Narrative of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India: From Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-1825, (with Notes Upon Ceylon,) an Account of a Journey to Madras and the Southern Provinces, 1826, and Letters Written in India, Volume 1

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J. Murray, 1828

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Page 239 - O'er Gunga's mimic sea ! I miss thee at the dawning gray, When, on our deck reclined, In careless ease my limbs I lay, And woo the cooler wind. I miss thee when by Gunga's stream My twilight steps I guide, But most beneath the lamp's pale beam, I miss thee from my side.
Page 240 - But miss thy kind approving eye, thy meek attentive ear. But when of morn and eve the star beholds me on my knee, I feel, though thou art distant far, thy prayers ascend for me. Then on ! then on ! where duty leads my course be onward still, — O'er broad Hindostan's sultry meads, o'er bleak Almorah's hill. That course nor Delhi's kingly gates, nor wild Malwah detain, For sweet the bliss us both awaits by yonder western main.
Page 244 - An Evening Walk in Bengal. Our task is done! on Gunga's breast The sun is sinking down to rest; And, moored beneath the tamarind bough, Our bark has found its harbour now. With furled sail and painted side Behold the tiny frigate ride. Upon her deck, 'mid charcoal gleams, The Moslem's savoury supper steams; While all apart, beneath the wood, The Hindoo cooks his simpler food.
Page 373 - ... from every part of India, as well as from Tibet and the Birman empire, a great multitude of rich individuals in the decline of life, and almost all the great men who are from time to time disgraced or banished from home by the revolutions which are continually occurring in the Hindoo states, come hither to wash away their sins, or to fill up their vacant hours with the gaudy ceremonies of their religion, and really give away great sums in profuse and indiscriminate charity.
Page 245 - O'er the broad plantain's humbler shade And dusk anana's prickly blade ; While o'er the brake, so wild and fair, The betel waves his crest in air. With pendant train and rushing wings, Aloft the gorgeous peacock springs ; And he, the bird of hundred dyes, Whose plumes the dames of Ava prize. So rich a shade, so green a sod, Our English Fairies never trod ! Yet who in Indian bower has stood, But thought on England's
Page 245 - Mid Nature's embers, parched and dry, Where o'er some tower in ruin laid, The peepul spreads its haunted shade ; Or round a tomb his scales to wreathe, Fit warder in the gate of death ! Come on ! Yet pause! behold us now Beneath the bamboo's arched bough, Where, gemming oft that sacred gloom, Glows the geranium's scarlet bloom,* And winds our path through many a bower Of fragrant tree and giant flower; The ceiba's crimson pomp display'd O'er the broad plantain's humbler shade, And dusk anana's prickly...
Page 68 - ... years to operate in, it is not easy to fix any limits to their power. I am inclined, after all, to suspect that our European vanity leads us astray in supposing that our own is the primitive complexion, which I should rather suppose was that of the Indian...
Page 372 - Fakirs' houses, as they are called, occur at every turn, adorned with idols, and sending out an unceasing tinkling and strumming of vinas, biyals, and other discordant instruments, while religious mendicants of every Hindoo sect, offering every conceivable deformity, which chalk, cow-dung, disease, matted locks, distorted limbs and disgusting and hideous attitudes of penance can shew, literally line the principal streets on both sides.
Page 156 - Colly). Some were swimming about at the full extent of their strings, or lying half in and half out of the water ; others were rolling themselves in the sun on the sandy bank, uttering a shrill, whistling noise, as if in play. I was told...
Page 8 - Thus many Brahmins eat both fish and kid. The Rajpoots, besides these, eat mutton, venison, or goat's flesh. Some castes may eat any thing but fowls, beef, or pork ; while pork is with others a favourite diet, and beef only is prohibited.

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