring the necessary number of men, who, besides conveying travellers and their stores, are employed by the dealers of Murree and Rawul Pindee, to carry their supplies of Europe comestibles, wines, brandy, and soda water, to Srinuggur, where they establish their branches for the season. The worthy old official appointed by the Maharajah for the purpose, unable to satisfy the general demand, takes a daily course of bullying from every new arrival with perfect equanimity. Encamping on his border to-night, to-morrow we start at four A.M., if the promised kulis arrive. The Dhunua Dhuk, a steep and rocky mountain which rises 164 LETTER XIII. LAHORE TO KOHÁLA. immediately from the bank of the river, commences the first stage. This hilly tract of country is not called Kashmir by the natives, neither do the kulis and labourers that inhabit it call themselves Kashmiris, designations which only appertain to the valley proper and its people. • t C 1 THE KHANSAMAH. LETTER XIV. KOHÁLA TO SRINUGGUR. KASHMIR, 4th June, 1870. AT Kobála we still were encompassed by the familiar sounds and scenes of dâwk bungalow life; the extortions of a bold Khan- samah now vexed, now bored us, his stock of disconsolate murghies diminished from day to day, yet whenever we chanced to look eastward we saw before us the precipitous sides of the Dunna Dhuk, darkly impending over the turbulent Jhelum as it rushed from poetic Kashmir! At Murree a Yarkund pony had been purchased, an acquisition soon repented of. With drooping head and eyes, vacantly staring in search of something never found, he swayed and stumbled over the level road like a lost specimen of the hippatherium period. But, assured that, nurtured on the steep ridges of lofty mountains, he would be found quite at home there, we mounted him once more and started on the long-deferred journey. 166 LETTER XIV. KOHÁLA TO SRINUGGUR. The road, a mere track up the sides of the Dunna, full of rocks, boulders, and stones, like the dry bed of a mountain torrent, ascends immediately from the river's edge. To walk up is a difficult and fatiguing task, to ride up seemed impos- sible; but no sooner did the Yarkund perceive what was before him, than he gave several loud snorts of joy; he had discovered the object of his search, and at once buckled to the work of climbing up the mountain. His neck is covered with a thick shock mane, holding on to which with both hands to avoid slipping off his back, we were carried far in advance of the kulis, while the syce was pulled up hanging on to his tail. After riding this wondrous animal along the edge of preci- pices, down deep ravines, and by the rocky sides of the mighty Jhelum, without a single false step, feelings of gratitude have taken the place of those he first excited. He is now revelling on the fat of the land, laying in huge stocks of grass and gram with unappeasable appetite, just as clowns in panto- mimes swallow sausages, but no amount of feeding fattens him; like the gaunt Quixotes of the dinner-table he is ever lean and voracious. The march across the Dhunna Duk, said to be seven miles long, was accomplished by the Yarkund with perfect ease in two, but occupied the kulis nearly six hours. Dunna, a collection of mud- huts, with a mud-fort, and a few muddy inhabitants, overlooks a valley now being irrigated for rice and other crops. At the summit of another mountainous ridge, the road to it being a deep descent followed by an equally steep ascent, is the second station, Meira, eight and a-half miles. Thence the stage runs four miles up a ridge, in some places narrowing to a couple of feet along the Chickar Dhuk, whence three miles down hill bring you to the bungalow. The Telkedar, or head man of the village, supplies milk and eggs at a low price, and procures relays of kulis. The bungalows, for which no charge is made, consisting usually of a ground and a first floor, are more properly mud-huts; built of mud and wood, the latter only visible in the ceiling, which is stuffed • + : CH रा $2 WIPALMER HUTTIAN, KASHMIR. [Page 167. LETTER XIV. 167 HUTTIAN. with straw. Walls, roofs, and floors are of mud; and as there are no doors or windows, but only an aperture to go in by or to look out of, and no furniture of any kind, the comfortable cha- racter of these caravanserais may be imagined, especially during a gale of wind, which happens about twice a day. At Chikar another relay of kulis was obtained, and we pushed on to Huttian. The next station, Chikotee, is placed at a short distance from `a precipitous gorge of the Jhelum. From Chikotee to Ooree, sixteen miles, the road leads through romantic scenery. As the heat of the day is somewhat oppressive, marches are made in the early morn- ing, and tents, luggage, and stores sent on by night. At four your bearer appears with chota hazri, and packs up beds and bedding. At eight you arrive to find tents pitched, a warm bath, clothes and linen ready, and a table neatly laid, placed perchance within sight of a mimic waterfall, leaping from rock to rock on its way to the rapids. The scent of violets is not disagreeably mingled under these peculiar circumstances with that of a steak now deftly preparing in conjunction with-mention it not—onions,— tomatoes, and boiled potatoes. Books, a siesta, tiffin, and an exploration of the surrounding scenery pass the time rapidly till the afternoon, when, having sent on stores and tents, you start for the bungalow, where everything is again waiting your arrival. " This can scarcely be termed roughing it, and yet this is the way in which one could traverse a great part of Asia, were the preparations for a more adventurous course of travel made on a corresponding scale of completeness, and with a retinue sufficient to impress native chiefs with an exaggerated notion of your importance. At Ooree the Jhelum is crossed by a bridge made of thin wicker-twisted branches of trees. Three wicker ropes twisted together form the lower portion on which to walk, and the hand ropes are attached to it at intervals of three feet— the sides therefore are open. It extends over a chasm seventy yards wide, and below runs the black flowing river. Those whose education on the slack rope has been neglected, and to whom passage over this specimen of Kashmerian skill in engineering is + 168 LETTER XIV. KOHÁLA TO SRINUGGUR. not an absolute necessity, prefer to admire the bridge rather than to pass across it; but the natives do so with perfect self- possession. SUSPENSION BRIDGE, OOREE, KASHMIR, From the pass of Baramula, at the extremity of the vale of Kashmir, to Kohála, the Jhelum descends a deep incline of rocks, and forms a continuous series of rapids like those of the St. Lawrence and the Danube, yet surpassing, not in volume, but in majestic scenery, those noble rivers. At intervals the precipitous rocks that hem in this raging torrent give place to low banks covered with greensward, bright as the lawn of an English garden, and chequered here and there with large white stones, which seem placed as chairs and tables for a picnic party; gentle undu- lations lead to closely overhanging hills dotted with spreading trees or covered to their summits with deodara pines, while above tower the snow-clad mountains, and before are the ever- plunging waves of the rapids, white with foam-a combination LETTER XIV. 169 KASHMIR. not to be adequately described. In the dense forests along the road are many ancient ruins overgrown with ivy, and near one of them, under an immense rock, abode an old fakir, who occu- pied himself during our cursory glance at him in blowing a tin trumpet and covering his head with ashes. From Naoshera to Baramula, the last march of ten miles brings you to the final pass, a wooded hill, ascending which, "beyond the poplars of Baramule," you behold the object of your toils, or as Bernier called it, "the terrestrial paradise of the Indies-Kashmire." "Kashmir is a large valley lying between two snowy spurs of the great Himalayan range, drained by the Vedasta, or Jhelum river, which, with its tributaries, is navigable by large boats for about ninety miles. The greatest length of the valley from ridge to ridge, measured from S. E. to N. W., which is also the direction of the drainage, is about one hundred and eighteen miles. The flat portion is about eighty-nine miles long, with an average breadth of sixteen and three-quarter miles, and elevated about 5200 feet above the sea. The flat ground consists of an upper level separated, from the lower by cliffs of clay, or standing alone in isolated masses several miles in length and breadth. The cliffs of clay, called karewahs by the Kashmirs, are some 200 to 300 feet high. The lower level is subject to inundation, and the portion between the city and the lake still forms a great marsh, but vaguely separated from the lake itself. The chief features of the valley are the lakes, which are of world-wide celebrity."* A considerable number of Kashmerians live in boats, thatched with matting, with rolls of matting at the sides, which are let down by night. The hire of a large boat is half a rupee, a shilling a day. Rupees are called "Company rupea" to distinguish them from "Kashmiri rupea." The wages of a boatman are six shillings a month. Of this the Maharajah claims and receives twentypence, so that the net wages of a man fully employed are four and fourpence a month. At Srinuggur, where large boats are not required, a smaller one is used, called a shikar," the charge for which is two * (C Captain Montgomerie's Report on the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, J. R. A. S. N 170 LETTER XIV. KOHÁLA TO SRINUGGUR. shillings a month. Seven men, two in front and five behind, paddle it along dexterously and swiftly. All that these men can earn during the month, in addition to the four and four- pence, is their share of the two shillings, boat hire, if the boat belongs to them. The boatmen and their families occupy a cabin at the stern separated from the travellers' compartment; and all hands join in paddling the boat or pulling it from the bank, —-all, from white-headed patriarchs to their great-grandchildren. The aged men are hale and strong; the young often models for a sculptor; the women sometimes beautiful, the children always so. Each child has its little paddle, and sits by its mother, keeping exact time; and the strokes of the many paddles along the boat's side sound as one. Passenger boats are sixty feet long by eight wide, and though prow and stern are occupied by rowers, the traveller has ample room for his table and chairs, which are removed at night to make way for his bed. Servants follow in the next boat, and are within hail for whatever may be wanted. The boats, moored to the bank at night, start in the morning at dawn. After the marches of the preceding days, the passage up the Jhelum -here a silent, still-flowing river-is a pleasing change. The balmy air and undulating fields of many brilliant hues, the superb groups of trees, and the surrounding snow-clad moun- tains, form a splendid combination of the luxurious and the beautiful. From morn till noon we were towed up the dreamy Jhelum, from noon till dewy eve, a summer's day, and, awakened next morning by the bearer with a cup of Malabar mocha, we were informed that the boats had moored for the last time at the suburban camping ground, the Moonshee-Bagh, or garden of the interpreter. Kitchen, stove, bath, bed, and sitting-room, tents were soon pitched by the active servants, who spread the carpets, open the tables, arrange chairs, lamps, canteens, cellar, books, guns, and fishing- tackle. When you emerge from your bath-room, the gusul kana, you find the bare lawn transformed to a well arranged abode, and LETTER XIV. 171 SRINUGGUR. before the door of your reception-room a line of clothiers, shawl merchants, silver, copper, and gun smiths, papier maché and button-makers, stationers, furriers, grocers, seal engravers, shoe- makers, chiropodists, hairdressers, perfumers, and bankers, await- ing your commands. Silversmiths trace their designs with only an iron nail, yet produce presentable and admired works of art. Encamped in a grove of apple trees, or, according to Moore, of STREET IN SRINUGGUR, my divine Amrita trees," on the banks of the ancient Hydaspes, boat is on the shore," or rather at the door. Srinuggur is an Asiatic Venice, and the Jhelum, here 100 yards wide, forms its Grand Canal, from which numerous streets of water, canals, over- hung by chenars, or lined with poplars and trailing vines, reflect the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave." The principal of these, called the Appletree Canal, flows from the city lake. 172 LETTER XIV, KOHÁLA TO SRINUGGUR. ? celebrated in the "Light of the Harem," and enters the Jhelum opposite the Maharajah's palace and Hindoo temple, the latter of black marble, having its dome covered with plates of solid gold. It contains the usual carved effigies of the Hindoo deities. Round the basement runs a corridor, now shut in by tin plates, tacked up to exclude the sun. Living is inexpensive. House rent costs nothing, and provisions are as under. Well-made bread, in loaves not quite so large as a half quartern, twopence each; butter is fourpence, mutton two- pence, table rice a penny, and flour one penny halfpenny per pound; spring chickens are one penny and a halfpenny each; fresh laid eggs the fowls are fed on grain-are dearer, being twopence per dozen. These particulars were given by the Baboo appointed by the Maharajah to protect European travellers from imposition, and the prices are for the best of the various articles. You will, however, notice an omission—the price of beef, " we never mention it, its name is never heard," for although the 600,000 or 700,000 inhabitants of Kashmir are nearly all Muhammedans, the Maha- rajah is a Hindoo, and the bovine race sacred in his eyes. To kill one of them is a capital crime; and opposed as his highness is to capital punishment, or to the cutting off of a whole neck at once as the taking of life is contrary to Brahminical law—yet anyone convicted of cow-murder, would be sentenced to imprisonment and punishment, from which death would be the hoped-for release. Those animals, however, that die from old age, accident, or disease, may be eaten by the Pariah caste both of Hindoos and Mussulmen. The tent-pitchers are Pariahs, and noticing that they were rubbing their stomachs and looking ghastly, the bearer explained what was the matter. "These fellas eat half a rotten sheep last night, master, and so much boiled rice," indicating about a hamper full. "Bellies very bad this morning." "Give them some pills." "Master give them fellas pills, all master's servants want pills; they get well soon enough." In effect, the next morning one of them up in a mulberry tree was shaking down the fruit, and the other below on all fours was devouring it with a gusto-evidence of complete recovery. Later in the season, all kinds of vegetables and fruits Of TOWING UP THE JHELUM. [Page 172. A LETTER XIV. 173 DOLLEES. abound in this valley. Ancient vines trail from poplar to poplar in huge festoons,. "altas maritat populos," and apples, pears, peaches, nectarines-all the fruits of a temperate climate-grow in the surrounding gardens. The Maharajah sends a "dollee"-offering-to travellers on their arrival, and another on their departure from his capital. A sheep, a fowl, three "chatties"-earthen crocks-full of different kinds of rice, half a pound of butter and of ghee, two ounces of salt, one of tea—from Ladak,—one seer of sugar, one of milk, five of flour, eight eggs, some cinnamon, cloves, rice, and a bundle of wood, are allotted each visitor. During a fortnight, while the runners were being transferred from the Sealkote to the Murree route, we had no post. Each runner conveys the bag three miles, and the distance between this place and Murree, 138 miles, is accomplished in about fifty hours, which, considering the difficulty of the route, is good travelling. The streams are crossed on a single rope suspended from poles or trees on either side, having a looser rope attached to it at distances of about two yards. Holding the upper rope, the men walk sideways on the lower-exactly the same contrivance as is used in reefing or furling sails. The Maharajah has his own postage-stamps, which must be used in his dominions; but Indian stamps are sold at the post-office, so that letters go through direct to England. His arrangements are now in working order, but the postal management of the Indian Government is defective. An Indian post-office would amuse you. A huge heap of letters and newspapers lie on the floor of the large airy room, surrounded by native clerks, who sort them while squatted on their haunches. On top of the tables half a dozen others in the same posture, with large office books before them, write or check accounts. They write quickly and well-an ac- complishment referred to in the letters of Nearchus to Alexander the Great! but they are slow in actual work. Cross-legged on the floor, the stamp-vendor keeps his stamps in a number of little bags, which he deliberately unrolls one by one. The letter- weigher is equally slow in determining the exact postage, and the 174 ་ KOHÁLA TO SRINUGGUR. LETTER XIV. dilatoriness in everything is ludicrous. The post hence only runs from the 15th April to the 15th October, after which all foreigners are ordered out of the country, taxes are levied, and communica- tion ceases with the rest of the world. : KASHMIRI. LETTER XV. SRINUGGUR TO AITCHABUL. KASHMIR, 18th June, 1870. THE annexed sketch is not a representation of the great sea-serpent meandering through an ocean of cabbages, but an attempt to describe the windings of the Jhelum, seen from the Shunkur Charah, a temple, two thousand years old, on the top- most peak of a 'steep rocky hill, the "Tukht-i-Suliman," Throne of Solomon. “The mountainous portal that opes Sublime from this valley of bliss to the world.” The oldest temple in Kashmir, both in appearance and according to tradition. Its erection is ascribed to Jaloka, the son of Asoka, who reigned about 220 B.C. "The plan of the temple is octagonal, each side being fifteen feet in length. The entrance, the back, and the two flank walls are perfectly plain; but the other four walls are broken into a succession of salient and re-entering angles. The height of the original temple cannot now be ascertained, as the present roof is a modern plastered dome, which has been built since the occupation of the country by the Sikhs. The interior, which is a circle of 21 feet in diameter, is perfectly plain and very dark, the entrance being a narrow passage only 3 feet in width. The walls are therefore 8 feet thick, which I consider one of the strongest proofs of the great antiquity of the building. It is surrounded by an octagonal enclosure, parallel to the 176 LETTER XV. SRINUGGUR TO AITCHABUL. walls of the temple at only 7½ feet distance. This enclosing wall is 3 feet 2 inches in thickness, and 4 feet in height, and stands upon a basement 5 feet broad and 10 feet in height. "The lower portion, 23 feet in height, is ornamented both on the outside and inside by small rectangular panels, 1 foot 8 inches in height." * The curves of the river, as seen from this point, originated the shawl pattern, which from Kashmerian looms has been copied to those of the rest of the world. Nature gave the design, which accounts for its universal acceptance. If one might modify Shakespeare,- 'So full of shapes is Nature, That it alone is high fantastical.” The sketch shows a part of the valley and of the snow peaks that bind it, but not of the city, which from both sides the Jhelum extends to the borders of the lake, with precipitous mountains for its background. Muhammedans or Hindoos by religion, the people of Kashmir are in feature a fine cast of Jews, a race of fair women and brave men; they are not credited with the latter quality, but such at least is their look and bearing. Bernier refers to this fact in his letters from Kashmir, A.D. 1660 :— On entering the kingdom, after crossing the Pir Punjal mountains, the inhabitants in the frontier villages struck me as resembling Jews. Their countenance and manner, and that indescribable peculiarity which enables a traveller to distinguish the inhabitants of different nations, all seemed to belong to that ancient people. You are not to ascribe what I say to mere fancy, the Jewish appearance of these villagers having been remarked by our father the Jesuit, and by several other Europeans long before I visited Kashmir. † * From General Cunningham's Essay on the Arian Order of Architecture. + CC George Forster, in a letter written at Kashmir in the year 1783, says that on first seeing the Kashmirians in their own country he imagined from their garb, the cast of countenance—which is long and of a grave aspect and the form of their beards, that he had come among a nation of Jews." དང THE CURVES OF THE JHELUM, THE ORIGIN OF THE SHAWL OR PINE PATTERN, AS SEEN FROM THE TUKHT I SULIMAN, KASHMIR. [Page 176. LETTER XV. 177 BERNIER. "A second mark is the prevalence of the name of Mousa, which means Moses, among the inhabitants of this city, notwithstanding they are all Muhammedans. 