Chapter II: India (2)

"Do not disbelieve me, Mr. John Bull, because my language is not rose-watered. The Old Maids' Journal (_Spectator_)--ancient, but not very pretty, virginity--has lately been berating me for seeking 'cheap credit' by 'pointing out how much better duties might be done by persons whose business it is to do them.' But officials are ever in trammels, whilst we critics, who look only to results, are not; moreover, a man is hardly omniscient because his work is in this or that department, or even because he holds high rank in this or that service. And did not Voltaire think and declare that, 'of all the ways of Providence, nothing is so inscrutable as the littleness of the minds that control the destinies of great nations'?

"Some have distinction, you know, forced upon them; others win it by means which honest men despise. They never report the truth unless pleasant to the ear; they calculate that, possibly, the disagreement will not occur; and that, if it does, their neglect will be slurred over and forgotten. Plausible and specious, 'they can preach and they can lecture; they can talk "soft sawder," and they can quote platitudes _ad infinitum_. These superficial specimens of humanity, who know which side their bread is buttered, owe their rise, their stars and ribbons, their K.C.B.'s and pensions, not to the sterling merits of courage and ability, of talents and manliness, but to the oily tongue that knows so well how to work the oracle, and to a readiness of changing tactics as the chameleon changes colour.' In short, these gentlemen have mastered the 'gospel of getting on;' the species, 'neglected Englishmen,' has not.

"Thus you have no right to be surprised, as you often are, when some notorious incapable, entrusted with an office of the highest responsibility, comes to grief. His 'Kismet,' his 'Nasib,' his star, have been in the ascendant, and he has done nothing to obscure them by personal merit, by originality, by candour, or by over-veracity. These qualities are sure to make enemies, and the millenium must dawn before your friends--private, public, or political--will look after you with the vigour and the tenacity of your foes.

"But so rotten is the state, so glaring is the inefficiency, of the Indian army, that you will not be astonished to hear reports of 'organic changes' and fundamental reforms, or even to see a return to the old system. Strange to say, Lord Northbrook, the civilian, saw the necessity of reorganization. Lord Napier, the soldier, who, during the Abyssinian campaign, sent for officers to every Presidency, ignored it. Perhaps the Napierian clique took the opportunity to oppose, tooth and nail, the efforts of another service. The Shí'ahs, who, you know, abhor the Sunnis bitterly, as Roman Catholics hate Protestants, when any mode of action left to private judgment is proposed, always choose the line opposed to that taken by their heretic enemies--_raghman li-'l-Tasannun_, 'in adverse bearing to Sunniship,' as the religious formula runs.

"Briefly, the sooner we convert Jacobábád into an outpost, connect it by a decent road with Shikárpúr, and station the troops at Sakhar, the better. No man in his sane senses would station his whole force upon the skirts of a province, where a troop or two suffices, without a single soldier, for support or reserve, nearer than some three hundred miles.

"The defective dyke has depopulated a fine tract of country; it threatened old Sakhar, and it may even cause a complete shifting of the irrepressible river. Any exceptional freshet may burst the 'Band' and insulate Sakhar Camp, below which the inundation used to discharge; and seriously damage the working of the railway, upon which all the prosperity of the Upper Province now depends.

"But dull, desolate, decayed, miserable-looking Sakhar has a future. Bad as the climate is, men live longer in it than at Shikárpúr or Jacobábád. The railway, which the engineers seem trying their hardest _not_ to make, must some day be finished; it will not only connect Sind with India, but it must also attract to itself all the outlying settlements. 'Common Sense,' again, will presently withdraw the Sind Horse from wretched malarious Jacobábád, a prison with the chance of being drowned. The occupation of Kelat will give poor old Sakhar an excellent sanitarium, and the annexation of the Unhappy Valley to the broad and fertile plains of the Panjáb will make it, I venture to predict, one of the principal stations upon the highway of commerce.

"The present antiquated arrangements date from the days of General and Acting-Commissioner John Jacob, who, after eighteen years' service in Sind, died on October 5, 1858; and his rules endure, I have told you, whilst all the conditions that favoured them have changed. They were originally intended for the benefit of the Jekránis, the Domkís, and the Bugtís; but these robber tribes have long ago become peaceful cultivators. They are perpetuated by the old school of Sind soldier, that sat at the feet of his Gamaliel, John Jacob, and that ever held and still hold him a manner of Minor Prophet. He was, I have told you, a remarkable man, and so you may judge by the entire devotion of his followers and successors. He used to base the most decided views upon the shallowest study of the 'Eternal Laws of Nature,' of 'Principles,' and so forth.

