LUXURIOUS MARCHING IN THAT LAND.

461

brother officer, as if he had been an infant under his care! - There was much in all this to amuse the mind, and a great deal, I confess, to pain the heart of a free-born Englishman."-Sketches of India, pp. 3-10.

With all this profusion of attendance, the march of a British officer in India seems a matter rather of luxury than fatigue.

"Marching in this country is certainly pleasant; although perhaps you rise too early for comfort. An hour before daybreak you mount your horse; and, travelling at an easy pace, reach your ground before the sun has any power; and find a small tent pitched with breakfast ready on the table. Your large tent follows with couch and baggage, carried by bullocks and coolies; and before nine o'clock, you may be washed, dressed, and employed with your books, pen, or pencil. Mats, made of the fragrant roots of the Cuscus grass, are hung before the doors of your tent to windward; and being constantly wetted, admit, during the hottest winds, a cool refreshing air.

"While our forefathers were clad in wolf-skin, dwelt in caverns, and lived upon the produce of the chase, the Hindoo lived as now. As now, his princes were clothed in soft raiment, wore jewelled turbans, and dwelt in palaces. As now, his haughty half-naked priests received his offerings in temples of hewn and sculptured granite, and summoned him to rites as absurd, but yet more splendid and debauching, than the present. His cottage, garments, household utensils, and implements of husbandry or labour, the same as now. Then, too, he watered the ground with his foot, by means of a plank balanced transversely on a lofty pole, or drew from the deep bowerie by the labour of his oxen, in large bags of leather, supplies of water to flow through the little channels by which their fields and gardens are intersected. His children were then taught to shape letters in the sand, and to write and keep accounts on the dried leaves of the palm, by the village schoolmaster. His wife ground corn at the same mill, or pounded it in a rude mortar with her neighbour. He could make purchases in a regular bazaar, change money at a shroff's, or borrow it at usury, for the expenses of a wedding or festival. In short, all the traveller sees around him of social or civilized life, of useful invention or luxurious refinement, is of yet higher antiquity than the days of Alexander the Great. So that, in fact, the eye of the British officer looks upon the same forms and dresses, the same buildings, manners, and customs, on which the Macedonian troops gazed with the same astonishment two thousand years ago.”—Ibid. pp. 23-26.

If the traveller proceeds in a palanquin, his comforts are not less amply provided for.

"You generally set off after dark; and, habited in loose drawers and a dressing-gown, recline at full length and slumber away the

462

PALANQUIN-ELEPHANT-PAGODA.

of a lamp fixed behind, and read. Your clothes are packed in large neat baskets, covered with green oil-cloth, and carried by palanquin boys; two pairs will contain two dozen complete changes. Your palanquin is fitted up with pockets and drawers. You can carry in it, without trouble, a writing desk and two or three books, with a few canteen conveniences for your meals,—and thus you may be comfortably provided for many hundred miles' travelling. You stop for half an hour, morning and evening, under the shade of a tree, to wash and take refreshment: throughout the day read, think, or gaze round you. The relays of bearers lie ready every ten or twelve miles; and the average of your run is about four miles an hour."- Sketches of India, pp. 218, 219.

We cannot make room for his descriptions, though excellent, of the villages, the tanks, the forests-and the dresses and deportment of the different classes of the people; but we must give this little sketch of the Elephant and Camel.

"While breakfast was getting ready, I amused myself with looking at a baggage-elephant and a few camels, which some servants, returning with a general's tents from the Deccan, were in the act of loading. The intelligent obedience of the elephant is well known; but to look upon this huge and powerful monster kneeling down at the mere bidding of the human voice; and, when he has risen again, to see him protrude his trunk for the foot of his mahout or attendant, to help him into his seat; or, bending the joint of his hind leg, make a step for him to climb up behind; and then, if any loose cloths or cords fall off, with a dog-like docility pick them up with his proboscis and put them up again, will delight and surprise long after it ceases to be novel. When loaded, this creature broke off a large branch from the lofty tree near which he stood, and quietly fanned and fly-flapped himself, with all the nonchalance of an indolent woman of fashion, till the camels were ready. These animals also kneel to be laden. When in motion, they have a very awkward gait, and seem to travel at a much slower pace than they really do. Their tall outstretched necks, long sinewy limbs, and broad spongy feet, their head furniture, neck-bells, and the rings in their nostrils, with their lofty loads, and a driver generally on the top of the leading one, have a strange appearance.”— Ibid. pp. 46-48.