'A third is the common tradition that Solomon visited this country, and that it was he who opened a passage for the waters by cutting the mountain of Baramula. "A fourth, the belief that Moses died in the city of Kashmir, and that his tomb is within a league of it. « And a fifth may be found in the generally received opinion that the small and extremely ancient edifice seen on one of the high hills was built by Solomon, and it is therefore called the Throne of Solomon to this day. You will see then, my dear sir, I am not disposed to deny that Jews may have taken up their residence in Kashmir. The purity of their law, after a lapse of ages, may have been corrupted until, having long degenerated into idolatry, they were induced, like many other Pagans, to adopt the creed of Muhammed." * All the griminess of the Jews' quarter at Frankfort or at Rome, the raggedness and squalor that characterise the filthiest of nations, prevails in an exaggerated degree among the far-famed Kash- merians. A petticoat, or chemise with sleeves, made of coarse cotton, is the sole dress of the Muhammedan women, excepting a scarlet skull cap, over which they throw a shawl made of the same material as their under garments. In the sketch the women are represented beside an embank- ment raised to protect the valley from the floods of the Jhelum ; the one seated is preparing cotton for the spinning-wheel. Their bracelets are of a brittle metal of various colours. The child's hair is plaited in braids, to which black cotton cords give the appearance of greater length, and this arrangement remains undisturbed for months together. When a new dress is pur- chased, about once a year, the owner takes a bath in honour of the occasion, but not till it is discarded in rags and tatters does * Bernier's Letters written at Kashmir, the Terrestrial Paradise of the Indies, apud 1660. Vol. ii. 173. A A 178 LETTER XV, SRINUGGUR TO AITCHABUL. she repeat the operation. Ghí is much used in their cooking, and their dresses are always black with grease and covered with flies. Great, therefore, must be the beauty that can assert itself under such disadvantages. Jacquemont, in his letters from India, says: "Moore is a perfumer, and a liar to boot. Know that I have never seen anywhere such hideous witches as in Cashmere. The female race is remarkably ugly. I know no country on earth where so 9R ง.. ين 心 ​" MUHAMMEDAN WOMEN OF KASHMIR. Ws Paimer many witches could be enlisted for Macbeth, if, instead of three, Shakespeare had wanted a hundred thousand."* Jacquemont was a naturalist, and exhausted the resources of language in his ecstasies at the discovery of a new caterpillar. "He was ap- "The men are brown and lean, but the women, taking them as brunettes, are very beautiful."-Yule's Marco Polo, 1, 157. 23 器 ​LAKE MANUSBUL, KASHMIR. [Page 179. LETTER XV. 179 JACQUEMONT. pointed by the Council of the Natural History Museum at Paris to travel through India, on a salary of £250 a year, as its natu- ralist and collector. He had soon to write, however, "If it be not raised from 6,000 to 15,000 francs, I shall be obliged to renounce the undertaking." He arrived thoroughly prejudiced against British rule, intensely convinced of our "insular arrogance," per- suaded that in India it ought to be abated, and, above all, "that its duration depended on the will of Russia, the speedy appearance of whose forces at the passes of the Indian Caucasus was a consummation devoutly to be wished and speedily to be obtained." But he had not been long in India before he com- pletely changed these views, and wrote to his friend in Paris that British rule was "an immense blessing to the provinces sub- jected to it."* Inquiring of a boatman why he did not make his wife, a really pretty woman, and his children, engaging little things, wash every day and wear clean clothes, his explanation was, that if he kept his wife cleaner than those of other boatmen the Baboo would report to the Vakeel that he was earning more money, and he would be more heavily taxed. Lake Manusbul is considered the most beautiful lake in Kashmir, but the sketch scarcely conveys that impression. Jahangir erected a palace for Nurmahall on the point to the right of the drawing, from which the finest view is obtained. Here some of our party amused themselves with fishing, while others explored the moun- tains, or during the heat of the day, under a wide-spreading chenar, admired the perseverance of their companions. The fish though fine looking are very indifferent eating; and this, to material philosophers, considerably diminished the interest of the sport. The boatmen, however, relish the fish, and are dexterous in spearing them; and it is interesting to watch these men standing at the very point of the prow, spear in hand, peering into the water, ready to strike, and then the swiftness and accuracy with which they dart their weapon into the silvery light below. From Manusbul a pleasant march across a valley leads to Ganderbul, on the Scinde river, here formerly crossed by a fine * J. R. A. S. of Bengal. 180 LETTER XV. SRINUGGUR TO AITCHABUL. stone bridge; but the river has changed its course, and the bridge is in ruins, The Hindoos, with the same cast of Jewish features, are fairer RUINED BRIDGE OVER THE SCINDE AT GANDERBUL. than the Muhammedans, and their women are seldom seen; but returning from Ganderbul to Srinuggur, early one morning at Shadipore, we surprised a great Hindoo festival. Shadipore is situate at the confluence of the Scinde river with the Jhelum, where the waters are peculiarly sacred, and on this occasion, six in the morning, a concourse of both sexes were bathing almost in puris naturalibus. As soon, however, as they saw boats approaching, the women rushed to the bank, and were soon cowering and peeping from under their embroidered shawls. Not to disturb their devotions, we passed quickly to a camping ground in a grove of chenars a mile farther down, and later in the day went to the festival, preceded by the sepoy, clad in white, with a scarlet puggery, wearing the breast band of his order, and armed with a scimitar, which he is not allowed to draw except in self-defence. Sepoy attendants are sent by the Baboo at Sri- nuggur to accompany travellers ignorant of the country and its customs during their stay in Kashmir, and are useful in procuring coolies and provisions at the established rates, and in keeping off beggars, loafers, and loos wallers (thieves). The mela, or fair, a very large one, was attended by many of the wives and daughters of the chief Hindoos. Their hair, instead of being separated in plaited braids over the back as LETTER XV. 181 MÉLAS. is the fashion among young Muhammedans, is gathered round a pad on the crown of the head, and forms a not ungraceful pyramid. Over it a silk shawl, scarlet embroidered with orange, is thrown, which falls to the brow in front and to the ground behind. Across the forehead they wear a fillet of gold or silver ornaments. A ring hangs from the left nostril, and is attached to the ear by a chain of gold. Ears, thumbs, fingers, and toes are covered with rings; and bracelets, armlets, anklets, and neck- laces, with pendants of bright-coloured stones, coral, and turquoise, complete their list of jewellery. On their thumbs they carry a ring holding a little mirror an inch in diameter, which they consult frequently. They have much to look to,—the gradations of collyrium round their eyes-sparkling eyes in youth, brilliant from belladonna when their natural lustre has begun to fade; the arch of their thick black brows; the arrangement of their hair and rings; and the devices and adornments by which, in attempts to heighten, they lessen their charms. For withal, and spite of all, some, not all, are beautiful. Soft, oval faces, large almond-shaped eyes fringed with abundant lashes, noses finely cut though of the Jewish type, classic lips, invariably pearl-white teeth, rounded arms, slender fingers bright with henna, and forms tall and well proportioned, are often seen. They wear a boddice and loose trousers of scarlet or blue silk, fitting tight at the ankles, which are covered with silver anklets. Some of these clank like prisoners' chains; others send forth a tinkling from the many little silver bells that hang from them. "" Rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes To tell her dear husband the way that she goes." But all is not couleur de rose even among "the brightest that earth ever gave" in the vale of Kashmir. To see them eating is not attractive. A dish full of rice, ghí and curry, unctuous and flavoured with onions and garlic, when placed in the centre of a group of women and children, is soon disposed of in the most natural, if not most graceful, style. Each grasps a handful, great or small as appetite dictates, and dexterously throws it into her 182 LETTER XV. SRINUGGUR TO AITCHABUL. widely-opened mouth. Mélas or fairs are mere assemblages of multitudes without amusements beyond those of eating, drinking, tom-toming, offering rice, flowers, and ghí to idols, and bathing— a practice which they seem to reserve for these occasions. On the plains they rig up large roundabouts and turnovers, and then it is a truly absurd spectacle to see middle-aged men, and even patriarchs, grinning with delight at being whirled or tumbled about, a sport which in other countries would amuse none but a child. From Shadipore by water, passing through Srinuggur, a three days' journey brings you to Islamabad, near which are the ruins of Marttand. A series of steppes, called karayas, are a feature in the conformation of the valley, which is believed by competent judges to have once been a lake, and these table-lands its sur- rounding shores. The slow results of time, or a sudden convulsion of nature, forced a passage for the waters through the Baramula pass, and thus rapidly, or gradually, drained it of all but the eternal springs, sources of its existing lakes and rivers. In after- periods of those remote ages when Kashmir flourished, these places became favourite sites for the erection of temples, the most celebrated of which, both in extent and splendour, was that of Marttand, dedicated to the sun. Instead of my incomplete de- scription I now insert that of General (then Captain) Cunningham in his work on "The Arian Order of Architecture :". "The temple consists of one lofty central edifice with a small detached wing on each side of the entrance, the whole standing in a large quadrangle surrounded by a colonnade of fluted pillars, with intervening trefoil-headed recesses. The central building is 63 feet in length, by 36 feet in width at the eastern end, and only 27 feet at the western or entrance end. "It contains three distinct chambers, of which the outermost one, named Arddha Mandapa, or the half-temple, answering to the front porch of the classical fanes, is 18 feet square. The middle one, called Antarala, or mid-temple, corresponding to the pronaos of the Greek, is 18 feet by 4; and the innermost one, named Oorbha Griho, or "womb of the edifice," the naos of the Greeks, and the cella of the Romans, is 18 feet by 31. 2 OF M! ICH RUINS OF MARTTAND, | Page 182, บ * D + M LETTER XV. 183 MARTTAND. "The first and middle chambers are decorated, but the inner is perfectly plain and closed on three sides. The walls are 9 feet thick, and its entrance-chamber only 4 feet thick, being respec- tively one-half and one-fourth of the interior width of the building. << On each side of the porch, flush with the entrance wall to the westward, and with the outer walls, the northward and southward, is a detached building or wing, 18 feet long by 13 broad, with a passage 4 feet wide, between it and the wall of the entrance- chamber. "The width of the passage between these wings being exactly one-third of that of the wing itself, the roof which covered the two would have been an exact square, the form required as the basis of the pyramidal roof of the Kashmerian architecture. RUINED QUADRANGLE OF MARTTAND. Within, the chamber had a doorway at each side, covered by a pediment with a trefoil-headed niche, containing a bust of the Hindu triad. "This representation was itself only another symbol of the Sun, who was Brahma, or the Creator, at morn, Vishnu, or the Preserver, at noon, Siva, or the Destroyer, at even. "The chamber was lighted during the day by semicircular openings over the closed doorways on the three sides, but in the evening, as the entrance was to the westward, the image of the glorious sun was illumined by his own setting beams. 184 LETTER XV. SRINUGGUR TO AITCHABUL. "The temple is enclosed by a pillared quadrangle 220 feet in length by 142 feet in breadth, containing 84 fluted columns. This number the Chourasi (84) of the Hindus is especially emblematic of the sun, as it is the multiple of the twelve mansions of the ecliptic (typified by 12 spokes in his chariot wheel) through which he is carried by his seven steeds in one year; or it is the product of his seven rays multiplied by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The 84 pillars are therefore most probably intended for that number of solar rays. Thus, even the colonnade is made typical of the deity to whom the temple is consecrated. "It overlooks the finest view in Kashmir, and perhaps in the known world. Beneath it lies the Paradise of the East, with its sacred streams and cedarn glens, its brown orchards and green fields, surrounded on all sides by vast snowy mountains, whose lofty peaks seem to smile upon the beautiful valley below. The vast extent of the scene makes it sublime, for this magnificent view of Kashmir is no pretty peep into a half-mile glen; but the full display of a valley 60 miles in breadth, and upwards of 100 miles in length, the whole of which lies beneath the ken of the wonderful Marttand."* A stream of water passed through the quadrangle, and is supposed to have been filled on ceremonial occasions. From General Cunningham's description, Mr. Sulmann, an artist who has given much attention to the study of Indian architecture, produced the accompanying drawing, which may very closely represent the temple in its former glory. From Marttand a short walk leads to the sacred springs and grove of Barwun on the plain at the base of the karaya. Seated near the tank a group of Hindoos surrounded a calf, which a priest, grasping the tail, poured water over, and prayed. He was consecrating it, to become a sacred bull in after-life. This opera- tion completed, the calf walked off, and the priest with the devotees knelt beside the water. Before them was a tin platter of roasted maize, and continuing to drone in a loud voice not unlike a presbyterian preacher, they threw handfuls of the corn into the * Cunningham's Arian Order of Architecture. I OF Z 眠 ​RESTORATION OF MARTTAND-BIRD'S-EYE VIEW. WIPSE [Paye 184. LETTER XV. 185 AITCHABUL. water, at which the fish rose on all sides. But when the prayer was ended and the remainder of the corn was thrown in at once, a hill of fish rushed at it, many supported above the water by the shoal of their companions below. (( Angler, wouldst thou be guiltless then forbear, For these are sacred fishes that swim here." This letter is being written from Aitchabul, in a pavilion sur- rounded by a tank filled with fountains, close to a waterfall, which, though artificial, roars like a natural one, a resemblance one would be glad to dispense with. "I turned," wrote Bernier, "a little from the high road for the sake of visiting Achiavel, a country house formerly of the kings of Kashmire, and now of the Great Mogul. What principally constitutes the beauty of this place is a fountain whose waters disperse themselves into a hundred canals round the house, which is not amiss, and throughout the gardens. The spring gushes out of the earth with violence, as if it issued from the bottom of some well, and the water is so abundant that it ought rather to be called a river than a fountain. It is excellent water, and as cold as ice. The garden is very handsome, laid out in regular walks, and full of fruit trees-the apple, pear, plum, apricot, and cherry. Jets d'eau in various forms and fish-ponds are in great number, and there is a lofty cascade which in its fall takes the form and colour of a large sheet, thirty or forty paces in length, producing the finest effect imaginable, especially at night, when innumerable lamps fixed in parts of the wall adapted for that purpose are lighted under this sheet of water. “From Achiavel I proceeded to another royal garden, embellished much in the same manner. One of its ponds contains fish so tame that they approach on being called, or when pieces of bread are thrown into the water. The largest have gold rings with inscrip- tions through the gills, placed there, it is said, by the celebrated Nurmahall, the wife of Jahangir, grandfather to Aureng-Zêbe.” * The Jhelum, among its agreeable characteristics, is a river whose sources are found without danger to the explorer. It starts from * Bernier's Travels, vol. ii. p. 154. BR 186 LETTER XV. SRINUGGUR TO AITCHABUL. a series of magnificent springs at the base of the mountains; and as the Mogul emperors in the summer visits which they paid to the neighbourhood erected palaces near these loca fabulosus, and adorned them with works of oriental fancy, scarcely had the waters gushed forth, than they were conveyed, to rise in fountains or over blocks of masonry, to fall in cascades, through gardens and in rapid streams, to fertilise the surrounding valley. The springs that flow in a large volume from the base of the spur that bounds this retreat are the finest in Kashmir, and the Emperor Shah Jahan availed himself of them to adorn a garden which he constructed here for the light of his eyes, of his harem, and of the world. Nothing but the Hammam or bath-rooms remain, nor can the form of the palace be traced in its ruins, but the tanks and canals, built with greater solidity, exist to give a notion of its beauty. The water, in a wave of crystal, falls into the tank over a block of masonry twelve feet high and twenty broad. This pavilion, which divides the tank into two squares, each containing twenty-five fountains, approached by small bridges and surrounded by lattice-work, is an agreeable retreat during the heat of the day, and in the evening my rides are through a valley whose mountains clothed with noble trees are intersected by pathways, through wildernesses of roses and jessamines. From the garden the streams pass into a tank full of fish, which may be caught by any one who likes them; but this was not the case last year. The Brahmin priests discovered and communicated the intelligence to the Ma- harajah, that the spirit of his father, the late Golab Singh, had migrated into a fish. Straightway an order was issued that no fish were to be caught that year. He has since flitted " else- where, so that the prohibition has been removed. This morning, the 22nd of June, the Maharajah, accompanied by his son, his prime minister, interpreter, and a retinue of two hundred followers, arrived from Jummoo, en route for Srinuggur, and encamped in the garden. The Maharajah of Jummoo and Kashmir, Runbheer Singh, now about forty-three years old, is the absolute ruler of a territory extending from Jummoo on the British frontier to Thibet, and LETTER XV. 187 RUNBHEER SINGH. embracing the province called Little Thibet. His army is from forty to fifty thousand strong, and the revenue of Kashmir alone is estimated at fifty lacs of rupees. His Highness is in person handsome and of a complexion “I know not how to express it with a more expressive epitheton than olive-an olive colour his face presenteth," fair for the people of his country, with features of the Grecian type, nose and forehead a straight line, and short, black, curly beard. His puggery of lawn with an edge of gold tissue, was relieved in colour by one scarlet fold. On his forehead was painted the yellow symbol with green centre that indicates the followers of Siva, and he wore the brahminical cord, also a necklace of berries inlaid with gold resembling the rosary of romanists, and used. for the same pur- pose. The rest of his dress was of white cambric, and a ribbon of scarlet and gold lace across his breast was his badge of authority. His son, dressed in the same way, wore a scimetar with a handle of embossed gold. He is shorter, stouter and fairer than his father, with features indicative of intelligence. * "The thousand names of Vishnu and Siva are strung together in verse, and are repeated on certain occasions by Brahmans, as a sort of litany, accompanied some times with the rosary. As each name is mentally recited, with the attention abstractedly fixed on the attribute or character that such name excites the idea of, a head is dropped through the finger and thumb: such operation is supposed to assist and promote abstraction—an attainment that enthusiastic Hindus think exceedingly efficacious. Brahmans, and pious men of inferior tribes, are often seen with rosaries in their hands, composed of amber or certain rough berries that are sacred to some of the gods. Brahma is frequently seen in pictures or images with the rosary in his hand. The use of rosaries is adopted in India, and perhaps in other countries of the East,—Persia, for instance, by Mahommedans, as well as by Hindus. With the Mahommedans the rosary seems to answer the same purpose as with the Hindus : a bead is dropped through the finger and thumb at the contemplation or repetition of certain names and attributes of God, who, in the 'copious rhetoric of Arabia,' has as many appellations nearly as in Sanscrit. It might be curious to investigate how the use of rosaries came to be adopted for the same purposes by people so distant and distinct as Christians, Hindus, and Mahommedans. I do not recollect (but my recollection and research are too confined to hang the lightest weight of argument on) that they were used by Christians of the earlier ages, or by the Jers anterior to Christ; and as there can be very little doubt of the high antiquity of their usage among Hindus, it would, if the former supposition be well founded, follow that it is an implement borrowed into the Christian church from the pagan temples of the East."