"General Jacob could not play whist; ergo, whist was banished from the Mess of the Sind Horse, and even now, nearly a score of years after his death, it is still, I believe, under interdict. A 'practical mechanic,' that is to say, a mere amateur, he tried to force upon the army a rapier-bayonet and a double-barrelled, four-grooved rifle, which reached the climax of impracticability. Incapable of mastering native languages, he hated linguists, and never lost an opportunity of ridiculing and reviling them. Moreover, he dignified his deficiency by erecting it into a principle--namely, that all English subjects should learn English; and here, for once, his prejudice ran in the right line. He knew nothing of the sword beyond handling it like a broomstick; therefore he would not allow it to be taught to his men, many of whose lives were thus sacrificed to his fatal obstinacy. He utterly condemned the use of the point, which is invaluable throughout India, because the natives neither make it nor learn to guard it. His only reason for this dogmatism was the danger of the thrust by his own inexperienced hand. In a few single combats, after running his man through the body, he had risked being disarmed or dragged from his horse. He probably never knew, and, with characteristic tenacity, he would not have changed his opinion had he known, that Lamoricière proposed to take away the edge from the French trooper's blade; that the French heavies still use the straight sword, best fitted for the point; and that the superiority of the latter to the cut is a settled question throughout the civilized world. His prejudices were inveterate, and they were most easily roused. He hated through life a native of Persia, who, not understanding his stutter, a defect imitated by his admirers, wrote his name J-J-J-J-J-Jacob, thus:--

At last his obstinacy killed him. When advised by the surgeon not to ride his final ride home, he asked, with a sneer, if the young man knew his constitution better than he did himself, and he died examining a new rifle."

He continues--

[Sidenote: _And Sind_.]

"Kasmor is our northernmost village, but it is one hundred miles of winding road, a deadly uninteresting series of seven marches, and is of no interest; but we will, on returning to Sakhar again, visit the ruins of Aror. Issuing from Rohri by the Multán road, we shall pass on the left the Aroráwáh, and east of it the new Nárá supply canal, and then we will drop down the Indus to Kotri. We have now inspected and studied Sind and its river Indus, and you must marvel at the complete physical resemblance, and the absolute intellectual difference between this and Egypt--there Meroe, Philæ, Thebes, the Pyramids; here nothing. Yet this is one of the nurseries of the Indo-Aryan race, whose occupation of the Panjáb learned Pandits placed before the sixth century before Christ; this is the home of the Vedas, the scene of the Puránas; the traditions of Ráma and Sitá's travel in Lower Sind. Why is this mighty contrast in the works of Art, where the gifts of Nature are so similar? My theory is that Old Egypt has always been the meeting-place of nations, the common ground upon which the Orient and the Occident stood front to front, where Eastern man compared himself with Western man, where mind struck mind, where the Promethean spark resulted from the impact of Northern or Southern thought. Indus-land stood in a corner far from the outer worlds of the North and the far West; she led to nothing, she was of scant service to racial development. Indus-land was compelled to work out her own destinies in a mean and humble way, while the monuments of Nile-land still instruct and astonish humanity."

Then we came to Hyderabad, and he discusses the Indus Valley Railway. He finds it silly that the Government continued to march its troops between Karáchi and Kotri in ten days, including a single halt, rather than take the rail for four or five hours; expensive economy, he remarks, as the baggage camels cost far more than a few additional cars.

He says that we have improved the climate of the Indus Valley; we have learned to subdue its wildness by the increased comforts of a more civilized life. Many abuses of the olden time have disappeared; formerly, it was a feat to live five years in Indus-land, but now you find men who have weathered their twenty years.

"There is an imperative demand for a sanitarium, and the nearest and best is Kelat. Kelat requires protection, and would be an admirable outpost in case of hostile movements from Merv upon Herat (1876). A couple of troops would amply suffice that abominable Jacobábád. A single corps of Sind Horse should support them from Shikárpúr, and the reserves, or body of the force, should occupy Sakhar, where the climate is supportable and locomotion easy. Sind is virtually unconnected with North-Western India, whose prolongation she is. From Kotri-Hyderabad to Multán (570 miles) is a long steamer voyage of twenty days, which should be covered by twenty-four hours of rail-travel.

