their largest, seem on the principle of a scoop, triangular, and terminating in a purse. They are extended on two long bamboos, to catch the stream and all it brings with it, and when supposed to be tolerably full, are lifted suddenly. Sometimes they are thus managed in boats in the middle of the stream, where they must require considerable dexterity; sometimes they are fastened to bamboos in likely eddies, near the banks. In either case the tame otters must be of most essential service to drive the fish and terrify them from escaping. This rudeness of net struck me more, because on the Hooghly very large nets, apparently of the seine kind, are used, with Kedgeree pots for floats. The river continues a noble one, and the country bordering on it is now of a fertility and tranquil beauty, such as I never saw before. Beauty it certainly has, though it has neither mountain, nor waterfall, nor reck, which all enter into our notions of beautiful scenery in England. But the broad river, with a very rapid current, swarming with small picturesque canoes, and no less picturesque fishermen, winding through fields of green corn, natural meadows covered with cattle, successive plantations of cotton, sugar, and pawn, studded with villages and masts in every creek and angle, and backed continually (though not in a continuous and heavy line like the shores of the Hooghly) with magnificent peepul, banian, bamboo, betel, and coco trees, afford a succession of pictures the most riant that I have seen, and infinitely beyond any thing which I ever expected to see in Bengal. To add to our pleasure this day, we had a fine rattling breeze carrying us along against the stream, which it raised into a curl, at the rate of five miles an hour; and more than all, I heard from my wife. We brought to at seven near a large village, called Tynybanya. The banks near the river were cultivated in alternate quillets with rice and cotton. Then followed long ridges of pawn, which grows something like a kidney-bean, and is carefully covered above and on every side with branches of bamboo, forming a sort of hedge and roof, as high as a man's head. When these branches and leaves become withered, (which they soon do,) they look exactly like a high mud wall, so like indeed, that when we first saw them in the course of this morning, we both thought they were garden walls, and that the pawn was cultivated within instead of under them. Pawn seems one of the most highly valued productions of India, if we judge either by the pains taken in its cultivation, or the price which it bears; we were told that its retail price was sixty leaves, (each as large as a bay-leaf) for an ana (14d.), no contemptible rate in a country where all products of agricultural labour are so cheap, and where rice may be had at less than half an ana the seer, a weight of nearly two pounds. Yet the only use of pawn (which has a hottish spicy flavour) is to wrap up the betel-nut BETEL-NUTS-GUNGA. 131 which the natives of India delight in chewing, and for which I should have thought many other leaves would answer as well. Our servants, indeed, have an idea that the root of the pawn is collected by the apothecaries as medicine, and sold at a high rate for exportation, but I never remember hearing of it. I tried chewing the betel to-day, and thought it not unpleasant, at least I can easily believe that where it is fashionable, people may soon grow fond of it. The nut is cut into small squares and wrapped up in the leaf, together with some chunam. It is warm and pungent in the mouth, and has the immediate effect of staining the tongue, mouth, and lips, a fiery orange colour. The people here fancy it is good for the teeth, but they do not all take it. I see about half the crew without the stain on their lips, but I do not think the teeth of the others are better. The betel is a beautiful tree, the tallest and slenderest of the palm kind, with a very smooth white bark. Nothing can be more graceful than its high slender pillars, when backed by the dark shade of bamboos and other similar foliage. A noble grove of this kind succeeded to the pawn rows at our village this evening, embosoming the cottages, together with their little gardens, and, what I see here in greater perfection than I have yet seen in Bengal, their little green meadows and home-steads. We rambled among these till darkness warned us to return. The name of this river is Chundnah. We saw a large eagle seated on a peepul tree very near us. On the peepul an earthen pot was hanging, which Abdullah said was brought thither by some person whose father was dead, that the ghost might drink. I before knew that spirits were supposed to delight in pecpul trees, but did not know, or had forgotten the coincidence, of the brahminical with the classical xou. June 29.