-Moor's Hindu Pantheon, pp. 15, 16. LETTER XVI. AITCHABUL TO GULMURG. KASHMIR, 2nd August, 1870. THE celebrated cook has departed. A confirmed kleptomaniac, it was necessary to discharge him as a warning and example to the servants. Entrusted with the purveyor's department, he over- charged at first moderately; but, emboldened by success, gradually increase his distoorie, until at last the commission rose to cent. per cent. The sepoy discovered that he had paid two shillings for a sheep, which the treasure explained was a bargain at four and twopence. Charged with the theft, he protested his inno- cence, and energetically called Allah to witness, he had paid the full sum of four and twopence; the two was a masterly stroke, but the shepherd, kept in ambush by the sepoy, confronted him, and he saw that his doom was sealed. Before the assembled servants he was solemnly ordered to leave, a severe sentence, as not allowed to remain in Kashmir, he must make his way back to Lahore at his own expense. During the scene, the sepoy was so agitated with alarm lest at last he would be forgiven, when he would have been victimised, that he could not utter a word without convulsive twitchings and his thin legs knocking together at the knees. The cook retired in consternation; but presently brought all the servants to beg a commutation of the sentence. They would watch him, they said, carefully, and see that he never robbed any more. He grovelled on the ground, and pretended to weep bitterly; but the inexorable fiat had gone forth and could not be recalled. So departed the kleptomaniac, boasting, as was learned afterwards, LETTER XVI. "THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.” 189 that he had managed to rob fifty rupees during our brief connection. The annexed sketch of the barber of Srinuggur exhibiting his chits, is to show how natives dye their whiskers and hair bright MIRZA BARBER OF SRINUGGUR. red. They are fond of colouring their horses, when white or grey with spots and other designs, of all shades of yellow to auburn, This fashion, not peculiar to Kashmir, may be observed from Egypt eastwards. Since commencing this letter, a matrimonial dispute of a some- what complicated character has been satisfactorily arranged with- out a decree nisi. Near the tents is a small native hut, in which live a man, his wife, and daughter, the last a young woman of sweet seventeen, remarkable only for her extreme dirtiness. She has been married about a twelvemonth to a groom, whose master, attached to the Maharajah's court, having to make a journey on business, required him to follow in charge of the horses. But his wife preferred to remain, and when he came for her this morning she flatly refused to go. Encouraged to resistance by her parents, a battle ensued between the father and his son-in-law, in which 190 LETTER XVI. AITCHABUL TO GULMURG. the latter, amid the shouts and screams of the women, got a pair of black eyes. He was the stronger man, and evidently did not wish to punish the father of his bride; an opinion which was confirmed by observing that, anxious to conciliate, he was very gentle in his expostulations with her and the members of her family. Presently the syce retired to consult with a number of his fellows, on what was best to be done, whether to take her by force or to leave her. While this was proceeding, the sepoy joined them to offer his advice, which was in favour of the former course. Thereupon ensued another scene, when, at the sepoy's suggestion, it was determined to refer the matter to the sahib. Accordingly the whole family, accompanied by numerous spec- tators of both sexes, were marshalled before the court, and the particulars of the case thus interpreted. On the day of the marriage the bridegroom gave a large dinner, a "burra khana," on which he spent sixty rupees, advanced him for the purpose by his master. According to the custom of Kashmir, when the bridegroom pays all wedding expenses-of which the chief items are the dinner and clothes-though a certain number of orna- ments are also expected-he is entitled to take his wife with him wherever he goes; but when these expenses are defrayed by the girl's father, the husband must live with her in the paternal home, and she is not obliged to accompany him elsewhere. The woman's plea for refusing to leave was, that the clothes she had received were now old and the promised bracelets not forthcoming. The syce replied, that he was under stoppages of two rupees a month, on account of the loan from his master, which would soon be paid in full, when he would give her all she asked for. The parents energetically besought a sanction to the wife's refusal; but convinced, from what was stated incidentally, that they were not over solicitous about their daughter's morality, and that the syce meant well, it was determined to declare in his favour. The eagerness, variously expressed, of the several parties, was a curious sight-the mother baring her daughter's arms to prove to demonstration that no bracelets had ever encircled them, the father no less vociferous and indignant, the wife a somewhat LETTER XVI. 191 HURRI PURBUT. passive spectator, and the husband with folded arms patiently, but anxiously, awaiting the issue. As they had agreed to abide by the decision, not to weaken its effect by giving reasons, which would probably have been misinterpreted, the wife was solemnly ordered to "go with her husband." As by a touch, the charm was snapped; the syce took his wife's hand, and leading her gently away, astonished all by his kindness and moderation, while the parents, without taking any notice of their daughter, walked home- wards with every appearance of indifference. A propos of inter- preting judgments through the medium of a moonshee, there is an anecdote which shows how easily the sense may be miscon- strued. When passing sentence on a European and a native, both guilty of the same offence, the judge said: "In determining the amount of punishment, it is necessary to consider that to a native, accustomed to the heat of this country, imprisonment is a less severe sentence than it is to a European. I therefore sentence the European to two years' confinement and the native to three." Whereupon says the moonshee: "The sentence of the court is, that you, sir, be imprisoned for two years, because you are a European; and you to three, because you are a native." The Hurri Purbut, or fort of Srinuggur, overlooks the city. Built on the ridge of an abrupt and rocky hill about 250 feet high, this long rambling edifice has a picturesque look, and reminds you of Edinburgh Castle-with a difference. A massive wall surrounds the base of the hill, and over one of the gates an inscription in Persian states that it was built by "The Chief of the Kings of the World, Shah Akbar-may his dominions extend, at the expense of one crore and ten laks of rupees, from Hindustan." Vigne, little anticipating that Kashmir, soon after his prediction, would fall into the power of Great Britain by the chance of war only to be immediately disposed of to a native chieftain, thus expressed hopes not destined to be realised. "One of the first results of the planting of the British flag on the ramparts of Hurri Purbut would probably be a rush of people, particularly Kashmerians, to the valley in numbers sufficient for 192 LETTER XVI. AITCHABUL TO GULMURG. a time to affect the price of provisions. The next would be the desertion of Simla as a sanitarium in favour of Kashmir. The news of its occupation by the Queen's troops in India would spread through the East with a rapidity unequalled; it would be looked upon as the accomplishment of the one thing needful for the consolidation of the British power in Northern India. When a road is made through the pass from Bara Mula, an army of any strength and most perfectly appointed may be marched in from four to six days from the healthy atmosphere of Kashmir to defend the passes of Attok or Torbela; and with such protection on the north, Bombay, as the capital of India, on the south, and the Indus between them, the British posses- sions in Hindustan ought to be as safe from foreign invasion from the westward as such an extended line of frontier can pos- sibly be made to render them. But Kashmir not only deserves attention as a stronghold in time of war; it is to the arts of peace that this fine province will be indebted for a more solid and lasting, though less gorgeous, celebrity than it enjoyed under the Emperors of Delhi. The finest breeds of horses and cattle of every description may be reared upon its extensive mountain pastures, where every variety of temperature may be procured for them; its vegetable and artificial productions may be treated with British skill and capital in such a manner as to ensure an excellence equal to those of Europe, and superior to that of the neighbouring countries. "Kashmir will become the focus of Asiatic civilization, a minia- ture England in the heart of Asia. The climate will permit the introduction of the sports and games of England, and presenting so many attractions, it will become the sine quâ non of the Oriental traveller, whether he be disposed to consider it as the Ultima Thule of his voyage, or a resting-place whence he may start again for still more distant regions." The Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, Sir Henry M. Durand, paid the Mabarajah a visit. His arrival was looked for with much interest, not only by the Europeans, who expected he would. LETTER XVI. 193 SIR H. M. DURAND. put an end to the exclusion of foreigners from the valley during the winter months, but also by the Maharajah and his court, which is mainly composed of the ruling Hindoos, and who were in the greatest state of apprehension as to what the object of the journey could be. He arrived in a splendid boat, rowed by thirty men; and fitted up with a large gaily painted pavilion; but as the roof was flat, and he desired to have a good view, he sat on the top of it. The Maharajah joined him outside the city; and over them attendants held long-poled umbrellas of scarlet and gold. The many handsome boats, and the large muster of Kashmirian dignitaries made the sight a brilliant one, of its kind. During the ten days of Sir Henry's stay, salutes were constantly fired to announce to the world the visits and return visits of the great, and every afternoon the Maharajah repaired to his father's tomb, where he remained some time seeking from him strength and counsel. The Maharajah gave two dinners to Sir Henry to which all the European residents were invited; gentlemen to the first, and ladies and gentlemen to the second, the only occa- sion on which he has received any members of the fair sex. The first was given in his town palace, situate on the river and alongside his temple, or chapel royal, which is roofed with plates of gold. The invitation, written on a large sheet of paper, addressed generally to the residents of Srinuggur, to most of whom it was presented, was worded as follows; and those who accepted it signed their names below. "His Highness the Maharajah requests the pleasure of the company of the gentlemen at Srinuggur and its vicinity, to dinner at the palace to-morrow evening at eight o'clock. His Highness further desires me to say that, as he is given to understand that some gentlemen are not provided with undress uniform or evening dress, this part of the ceremonial will be waived; and His Highness will be happy to see such gentlemen in morning attire. As each gentleman arrives he will be introduced to the Maharajah by the Resident." C C 194 LETTER XVI. AITCHABUL TO GULMURG. The dinner took place at nine. The bridges and opposite bank of the river were illuminated in a primitive but effective manner by numerous large boats drawn up close to the bank, having scaffoldings three or four storeys high erected on them, covered with innumerable little oil lamps, which lighted up strange efforts of native art in the shape of hobgoblins and other designs of a more or less demoniacal character. A rude massive wooden stair- case lighted by flaming torches held by soldiers, is the only approach to the palace from the river-side. Ascending it, a short passage leads to a large court-yard lined with troops, whence you make your way to the grand entrance, where the body-guard present arms. Entering the hall you are greeted with a loud "Salaam, sahib," to which you reply "Salaam." The baboo in waiting forthwith conducts the guest to a large and wide balcony fronting the river, at the further end of which are seated the Maharajah, Sir Henry, and the Prince, who rise and bow as each arrival is presented. On the river, in addition to the lighted scaffoldings and bridges, a fleet of canoes covered with small lamps performed various evolutions, paddling with much dex- terity. To beguile the mauvaise quart d'heure two nautch-girls danced in the centre of the apartment, wriggling, waggling, and moving slowly round and round, waving their arms; rolling their eyes, and repeating the same evolutions till dinner was served; but of ballet-girl sensationalism there was none. They were enveloped in a cloud of spangled gauze, silk trousers, and showy jewellery. Stupid and uninteresting as these nautches are to foreigners, they are a source of supreme delight to the people of India, whether Muhammedans or Hindoos. The latter have troops of them attached to their temples, where they assist in the sacred rites. A burra khana and a nautch is the ambition of the poor, who save up their earnings for the festival, while the rich can do no greater honour to their guests, than by exhibiting their private nautch-girls. We have entered the great hall brilliantly lighted with coloured lamps, and glowing with devices of the shawl pattern, printed on : LETTER XVI. 195 NAUTCHES. its ceiling and walls. The Maharajah led his chief guest to the seat of honour, and retired to a balcony, where he watched the proceedings from behind a screen. Toward these dinners His Highness contributes the eatables and drinkables, but cooking is done by the Resident's chef, or by those of other Europeans, and the plates, knives, glasses, all GUARD AT THE MAHARAJAH'S PALACE. the properties are brought by the guests themselves. Each man brings his own servant who looks sharply after his comforts, and yet more so after his table furniture. Some of the visitors re- turned minus their silver mugs; the neighbouring servants watch them rise, and pocket them on the instant. The dinner was well laid out, the hall brilliantly lighted, and the guests, nearly all officers, were full of expectation of Sir Henry's speech, which was to fulfil hopes that the valley would be open to Europeans in winter, and consequent sport in Kashmir. 196 LETTER XVI. AITCHABUL TO GULMURG. The bill of fare, a literary effort, may be recommended as a novelty for a fashionable Menu du diner:- White Soap. Russian Soap. Salmon six (i.e., tins). Russian Chop. Milken Chop. Chicken Shampio. Chicken Philig. Hermala Sardines. Para glassée. Julevan Puddings. LIST OF VICTUALS. Duck Salmon. Duck glacie. Sidal Mutton roast, i.e., roast saddle of mutton. Legs boiled. Cocks roasted. Europe Pie. Blue Bones (blanc mange ?) Salters ? Truffuled Cream? Sir Henry, a stalwart man, and in youth a dashing officer, has long been considered one of our ablest Indian administrators. He and Lord Napier of Magdala, schoolfellows at Addiscombe, had their only quarrel there, when the future Sir Henry got a pair of black eyes from the future Napier of Magdala. This episode in their histories was told by Sir Henry when returning thanks to a speech in which Lord Napier proposed his health at a banquet given on his appointment to the Lieutenant-Governorship of the Punjab. Dinner over, Sir Henry proposed the toast of the evening --the Maharajah of Kashmir. At the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny the late Golab Singh, then on his death-bed, enjoined, nay ordered, his son to proceed with all his troops to the aid of the British, an injunction promptly obeyed, and the soldiers of Kashmir fought by our side at the siege of Delhi. From the late Maharajah and from the present ruler Englishmen had received un- varying kindness and hospitality. In no country were they treated with greater, or perhaps equal consideration. He asked the officers round him whether, even in India, they met with the same prompt attention to their wants, the same quick despatch, or whether kulis were supplied to them with the readiness that distinguished Kashmir, a remark much applauded, as there have been loud complaints on this subject in India. Sir Henry concluded a com- plimentary and diplomatic speech by saying that the Queen had LETTER XVI. 197 BALKANS. no subject more loyal than the present Maharajah, and called on Colonel Gardiner to reply. The colonel, one of the most extra- ordinary men in India, has from his boyish days gone through adventures of every romantic and daring character. Probably from this fact he took the fancy of Golab Singh, forty-five years ago, by whom he was appointed commander-in-chief of his forces, a post which he has held uninterruptedly till the present time. Now a strong hale man of eighty-five, his uniform is a large green and yellow tartan plaid, puggery and trousers. He replied briefly, and ended by saying that he had been present at the late Maharajah's death, whose last words to his son were, “Should only one Englishman be left in the world, trust in him." Some present were disposed to think this concluding sentence an embellishment of the gallant colonel's invention. The young prince, in his father's name, thanked Sir Henry for his speech. The company then withdrew to the balcony, and dispersed by boat to their camps or bungalows. Sir Henry threw no light on the subject which has so deep an interest to Indian visitors; but a few days afterwards it oozed out that His Highness had consented to the establish- ment at Islamabad of a sanitarium for British soldiers, and that six hundred men were to come, as soon as the arrangements were completed. Thus the thin edge of the wedge will be inserted. Two days after the banquet the Maharajah held a review of his army in a fine parade ground, not unlike the race-course in the Bois de Boulogne. Seats were provided under an awning for the European visitors, and the troops, in number about five thousand, marched past. The main body of the infantry wore an imitation of the British uniform, scarlet coat and white trousers, with scarlet and white puggery. But the most picturesque regiment was formed of Balkans, from Baltistan, Little Thibet, the capital of which is Iskardoh. Their uniform consists of a large double-cornered scarlet cap, which, when on, has a most extensive look, and when off, folds down flat, jacket faced scarlet, with dark green sleeves, a kilt, light green knickerbockers, crimson woollen leggings bound round with different coloured cords and bare feet. They are 198 LETTER XVI. AITCHABUL TO GULMURG. armed with the old Brown Bess, and carry their ammunition in pouch boxes, made of papier mâché. Not the least singular BALKAN SOLDIER. 