"The military political has had his day, and Sind, after a fair trial of seventy-five years, has shown herself impotent to hold the position of an independent province. She should be annexed to the Panjáb, and then, as in the ancient days of the Hindú Rajahs, her frontiers will extend to Kashmír. Already the papers tell us that the Trans-Indine districts, from Pesháwar to near Karáchi, will be formed into a Frontier Government, or an agency purely political, and will be placed directly under the Viceroy; while Cis-Indine Sind, including also Karáchi, is to be transferred from Bombay to the Panjáb, in exchange for the Central Provinces. These sensible measures will be, to use a popular phrase, the making of Young Egypt or Indus-land. She will become the export-line of the rich Upper Valley, and the broad plains of the Land of the Five Rivers, and increased wealth will enable her to supply many a local want; for instance, water and gas to Karáchi, a branch railway to Thathá, and so forth. Finally, when Karáchi becomes the terminus of the Euphrates or Overland Railway, so much wanted at this moment (February, 1877), then 'The Unhappy' will change her name, and in the evening of her days shall become 'The Happy Valley.'"

[Sidenote: _The Muhárram_.]

We were fortunate enough to be in time for the Feast of the Muhárram, with the procession for Hossein's death. This is a Moslem miracle play, answering to our Passion play at Ober Ammergau, and represents the martyrdom and death of Hassan and Hossein, sons of Ali and Fatima, son-in-law and daughter of Mohammed. No European seemed to care about it, but in any other land there would be crowded express trains and excursion steamers to catch a glimpse of it. Richard took me to the Imám Bárrá, to his friends the Shí'ahs (Persians), to his Highness Agha Khan, chief of the Khojahs, who took me to the Jumat Khana, the place of assembly of the Khojah caste--an immense building, enclosing in a large space of ground. They let us in, and the Hindús, but not the Sunnis, who, though Moslems, are their religious enemies. The whole place was a blaze of lamps, mirrors, a brazier of wood flaring up, and a large white tank of water (Hossein died fighting his way to the Great River). Men form themselves into a ring, moving from right to left with a curious step, beating their naked breasts with their hands. It makes a noise like the thud of a crowbar, but in musical time; the Arabs dance that way, but do not beat their breasts. The blows are given with such violence that they sometimes die of them, and often faint, and think themselves happy to suffer for the cause. They become more and more fanatical, working themselves up to frenzy, crying, "Hossein! Hossein Ah-ha!" and with this wail the blows are dealt with noise and regularity like a huge sledge-hammer, till it becomes a maddening shriek. They become raw as beef, and bleed, and are distorted. To see those hundreds of men, in the prime of life, brawny and muscular as they are, carried away by religious fanaticism, awes you; and you know what a terrible thing it is, and what a tremendous force it is, when roused, to twist the world in and out of shape with.

Then comes a procession of horses bearing little boys of six or eight, the children and nephews of Hossein, carried off prisoners; their white clothes and the horse's trappings stream with blood (painted wonderfully well). A group of mourners hang round each horse, crying real tears, and shrieking, "Hossein!" which thrills our nerves, and all the spectators sob. Then comes the bier with Hossein's corpse, and his son sitting upon it sorrowing and embracing him, and a beautiful white dove in the corner, whose wings are dabbled with blood. The effect upon the excited crowd is awful. Then follows a litter with the sister and widow of Hossein, throwing dust and straw upon their heads. One horse has a score of arrows stuck in its housings. We must here call to mind that Fatima was the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed, was married to Ali, the Prophet's favourite companion, and was mother of Hassan and Hossein. Fatima expected Ali to succeed her father; but Ayesha, the last and youngest wife of Mohammed, managed that her own father, Abubekr, should become the Caliph. Then came Omar, then Osman. When Osman died, Ali, who was still alive, became Caliph, and was assassinated A.D. 660, leaving his two sons, Hassan and Hossein, blessed by their grandfather, Mohammed, as the foremost youths of Paradise. Hassan renounced his rights to save civil war, and was poisoned at Medina by his wife, at the instigation of Muawíyah. Hossein went to Medina, invited to return by the subjects of the treacherous Yezíd, was caught in the snare, and slain in battle at Kerbála (Arabia).