-This morning we continued our way with a strong and favourable breeze against 66 a broader and a broader stream, that rocked the little boat," and surpassing the Hooghly almost as much in width as in the richness, beauty, and cheerfulness of its banks, which makes me believe that Calcutta is really one of the most unfavourable situations in Bengal. We passed some fishing-boats of very ingenious construction, well adapted for paddling in shallow water, and at the same time not unsafe, being broad in the beam and finely shaped. They were also clinker built, the first of that kind which I have seen in India. About 12 o'clock we passed on our left-hand a large and handsome European house, very nobly situated on a high dry bank, with fine trees round it, and immediately after, we saw before us a sheet of water, the opposite bank of which was scarcely visible, being in fact Gunga in her greatest pride and glory. The main arm which was visible, streched away to the north-west, literally look 132 OFFERING TO KHIZR. ing like a sea, with many sails on it. Directly north, though still at a considerable distance, the stream was broken by a large sandy island, and to the south, beyond some low sandy islets and narrower channels, we saw another reach, like the one to the north, with a sandy shore, looking not unlike the coast of Lancashire, as seen trending away from the mouth of the Mersey. To one of these islets we stood across with a fine breeze. There the boatmen drew ashore, and one of them came to ask me for an offering, which it was (he said) always customary to make at this point, to Khizr, for a good passage. Khizr, for whom the Mussulmans have a great veneration, is a sort of mythological personage, made up of different Rabbinical fables concerning Eliezer the servant of Abraham, and the prophet Elijah, on which are engrafted the chivalrous legends respecting St. George! They believe him to have attended Abraham, in which capacity he drank of the fountain of youth, which gave him immortality. This is Rabbinical, but the Mussulmans also believe him to have gone dry-shod over Jordan, to have ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot, and lastly, to be a valorous knight, who helps the arms of the believers, and will return at length on a white horse, a little before the day of judgment, together with, and as the Vizier of our Lord, to destroy Dejjal or Anti-Christ, and subdue the multitudes of Gog and Magog. But as having access to the fountain of life, and as having passed Jordan, he is particularly disposed to love and cherish the waters, and all which belong to, or sail on them. Dacca, under the Mogul dynasty, was placed under his peculiar protection, and he naturally succeeded to that veneration, which, in the same district, the Hindoos had previously been in the habit of paying to their Varuna, god of the seas and rivers. Our vessel found something like a sea running in the mid-channel, and I could observe our two sirdar-bearers sitting close to each other with very melancholy countenances. I observed to mine that this river was greater than the old Gunga, and was amused by the faint and dismal assent he gave, though he endeavoured to conceal his unmariner-like sensations. We stood across to the other side, leaving a large sandy island on the righthand, and halted to wait for our boats, though in a bad situation, where a heavy sea beat on the shore, and the pinnace thumped continually on the sand. We ought to have anchored further out, but that would have been contrary to the naval tactics of Bengal, which always incline to hug the shore as much as possible; and what followed made me rejoice that this was the A poor miserable-looking man came along-side, and with joined hands, and in accents of deep distress, asked for medicine. On inquiring what was the matter, he said that he and eight case. BEGGARS-RELIGIOUS MENDICANT. 133 others, a boat's crew, were all lying within a few yards so ill and weak that they could not navigate their vessel, and only himself and two more had strength to crawl about at all. The complaint he called "play," which I was told was a bilious fever. We went to the vessel, which presented, indeed, a dismal scene of misery. I would not let Stowe go into the cabin, which he was about to do, but made the poor fellows come to the gangway. Their case seemed a very plain one, their tongues white, pulse very quick and hard, and skin much suffused with yellow, and they had almost given up hope of life. Our Serang said it was the Sunderbund disease, in fact a marsh fever. Stowe immediately fell to work to make some pills of calomel and colocynth, which they took very thankfully, and left them more to take if required. We soon found indeed, and