17 feature is their long, silky, black hair, curling in ringlets down to the waist. Most classes of Muhammedans shave their heads completely, and from youth to age never allow the hair to grow more than a few days. Yet many old men have very little hair left to shave. The troops under the command of Colonel Gardiner are executing various evolutions with considerable dexterity. The words of command are given in English, which sounds strange. Two regiments have formed a square to receive cavalry, with small field-pieces at the angles; and the ammunition in the centre. They are loading, when one of the gunners lets his fusee fall on the powder-bag, but catches it up and hurls it into the square. The ammunition waggon explodes, and so do most of the papier mâché pouches, in which the men carry their cartridges or loose powder. As the smoke clears away, the plain is seen LETTER XVI. 199 POLO. covered with running, burning figures, tearing off their clothes, falling and rolling in pain as though on a field of battle. Un- provided with medical stores, the native doctors attempted, but in vain, to relieve the worst sufferers, and the cavalry dashed off, quickly returning, each man bearing a sheep before him. These animals were at once killed, and their blood poured over the wounds of the sufferers, but no benefit could be derived from the process. The hospital, which had been empty in the morning, was quickly filled. The Maharajah immediately left the ground; first, to consult his spiritual adviser, and then to visit the survivors in the hospital. Fourteen men died that evening, but no information could be afterwards obtained, as the matter was hushed up by orders from head-quarters. Another day was devoted to boat races in honour of Sir Henry. The Maharajah's boats contended, each rowed by thirty men, and there were several races between Englishmen. Another day to Polo, or hockey on horseback, a favourite game among the chiefs and nobles of Asia. The game of Chaugán * is explained by Abul Fazl in the Ain i Akbari, as the Emperor Akbar was proficient in it, and played, not only by day, but at night, when fire balls were used. Superficial observers look upon this game as a mere amuse- ment. . . but men of more exalted views see in it a means of learning promptitude and decision. It tests the value of a man, and strengthens bonds of friendship. Strong men learn in playing this game the art of riding, and the animals learn to perform feats of agility and to obey the reins. Hence his Majesty is very fond of this game. Externally it adds to the splendour of the Court; but viewed from a higher point, it reveals concealed talents . . There are not more than ten players, but many more keep them- selves in readiness. When one g'hari (twenty minutes) has passed, two players take rest, and two others supply their place. The game is played in two ways. The first is to get hold of the ball with the crooked end of the chaugán stick and to move it. Ain i Akbari. Professor Blochmann's edition. 200 LETTER XVI. AITCHABUL TO GULMURG. slowly from the middle to the hál (the pillars which mark the end of the playground). This manner is called in Hindi rol. The other consists in taking deliberate aim and forcibly hitting the ball with the chaugán out of the middle; the player then gallops after it quicker than the others, and throws the ball back. This mode is called beluh, and may be performed in various ways. The player may strike the ball with the stick, in either hand forwards or backwards. . . in any direction, or he may spit it when the ball is in front of the horse . . . His Majesty is unrivalled for the skill which he shows in the various ways of hitting the ball; he often manages to strike the ball when in the air, and astonishes all. When a ball is driven to the hál they beat the naggárah, so that all that are far and near may hear it. In order to increase the excitement betting is allowed. . . If a ball be caught in the air, and passes, or is made to pass, beyond the limit (mil), the game is looked upon as burd (drawn). At such times the players will engage in a regular fight about the ball, and perform admirable feats of skill. "His Majesty also plays at chaugán in dark nights, which caused much astonishment even among clever players. The balls are set on fire. . . palas wood is used which is very light, and burns for a long time. For the sake of adding splendour to the games, which is necessary in worldly matters, His Majesty has knobs of gold and silver fixed to the top of the chaugán sticks. If one of them breaks, any player that gets hold of the pieces may keep them.” Finally, his Highness gave a grand dinner-party to all Euro- pean visitors, the first to which ladies had been admitted; but we live, as Mr. Disraeli says, in times of transition. The enter- tainment took place in a garden called the Nishat Bagh, on the margin of the Dhul Lake-the favourite haunt of Lalla Rookh and Feramorz. The garden, situate at the head of the lake, and base of the mountains, rises in a series of ten terraces, the upper three being eighteen feet in height, one over the other. From tanks filled with fountains on every terrace a stream runs down the centre A LETTER XVI. 201 GULMURG. of the garden, and along inclined walls of marble cut into various shapes to diversify the form of the wave and lessen its sound. "When the waterfalls gleam like a quick fall of stars, And the nightingale's hymn from the isle of Chenars Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet From the cool shining walks where the young people mcet.” Pathways of green turf, o'erarched by ancient trees of the time of Akbar, lead to an open pavilion, through the centre of which runs a crystal stream, brought through a passage from the springs of the mountain hard-by, and crossed by slabs of marble. The dinner was at nine. The road to the garden was through the Apple-Tree Canal, the floating gardens, the city lake (with its limpid waters covered with rose-coloured lilies), and past the Isle of Chenars, from which might perhaps have been heard "the nightingale's hymn." The garden was illuminated with rows of lamps along the several terraces, and on the landing stage a guard with lighted torches received the guests. Soldiers and torch- bearers preceded each of them to the tenth terrace, where, under a large awning, sat the Maharajah, and the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. A nautch was progressing. Thirty women were present, only a few of whom took part in the performance, which was in the style before described; but varied by a single-stick encounter between two of the girls. The scene was brilliant, and the cool shining walks glittered with a profusion, if not with the “hundred thousand" lamps of Vauxhall. After nautch, dinner. Then walk, see the fireworks, smoke, and depart. Sending on tents in the morning, and riding twelve miles in the evening, we found ourselves in the afternoon of the second day ascending the steep sides of the mountain that leads to Gulmurg. The journey had been a hot one, although it ran along path- ways redolent of jessamine and sweet briar, and lined with pear and apple trees covered with fruit until it entered a forest of deodara pines. Many burnt trees lay across the path, or remained standing charred into fantastic forms. The ascent is tedious, but at last there is a break in the forest, a slight descent of a few D D 202 LETTER XVI. AITCHABUL TO GULMURG. paces, and you see with delight spread out before you a park-like vale, three miles long, and varying in width from a mile to a few hundred feet completely shut in by a dense fringe of pines, while at its farther end the mountain again towers up to a height of more than 3000 feet. The plain is covered with flowers, whence its name from Gul, in Persian, "flowers" (more generally the rose) and murg, "a meadow." The tents, already pitched on a knoll stretching into the valley, were shaded by magnificent trees. Champagne was iced in the mountain snow, and before the tents a blazing log fire. The ridge commands glorious views of the valley, its lakes, and mountains. Few more beautiful prospects are to be seen, and no drawing could do it justice. But as a memento of Gulmurg, a sketch is inserted. One pet item was too small to be discernible in the reduced drawing a bird. It had been taken full-grown from its nest by the bearer, when staying in Nurmahall's garden at Aitchabul, where he tied it to the foot of a tree, and its parents supplied it with insects and worms, which they carefully put down its throat. In the bearer's words, "his father and mother feed him every morning." He soon became quite tame. Yesterday he suddenly turned round from the door at which he was standing, and ran into a corner of the room. A Colassie noticed the sudden movement, looked out, and seizing a stick, immediately killed a large snake. Attracted by a bird's nest full of young ones in the eaves, it was at that moment twining up the post of the verandah, and seemed an ugly animal, but there are no poisonous snakes in Kashmir. The hud-hud is referred to in the last song in Moore's "Light of the Harem," beginning "Fly to the desert, fly with me,” in the stanza- "Come, if the love thou hast for me Is pure and fresh as mine for thee, Fresh as the fountain underground When first 'tis by the lapwing found." The hud-hud, however, with its long beak like a woodpecker's, searches the ground only for worms or insects, and as it lives on such succulent food, never takes any water. It enjoys dust-baths, PICKNICKING AT GULMURG. [Page 202. : LETTER XVI. 203 HUD-HUD. and the chiria takes about twenty a day, emerging clean and bright from them all. When evening draws on, he makes several leaps into the air expressive of a desire to roost, and on the cage being brought jumps into it immediately. In the morning he comes to be fed. But he is rather a late riser, and to the inquiry, "Where's the bird?" the bearer will answer, "Not got up yet, Sahib." This servant, taught English when a boy at school, indulges in some quaint expressions: "Master's horses want their nails cut," meaning that their hoofs require trimming. It is not possible to cure him of saying "going down-stairs," when he means “going down country;" that is, to the plains. Since the Maharajah's arrival he has married only one wife, his sixteenth. The young prince has two wives, and it is said his father is very uneasy that he does not marry more. The Maha- rajah seems a kindly ruler. If the people of Kashmir are not prosperous, the cause must partly exist in their listlessness and want of energy; judging outwardly, they are a light-hearted race, and wherever a crowd congregates it is sure to be a merry one. After writing the history of the hud-hud, on returning from my evening ride, the bearer appeared with a more than usually long face. "Something bad to tell the master. Master's bird be dead." His corpse had been found near the bath-room door, a spot to which he was fond of resorting for his earth baths; but how he met with his end has not been discovered. He liked straying away and keeping company with other birds. Once when thus perambulating he was caught and brought back by the bearer, who explained that he had been found "walking with his friend." The patriarch of the boat's crew dug the grave in which the hud- hud was deposited by his granddaughter little Marie. LETTER XVII. GULMURG TO MURREE. MURREE, 1870. ON the afternoon of the 22nd August we embarked from Srinuggur, (“Suraya-nagur," the city of the sun,) not without regret, to look for the last time on scenes that had become familiar, yet had lost no charm. Passing down the city you receive the salaams of the shawl and other merchants whose places you have visited and temptations resisted with creditable consistency. A continuous stream of gunsmiths, silversmiths, shawl, pushmena, carpet, papier mâché, leather and other dealers periodically assail the visitor during his stay. Shawl merchants, nearly all Muham- medans, cash cheques on the principal cities of India. In doing business they as a rule ask double of what they would gladly accept, and invoke Allah and the Prophet to attest the unim- peachable veracity of their assertions, though, during these trying moments, they are rarely able to look at you without a grin. Long will they stand and exhibit shawl after shawl, dressing-gowns, pushmena cloths, and a hundred different varieties of as many different articles. The sketch shows a Hindoo dealer with his boatman, a Muhammedan, spreading out a Kashmir shawl, on which you may trace the pattern and compare its resemblance if you will with the source from which it sprang. Their show-rooms, principally on the river banks with balconies of lattice-work, during summer open, and in winter closed with paper, are posts of vantage from which they watch their British customers proceeding along the river. The merchant, his head man, sons or brothers, rush down to meet you as they " LETTER XVII. 205 CHA. see your boat approach, escort you to the show-room, and as soon as you have entered it call for "cha," the name for tea brought by the Portuguese, and thus spread through the Asiatic world; it comes from Ladakh. A row of arm-chairs is placed for European visitors, as your Eastern, high or low, rich or poor, never sits in a chair unless by way of compliment to a European, and then is painfully at a loss what to do with his legs. Kashmir shawls, properly so called, are of two kinds, loom and hand made. When a shawl is begun, a piece about six inches square is taken to the Government Officer who examines the quality, appraises, and receives the duty, and then, after affixing the government stamp, returns the piece to the manufacturer, * Many other Hindustani words were introduced by the Portuguese, as saya, a petticoat; fita, a ribbon; padri, clergyman; girjá, a church, Port. igreja; kobi, cabbage, Port, couve ; chabi, a key, Port. chave."--Professor Blochmann's “Ain i Akbari." 206 LETTER XVII. GULMURG TO MURREE. to be woven into the shawl. When completed it is again submitted to the inspector, who tests the work, and until sold no shawl is washed, nor is the government stamp obliterated. The French trade is represented by several houses, and their annual exports, chiefly of shawls, average in value four lacs of rupees; besides this they have establishments at Amritsir, where a larger trade is done by them. A fine flannel of goat's hair, called "Ulwan," and the pushmena cloths of Kashmir have a considerable sale in India, but it is remarkable that although the French have several houses in the city there are no British shawl dealers there. Pushmena is a cloth made from poshm, the under-wool of the Thibetan goats, very soft and warm, which grows beneath the long silky hair and protects the animals from the severity of the elevated plains on which they roam. It is brought to Leh, the capital of Ladakh, and there purchased by the Kashmirian merchants. Its natural colour is a darkish brown, and the cloth is usually made of undyed wools. Socks, stockings, and gauntlets are manufactured from it, and blankets which, though warm, are not thicker than an ordinary English cloth. If you say to a dealer, to escape from the importunate exhibition of his wares, that you will decide in a few days, he will be sure to answer "behter" or "praper," which you suppose to be English words used to express acquiescence; they are, however, Hindostanee, and have the same meaning as those which they resemble in sound. The language, or dialect, of Kashmir is peculiar to that country, but Hindostani is spoken by all the principal men, and by many of the poorer inhabitants who during the summer months are dependent on the patronage of visitors from the plains. We have gone through the merchant's stock, purchased some trifling articles, and rise to leave. His "Cha" we have declined, but he insists on our taking a basketful of almonds and raisins, sweetmeats, sugar-candy, or preserves. Muhammedaus are fond of sweets, and Fatima, daughter of Muhammed (the greatly praised) has the credit of inventing a sticky substance much sold at Constantinople. But the Prophet himself was not exempt from LETTER XVII. 207 BROKERDOM. the decay of a love of such delicacies. According to tradition the favourite dish of his riper years was a haggis of sheep's head stewed in garlic, or a plate of young camel's tripe and onions, which latter delicacy he declared to be the "lord of all dainties." In other days when Kashmir was comparatively a terra in- cognita, the shawl merchants employed brokers as their correspon- dents in the plains, who advised them of the intended visits of dealers, when a system of touting was adopted on a more extensive scale than has yet suggested itself to the Manchester mind. The dealer travelling up country by horse dawk, as he approached the belt of mountains that guard the famous valley from a profane and vulgar world, would be met at one of the principal cities by an emissary from Srinuggur with a letter of welcome and an invitation: the arrangements of the journey, the troubles of the road, would be undertaken and lightened by this kindly messenger. At the end of a hard day's march, the traveller, weary, comfortless, and repenting his pilgrimage, found a cheerful fire awaiting him, a pilaf or kabobs to recruit exhausted nature, a fragrant tchibook ready to his hand, all prepared by the consi- derate provision of his unknown friend. Pilaf" is rice boiled in mutton suet; “kabobs" are small pieces of mutton roasted on a skewer over hot embers, and served on bread with chopped onions and parsley. When at last he descended into the valley, that ex- cellent individual would receive and conduct him to a house prepared for his reception. Only a heart of oak, triply ironclad, could be impervious to such attentions. The dealer insensibly found himself in the broker's hands, who in the transactions that ensued, found means to recover his speculative, but well-timed, outlay. Nothing of this kind now exists. The extra stocks of the manufacturers are forwarded to Amritsir, and the glory of brokerdom is extinguished for ever. * To those who like to examine, criticise, or admire the contents of shop windows without any covetous desires, the eastern custom of bringing wares to your verandah and exhibiting them is an excuse * See Vigne's Kashmir. 208 LETTER XVII. GULMURG TO MURREE. for doing nothing. If that verandah is placed near the bank of the Jhelum, and the dealers are slow to go when your curiosity has been satisfied, a threat to duck them in the calm flowing river is all that is necessary to hasten their departure: especially as they know your boatmen are on the look-out and only wait your order to accomplish a congenial task. We are paddling down the main street of Srinuggur, sweeping quickly under its bridges, where the stream, compressed by the numerous piles, rushes with greater force, and so gain the open vale, whose plains, dotted with trees, extend like English meadow- lands on either side. On the left bank, amid an undergrowth of rank luxuriance, stands the gallows, a wholesome warning to in- tending murderers, if such there be, of cows, or less sacred beings. A large wasps' nest has been formed on the upper bar, and, at a distance, looks like a human skull. It is disappointing when you go to sketch it to find it an object so much less sensa- tional. At every bend in the river the picturesque height of the Tukht-i-Suliman shows in a different form. Glorious is the well-remembered prospect which unfolds from its base,—the curves of the Jhelum circling below, the fortress and wide-spreading city, the gleam of the river in its distant windings, the famous lake with its royal gardens and sunny isles, and the white line of the surrounding mountains. The trees are thronged with parliaments of birds; and the sun is declining in a sky of purple and gold. Following the good example of the feathered tribes, you go to rest to wake with them in the early dawn, paddling through the "Burra Wulloor." It is ten to twelve miles in diameter, and encompassed by lofty mountains. The Jhelum runs through this fine sheet of water, which, in many places, is covered with the broad leaves and pink and white flowers of the lotus and other lilies. Kash- mirian legends tell that the lake, which once filled the valley, escaped through a chasm made by the prophet Solomon, who pitched his throne on the summit of the Tukht-i-Suliman, and was carried through the air in a chariot drawn by hud-huds. In acknowledgment of their services he bestowed on them the crest LETTER XVII. 209 NAOSHERA. they raise when excited, and that forms their characteristic ornament. Leaving the boats at Baramula, the grandsires and granddames, their stalwart sons, pretty daughters, and prettier grandchildren, Marie and Ejiji, were drawn up to give their salaams. Marie is a common name amongst the Kashmirian women, and little Marie was a beautiful child, but it took a long course of biscuits in the morning to overcome her timidity. From Baramula a short march brings you to Naoshera near some ancient ruins. Every available patch of ground was covered with rice, corn, or tobacco plantations. Gulmurg is sixteen miles distant, but the road to it is through a pine forest and up the sides of a steep mountain. The Yarkund twice attempted the ascent and would have reached the maidán, but the time occupied was longer than anticipated, and one of the storms of thunder, lightning, and rain, frequent in these mountains, compelled us to return. Herds of cows and buffaloes, the latter Ա DAWK BUNGALOW, NAOSHERA, KASHMIR. PANIC OF MURGHIES ON THE ARRIVAL OF TRAVELLERS, of enormous size, graze on the sides and steppes of the mountains, and in the evening are collected by the "Guzurra wallahıs," cow- fellows who live in huts built and roofed of deodar, covered with a thick layer of clay, on which the herds are inclosed for the night, so that the herdsmen in their cabins below, are at once warned if an attack is made by a panther or