This was the tragedy represented there:--

First came Hossein, six feet high, with fair complexion, and black beard cut close. He walks with dignity, as becomes so great a personage. His green and gold turban is like a crown, and shows his relationship to the Prophet. He is draped in a black cloak. Then the wife and sister came, veiled; then four little children; then attendants. Hossein seats himself in a large armchair on one of three dais; his family on a similar one opposite; and a sick youth, the son of Hossein, lies on a mattress on a third. His son was ill when Hossein died, but lived to become the progenitor of all the Sherífs of the East. Then the villain Shimr, inviting Hossein to return, was hooted, and a noble reply from Hossein was received with murmurs of applause. Then rises up Hossein's sister, imploring him not to go to destruction. The wife dare not speak; she may feel the most, but in the East she dares not show it, even by a murmur. Hossein says that he is called to be the Imám of the Faithful. If slain, he will die for the people of the true Faith; if he lives, he will do Allah's will. The sister cries aloud, and casting dust on her head, flings herself on his neck. He embraces her tenderly, but will go and die for the sins of all. Sobs burst from all sides--and real sobs. Everything is so earnest, so simple, so distinct, and expressive. Then the little daughter comes forth and caresses him; the child really weeps. He takes it in his arms, soothes, and puts it back to its mother's lap. He then goes over to his son's sick bed and bids him a tender adieu. A splendid horse then comes in, and the sister brings him a white linen shroud, and puts it on him. When about to mount, the child rushes from her mother's arms and catches his cloak. He sinks on the ground, and wraps the child in his arms. As he rises, the child pulls off the shroud, covers herself with it, and stretches herself on the earth. He takes it from her, and mounts his horse. The child flings herself in front of the horse's hoofs, and the animal stands still. A servant picks the child up, but she breaks away, and clings to the horse's legs; her little hands clutch its hoofs.

The audience have been sobbing the whole time, but now there is a perfect spasm of grief. An angel then comes, and offers to slay Hossein's enemies; but he refuses, and the angel throws dust over his head. Then he draws his scimitar. The villain Shimr appears, and they ride off. The battle, the treachery, want of water, and the slaying, are left to the imagination; and we next see the procession of the Imám's captive children, widow, and sister, and the headless corpse upon a bier. The procession of last night follows again, shrieking, "Ya Ali! Ya Hossein!" with beating of breasts. The _tabuts_ are set up in every nook and corner, and are fanciful representations of the tombs of Hassan and Hossein--gay, glittering gimcracks and tinsel. They are carried through the streets by men and boys as merry as grigs, dancing and shouting, to fling them into the sea. The explanation is that the Shí'ahs mourn for Hossein with despair, but the Sunnis consider him not a martyr to be mourned for, and turn the occasion into ridicule; and these _tabut_ processions are conducted by the Sunnis as a caricature, which sometimes ends in a serious fight.

We also came in for a regatta, and we received great hospitality on board the Squadron.

[Sidenote: _Richard's old Persian Moonshee_.]

During this journey we saw a great deal of Mirza Ali Akbar, who was Richard's old _moonshee_ when he was a boy. We had a delightful Persian breakfast with him, of fruit, vegetables, every kind of sweets, and rice highly seasoned, rice with caraway seeds, _pilao_ with saffron savoury and aromatic, prawn curry with plain rice, sweet rice with rose-water, spices, and sweet paste from Muscat. He had been very much wronged in some matter, and Richard was helping and instructing him how to put his case clearly before the public, he being quite an innocent man, of whatever charge was brought against him, though I forget what it was; but he died--like many others--before he was righted--as justice was slow. When he called upon Richard, his card was brought in, in large letters looking like the visiting-card of some middle-class respectable Englishman, with "Mirza _Ally_ Akbar" upon it. "Hullo, Mirza," Richard said, after they had salaamed. "Are you any relation to Ally Sloper?" The Mirza laughed--that is, as nearly as an Eastern does laugh--and said, "No! but the English always call me _Ally_ Akbar, so I found it was the shortest way to call myself so." It is surprising how often we have gone to places, and found the natives had changed their names to whatever the English chose to call them; for instance, a Señor Machado had become a Mr. Much-harder.

We saw a great deal also of Mr. and Mrs. MacLean, and Mr. Gratton Geary, editors of the papers. We visited the schools of the native girls; it was an English institution called the Alexandra, where they went through a good many performances, sang and recited in English and Guzeratee, and one girl, D. A. H. Wadia, illustrated well enough for a professional.

