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jo sare fahemon se bahur hue;"-"The peace of God, &c.;" and of" Khoda Khader, Mutluk, jo Bap our Beta our Ruk Kodus hue;"-" God victorious, Mighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." I had also twelve candidates for confirmation, and administered the sacrament to twenty-five persons, and found the people extremely anxious to assemble for public worship. The first Sunday I preached, indeed, three times, and twice the second, besides giving two confirmation lectures on the Friday and Saturday, and some other occasional duty. Mr. Ricketts is himself in the habit of acting as chaplain at the Residency every Sunday; but the people in the king's employ, and the other Christian inhabitants, complain that Government are very jealous of their attending at that place, and they express great anxiety to establish a similar meeting for devotional purposes among themselves. It would not be expedient at present to send a missionary here; but they might have a schoolmaster, furnished by our Society, with a stock of sermons to be read every Sunday. I have requested Mr. Corrie to inquire for such a person. There are a few Roman Catholics, mostly Portuguese, or their degenerate descendants, who have a small chapel, and a Propaganda Franciscan priest. And, to show the strange mixture of adventurers who are attracted hither, I had applications made to me for charity by a Spaniard from Lima in Peru, who had come in search of service, and a Silesian Jew, who pretended that he had been an officer in the Russian army, and had been encouraged to bend his course in this direction by the golden dreams which men in Europe build of the opening for talent and adventurous spirit in India. I should have thought this last fellow a spy, had he not been quite without papers or documents of any kind, or if it had not been unlikely that a Russian spy would have openly professed to have served in the Russian army. He was exceedingly ignorant, spoke wretched French and German, with a strong Jewish accent, and, instead of having served in the army, had every appearance of having sold oranges all his days in Leipzic.

CHAPTER XVI.

LUCKNOW TO BAREILLY.

DEPARTURE FROM LUCKNOW-GRATITUDE OF SEPOYS-ILLNESS-MUSSULMAN SUWARR-SANDEE-DISPUTE BETWEEN

TWO VILLAGES

SHAHJEHANPOOR-REBEL CHIEF IN THE FOREST-ANECDOTE OF ROHILLA CHIEF-FERTILITY OF ROHILCUND-FUTTEHGUNGE-HAFEZ REHMUT-VISIT FROM TUSSULDAR-FURREEDPOOR-BAREILLY

-PROFESSIONAL

OF
DUTIES-CHARACTER

TIONS FOR THE MOUNTAINS.

ROHILLAS-PREPARA

ON Monday, November 1st, having united my two kind-hearted friends, Mr. and Mrs. Ricketts, and taken leave of them, the Corries, and poor Lushington, whose bad health obliged me to leave him behind, under the care of the Residency surgeon, Mr. Luxmoore, I set off from Lucknow alone, and, I confess, with more regret and depression of spirits than I expected to feel on such an occasion. I had become quite intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Ricketts; for the Corries and Lushington I feel a sincere regard, and I could not but, be painfully sensible how great the probability was, in such a climate, that this might, on earth, be our last meeting. I had the satisfaction, however, to leave the Archdeacon much better than he had been, and to find that Mr. Luxmoore thought favourably of Lushington's case. But it was, altogether, a sad leave-taking. Lushington was very low, in spite of many endeavours to speak cheerfully, the Corries much agitated, and their little girls in tears; and I do not think I felt least of the party, though I believe I talked the most on various subjects.

I had found great difficulty in ascertaining the best road to Bareilly. That marked down in Paton's routes was declared, by the Dak Moonshee, and the King's Aûmeen, the only persons from whom I was likely to obtain information, to be no longer practicable, the villages specified there being either deserted, or so far impoverished as to afford neither supplies nor shade. very direct road, which is marked on Arrowsmith's map, and which runs north-west from Lucknow to Shahabad, was said by the sarbann to be probably good and practicable at this time of year but the Aûmeen declared he could not possibly go with me that way; that it was mostly wild jungle, and inhabited by Zemindars, at present in a state of rebellion. I argued the matter

PREPARATIONS FOR THE JOURNEY.

341

some time, for the difference of distance is really great, and with a guard of fifty men there was no danger to be apprehended. But the old man said that though, perhaps, we might be safe from open attack, we should certainly get no supplies,-that nobody ever went that way but Faqueers and hunters, and that the King had himself ordered him to take me the "Shahi Rustu," King's highway. I then gave up the point, which I afterwards was sorry for, for the jemautdar of the horse-guards whom the King sent with me, assured me that one was as much a Shahi Rustu as the other, and that I should have found the Shahabad road not only three days shorter, but, in his mind, much more pleasant. He owned that there were plenty of thieves and Zemindars, but none that were likely to meddle with us, or of whom any but a timid old Aûmeen would be afraid; and he spoke with a good deal of glee of the deer and the wild hogs which we should have met with in these woodland marches. It must be owned, however, that none of the British officers at the Lucknow cantonments, nor any body at the Residency, or of the Europeans in the King's service, had ever been this road, or believed it to be practicable, so that we might possibly have been occasionally put to some inconvenience for supplies. As it was, I found it impossible to get the distance to Bareilly divided into less than fourteen stages, and was compelled, therefore, to send off the tents and baggage on Sunday morning, in order that I might reach that place for divine service on the 14th, and rest the intervening Sunday by the way.