leopard. E E 210 LETTER XVII. GULMURG TO MURREE. Your two last letters were received on the road between Naoshera and Ooree. Servants, as usual, preceding with tents and stores, had prepared the morning meal. They had been even so careful as to spread a cloth over the smooth white stone which was the breakfast-table by the side of the rapids. No carpet could have surpassed in softness the sward by the river-side; ancient deodaras clothed the mountains with walls of green, the waves of the Jhelum burst over huge rocks like breakers on a shore, and under the wide-spreading chinar, where breakfast was laid, all seemed quiet. and at peace. The oriental plane, appa- rently the same species as that of England, attains here a much greater size. "The Platanus orientalis, or plane tree, the chinar of Persia, has a very extensive geographical range from this elevated region, westerly, and is admirably characterised by its derivative λarus, ample, significant of its palmate leaves, its spreading branches, and shady foliage, the pale green colour of which last contrasts beautifully with the silver bark of its lofty stem. Its value in a hot climate has been appreciated by those who look no higher, to the beneficent goodness of the Creator; and in this favoured spot the plane tree has attained, under the foster- ing attention of royalty, to the greatest age and perfection.” * A grove of them on the border of the City lake, planted by Akbar nearly three hundred years ago, contains many with a girth near the base of fully twenty feet. The wood is hard and used for gun-stocks. The stems decay at their base, yet preserve their branches and leaves in almost as great luxuriance as ever, until at last unable to support the incumbent weight they sud- denly fall. Arrived after a ten-mile walk to the place from which we have wandered into these details, to find the creature comforts well attended to, there waiting also was a kuli with letters, news- papers, and telegrams. The facility of obtaining correspondence by this route, rather than by the more direct one of the Pir Punjal, makes it especially preferable. Every day either a *Note by the translator to Hugel's Kashmir. LETTER XVII.. 211 HOSEAH. printed telegram, letter, or newspaper from the "Public Opinion office at Lahore, with the latest telegraphic intelligence from Europe, were received, forwarded by kuli from Murree, whereas by the other routes you are deprived during three or four weeks of all communication with the outer world. These sheets of paper rolled on a cane and protected with oil-silk, were received from Ismail Khan at 6 A.M., on the 29th August, when between Huttian and Chickar. A few minutes previous a covey of chikor (the Hima- layan partridge), obligingly crossed the path, and when the kuli, crying "Sahib, chitty hai," handed a bundle of letters and news- papers, it was a birthday gift. At the top of the desolate Chikar hill the fakeer of the village had for his sole attire a poncho made of brown Kashmirian cloth. He was squatted on the top of a dyke playing a game at draughts with the head man of the village, crouched opposite him in the same attitude. The board was roughly drawn on a smooth rock, and the men were bits of red and grey stone fashioned for the occasion. At Hoseah a native shikaree brought a jungle fowl and a black pheasant. He carried a long heavy matchlock, used coarse cannon powder, and odd pieces of lead for shot. His dog was a native pointer common to these parts, and he had with him some slender sticks, round which were rolled two yellow-brown cotton cloths, painted with darker spots so as roughly to imitate a tiger's skin. One piece, of triangular form, with holes for the eyes like a mask, he placed over his face, the other, about four feet long by two broad, he stretched on cross pieces of wood, and held before him as he knelt down. Thus covered, he might perhaps at a distance look something like a tiger. The tiger, dreaded by the beasts of the field, is liked by the birds of the air, who approach him without fear, and even court his society, and the shikaree explained that, screened by this painted cotton, he could get close up to any birds, and kill with the least expenditure of ammunition. Not till you arrive at Kohála, and look on doors, windows, and, above all, window-glass as a novelty, do you realise you have passed a somewhat primitive existence undisturbed by regrets for the luxuries of civilization. Yet you will not regret to find your 212 LETTER XVII. GULMURG TO MURREE. chef has provided a beefsteak, and may determine to be for some time a Brahmin so far as mutton and fowls are concerned. Two Kashmir youths, who had officiated as policemen, and the sepoy allotted by the Baboo, at their own urgent requests, joined the retinue of kulis and servants on the journey here. The youths wished to see the "English English" country, and the sepoy to accompany them as far as possible. On arriving, the roads near Murree were swamps, and the state of the weather at once destroyed the illusions entertained by the Kashmiris. They were inconsolable for the loss of their home, passed most of their time in tears at the back of the cottage, and when told they might return were overjoyed. The lads, Muhammedans, had never seen beef before, and were much astonished at the large pieces of it in the bazaar. But they could not be induced to taste it, fearing that their doing so would come to the knowledge of the Maharajah, and that they would be punished. The interdic- tion has prevailed so long, and has been so rigidly enforced by the Hindoo rulers, that a relaxation of it would not be felt imme- diately as any boon to the Muhammedans of Kashmir. Vigne relates that an earthquake, which caused great destruction to the valley in 1828 was followed, by an epidemic disease, which threatened to depopulate the country. The prince consulted the Hindoo priests, but they could give no satisfactory explanation. He then sent for the leading Muhammedans, who said the calami- ties had happened, partly because they were not permitted to eat beef, and partly because the muezzins were not allowed to call them to prayer. On this it was decreed that cows might be killed, and that the priests might summon the faithful to their devotions. Shortly afterwards the disease abated, and forthwith an order was issued that no more beef should be eaten, and that there was to be no more calling to prayer from the mosques. Kashmir, annexed by the great Akbar, remained part of the Empire of the Moguls till 1739, when it was accepted by Nadir Shah, together with other wide territories, as the price of peace. These facts are not clearly stated in Mill's India. He says that all the provinces on the west side of the Indus were detached from LETTER XVII. 213 KASHMIR. the dominions of the Mogul and added to Nadir's, while Kashmir, to use the inexpressive words of the treaty between the British. Government and the late Maharajah, is comprised in "all the hilly or mountainous country situated east of the river Indus and west- ward of the river Ravee." In neither treaty is there direct mention of Kashmir, the well guarded, or of the unequalled valley that bears its name. In Akbar's time its revenue was one crore of rupees, a million sterling, one half of which was regularly remitted to the imperial exchequer; and the genius of its people, the beauty of its women, the salubrity of the climate and the fertility of the soil have been justly extolled by many writers from the remotest antiquity. Murree, now in the last throes of the wet season, is visited by dense fogs, torrents of rain, and storms of thunder and lightning, their final efforts. The hotels are crowded, but the evil of pitching tents in a damp compound is escaped by taking a small cottage on the summit of a mountain, overlooking the long serrated spurs that descend to the plain. This station in the Hazara district of the Punjab is one of the highest in India, being seven thousand five hundred feet above the sea level; Simla and Dalhousie are seven thousand; Dhurmsala six thousand; Landour seven thousand; Mussoorie and Darjeeling seven thousand; and Nyneetal six thousand four hundred. During the summer months the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab resides here with his retinue. It is a military depôt, and about three hundred European families resort to it from the plains. The Mall is crowded in the evening when the band plays, and the scene resembles an English watering-place. Ladies ride or are carried in jompons by servants in native liveries. Wheel-carriages are not used, because there are no roads, and accidents from riding too near the sides of the khuds or precipices occur at all the hill- stations. LETTER XVIII. MURREE TO PESHAWUR AND LAHORE. LAHORE, 29th October, 1870. A PLEASANT trip may be made from Murree to Abbotabad. It was so named because a certain Mr. Abbott resided there. In imitation of the former rulers of the land, other places have been called after notable Feringhees, as Jacobabad, Edwardesabad, Campbell- pore, Frazerpete, and so on. From Murree to Abbotabad the road runs along the steep sides of the Himalayas in almost parallel lines, so that the dawk bungalows, ten or fifteen miles distant by road appear across the intervening spurs and ravines near at hand but over the way. The stations are situate in breaks of the mountain tops called in Hindostanee as in English gullies, and near the military road twelve feet broad, which is a specimen of engineering skill. At one precipitous place, washed by a torrent during the rains, the engineer was puzzled how to proceed, when one morning tracking a bear, he brought it to bay at this spot, but to his surprise the animal scrambled over. "Where a bear can go, I can go," was the thought that crossed his mind, so with- out further hesitation he carried the road through. Standing on this cutting and bridge, which overhangs a deep ravine, it is curious to watch the myriads of monkeys which fill the forests, of all ages and sizes, racing across the open, and leaping about the trees. The first day's march is to Changla Gully, a hutted camp, now containing two companies of the 6th Royals. From the bungalow built of wood, and perched on the edge of a ravine, Murree and its LETTER XVIII. 215 ABBOTABAD. villas could be seen on the opposite side. station, ten miles distant, has opposite to further, thence fifteen to Abbotabad. Dounga Gully, the next it Bara Gully, six miles In the early morning it was strange to hear a native band practising "God save the Queen," to see the little naked urchins stand aside, draw up to "attention" and give the military salute, and to note the difference in physical strength between a company of native soldiers clearing the road where a landslip had obstructed it, and another of British sappers similarly employed. Abbotabad lies in a valley surrounded by mountains from four to eight thousand feet high, through a break in which is seen the snowy range. The verandah of the dawk bungalow was trellised with convolvuluses and passion flowers. A narrow strip of lawn separated it from the main road, which a hedge concealed, and a meadow of rising land on the opposite side was dotted with Brahminee bullocks, and shaded by the Persian lilac or Paradise trees. Sitting there sipping coffee in the cool dawn, it was interesting to watch the various objects that passed along. A string of huge buffaloes carrying wood, nothing of the animal visible except its head peering out of the bulky burden; a Hazara mountain battery of twelve-pounder howitzers carried on the backs of mules; a long line of camels laden with government stores, each tied to the other from nose to tail, the little colts trotting beside their mothers; a troop of guides, well mounted, and at their head on a spirited charger a native officer, white- bearded and décoré, ekkas, native gigs of curious make, pass rapidly by, their curtains closely drawn, for within, perchance, some beauty lies, the cynosure of neighbouring eyes; or a bride astride a mule and muffled up, being led by her husband to her future home. But pass from the road to the cantonment, and here on the northern outposts of British India you will almost fancy yourself in an English village, with its neat church and vicarage, library and schools, gardens and belts of newly planted trees, all taste- fully ordered or arranged. Abbotabad has its hill station, the smallest but loftiest in India, named Thundiani, perched on the 216 LETTER XVIII. MURREE TO PESHAWUR AND LAHORE. top of a steep mountain, eight thousand feet above the sea level. It is now for the season deserted, the few English families who live there during the summer months having left it for the plains, and the rains had made the road heavy, but the Yarkund was equal to the occasion, so a few hours were passed at the summit, which commands noble views on every side. Flying- squirrels, a rare species, are found in the woods, and bats of all kinds abound. Returning to Murree, it was exhilarating to observe a thin white line on the hills towards Kashmir, and a few days afterwards a broader one over the Chikar Dhuk, bespoke the rapid approach of winter. From watching the snows on one side you look at the mist over the plain which gradually loses its sultry hue. Sending tents, horses, furniture, and saddles, to auction, where they become the spoil of Parsi dealers in europe goods, an easy march down hill to Rawl Pindee, thence travelling by government express dawk, a night's journey, takes you to Peshawur, the frontier station near the Khyber Pass. Peshawur is built in the centre of a valley surrounded by mountains, which at all times beautiful, are covered with snow during the winter months, and must then form a charming panorama. The valley, twenty miles wide in its narrowest part, is one immense cemetery, so that no spot can be found either for building or planting which was not once a grave. Even when you think you have cleared down to a firm foundation and build your bungalow, a heavy rain, or a touch of earthquake, will undeceive you, and a side of your house will settle down a few feet where some unsuspected excavation has given way, or, as actually happened in the Commissioner's house, you may step out of your bed into a grave, opened by the bursting of a drain and filled with mud and water. The valley itself and the foreign territory around it is occupied by bold and daring tribes, hostile to each other, and inimical to British rule. Yet when they enter the British army they become faithful soldiers, and delight in any dashing enterprise; as horsemen they are unsurpassed. LETTER XVIII. 217 HORSE-STEALING. * A Commissioner and a Deputy-commissioner have been murdered at this station, the latter in the bazaar by an Affghan, who stabbed him in the back, but was shot down almost in the act by the "Sowar," or mounted guard, afterwards made a "Kotwal,” or head man of the bazaar. We spoke to him. His countenance was of that serious handsome cast so often seen among the Moorish Spaniards, and which is constantly met with among the Affghans. Why was he not a moment sooner to arrest the deed? The thought will be best answered by relating a circumstance which occurred to one of the most distinguished officers in India. Horse- "Colonel Mackeson, Commissioner of Peshawur in 1853, a bold and efficient officer, chivalrous in his feelings and rightly judging the people within and beyond the border, was ever an advocate for resolute, immediate, and decisive measures. It ill suited such an officer tamely to submit to indignities inflicted upon the British government, of which he was the representative. He well knew the character of the people he had been cast amongst, and he knew that imbecile and pusillanimous measures were not measures of humanity, but the reverse, always tending, in the end, to disaster and destruction. He knew that the natives of those parts were simply invited to revolt by acts of an apparently conciliatory nature, and that they imputed to British rulers cowardice and weakness in their acts of intended good-nature. With these views Colonel Mackeson ruled the fron- tier; he was greatly respected, but, probably, was dreaded by the fanatics of such a country. "In the city of Peshawur, at any hour of the day or night, an assassin may be pro- cured for a few rupees, who would undertake, with the certainty of his own destruc- tion, to murder any European functionary, because the act in itself, as is generally believed by these men, ensures to them their removal to Paradise; indeed, such is the general feeling of the fanatics of those countries towards the infidel, as the European is considered. "Sitting in the verandah of his bungalow (private residence), Colonel Mackeson was suddenly accosted by a native, who desired to be allowed to present a petition ; the colonel at first peremptorily refused to receive it at his private residence, and directed the man to attend the following morning at the Cutcherry, or Court House, where all public business was transacted. The man, in true native style, fell down at the feet of the Commissioner, and, clasping his hands, very earnestly implored of him to read his petition, adding, that his family were deeply interested, and that the immediate orders of the Commissioner were required. Colonel Mackeson then took the paper, and commenced to read it, and, being intent on its contents, the native suddenly sprang upon the colonel, and plunged a dagger into his breast. He fell mortally wounded. The man was seized, and hung, glorying in his deed of blood. Poor Mackeson died, and was buried in the cantonment of l'eshawur, in a position of security, as it was then discovered that large sums of money had been offered for his head for exhibition at the Affghan capital.”—Nine Years on the New Frontier of India, by General Sir Sydney Cotton. F F 218 · MURREE TO PESHAWUR AND LAHORE. LETTER XVIII. stealing among the hill-men has been advanced to the dignity of a science, and carried to incredible perfection. Valuable horses are stolen while guarded by their syces, and surrounded by sleeping men. One of the most noted artists in this line, captured and condemned to a long imprisonment in the jail of Peshawur, was asked to explain how he managed to carry off a horse when hobbled by all four feet to posts, as is the custom in India, and with men lying around. "Would he give them a specimen of his skill?" Willingly." With the consent of the Commissioner who was present on the occasion, he was taken from the jail to the officer's house, where a restive horse was hobbled as described; syces were ordered to lie down in a circle round it. "Now," said the colonel, "could you take the horse without touching these men?" Easily." "Do so, then." The prisoner urged that encumbered with his fetters the attempt would fail, and as this assertion seemed reasonable they were removed. Stepping over the circle of men, he caressed and unbound the horse, then gently lifting a fore foot advanced it a step; obedient to his hand the horse permitted each foot to be lifted and placed in turn. They were on the edge of the circle when, quicker than thought, the horse bounded, into the air, the thief on his back; and before the astonished spectators could utter a word, he was off and away. << "There was racing and chasing on Cannobie lea, But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see--” nor the lost horse and thief of Peshawur. It was a practical exemplification of the noble art of horse-stealing by a master hand. The entrance to the bazaar is wide and shaded at intervals by banyan trees. In addition to the usual quartiers, there is one for merchants from Central Asia. The names of Turkestan, Iran, Bokhara, and Cabul, become familiar as household words. Cabul is pronounced Khawbl, a fact which is damaging to some of Moore's lines. Thence come, packed in wool, delicious grapes. LETTER XVIII. 