The beautiful moonlight nights are here spoilt by the air being redolent of burnt flesh (roast Hindú) and sandal-wood. Richard took me over to inspect the cotton-mills. There were some grand races, and the Nawáb and all the Eastern "big-wigs" were there; distance a mile and a half, and, as usual, whatever Hackney rode won. Long, lanky weedy whalers ran better than the Arabs _bred there_. We dined with the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Charles and Lady Staveley, in tent quarters. We used to frequent the burial-ground very often in search of a tomb we could not find, and at last we found it in the old Girgaum burial-grounds in the Sonápur quarter, which had long been closed as full. It was one of the characteristics of my husband that he could never bear to pass a countryman's grave, or a celebrated person's grave, without honouring it. This was a once celebrated man, yet, except Richard, no one of the present day knew anything about him, or his nameless grave--such is glory!

After many hot hours and days, and vain searching in parties amongst the twenty thousand tombs, we found a plain space containing a very old tombstone, with letters that required one to kneel down and trace with the finger. No "Sacred to," but only "Victor Jacquemont, born in Paris 28th August, 1801; arrived at Calcutta in May, 1829; and after travelling three and a half years in India, expired at Bombay on 7th December, 1832." He was a man of letters, a botanist, and naturalist, who is supposed to have pioneered the French to India, and had the Legion of Honour ("Correspondance de Victor Jacquemont," 2 vols., Paris, 1833, published a year after his death). He was a French Catholic and fellow-Bohemian, so we paid a tribute to his memory. I recited a "De profundis," and my husband gave directions to have the letters picked out and painted afresh, and the grave replanted to mark where he was buried. Jacquemont died in the house of one Nico, who wrote to his brother, M. Porphyre; he had three doctors, MacLellan, Kembell, and Henderson; treatment was 60 by 60 leeches, salivated, blistered, etc.; got worse after a quarrel with his black servants, and died of abscess on the liver, which burst internally. He had black vomit "c'était un baquet de macération," and was kept alive by animal soup and wine. He had a public funeral. These were all the details we were able to collect; but it was a great deal, after forty-six years of such utter forgetfulness that nobody knew where he was buried. We also saw a great deal of the philanthropist, Miss Mary Carpenter, and her work.

We went to the wedding feast of the daughter of Venayek Ramchunder Luxumonjee, at Bhau, Russell House, Girgaum Road. It was a magnificent entertainment, a long saloon brilliantly lit, every sort of luxurious carpet, crossed one upon another, hundreds of Easterns in gorgeous dresses. They say "we are just, but not kind," and it is true. There is no mixing of Society. There are few Burtons, and Stricklands of the Rudyard Kipling type. I regret to say that I was the only European lady. There was a _Nach_ (Nautch). The host had natural dignified manners. He was gentlemanly, manly, courteous without servility, spoke excellent English, and was in nothing inferior, except in colour, to the most polished English gentleman. The little bride and bridegroom were aged nine and ten. The marriage feasts last for days, after which they each stay with their parents till they are ready for practical marriage. There are no more ceremonies; they are actually _theoretically_ married to-day. The house was lit up like a transformation scene in a pantomime. Then we had to go and be vaccinated, for small-pox was raging; so we made a large party, and were about four hundred clustering round a cow at the hospital. Then Mr. Ormiston and his brother took us in a steam launch to see his work--the revolving light at the Prongs, the handsomest thing we had ever seen. The lighthouse is eight stories high, 169 feet. We then went to a Garden-party at Parell, Government House--something like a mild Chiswick party. There is so much hospitality that we dined out every night, and the drives out to dinner and back were delicious, on the balmy Indian nights. We saw Indian jugglery, such as the mango planted and growing before one's sight, the child being killed in the basket, and many other things which I, being a new-comer, was delighted with, and it amused Richard to see my astonishment.

[Sidenote: _Mátherán_.]