We must add the following very clear description of a Pagoda.

“A high, solid wall, encloses a large area in the form of an oblong square; at one end is the gateway, above which is raised a large pyramidal tower; its breadth at the base and height proportioned to the magnitude of the pagoda. This tower is ascended by steps in the inside, and divided into stories; the central spaces on each are open, and smaller as the tower rises. The light is seen directly through

FALLEN HINDU CITY.

463

them, producing, at times, a very beautiful effect, as when a fine sky, or trees, form the back ground. The front, sides, and top of this gateway and tower, are crowded with sculpture; elaborate, but tasteless. A few yards from the gate, on the outside, you often see a lofty octagonal stone pillar, or a square open building, supported by tall columns of stone, with the figure of a bull couchant, sculptured as large, or much larger than life, beneath it.

"Entering the gateway, you pass into a spacious paved court, in the centre of which stands the inner temple, raised about three feet from the ground, open, and supported by numerous stone pillars. An enclosed sanctuary at the far end of this central building, contains the idol. Round the whole court runs a large deep verandah, also supported by columns of stone, the front rows of which are often shaped by the sculptor into various sacred animals rampant, rode by their respective deities. All the other parts of the pagoda, walls, basements, entablatures, are covered with imagery and ornament of all sizes, in alto or demi-relievo."

The following description and reflections among the ruins of Bijanagur, the last capital of the last Hindu empire, and finally overthrown in 1564, are characteristic of the author's most ambitious, perhaps most questionable, manner.

"You cross the garden, where imprisoned beauty once strayed. You look at the elephant-stable and the remaining gateway, with a mind busied in conjuring up some associations of luxury and magnificence. Sorrowfully I passed on. Every stone beneath my feet bore the mark of chisel, or of human skill and labour. You tread continually on steps, pavement, pillar, capital, or cornice of rude relief, displaced, or fallen, and mingled in confusion. Here, large masses of such materials have already formed bush-covered rocks,— there, pagodas are still standing entire. You may for miles trace the city walls, and can often discover, by the fallen pillars of the long piazza, where it has been adorned by streets of uncommon width. One, indeed, yet remains nearly perfect; at one end of it a few poor ryots, who contrive to cultivate some patches of rice, cotton, or sugar-cane, in detached spots near the river, have formed mud-dwellings under the piazza.

I

"While, with a mind thus occupied, you pass on through this wilderness, the desolating judgments on other renowned cities, so solemnly foretold, so dreadfully fulfilled, rise naturally to your recollection. climbed the very loftiest rock at day-break, on the morrow of my first visit to the ruins, by rude and broken steps, winding between and over immense and detached masses of stone; and seated myself near a small pagoda, at the very summit. From hence I commanded the whole extent of what was once a city, described by Cæsar Frederick as twenty-four miles in circumference. Not above eight or nine pagodas are standing; but there are choultries innumerable. Fallen columns, arches, piazzas, and fragments of all shapes on every side for

464

RESTRAINTS ON EUROPEAN OBSERVERS.

miles. Can there have been streets and roads in these choked-up valleys? Has the war-horse pranced, the palfrey ambled there? Have jewelled turbans once glittered where those dew-drops now sparkle on the thick-growing bamboos? Have the delicate small feet of female dancers practised their graceful steps where that rugged and thorn-covered ruin bars up the path? Have their soft voices, and the Indian guitar, and the gold bells on their ankles, ever made music in so lone and silent a spot? They have; but other sights, and other sounds, have also been seen and heard among these ruins.-There, near that beautiful banyan-tree, whole families, at the will of a merciless prince, have been thrown to trampling elephants, kept for a work so savage that they learn it with reluctance, and must be taught by man. Where those cocoas wave, once stood a vast seraglio, filled at the expense of tears and crimes; there, within that retreat of voluptuousness, have poison, or the creese, obeyed, often anticipated, the sovereign's wish. By those green banks, near which the sacred waters of the Toombudra flow, many aged parents have been carried forth and exposed to perish by those whose infancy they fostered."