219 KHAWBL. and the finest of melons. for sale. Here is an Affghan offering fruit (( Grapes of gold like those that shine On Casbin's hills; pomegranates full Of melting sweetness, and the pears And sunniest apples that Cabul In all its thousand gardens bears." Sable and ermine skins from Bokhara, dressing-gowns and silks from Turkestan, Russia leather, swords, and daggers, were offered in tempting array. Our guard, meanwhile, keep off all idle loungers; for who knows but that, lurking near, some fanatic, stupid with opium or drunk with bhang, may be yearning to effect a quick solution of the great problem by plunging his dagger into a dog of a Nazarene? Imbued as they are with this antipathy to us, it is surprising how safe the European community are, thanks to the ener- getic, serene, and fearless character of the British Commissioners. Ten government camels had that morning been stolen. The Com- missioner, having discovered the delinquent tribe, sent out and laid an embargo on a drove of sixty bullocks belonging to them, and placed several of their men under arrest. "My camels will be back in a few days,” said he; “we hold our own by a system of reprisals." -220 MURREE TO PESHAWUR AND LAHORE. LETTER XVIII. Passing through the bazaar and up a steep and narrow street, we drove out under a building once occupied by the Italian general, Avitabile, who, along with several European officers, was employed by Runjeet Singh. Baron Hugel, in his Travels in Kashmir, refers to Avitabile and the army of Runjeet as follows:- (( Avitabile, a Neapolitan, formerly an officer of Murat's army and court, and a pupil of the Polytechnic School of Paris. All the troops, regular and irregular, excepting the irregular cavalry, have the French words of command on their being armed with muskets, and the French legion has the eagle and tricoloured flag with the inscription Govind Singh.' Each private has eight rupees a month, a red coat, and his arms, but he has to feed and clothe himself. The whole army is generally kept a twelvemonth in arrear by Runjeet. This is a good means of securing their subservience to him. The jemidars, or lieutenants, have thirty rupees, and, with the exception of the French legion, all are allowed to dress as they please, so that there is a strange medley of European costumes in those of the Punjab.” Among the others was General Allard; afterwards appointed by Louis Philippe to the court of Runjeet. "Notre agent afin qu'il soit constamment à vos côtés, un gage vivant de notre souvenir, et de notre inviolable et sincère affection." This precious docu- ment, in which Louis Philippe dubs himself Emperor, is written in the most inflated style of Eastern hyperbole, and ends as follows:-" Nous faisons des vœux pour que l'Eternel rende votre bonheur inalterable, qu'il accroise les félicités de votre famille et celles de vos peuples, et qu'il prête encore un nouveau lustre à l'astre directeur de vos drapeaux victorieux. Ecrit en notre Palais Impérial des Tuileries le 27º jour de mois d'Octobre, mil huit-cent trente cinq. "V. BROGLIE, "Votre très cher et parfait ami, "LOUIS PHILIPPE, "Ministre et Secrétaire d'État de Sa Majesté l'Empereur des Français." LETTER XVIII. 221 FORT JUMROOD. Avitabile's quarters are now used for a police-office, and from the top were visible the flat roofs of the city, partitioned by screens, and thronged with women and children. Some tribes in this and the Hazara district have become troublesome, gaining audacity from our forbearance; and the generals of the Punjab have recommended energetic action at once, to avoid more serious complications hereafter. Their opinions have been endorsed by the Lieutenant-Governor and by the Indian government, and the minutes have been forwarded to the Secretary of State for India. The Governor-General and half-a- dozen councillors are the potentates that make laws for the two hundred millions of subjects, allowed little voice in state affairs. But the council owes allegiance to the India Office, Whitehall. The revenues, taxation, and expenditure are finally examined by the clerks there, and when the documents are prepared, the secre- tary names a day on which he will introduce his financial statement to the House of Commons. It arrives, and the newspapers announce that the speech of the right-honourable gentleman, or noble lord, was delivered to a beggarly account of empty benches. The picture is complete. The people of India care nothing for England, and England returns the compliment by caring, if that is possible, still less for them. Loyalty, patriotism, and the like virtues, are here unknown, nor can they be expected to exist. All that the best of the natives comprehend is, that they are governed by Europeans. The rupee that bears the effigy of the Queen wearing an imperial crown is, to her Indian subjects, still "Company rupee; not that they ever knew anything about. John Company," but that in the course of the last hundred years the name has prevailed. "" Fort Jumrood is situate halfway between the town and the Khyber, in the Neutral Ground, which could not be traversed without considerable risk till very lately. Arrangements have been made between the British government, the Ameer, and the hostile chiefs and assassins that infested it, and it is now open for traffic. The former marauders have been changed into a police; and as you drive along, here, there, and everywhere start up from caves and 222 LETTER XVIII. MURREE TO PESHAWUR AND LAHORE. 1 burrows the former bandits, present guardians of the road. A visit from the Deputy being expected, a greater show than usual was made. Leaving the outskirts of the cantonments with a small escort, after proceeding about half way, a number of the chief men of the tribes dashed up, and surrounding our party, conducted us to the fort. Every man, every child, was armed. To the mouth of the Khyber we were safe; but woe to the rash intruder who enters the defile! This is the domicile proper of the Khyberees, Afridees, and other tribes, who are always at war with each other. Every man's house is his castle, and let the stranger who approaches it beware. Once within range of the owner's matchlock, the adventurer will find the number of his billet. "In their valleys they have terraced houses; but in the mountains movable huts of straw. They come down into the low hills in winter, where they chiefly live in caves cut out of the earthy part of the hills. They are extremely impatient of heat. They are excellent marksmen, and are reckoned good hill soldiers, though of no great account in the plain.' ""Tis a strange life, fearful and full of change, the mountain-robber's!" and nowhere more so than in this border-land. Feuds here are handed down from generation to generation of men; but are not shared in by their women, who daily meet at the same well to gossip. r "'* They are for ever fighting against one another, and, on one occasion, the author personally witnessed a hill-fight, not very far from the centre of the Kohat Pass. One tribe was fighting against another. They had quarrelled about a mulberry-tree; and on visiting the scene of action with a young Affghan gentleman and an escort of cavalry, the author was informed that the fight had then lasted three days and three nights, and scarcely any number of men remained alive. The women were at their usual avoca- tions when the author and his party reached one of the hostile villages, and they appeared quite unconcerned about the whole affair. Their husbands, brothers, and fathers had been killed, and yet they were carrying their pots of water on their heads, Ephinstone's Cabul. LETTER XVIII. 223 LAMBRO. : spinning, &c., &c., as usual. They are quite accustomed to that sort of thing."* At Fort Jumrood we were received by the principal chief, a veteran with dyed beard and whiskers, who looked the pirate in Don Juan << "The mildest-mannered man That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat." His followers were ranged round him, and among them a son of the late prime minister of Dost Muhammed, of Cabul. Slowly and systematically the chief exhibited numerous weapons, with which he was armed; his silver embossed matchlock, sighted in imitation of the English system, on a principle of his own invention; his daggers, bright, and sharp as razors, his pistols, flint-locks orna- mented and inlaid with silver, engraved with the name of Claude Martine, of the Martinière of Lucknow, and a silver snuff-box, originally presented to an English clergyman by his pupils, and which bore their complimentary inscription. The fort is a dilapidated building, swarming with hill-men, apparently under discipline, Lambro being evidently feared and respected. Returning, our bandit-guard parted with us at the place they had previously joined, where a small party of them with refreshments awaited our return. Curry and rice was pre- sented on a leaf (as it would have been profanation to touch their dishes) and water in a brass vessel, but here again we were obliged to use our hands, into which they poured the water, keeping the hand close to the mouth. As may be expected amid such a population, the Peshawur and Lahore jails are large and well filled. Old offenders, constantly in and out of them for petty offences during the last thirty years, bear evidence of punishment by native rulers, in the absence of ears, arms, hands, or of only a few fingers, according to the gravity of their crimes in Runjeet's time. Many trades are taught, and the under-management and work of the establishment is conducted by the prisoners. They excel in the manufacture of carpets, which * Sir Sydney Cotton. 22+ MURREE TO PESHAWUR AND LAHORE. LETTER XVIII. are worked before an upright loom. As the fabric progresses, it is rolled up from above, while the pattern is read to the workmen from behind it. The designs being often complicated, and of many colours, this system of reading a pattern, to workmen who have no other guide to go by, proves in them great intelligence and skill. Several packages of these goods were addressed to a Bond-street firm. Excellent towelling, and all kinds of cotton fabrics for domestic use, besides articles too numerous to mention, are manufactured for sale in the jails of India at moderate prices; and whatever may be the moral character of the operatives, all are honestly made. Visiting the jail at Peshawur, as at Lahore, we asked the chief superintendents, "Which do you find, as a class, the best conducted among your prisoners?" In both cases the same answer was given without hesitation—“ Murderers,—they are less cunning, more to be depended on. That," said the super- intendent, "is a first-rate fellow. I like him much. He'll soon be hanged." In the same tone, the head gaoler at Peshawur said, “Confound it! it's a shame to hang these men." What else can be expected from a people that are fanatical, jealous, impatient of wrong, and ever ready to risk their own lives where their instincts of honour are concerned? Most quarrels arise about women. pretty woman is certain to change masters before the end of her career. I once heard a Spaniard, who was staring out of a railway carriage at a pretty girl, on the platform of the Escorial station, say to himself, with an ajo, "Capaz de hacer una revolucion," "worth making a revolution for." So if a chief sets his affections on the wife of some neighbour, there is sure to be a revolution on her account. Again, when a lady runs away from her husband, " for jewels or gold," or caprice, as the humour may be, and leaves a son behind, the child is taken about until he has seen his mother's paramour, and is told that the business of his life is to kill him. Sworn from infancy to a deed of vengeance, when the opportunity arrives he will fulfil his vow as a sacred duty, at all hazards. Perhaps not for this purpose, but probably to accustom them to the handling of arms, little boys are seen walking about with daggers almost as big as themselves. We asked an official whether A LETTER XVIII. 225 PESHAWUR. • it would not be well to prohibit this universal custom ? 'Impos- sible the population is to a great extent migratory, constantly coming from and going to the hills. If we disarmed them on their entering the valley, they would soon become a prey to the surrounding tribes." Whenever we called on the Commissioner, he showed us "another dagger," generally stained with blood, added to the collection. Obliged to confirm several sentences of death, faithful attendants sat armed round the door of his private office. Such is life in the extreme northern frontier of India at the door of the Khyber. Leaving Peshawur by dawk at night, you reach Attock the following morning. A battlemented ancient fort, garrisoned by a detachment of European troops, guards the spot where the main body of the army of Alexander the Great under Hephaeston, guided by Taxilis, an Indian chief, is supposed to have crossed the Indus. The day was passed in walking about the fort, and in watching from the bungalow the rushing waters of the Indus, here joined by the Cabul river. At five A.M. on the 10th August 1858, the Indus at Attock was very low; at seven it had risen ten; by half-past twelve fifty feet, and it continued to rise till it stood ninety feet higher than it did in the morning. The Cabul river flowed upwards for ten hours. The cause of this cataclysm has not been explained; doubtless a part of the main stream, dammed up by natural or artificial obstructions, had suddenly burst the barrier, and the accumulated waters thus released swept like a torrent down upon the plain, drowning its flocks and herds. The territory of Gilgit, through which a great part of the upper Indus runs, was occupied by the Maharajah of Kashmir in the following year, 1859, and timely precautions would now be taken to prevent the recurrence of such a calamity, if, as is believed, the deluge of 1858 had its source there. From Attock to Rawul Pindee, fifty-four miles, is another night's journey, and, after passing a warm day in a bad hotel, you leave in the evening for Jhelum, seventy miles, and arrive there the following dawn. All over the country the Persian wheel Q G 226 LETTER XVIII. MURREE TO PESHAWUR AND LAHORE. is used--the noria of the Spaniards, the saquieh of the Egyptians. The wells, about twenty feet deep, are worked by bullocks, or buffaloes, which latter require no driver when their eyes are covered, but move on round and round in perpetual motion drawing water to irrigate the fields. Crossing the Jhelum river, here full of logs of Dearr and Deodar floated down from Kashmir, another night of affliction, but of only thirty-one miles, travelling, brings you to Goojrat, where the tired traveller finds rest and comparative comfort in a well-ordered dawk bungalow; and can amuse himself by inspecting the damasked sword blades, in the manufacture of which the place has some celebrity. At night, happy if you are the possessor of a Government express dawk, miserable, if you can procure none other than Sheik Jetoos, you start for Lahore, seventy-one miles, and arrive there (if you don't break down very often) about noon next day, glad to bid adieu for a time to dawk gharries of every description. Two suburbs of Lahore, Anarkulli and Mean Meer, are occupied, the first by the Civil, the other by the Military Services. The head-quarters of the government of the Punjab are at Anarkulli, where special attention is given to the planting of trees and water- ing of roads. A handsome building-in this case not a tomb- erected for the purpose contains an interesting collection of the manufactures, curiosities, and natural history of this and the sur- rounding countries. Lahore, enumerated by the poet in the list of "earth's kingdoms, and their glory" which "the tempter showed our second Adam in the wilderness- (( 'Agra and Lahor of Great Mogul,” is the principal city of the Punjab, although inferior in size to Amritser, the capital of its shawl manufacture. From the minarets of the imperial mosque you behold around its walls a wide horizon filled with ruins. They testify to the accuracy of Moore's description of that once-" splendid city of Lahore, in whose mausoleums and tombs, magnificent and numberless, death · LETTER XVIII. LAHORE. 227 appeared to share equal honours with heaven." Here more than in any other part of India porcelain tiles have been used for decorative purposes. They were brought first from Persia during the reign of Akbar. To Persia they had been introduced by the Moghuls of China, after their conquest of that kingdom. The earliest building on which they were used, the mosque of Shah Mussa, still retains them, in brilliance of colour as perfect as when first placed there. The front of Akbar's palace, five hundred yards long and four storeys high, was at one time covered with designs formed of these imperishable tiles, some parts of which escaped barbaric rage, exhibiting religious emblems, Hindu, Mahommedan, Christian and Parsi, interspersed with representations of elephants, men, horses, and plates with fruit and flowers, zodiacal signs and angels. A part of the palace is occupied by state prisoners, aspirants to the throne of Cabul kept there in deference to the political proclivities of our faithful ally, the Ameer, who, in the opinion of the youngest of them, "is a very bad man." This youth accompanied us over the armoury, which contains a curious collection of ancient weapons, including a small cannon made as a plaything for the present Dhuleep Singh of London, probably the model presented by Moorcroft to Runjeet, and referred to in his travels. لي ċ LETTER XIX. LAHORE TO BOMBAY. BOMBAY, 1870. FROM Lahore to Saharunpore is a journey of thirteen hours by the Punjab and Delhi Railway; leaving at 11 A.M., you arrive at 12.30 night. Saharunpore, situate on the plains 1000 feet above the sea level, is one of the few stations from which the peaks of the snowy range are seen against the unclouded sky, a panorama not unlike that of the Andes from the Pacific on approaching Valparaiso. The botanical gardens, first laid down here by a native despot, who appropriated the revenues of seven villages for their maintenance, were taken by the Government of the Marquis of Hastings, and formed into the present garden, forty acres in extent. Their trees and plants are labelled according to the Linnæan, or artificial, and Jussieuan, or natural, systems. Specimens of the mahogany, with its dark brown close bark and laurel-like foliage, received from America; of the teak leaves, broad as amazonian targe; of the Ficus religiosa, appro- priately encircling the remains of a Muhammedan's tomb; Ficus elastica, now so popular in English windows, which, here full grown, spreads its root in long serpentine walls over the ground; the beefwood tree (Casuarina exquisitifolia); the weeping cedar, and many others, flourish so luxuriantly that one asks why they are not more generally seen. A department of comparatively recent creation-forest con- servancy—is now working in all the provinces of India, under able scientific direction. The ancient forests of the western ghauts K LETTER XIX. 229 SAHARUNPORE. which supplied the dockyards of England and Bombay, had gradually disappeared, excepting those held sacred as the abode of demons, which owed their existence to the only effectual aid to preserve them-superstitious fears. Plantations of teak, com- menced in the Madras Presidency in 1844, have now arrived at forest growth. The various species of the Australian eucalyptus, the acacia and the chinchona, thrive not only on the Nilgiri plateau but at many other hill stations. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the latter tree, which, previous to its introduction in 1869, existed only in the forests of South America; and there, although so valuable a product, was from neglect of conservancy and supervision rapidly decreasing in numbers and quality. The bark of Indian growths is much richer in quinine than that of the indigenous trees, and chinchona forests of the finest species flourish in many parts of the Madras Presidency, in British Burmah, Ceylon, Darjeeling in Bengal, and, on the Mahabulishwar hills of Bombay. Four agri-horticultural societies at Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Lahore, and six Government botanical gardens of Calcutta, Madras, Bangalore, Ootacamund, Lucknow, and Saharunpore, ex- change their products with those of most parts of the world, notably with America and Australia, and have succeeded in introducing many useful plants and fruits. Potatoes, peas, and other European vegetables are now very generally cultivated, and may vary, if not partly supersede, the universal rice diet of India. Another department of public interest-the Government stud—is represented at Saharunpore, one of seven stations, three of the North Western and four of the Central Division, charged with the horse supply of the army of Bengal. Although great attention many years, none of the has been directed to this subject for systems adopted have been equal to meet the annual demand. The department is to be discontinued, and the cavalry of Bengal, like that of Madras and Bombay, will depend for its remounts on the resources of private enterprise. India possesses excellent breeds of horses, and imports them landward from Cabul, and by sea from Arabia, England, the Cape, and Australia. An attempt 230 LETTER XIX. LAHORE TO BOMBAY, to introduce horses from the plains of La Plata about fifteen years ago was not repeated, although a number of them received at Madras obtained prices much above their value. Judiciously advertised in the newspapers of the Mofussil for months in antici- pation, orders for them were sent from many parts of India, so that the animals came to a ready market, and were sold as soon as landed, but proved sorry bargains to their up-country purchasers. A day's exertions at Saharunpore had exhausted its sources of interest, when, on sitting down to dinner, the preparation of which had been a subject of great anxiety, a lady, dishevelled and in tears, rushed into the room, imploring assistance. Her husband, arrived at the bungalow en route to a lunatic asylum, taking advantage of his keepers' inebriety, had broken loose from his bonds, and, after attempting to murder her, rushed out into the darkness. First catch your madman-it was not an easy task; but at last, assisted by the bearer, we succeeded in handcuffing the unfortunate, whereupon he yelled so discordantly that it was necessary to use a stick, a few whacks from which quieted him for the remainder of the evening. Saharunpore, visited less for its botanical gardens or govern- ment stud than because it is the nearest station to the hills of Mussoorie and Landour, is distant a twelve hours' journey by dawk gharry from the banks and braes of Dehra Doon. The valley of the Ghoorkas lies between the first range of the Himalayas and the Sivalik Hills, through which it is entered by the Mohun pass. Gangs of kulís, "girt with cotton cincture, naked else and wild,” drag the gharries through the defile, parts of which are picturesque in scenery; but the sandy soil renders locomotion difficult. Horses were waiting at the opposite end, and at seven, after a twelve hours' journey, the cantonment was reached. The brave Ghoorkas, all Hindus, who did such good service in the mutiny, are the ancient inheritors of the valley. In deference to their prejudices and recognition of services, the British Government does not permit the slaughter of the bovine race within this terri- tory, so that the numerous English residents in the Doon are supplied with beef from the adjacent hills. 