We then went up to Mátherán, the most easily got at hill-station, or sanitarium, passing through the villages Byculla, Chinchoogly, Parell, Dadur, Sion, Coorla, Bhandoop, Tannah, and Derwa. Tannah is a big village, an unhealthy-looking place, with two crumbling forts in the river. Long, long ago there were five thousand velvet weavers here. They also used to cure large quantities of bacon. In the thirteenth century four friars went to dispute with the Moslem Kadi, and told him Mohammed was in hell with his father the Devil, on which he executed them with such tortures that his own King banished him, and the Portuguese took signal revenge. Our third halt was Kalyan junction. This poor village port was, in A.D. 200, the far-famed Kalliénapolis, which shipped dry goods and precious woods to the outer west. We are also now on classic ground, near the northern extremity of the Shurpáraka, or winnow-shaped region, the Greek Limyrica, where some have placed Ophir of Solomon. The Konkan lowland is like the Arabian desert, tawny, not with sand, but black patched with fire. Here we turn down towards Madras, joining the Calcutta Railway, and pass Budapoor. We catch the Deccan hot winds, and alight at Narel, a little Maharatta village at the eastern base of Mátherán, which will be noted afterwards as the birthplace of the infamous Nana Sahib.

Here we mount ponies. We had to climb up four plateaux, and we arrived at the Alexandra Hotel, Mátherán, a very comfortable bungalow. The wooded lanes, the wild flowers, the pure atmosphere, the light and shadows playing on the big foliage, and the birds rustling and singing in it, were delightful to us. We were standing on a table-land of eight square miles covered with bungalows in lovely woods, seamed with riding-paths--regular leafy screens, whose ends lead to famous points, each one showing a magnificent view. We looked down splendid ravines amongst buttress-shaped mountains, light and shade sharply defined, burnt yellow grass, green trees and black basalt. The fresh vivid verdure of the woods is a repose to the eyes, weary by tawny lowlands and fœtid jungly undergrowth. We enjoy bright green grove, black rock, red-yellow laterite, a luxuriance of fernery, after so much palm and bamboo, aloe and cactus. We have got a patch of virgin forest and plenty of the gigantic anjun, whose pink-and-lilac bloom look like patches of morning sky through the foliage, and you hear everywhere the bark of the Wánúrú monkey, which is something like that of the wolf.

The officers' sanitarium is a horridly smelling, melancholy, deserted almshouse-looking row, painted black, with black mat screens; it looks like a stationary hearse, and would make one sick even if the air were not redolent of small-pox. The rooms looked evidently fresh from some horrid disease, and unclean. We shuddered, and passed away from the tainted atmosphere. Mátherán is not fashionable; it is affected by the commercial classes from Saturday till Monday. It is Margate, whilst Máhábáleshwar and the Neilgherries are Brighton and Biarritz, and are patronized by the "Services." But we did meet with some nice people there--a charming Mrs. Douglas, and Dr. and Mrs. Nevin.

I think I said to leave Mátherán one has to get back to Narel. The railway makes a tour like a V. We came down one side, and we go up the other to Lanauli. On our road down from Mátherán we passed a procession of Brínjaris for about two miles. This wild tribe intermarry only amongst themselves, and have their own laws. They are a strong race; men, women, and children are good looking. They grow their own corn, have their own bullocks, spin their own sacks, and have huge dogs for guard. They dress picturesquely, and are very defiant. The women carry the babies in a basket on their heads. They _have_ been described, as have also the Nats, as being one with the Gypsies, to whom they bear some resemblance; but it is a mistake. My husband made up his mind on this point whilst he was working with the camel-men, and lived with the "Jats" in India, in his early days. He said the Romany are an Indine people from the great valley of the Indus.

We passed another overhanging rock covered with monkeys, some as big as a man, and some of a small species; they do not associate or intermarry. There are two Maharatta forts in this part of the world, on the way to Lanauli, called Rao Machi, the scene of one of our great fights in 1846. The conductor on our brake had been a soldier fighting in it, and gave my husband, who was at that time on Sir Charles Napier's staff in Sind, a spirited account of it.

With the English mistaken notion of clemency, that always scotches its snake, but is too generous or holds it too much in contempt to kill it, and lets it run about to sting _ad libitum_, instead of being hanged, Bajee Ráo was pensioned with 80,000 rupees a year, and retired to Bithoor on the Ganges, where he rewarded British clemency by adopting a child born in the village of Narel, at the foot of Mátherán, who lived to be the infamous Nana Sahib, the same that afterwards tortured and killed so many of our people.

[Sidenote: _Karla Caves_.]