The following reflections are equally just and import

ant:

66

'Nothing, perhaps, so much damps the ardour of a traveller in India, as to find that he may wander league after league, visit city after city, village after village, and still only see the outside of Indian society. The house he cannot enter, the group he cannot join, the domestic circle he cannot gaze upon, the free unrestrained converse of the natives he can never listen to. He may talk with his moonshee or his pundit; ride a few miles with a Mahometan sirdar; receive and return visits of ceremony among petty nawabs and rajahs; or be presented at a native court; But behind the scenes in India he cannot advance one step. All the natives are, in comparative rank, a few far above, the many far below him: and the bars to intercourse with Mahometans as well as Hindoos, arising from our faith, are so many, that to live upon terms of intimacy or acquaintance with them is impossible. Nay, in this particular, when our establishments were young and small, our officers few, necessarily active, necessarily linguists, and unavoidably, as well as from policy, conforming more to native manners, it is probable that more was known about the natives from practical experience than is at present, or may be again.”— Ibid. pp. 213, 214.

The author first went up the country as far as Agra, visiting, and musing over, all the remarkable places in his way-and then returned through the heart of India— the country of Scindiah and the Deccan, to the Mysore. Though travelling only as a British regimental officer, and without public character of any kind, it is admirable to see with what uniform respect and attention he

was treated, even by the lawless soldiery among whom he had frequently to pass. The indolent and mercenary Bramins seem the only class of persons from whom he experienced any sort of incivility. In an early part of his route he had the good luck to fall in with Scindiah himself; and the picture he has given of that turbulent leader and his suite is worth preserving.

"First came loose light-armed horse, either in the road, or scrambling and leaping on the rude banks and ravines near; then some better clad, with the quilted poshauk; and one in a complete suit of chain armour; then a few elephants, among them the hunting elephant of Scindiah, from which he had dismounted. On one small elephant, guiding it himself, rode a fine boy, a foundling protégé of Scindiah, called the Jungle Rajah; then came, slowly prancing, a host of fierce, haughty chieftains, on fine horses, showily caparisoned. They darted forward, and all took their proud stand behind and round us, planting their long lances on the earth, and reining up their eager steeds to see, I suppose, our salaam. Next, in a common native palkee, its canopy crimson, and not adorned, came Scindiah himself. He was plainly dressed, with a reddish turban, and a shawl over his vest, and lay reclined, smoking a small gilt or golden calean.

"I looked down on the chiefs under us, and saw that they eyed us most haughtily, which very much increased the effect they would otherwise have produced. They were armed with lance, scimitar and shield, creese and pistol; wore, some shawls, some tissues, some plain muslin or cotton; were all much wrapped in clothing; and wore, almost all, a large fold of muslin, tied over the turban top, which they fasten under the chin; and which, strange as it may sound to those who have never seen it, looks warlike, and is a very important defence to the sides of the neck.

"How is it that we can have a heart-stirring sort of pleasure in gazing on brave and armed men, though we know them to be fierce, lawless, and cruel?-though we know stern ambition to be the chief feature of many warriors, who, from the cradle to the grave, seek only fame; and to which, in such as I write of, is added avarice the most pitiless? I cannot tell. But I recollect often before, in my life, being thus moved. Once, especially, I stood over a gateway in France, as a prisoner, and saw file in several squadrons of gens-d'armerie d'élite, returning from the fatal field of Leipsic. They were fine, noblelooking men, with warlike helmets of steel and brass, and drooping plumes of black horse-hair; belts handsome and broad; heavy swords; were many of them decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honour. Their trumpets flourished: and I felt my heart throb with an admiring delight, which found relief only in an involuntary tear. What an inconsistent riddle is the human heart!"-Ibid. pp. 260-264.

In the interior of the country there are large tracts