2.10 DEHRA DUN AND HILLS OF MUSSOORIE AND LANDOUS. [Page 231. LETTER XIX. 231 DEHRA. Dehra is 2600 feet above the sea level, and the climate, though warm in summer, is more temperate than that of Saharunpore. Luxuriant clumps of bamboos are the most prominent of many beautiful trees abounding, and the tea plant, after passing through a long period of difficulty, is largely and successfully culti- vated. The production of tea is rapidly increasing at Assam, Cachar, Sylhet, the Kangra valley, and many other stations, and this article is undoubtedly destined to occupy a prominent place in the exports of India. Throughout the country it is used by the European community, who prefer it to the growths of China; and the finer qualities are superior to the best Chinese teas. A walk of six miles to Rajpore, at the foot of the hills, thence a ride up a broad and well-kept road, bring you to the hill stations of Mussoorie and Landour, 7000 feet above the sea. The mountains, steppes of the great Himalayas, their sides and summits specked with the white bungalows of Europeans, churches, hotels, barracks, and other buildings, are a beautiful object, seen with their constantly varying shades from Dehra, whence the sketch was taken, now engraved on the opposite page. Mussoorie and Landour, contiguous, are only separated by the native bazaar. Deserted during this, the cold season, they are a favourite resort during the summer months. Landour contains one of the numerous sanitariums for European troops. which have been constructed on the hills; and at Mussoorie there is an asylum for the children of British soldiers, one of the numerous benevolent institutions of the kind initiated by Sir Henry Lawrence. The snowy range in all its magnificence is seen from these hills to great advantage. This, the period of the year when life on the plains is endurable,-even agreeable,-is also the pleasantest on the hills, which during summer are enveloped in fogs and a deluge of rain. But time presses; we bid adieu to Mussoorie, dawk back to Saharunpore, and take train to Meerut, the Woolwich of India. Again broad roads flanked with trees, a spacious and well- watered mall, bungalows in gardens, shops in compounds, the European Meerut, like so many other cantonments, with nothing 232 LETTER XIX. LAHORE TO BOMBAY. to describe, excepting that the trees are perhaps larger and the station possibly better kept than some others to be seen. Here exploded the long-prepared, predicted, expected mutiny. Here the European officers of native regiments, their wives and families, were massacred by the pampered and petted sepoys; hence the murderers escaped to Delhi. What of the European troops? They followed the mutineers, who somehow escaped." There is much virtue in an "if." If, then, those troops had intercepted escape, captured the mutineers, blown them from guns, and by decisive action averted what was doomed to be a fatal catastrophe, -what then? What justice would have been meted out to a commander who, acting on undivided responsibility, had displayed such extraordinary excès du zèle? This is a question which subsequent experience has answered in the cases of Governor Eyre and Mr. Cowan. Six miles distant from the cantonment stands the mansion, nunnery, and garden of the late Begum Sombre, a favourite picknicking resort of the Europeans of Meerut. A costly chapel, faced with marbles of many colours, saints and tinsel gewgaws— for the Catholics call the old graven images of the pagans idols, while they bow down to new sagradas imagines themselves * contains a monument from Paris representing the old lady seated in a chair, placed over her tomb. The nunnery is not exhibited ; but you may wander over the long-deserted rooms of the mansion, and about the newly laid garden of the aristocratic house of Sombre. The name was given by his brother soldiers to one Walter Reinhard, a native of Strasburg, who arrived in India, 1754-55, and enlisted in the army of the Honourable Company. Uneducated - he could neither read nor write-but subtle, he perceived in the unsettled politics of the India of those days a field of ambition. Joining first one, then another, of the native courts, in the army of the Nawab of Bengal he personally under- took the massacre of British hostages under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, the native officers refusing to join in that dark * Ford's Spain. LETTER XIX. 233 MEERUT. deed of treachery. As the fortunes of the Nawab declined, Reinhard joined successively the governments of Oudh, Delhi, and the Punjabees, and, although devoid of personal courage, had the genius to retain an independent body of troops, which he syste- matically moved from every doubtful field, to hire again as occasion or interest dictated. Fear and apprehension of the British, who endeavoured, without success, to capture him from his native allies, is said to have made his existence miserable. At Delhi he married a nautch girl, first Begum Sombre, and soon afterwards the Emperor gave him an estate having a rental of 60,000l. a year. The Eastern Jumna Canal runs through the Sombre estate, and is crossed by a bridge near the mansion. This is one of the numerous extensive works of irrigation which have been con- structed by Government. Wells worked by the Persian wheel have been used from a remote antiquity, and prevail generally to this day for irrigation purposes; but the first mention of canals in Indian history is a decree of the Emperor Akbar ordering the restoration of one which had been made by Firoz Shah to water his hunting-grounds at Hissar. * Omitting the preamble, the act proceeds: "The Chitang Naddi, by which Firoz Shah Badshah, two hundred and ten years ago, brought waters from the nálás, and drains in the vicinity of Sadhaura, at the foot of the hills, to Hissar, and by which for four or five months in the year water was then available, has, in the course of time, and from numerous obstacles, become so choked, that for the last hundred years the waters have not flowed past the boundaries of Kythal, since which time the inhabitants of those parts have become parched with thirst and their gardens dried up. "Now that I have given the district of Hissar to the great, the fortunate, the obedient, the pearl of the sea of my kingdom, the star of my government, the praised of the inhabitants of the sea and land, the apple of my kingdom's eye, my son Sultan Muham- med Salim Bahadur (may God grant him long life and greatness) * Translated by Col. Yule, J. R.A.S. B., xv., 213. H H 234 LETTER XIX. LAHORE TO BOMBAY, —afterwards the Emperor Jehangir, who was at this time under two years of age-my wisdom wishes that the hopes, like the fields of those thirsty people, may, by the showers of liberality and kind- ness, be made green and flourishing, and that the canal may in my time be renewed, and by conducting other waters into it, may endure for ages." From this canal, then reconstructed, Shah Jahan brought a branch to his city of Delhi, an extension which, with the main canal, has long since disappeared. In the restoration of these works, now called the Western Jumna Canal, commenced that great system of irrigation, one of the monuments of beneficent enterprise which mark the rule of Britain in the East. From Meerut and Sombre to Cawnpore and Nana Sahib. Cawnpore, on the right bank of the Ganges, is the head-quarters of the Cawnpore branch of the Ganges canal, the greatest system of water-communication ever constructed in any country. The Wingfield Park, English in character, well kept and tastefully arranged with drives and walks, turf, bright trees, shrubs and flowers, contains in its centre the memorial tomb over the well, sacred to the remains of the victims in that now almost for- gotten tragedy. The restriction which forbids natives to enter the inclosure is not enforced, and several of them were inspecting it. Lucknow, forty-two miles distant, is reached by the Oudh and Rohilcund railway at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. Along the road, suspended from the branches of the hedges and trees, are quantities of birds'-nests resembling purses. The entrance to them, through a slit at the side, closes by the weight of the inmates, thus protected from the attacks of snakes, to which, if exposed, they would be an easy plunder. The hotel gharry, drawn by a pair of camels, moved along at a good pace. . Lucknow, capital of Oudh, is one of the finest cities in India. Its public buildings, semi-Parisian, semi-Saracenic in architecture, have amused or interested travellers from Bishop Heber down- wards. Suffice it but to name the Imambarra, entered through the gate of Stamboul; the Dilkushar, where Nasr-ud-din held revel in former days; the Kaiserbagh, an eastern Palais-Royal; the LETTER XIX. 235 LUCKNOW. Chutter Munzil, now an English club-house; and La Martinière, amid many others. But barbaric pomp and gold, fights of wild beasts, the retinues and surroundings of eastern princes, exist, or are seen, no longer. The policeman with his staff has superseded the chokidar with his scimetar and shield, and modest tea-carts or unpretentious waggonettes supplant the elephant's howdah and its gorgeous appendages. And with courts and armies the occupation of cunning adventurers has also vanished. No more Sombres will rise from obscurity to 60,000l. a year; nor Martines bask in the favour of the great, and accumulate riches beyond dreams of avarice. Nous avons changé tout cela, and introduced, let us hope —after passing through the ordeal of experience—a happier order of things; replaced anarchy by peace, oppression by freedom, the edicts of despotism by equal justice! Oudh had long suffered from misgovernment by native princes before it was annexed, in 1856, to the Company's dominions, and its transfer occasioned no general feeling of resentment until the land settlement was made. By some fatal misconception the claims of the talookdars (landed nobility) were then ignored. They were dispossessed and dis- inherited incomes of even 20,000l. a year were reduced to a few hundred pounds, and wholesale expropriation involved the most influential members of the State in ruin. This act, promulgated in 1857, just previous to the mutiny, arrayed all classes in hostility to British rule, and a rebellion of the people-accepted as a national deliverance-that of the army of Bengal. After peace was restored, generous counsels prevailed, and all proprietary rights that had previously existed were re-established and confirmed. : Are the populace now contented and peaceful? It is impossible for a stranger to fathom native character; but, judging from the scowling countenances one meets constantly in the crowded bazaar and from complaints too generally heard of insolence of servants, and difficulty of obtaining redress from them even before British magistrates, one might arrive at a conclusion that they are scarcely kept sufficiently in hand, and that, where dissatisfaction prevails among the European community, the native Indians are not more happy themselves. Your oriental attributes leniency to weakness, 236 LETTER XIX. LAHORE TO BOMBAY. indulgence to fear, and it is impossible to relax in firmness without depreciating his estimate of a ruler's character. One of the most outré and extensive buildings in Lucknow is La Martinière. Claude Martine, a Frenchman, who enlisted first in the Company's army, and rose afterwards to the rank of general in that of the Nawab of Oudh, bequeathed 100,000l. to found an asylum for orphans in Lyons, his native city; a like amount to Calcutta; and his residence to Lucknow, with the same object. They all exist under the name of La Martinière. "When the general died, bis furniture was sold by auction, and the Company's agents purchased the chandeliers and lustres to decorate the Governor-General's palace in Calcutta. They got them a dead bargain, for the King of Oudh would not bid against the Company, and the Honourable Company was delighted with its commercial sagacity. No Yankee pedlar could have done the thing better." He was buried in the centre of the Lucknow edifice; but during the siege his remains were disinterred by the mutineers and scat- tered to the winds. The roofless room where Sir Henry Lawrence received his mortal wound in the ruined residency, and the shattered remains of its adjoining buildings, are surrounded by gardens and a park, which incloses a cemetery, where rest many of England's best and bravest sons. Here a tablet marks the spot where stood "the battery of Sam Lawrence;" and on the road to the Martinière is the grave of the gallant Hodson. Havelock's, in a distant suburb, is placed also in a garden. From Lucknow to Cawnpore, thence to Jubbulpore, the inter- mediate entrepôt of transit for the trade of the east and west, a place where commerce has been greatly stimulated by the com- pletion of the railway, and which has felt the influence of the opening of the Suez Canal more immediately than any other inland town. But not to obtain commercial statistics do travellers quit the train at this station. Their first visit is to the Deputies' cutcherry, to obtain an order for admission to a Government bun- galow, six miles distant; and the next, if fortunate to procure one, is to proceed to the place in question. A road through well- : • € MARBLE ROCKS OF THE NARBUDDA. [Page 237. LETTER XIX. 237 MARBLE ROCKS. cultivated fields, full of whitewashed huts and an industrious population, leads to the famous marble rocks. A neatly furnished bungalow overlooks the opening of the gorge, which, compressing the waters of the Narbudda, rises in rocks of marble, like icebergs beneath a tropical sky. Atmospheric action has darkened here and there the angles of the rocks less exposed to the rains, which throw out in powerful contrast the dazzling purity of the adjoining masses. The sketch was made from the extremity of the gorge, beyond which the river falls in rapids over boulders of marble, and conveys an idea of the scene to which words can do no justice; for you may dream you have "dwelt in palaces lifting to eternal summer their marble walls," but imagination fails to picture from description the creations of abounding Nature in her wild fantastic moods, and the marble rocks of the Nerbudda cannot be conjured, they must be seen by the visual eye. Crags, a hundred feet high, reflect from their white masses innumerable shades of pearl or yellow, culminating in points that seem of snow, or relieved by strips of black and green, where the pure marble has been intruded on by other formations; all are reflected in the blue waters, which add at once softness and majesty to the scene. "We gaze and turn away, and know not where, Dazzled and drunk with beauty;" then return to the bungalow. << Keep door shut," said the Khansamagh, as he was laying the table; “monkey bhort crab, very bad monkey; come take all sahib breakfast yesterday." These animals-some as big and as mis- chievous as a boy of thirteen, with tails about four feet long, pre- hensile, by which they cling to the branches of the adjacent trees -abound in the neighbourhood of the marble rocks, and, on the look-out near the bungalow, if they get a chance, rush in and take everything off the table by the summary process of pulling away the table-cloth. When teased, they become savage, and even attack their tormentors. A sportsman had been amusing himself by shooting, killing, and wounding some of them the previous day 238 LETTER XIX. LAHORE TO BOMBAY. C a cruel pastime, as they are by nature inoffensive; but, after enticing a group of them for some time, they slowly advanced and snatched the grain offered to them. The more timid, however, only approached after long hesitation, while the affection of the mothers for their young was interesting to witness. Near a large collection of Hindoo temples at the summit of the hill is the grave and an inscription to the memory of an officer named Boddington, stating that he was killed by bees. The rocks shelter swarms of these insects, which, when disturbed, attack all in their way with extraordinary fury and venom. Common to this part of the country, and comparatively inoffensive during the winter months, if disturbed at other times they are very dangerous; and, although an expert swimmer, Mr. Boddington was drowned when attempting to elude a swarm of them by diving. Jubbulpore, or Jubalpur,—for there are differences of opinion on the correct orthography of almost every Indian place or town- situate in the centre of a rich district, has a large native popula- tion and bazaar. Our funds had run low, and, as the manager of the Bank of Bengal refused to advance anything, we pro- ceeded to a native banker in the bazaar. He understood English, but insisted on being interpreted to; and, after the particulars of the case were explained to him, delivered himself as follows, through the medium of his head clerk :—“ Last month, on this day of the month, and just at this hour, a mam sahib" (English lady) "drove here in the identical gharry which the honourable sahib has now. The mam sahib wanted the same number of rupees, and for exactly the same purpose, which I give her on her chit on Calcutta, and never see no more of her or my money neither. My master very sorry he not able to oblige the honourable sahib same way." From Jubalpur to Nandgaum is a summer day's journey, thence another by bullock transit, a night at a dawk bungalow, and a few hours' travelling in the early morning, passing the celebrated fortress of Doulatabad, brings you to Aurungabad, the city of Aurungzebe, in the territory of our faithful ally, the Nizam. The fortress of Doulatabad was completed by Muhammed LETTER XIX. 239 DOULATABAD. Toogluck, "one of those persevering zealots who hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell." Previous to his time the district was called Deogir, but deeming its central position adapted for "the seat of mightiest empire," he suddenly banished to it all the inhabitants of Delhi. "Hence Delhi, which was the rival of FORT OF DOULATABAD. Bagdad or Damascus, he entirely ruined," and great numbers of its inhabitants perished on the way. The fortress covers an abrupt hill of granite scarped perpendi- cular to a height of two hundred feet,* above which it rises some * "The governor led the way, through an excavation, into the heart of the rock, so low that I was obliged to stoop nearly double; but, after a few paces, a number of torches showed me I was in a high vault, and we began to ascend on a winding passage, cut through the interior of the body of the hill, a gradual slope about twelve feet high 240 LETTER XIX. LAHORE TO BOMBAY. three hundred feet more in a circular form, so that it appears, to use the words of Batuta, "elevated like a milestone." Two lines. of fortification constructed from the scarped rock are not ob- servable in the landscape, and, seen from a distance, the celebrated fortress starts, "like the flying Island of Laputa," from the surrounding plain. Six miles distant is the city of Aurungabad, built, as its name indicates, by Aurungzebe, "ornament of the throne, reviver of religion, and conqueror of the world;" who, having blinded and imprisoned his father and murdered his brothers, retained the empire of India during fifty years. Its revenue was about 38,000,000l., or within 12,000,000l. of that now collected. He raised the city of Aurungabad "as well by reason of a lake two leagues about, upon which the village is built, as for the memory's sake of his first wife, who is dead, and the same broad, and the rise regular; and at certain distances from this dismal gallery were trap-doors, with flights of small steep steps, leading to the ditch below, only wide enough to admit a man to pass, also cut through the solid rock, to the water's edge, and unexposed to the fire of the assailants, unless they were on the very crest of the glacis. I suppose we were four or five minutes in reaching the window I had seen from below; and, after resting, we continued to climb. As I observed a passage leading off from the one in which we were, I followed it, and, to my surprise, found it led back forming a retrogressive semicircle, to our road; and on the sides of it were many recesses, with shelves for depositing stores. We might have been, in all, ten minutes mounting by torchlight, and came out in a sort of hollow in the rock, about twenty feet square. On one side, leaning against the cliff, was a large iron plate, nearly of the same size as the bottom of the hollow, with an immense iron poker. On the besiegers having gained the subterraneous passage, this iron is intended to be laid down over the outlet, and a fire placed upon it. I observed a hole perforating the rock, about three feet in diameter, which is meant to act as a bellows to the fire, and the current of air that came through it was so strong that I could hardly stand against it. From its strength, and these various precautions, this for- tress is deemed impregnable. There are some small houses, towers, and gates on the road to the summit, which is very steep, and in some places covered with brushwood. But the house of the governor is a most excellent habitation, surrounded by a large verandah, with twelve arches, hence called the doasdo durwaseh, or twelve doors. The road, and the only one to the top, passes through this house. Above this, the ridge is very narrow, and on the peak, on which flies his highness the Nizam's flag, on a stone bed, not many feet broad, stands a large brass twenty-four-pounder. From the flag-staff the view is most extensive and beautiful. "After resting from the fatigue of ascending, which was very great, we returned down the hill, and saw a tank or cistern, about a hundred yards from the summit, cut out of the rock, and containing, I should think, forty hogsheads of water."