We visited the Karla Caves, climbing a goat-like path to a gash in the mountain side, with a belt of trees, and sat on the stones facing one of the most wonderful Buddhist temples in India, constructed more than two thousand years ago. It was shaped just like our cathedrals, body and aisle, with a horseshoe roof of teakwood. The nave is separated from the aisles by fifteen columns on each side, whose capitals are two couchant elephants, with a man and woman upon each. A dome surmounted by a coloured ornament at the top takes the place of high altar, the ornament being like the pedestal for the Blessed Sacrament, and the umbrella for canopy or tabernacle; and the space behind the high altar in continuation of the horseshoe shape is separated by four plain columns. The light comes from an open space where a large window should be, artistically shining only on the high altar and dome, like ancient Spanish and Portuguese churches. This is cut out of the solid rock, pillars, capitals, façade, and all: the Kanheri Caves are the same. On either side of the entrance are carved three splendid elephants larger than life, and covered with niches and figures of Buddhist men and women. Four enormous columns front it, with a gigantic slab of stone across the entry, to prevent curious gazings from outside. A huge column with three lions for its capital is a further outpost. A little temple far outside is consecrated by the Brahúis to Devi. We were only allowed to peep into this last. The "Monkery" was most curious. Cells scooped all round opened into the large round centre room. Besides a ground-floor cave, there were three stories. They say the Jesuits pick and choose the best situations, but I am sure the Buddhists did the same thing. This place commands the whole country. The more I travel, see, and learn, the more I perceive that all the ancient religions, show that but one has existed from the Creation, for every faith tells the same tale as ours, with different actors under different names, but all the facts are the same.

To get to Poonah the way is through the Indrauni River valley, through the station of Kurkulla, Tulligaum, Chinchwud, and Kirkee, a large European military station and very pretty. We eventually reached Poonah, the scene of all the Peshwa intrigues against the English, and our great battles with the Maharattas. Their dynasty lasted over seventy years, but Bajee Ráo and his successors might always have been there, if they had not quarrelled with the English. This was in Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone's time, with whom at that time was Grant Duff, the historian. The great names connected with that period and business were Sir Arthur Wellesley (Wellington), General Sir Harry Smith, Lieut.-Colonel Burr, Captains Ford and Staunton, General Pritzler, Sir Thomas Munro, and Colonel Prother. We went to Párbati, the Maharattas' chief palace and stronghold, from which the last Peshwa, Bajee Ráo, who sat on the rocky brow, saw his troops defeated by the English on the plain, fled on horseback down the other side, and was hunted about the country for months, till he gave himself up to Sir John Malcolm.

There are three pagodas in Bajee Ráo's palace, dedicated to Vishnu, Shiva, and Wittoba, and one small temple particularly to Kalee or Bhowanee, wife of Shiva, and patroness of the Thugs. Being sunset, the wild, mournful, bizarre sound of tomtom, kettle, cymbal, and reed suddenly struck up. We shut our eyes, and fancied ourselves in camp again in the desert, wild sword-dances being performed by the Arabs. We had a remarkable dinner at Mr. and Mrs. Petersen's, meeting Captain Yates and Dr. Machonochie. Next morning we visited the Kharekwasla tanks or lakes, laid out by Mr. Joyner, C.E.--a wonderfully clever work--and he made a water-party for us.

[1] "Moslems, I have said, count seven heavens; they also reckon, after the fashion of the Greeks and classical geographers, seven climates on earth. Their 'Haft-Iklim,' therefore, means this sublunary world. This is blending together two superstitions, Hindú and Mussulman--but _n'importe_."--R. F. B.

[2] This was a very romantic affair.--I. B.

[3] I give a short account of these two in the appendixes (C, D).

[4] "A _memento mori_, fashionable amongst Eastern devotees. So the Icelanders provide their coffins in middle age."

[5] "The Creator."

[6] "Meaning that his heart in his withered bosom was as the germ of life in the dry seed--a true Pythagorean, Oriental idea."

[7] "_Wá wailá_--'Alas! and alas!' The Arabic explanation is put into Bári's mouth on account of the sacredness of his character. Saints, prophets, and sages are always made to speak as Semitically as possible."

[8] "In the days when sugar of any kind was a rarity, and consequently a delicacy, our English poets used the word with a certain appetite in their comparisons. Now, the metaphor is apt to offend the sensitive ear, long accustomed to associate the word with nursery discussions, or tiresome colonial grievances. But in Persian, _shakkar_ (sugar) still holds its ground as a fit simile for choice things; for instance, a 'sugar-candy-chewing parrot' is a compliment which may be offered to the daintiest damsel in the land."

[9] "The songs always conclude with some such formula as this."

[10] Smith, Taylor, and Co., Bombay, 1858.