My separation from Mr. Lushington enabled me to send back to Cawnpoor one elephant and six camels, besides the two elephants which belonged to Mr. Corrie's tent. I also sent back a routee, but kept two small double-poled tents, in order to save trouble and time by pitching them on alternate days. I had still three elephants and twenty-two camels, including two spare ones, a number which was rendered necessary by the length and arduous nature of the journey before me, as well as by the number of tents and quantity of baggage required by my escort. That consisted, besides the King's ten guards, of forty sepoys, under a "Soubahdar," a native officer, and four non-commissioned officers. I thought this number unnecessary, but was told it was according to rule; and it so happened that I occasioned no inconvenience to the service, since the officers and men who were assigned me were actually under orders for Nusseerabad, and might just as well accompany me thither. My new Soubahdar was introduced

to

me on the Saturday by his predecessor, who was himself, against his will, ordered back to Cawnpoor. The new one is a grave, modest-looking old man, with a white beard, a native of Rajapootana, and of high caste, but of far more reserved manners, and greater diffidence than the former. He is, however, a

342

GRATITUDE OF SEPOYS.

Hindoo, and they are certainly a less dashing race than the
Mussulmans.

All my tents and baggage being gone, except what clothes a bag held, and all my servants but two, I set out at half past four o'clock, on one of Mr. Ricketts's elephants, accompanied by Captain Salmon on another, and attended by a third with the two servants. Mr. Ricketts had thought it proper that Captain Salmon and a body of suwarrs should go with me through the city; and the King, whose howdahs had no tilts to them, had kindly stationed two more elephants half-way, to receive me as soon as the sun should be gone down. In this way I made the journey rapidly and agreeably, and reached my tent at Hussungunge, twenty miles from Lucknow, a little after eight in the evening. In the way, at Futtehgunge, I passed the tents pitched for the large party which were to return towards Cawnpoor next day, and I was much pleased and gratified by the Soubahdar and the greater number of the sepoys of my old escort running into the middle of the road to bid me another farewell, and again express their regret that they were not going on with me "to the world's end." They who talk of the ingratitude of the Indian character, should, I think, pay a little more attention to cases of this sort. These men neither got nor expected any thing by this little expression of good will. If I had offered them money, they would have been bound, by the rules of the service and their own dignity, not to take it. Sufficient civility and respect would have been paid if any of them who happened to be near the road had touched their caps, and I really can suppose them actuated by no motive but good will. It had not been excited, so far as I know, by any particular desert on my part; but I had always spoken to them civilly, had paid some attention to their comforts, in securing them tents, fire-wood, and camels for their knapsacks, and had ordered them a dinner, after their own fashion, on their arrival at Lucknow, at the expense of, I believe, not more than four rupees! Surely if good will is to be bought by these sort of attentions, it is a pity that any body should neglect them!

The suwarrs furnished by the King for this journey were a very different description of men from those who previously accompanied me. They were evidently picked for the purpose, being tall, strong young fellows, on exceedingly good horses, and as well armed as could be wished for the nature of their service.

We passed again through Nawalgunge, and I asked after the sick elephant, but was told he died the same morning that we went on towards Lucknow.

November 2.-I went five coss to Meeagunge, which was built by the famous eunuch Almass Ali Khân, whose proper name, while in a state of servitude, was Meea. It consists of a large

MALLAON.

fort of bricks, with eight circular bastions, surrounded by an exterior enclosure, at perhaps five hundred yards distance, of mud, but also in the shape of a fortification, with great gothic gateways corresponding to those in the central enclosure. Between are avenues of very noble mangoe-trees, with which, indeed, the whole intervening space is planted, though at such considerable intervals as not to intercept the breeze. It is a fine old-fashioned park, but now trees, towers, gates, and palaces are sinking fast into rubbish and forgetfulness. Almass had here a park of forty pieces of artillery, and when he received a visit from the Nawab Saadut Ali, he built him up a throne of a million of rupees, of which, when his Highness was seated on it, he begged him to accept. The fort is now filled with the bazar of a poor village, erected under the shade of the mangoes; the park was laid down, when I saw it, in quillets of beautiful green wheat and barley.

I had been unwell for the last two days, and was obliged to perform my journey of the 3d in my palanquin, the best way in which a sick man could make it; I travelled seven coss to Seetalgunge, the country level, fertile, and well cultivated. The whole of this day I felt extremely ill, and was in much perplexity what to do, as I was some days' journey from any medical adviser. The application, however, of lecches to my temples relieved me considerably, and I was able to get into my palanquin the next morning, intending if possible to push on, so that if I grew worse I might be able to get assistance by sending a servant on to Futtehgunge, the nearest station, on a swift-trotting camel.

This day's march, the 4th, brought me to a large town called Mallaon, in the neighbourhood of which my tents were pitched. Here I remained the whole of the next day, being too ill to move. At the time that I gave orders for this halt, I know not why, but the whole caravan seemed to be convinced that I was not long for this world. Abdullah worried me a good deal with his lamentations on my premature end in the wilderness, recommending all manner of unattainable or improper remedies, and talking all sorts of absurd wisdom, at the same time that his eyes were really full of tears. The poor sirdar said nothing, but showed a most pitiful face every ten or twelve minutes through the tent door. The "goomashta," or master of the camels, the old soubahdar, the Aûmeen, and many others, came to offer up their good wishes and prayers for my recovery; and, perhaps, the best and most useful proof of their good will was, that I heard no needless noise in the camp the whole day; and, if a voice were raised, "chup! chup!" "silence! silence!" followed immediately. Abdullah offered to push on with the camels to procure assistance; and I promised him that, if I were not better next morning,

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