-Fitz- clarence's Route Across India, p. 215. LETTER XIX. 241 ELLORA. by whom he had his children. She is interr'd toward the end of the lake upon the west side, where the King has built a mosquee with a stately monument and a fair Inn. The mosquee and the monument were reared at great expense, being covered with white marble, which is brought from Lahor by waggon; being a journey of four months. Going one time from Surab to Golconda I met, five days' journey from Aurungabat, more than three hundred waggons laden with this marble, the least whereof was drawn by twelve oxen. The tomb of Rabbia-ud-Doorannee is a poor imitation of the Tâj, and ornaments of stucco-lilies and roses-represent the marble carvings that adorn the monument at Agra to Mumtaz Mahall. But the once-great Emperor has a humbler resting-place. "I came empty-handed into the world, empty-handed I quit it. Let no royal pomp accompany my funeral. Make a tomb for my corpse in the same manner as is done for dervishes; and let not my fortunate children concern themselves about my monument. I leave a thousand rupees to the poor." Such in substance was the conclusion of his last will and testament. About eighteen miles distant are the caves of Ellora. Starting at bedtime in a bullock transit, you will awake at dawn before the portals of Keylas, the paradise of Siva. This work, about 140 feet deep by 60 broad, stands in the centre of a court, 250 deep by 150 broad, which is excavated in cloisters, decorated in bold reliefs. of the gods and goddesses of Hindoo mythology. Keylas is the principal of the numerous temples, all different in their styles, which are excavated along the side of the Ellora hill, facing the west, for the purpose of worshipping the setting sun. The most singular, though one of the smallest of them, is called the Burriake Jompre, Carpenter's Hovel, from the figure of Viscavarma, artist. of the gods, represented sitting on a bench in the centre of a lingam, with attendant sprites on either hand, comprised in the same peculiar emblem. Exteriorly the temple is two-storied, with a gallery across it, on which three windows open, but the central * Tavernier. I I 242 LETTER XIX. LAHORE TO BOMBAY. alone lights the interior. Quaint in form, they do not participate in the marked character of the interior excavation. Once exqui- sitely worked by the chisel, now injured or destroyed, the façade of Viscavarma's Cave forms still a startling contrast with the rocky VISCAVARMA S CAVE, ELLORA. sides of the mountain, rough boulders of stone and wild vegetation, from which it peers. Entering, you behold a vaulted temple, eighty feet long, forty-four broad, thirty-six high to the centre of the arch. Over the entrance, a gallery exactly represents the choir of a Protestant church, and in front, as before the altar, is the image of LETTER XIX. 243 ROZAH. the Carpenter, his eyes, which are supposed to be sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought, now painted white by some irreverent Muhammedan. The roof is carved into arches which nearly approach the gothic curve, supported, apparently, by twenty-eight octangular pillars. Sculptured figures of the presiding god sur- mount their entablatures. The disciples of Buddha, in the pursuit of nirvana, excavated these sacred abodes, wherein, removed from the tumult of a dis- tracted world, they proposed to meditate on the vanity of life's illusive pleasures, and to transmit to future ages their faith and traditions. But the persecution of Muhammedan conquerors dis- persed the recluses, converted their followers to Islam by the logic of the sword, destroyed the painted stuccos, bas-reliefs, and sculp- tures that then adorned them, of which only the barest vestiges remain, so that no record of their founders or of any period of their history can be discovered. Unfortunately, also, Government has not interfered to preserve them from that mutilation to which, situate in the centre of a Muhammedan populace, they are still exposed, and the progress of deterioration is constant and pro- gressive. A mile and a half from the temples, and at the summit of the hill, is the town of Rozah-the place of tombs-which contains that of the Emperor Aurungzebe. Here the acquaintance may sometimes be made of a former Company's officer, the most popular and informed gentleman of Aurungabad, who, in the evening of his active life, amuses himself with the art of photography, and from whose excellent productions the two preceding views of Doulatabad and the exterior of Viscavarma's Cave have been taken. The most interesting and genial of men, a visit to his hospitable camp will be ever remembered, by those fortunate to enjoy it, among their pleasantest hours passed in India. We leave the caves of Ellora with that regret now so often experienced after visiting the shrines of nature or of art, that our stay has been too limited to explore them adequately, and, returning by bullock transit to Nandgaum, take the rail to Bombay. Gin LAB RUTNAGHERIA. LETTER XX. BOMBAY TO GOA. LEAVING Bombay at 4 P.M. the 22nd December, Rutnagheria was passed on the following evening, and Goa reached on the morning of the 24th. The rocky headland of Rutnagheria is surmounted by a dark line of wall with a tower and fort at its extremity. These defences, of which there are many on the line of coast from Bombay to Goa, were erected by Mahratta pirates to defend them by land—at sea they were masters; and hence they scanned the horizon in search of plunder. Angria of Colaba was the pirate of his time, 1756; but he paid allegiance to the Peishwa of the Mahrattas and respected the British flag, though, according to Grant Duff, British ships were occasionally taken and sometimes released, with an apology that they had been mistaken for those of other nations. It was 5 A.M. when the boat, rather too redolent of fish, stopped at the quay of Panjim. There are neither hotels nor dawk bungalows in Portuguese India, so the traveller must seek a room, borrow a bed, and exist as best he can. On this occasion, possession was taken of an outhouse in the garden of an unoc- cupied house in the plaza, which might have served for the summer retreat of Robinson Crusoe, while an old mestizo, who spoke a LETTER XX. 245 GOA VELHA. few words of English, answered to the name of "Man Friday," and proved an excellent caterer. The language spoken by the natives is a mixture of Portuguese and Canarese peculiar to the territory. Eatables are very cheap, and the difference in the cost of pro- visions between Goa and Bombay is astonishing. A family is esteemed wealthy, and may live sumptuously in Panjim on 100%. a year; and 300l. is a superfluity beyond Goanese dreams of affluence. New Goa reminds one of San Blas, Gualeguaychú, Santa Isabel, Paysandú, or any other of those moribund places, to which the same death-in-life, common to all, imparts a strange resemblance, although it has a superiority over the others in its situation. Tavernier two hundred years ago compared it to Constantinople, but the beautiful works of nature scarcely admit of comparison, -none but themselves can be their parallels. Goa Velha, four miles distant on the same island, is not the veritable Velha, there was still an older city before that now desolate was founded. Let us take a boat and sail up the estuary which surrounds the islands of Goa, and admire their gently declining shores crested with monasteries, convents, churches, palaces, in the ponderous, if not graceful or classical, style of architecture which the Spaniards and Portuguese made familiar to the world, and behold, opening from the midst of a forest of palms, the long array of buildings which is your first sight of what once was "la célèbre ville de Goa, la plus belle, la plus grande, et la plus magnifique de toute l'Inde," is it possible we are approaching a deserted city? Well, not entirely deserted, a few mestizo priests still perform the services of the Church of Rome in the Cathedral of the Santa Sé, a few padres in the monastery of Bom Jesus will exhibit to you the mausoleum of San Francisco Xavier, or draw aside the curtain that veils the shrine of San Ignacio Loyola, and in doing so startle a flight of bats into the air, to fill the edifice with their cries; a few indigenas will stare at you from among the death-like ruins of the great Inquisition, and fewer still—only three remain ―ancient madres of the convent of Santa Monica will interrogate 246 LETTER XX. BOMBAY TO GOA. you, whence you came, whither you are bound, and gesticulate with horror if you attempt to enter precincts still unprofaned by foot of man-but that is all. The bright blue rippling water that seems so exquisitely Italian, as you look back from under the Arch of Vasco da Gama rocks against the Viceroy's stairs no boat but yours; and the effigy of the old Admiral is the sole representative of humanity, in this the rua, along which innumerable throngs were wont to pass. "O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear; A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, 'The place is haunted !'” Goa, called also the "City of the Sails," perhaps from the extent of its commerce in remote ages, is supposed to have derived its name from Goaldeo, son of its founder Cadamo, a Hindoo poten- tate who heads its lists of sovereigns. The line continues to 1374, when the city was captured by the Muhammedans, or Moors, as they were called by the Portuguese, who took it from them on the 17th February, 1510. A quaintly sculptured tablet on the wall of Santa Catarina, in bas-relief, coloured and gilt, represents St. Martin handing his cloak to the beggar, and records the second capture of Goa by Alfonso d'Albuquerque. - About fifty edifices, some of colossal proportions, all of which are now more or less decayed, and the greater part in ruins, attest the former greatness of Goa. Still in fair preservation are the cathedral of the Santa Sé, the monasteries of San Francisco-one padre lives in it-of Bom Jesus, and of our Lord of the Mount; the convents of Santa Monica, Madre de Dios, Our Ladies of Carmo, Pilar, and the Cape; the colleges of St. Roque and Rosario; the churches of St. José de Dios, Sta. Lucia, St. Cajetan, and St. Peter; the chapels of the five wounds-das cinco chagas-of St. Catherine and St. Anthony of Padua, the arsenal, hospital, and wharf. Ruined, and in most cases their sites alone existing, are the LETTER XX. 247 RUINED EDIFICES. archiepiscopal palace, the palace of the Viceroy, the senate-house and the ecclesiastical prison, the royal tobacco-warehouse, and the palace of the Holy Inquisition-seventy-one autos da fé are re- corded as having taken place in Goa, in which four thousand and forty six victims were sacrificed; the monasteries of St. Augustine, of the Augustine friars, the Dominicans, and the Carmelites; the + AQVI NESTE + LV GAR+ ERXX A+PORTA POR QVE + ENTRO V+O+GOV ERNADOR + A + DALьo QVER QVE + E + TO MOV ESTA + CIDĀ DE+ÃOS +MOV ROS+E+ + DIA+DE+ SANTA OR CATARINA+ANO+ DE +1510+ EN + CVJO + O + LOVV OR+E ME MORIA+O + COVER NAD JORGE + CABRAL MÃDO FAZER + ESTA + CASA ANO + DE+ 1550 + A CV STA + DE + S + A+ TABLET IN THE CHAPEL OF SANTA CATARINA, convent of Sta. Barbara; the churches of our lady of Light, St. Thomas, St. Alexis, and St. Thomas Aquinas (full of cobras de capello); the church and house of Mercy; chapel of St. Mary Magdalen; churches of the Miraculous Cross* and of the Holy * A cross which Padre Emanuel Rodriguez placed on the hill of Boa Vista, did, says the pious tradition, increase in height upwards of two feet, and the place from which it was withdrawn burst, without human intervention, into a fountain of miraculous water. The Archbishop thereupon ordered it to be carried in procession 248 LETTER XX. BOMBAY TO GOA. Trinity, colleges of St. Paul and Boa Ventura, hospital of St. Lazarus, custom-house and market-place. This sketch of the ruined monastery of St. Augustine affords an idea of the extent of the buildings constructed here, either by Government or by the various orders of the church of Rome. Sit RUINED MONASTERY OF ST. AUGUSTINE. The Abbess of the Convent of Santa Monica said that the roof, and all the rest of the monastery, with the exception of the front wall and the tower, here sketched, fell down thirty-six years ago. The old lady was seated at the door of the convent with three ancient nuns, their hair cut short like a man's. Fronting to the church of Our Lady of Light, and afterwards, as the theologians deemed it worthy of more devout honour and worship, the church of the Miraculous Cross was erected over the spot where the miracle had occurred, to which the cross was again taken; but the edifice having fallen into decay, it is now located in the cathedral. LETTER XX. 249 XAVIER. St. Augustine is the ruined church of San Juan de Dios, and between them, still preserved, partly by Government, and partly through the donations of the Abbess, is the convent referred to. In a chapel of the monastery of Bom Jesus stands the mauso- leum of St. Francis Xavier.* It was presented by a Grand Duke MAUSOLEUM OF SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER. of Tuscany, in return for the cushion on which the head of the saint had lain for many years after death, and which was sent him from Goa by the Jesuit fathers. To the top of the crucifix the * "On the 16th March, 1554, the body of Francis Xavier, which had been trans- ferred from the island of Sancian, on the coast of China, where he died on the 2nd December, 1552, was taken to Goa in triumph, and deposited in the church of the College of St. Paul, where it remained for a great number of years exposed to the sight of the people, in a perfect state of preservation. In 1783 the body, which had K K 250 LETTER XX. BOMBAY TO GOA. monument is twenty-one feet high. The base is of jasper, with alabaster ornaments. The first superstructure bears four artisti- cally executed bas-reliefs in bronze, commemorative of the labours of the apostle of the Indies; and the second supports a silver casket which incloses the precious deposit of his mortal rėmains. They are clothed in embroidered vestments, the gift of a Queen of Portugal. The casket, elaborately carved in open-work, is studded with precious stones; and around, in repoussée, are thirty- two designs exhibiting the adventures and miracles of the life of Xavier. It is seven feet long, three wide, and, including the ornaments of the lid, four and a half feet high. The value of the silver alone (600 marks) is about 1,2007. A worthy cenotaph for the most successful Christian missionary that has laboured in India. Innumerable converts to the Catholic faith flocked around him. Writing to Francis Loyola, from Cochin, in 1543, he says: "As to the number who become Christians you may understand them from this, that it often happens to me to be hardly able to use my hands, from the fatigue of baptizing; often in a single day I have baptized whole villages. Sometimes I have lost my voice and strength altogether with repeating again and again the creeds and other forms." The histories of old Goa present little else than a catalogue of its viceroys and governors. The appointment lasted three years, during the first of which the viceroy was occupied in arranging and furnishing his palace; during the second, in accumulating a fortune; and during the third, in preparing to depart. Some- times they were recalled, or their period was extended, or they died during their term of office. Francisco de Almeida, 1505, was the first Viceroy of India, and Alfonso de Albuquerque (1509), o maior heroe da Azia Portugueza, the first governor that resided at Goa. He took Aden, and opened to the Portuguese the navigation of the Red Sea. Vasco da Gama, before been constantly exposed to view, was shown for the last time. Ever since which it has been locked up in its beautiful shrine, under three keys, one of which is kept by the archbishop, the other by the scuate, and the third is at Lisbon.”— Kloguen's Goa. LETTER XX. 251 PANJIM. 1524, was second Viceroy, and sixth Governor. De Souza, twelfth representative of Portugal, arrived at Goa in April, 1542, with Francis Xavier; and on the 12th October of the same year, Akbar, succeeding his father Houmayon, was proclaimed Emperor at Lahore. Sixty-three years afterwards, on the same month and day, the 12th October, 1605, Akbar died at Agra; twenty-three Portuguese Governors having succeeded one another in his time, the number from Almeida being thirty-five. The list now reaches the respectable number of one hundred and twelve, and the present holder of the ancient dignity is the Marquis de Sam Januario. It was pleasant to sail about the islands, explore their ruins, visit the fat old padres in their retreats alongside their white- washed churches, or after sauntering about the streets of deserted Goa, to return on foot along roads bordered with palms. The distance is about four miles, and these walks were considered remarkable instances of pedestrianism by my Panjim friends. The summer-house, loosely surrounded by canes, was thatched with broad leaves of palm, so dry that the slightest gust of wind showered fragments of them down, especially at dinner-time, when everything prepared by the skill of man Friday was persistently flavoured with them. At night the good people of New Goa strolling through the Plaza, had an opportunity, which they availed themselves of, to inspect the sylvan, albeit withered abode, and of freely criticising the eccentricities connected with its domestic arrangements. They were not luxurious, but there is an indefinable charm in liberty, and a fascination of its kind in picknicking about the world. Panjim (New Goa)-like the Old-situate on the left bank of the river Mandovi, is the capital of all the Portuguese Eastern possessions. It has a population of about ten thousand, and comprises a white-washed church, placed on an eminence, a principal square, another, with a statue in the centre of it to Alfonso Albuquerque, removed from the old city; a custom-house, not much frequented, the principal revenue being derived from a tobacco monopoly, barracks, some municipal buildings, and a good 252 LETTER XX. BOMBAY TO GOA. 1 many houses of two stories with verandahs, out of which the people are fond of lounging, en déshabille or in their shirt-sleeves. The Governor's palace, situate on the river, has some spacious rooms, where his Excellency receives most of the European inhabitants. His country-house, formerly the convent of Our Lady of the Cape, on an eminence at the easternmost part of the island, is surrounded by woods, and overlooks the sea, as well as the opposite fort of Margao and the lands of Salsette and Panjim. On the afternoon of a day passed at this charming retreat, in the enjoyment of the Governor's hospitality, the steamer was seen in the distance arriving from Cochin, en route for Bombay, and a few hours afterwards I was steaming back on the first stage to England, after a year's enjoyment of travel in India. लु BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIANs. ! UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 3 9015 00657 7475 SIMMONS & WATERS Book and Print Dealers 10 Spencer Street, Leamington Spa. $ t J