on their account found with less regret, that many things were to be done before we could resume our voyage. As the wind was full against us, our top-masts were to be struck, and other preparations made for tracking. The boat-men wished to show their gratitude to St. George, (or St. Khizr,) by a little feast; and as the village where our lot was thrown bade fair to be interesting, we disposed ourselves for an earlier and longer walk after dinner than usual. Meantime we were besieged by beggars: a wretched old leper all over sores, a younger object of the same kind, a blind man, with many others, came down to the beach; and when, after dinner, we walked into the village, a very small and deformed dwarf, an old man, not above three feet high, was brought on a man's shoulders. He seemed to set a tolerably high value on himself, and instead of being grateful for the alms I gave him as a beggar, wanted to be paid as a curiosity. The most characteristic, however, of these applicants, was a tall, well-made, but lean and raw-boned man, in a most fantastic array of rags and wretchedness, and who might have answered admirably to Shakspeare's Edgar. He had a very filthy turban round his head, with a cock's feather in it; two satchels flung over his broad shoulders,-the remains of a cummerbund, which had been scarlet, a large fan of the palmetto-leaf in one hand, and over the other wrist an enormous chaplet of wooden beads. He came up to our boatman with a familiar air, bade them salam with great cordiality, then, half laughing, but with moments in which his voice assumed a tone as deep as a curfew, appeared to ask their benevolence. He was a Mussulman religious mendicant, and was come to congratulate his brethren on their arrival, and receive their bounty. That bounty was small neither his own merits, nor those of Khizr, could extract a single pice either from Serang or boatmen. They gave him, however, a little rice, which he received in a very 134 FIELD OF CUCUMBERS. bright and clean pot, and then strode away, without asking any thing of us, and singing Illah, Illahu! The evening was very fine, and we had a beautiful stroll along the beach and through the village, which, more than most I have seen, reminded me of the drawings of Otaheite and the Friendly Islands. It was surrounded by quillets of cotton, sugar-cane and rice, overgrown with bamboos and palms, and on the shore were some fine specimens of the datura stramonium, which, as night came on, opened a magnificent and very fragrant white lilyshaped flower, while all the grass and bushes were gemmed with brilliant fire flies. A number of canoes were building on the beach, many of them very neatly made, and, like those which I have lately seen, clinkered. These were, however, dear, (at least I thought so.) On asking the price of one of them, the carpenter who was painting her said 46 rupees. Dragon-root grows plentifully in all these thickets. On going at night-fall to inquire after our patients, we found them already better, but very anxious for wine or spirits, which they said always cured the Sunderbund fever. Rhadacant Deb had assured me that no Hindoo ought or would on any account take spirits, or even any liquid medicine, from the hands of an European. Yet these people were all Hindoos; so that it appears that the fear of death conquers all the rules of superstition, or else that these people in general really care less about the matter than either Europeans, or such bigots as Rhadacant Deb would have us believe. The river, I should guess, at this place, is about as wide as the Mersey a mile below Liverpool; but its very flat shores make it look wider. The place where we lay was evidently frequented by people who either were frightened, or had recently been so, since there were very many traces of that devotion which originates from a supposed dangerous enterprise. I saw no fewer than three turf-built kiblas, for the devotion or thanksgiving of Mohammedans; and a small shed containing the figure of a horse, rudely made of straw plastered over with clay, which I was at a loss whether to regard as Mohammedan or pagan, since the Mussulmans of this country carry about an image of the horse of Hossein, and pay much honour to that of Khizr. Near it was a small shed of bamboos and thatch, where a man was watching a field of cucumbers, which interested me as being the same custom to which Isaiah alludes in chap. i. ver. 8. I pointed out the coincidence to Abdullah, who was greatly delighted, and observed, after some praises of Isaiah, that, surely the old religion of the brahmins must have had some truth, since they all, he said, looked forward to an incarnation of Vishnu, on a white horse, to restore the world to happiness. "They only not know," he said, "that |