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BEGGARS-RELIGIOUS MENDICANT.

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 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 da tura stramonium, which, as night came on, opened a magnificent and very fragrant white lily-shaped flower, while all 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

the

FIELD OF CUCUMBERS.

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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 a 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 Vishnu already incarnate, and that he come again when they mention, on white horse, as they speak;" alluding, as he afterwards explained himself, to the description of Christ in Revelations xix. ver. 11. This man is certainly intelligent, and, for his situation in life, extremely well-informed.

And thus we are, literally, in India beyond the Ganges. We have had the mortification, however, of learning that we have come hither too soon, and that our Serang ought to have kept on the western bank till almost opposite Jaffiergunge. Through his ignorance we shall have the greatest strength of the monsoon to contend with to-morrow, instead

of having its force broken by a weather shore, or one which partly answers to that description.

June 30.-This morning we heard a very good account of our patients, and left them with a small stock of bark and wine, enough, I should hope, to set up men who are entirely unaccustomed to any stimulant. We found, unfortunately, but too soon, the difficulty of proceeding on our way to Dacca. The men towed us a few miles with much labour against a fierce wind, which thumped us every moment with right good-will, on the clay bank,-then begged leave to rest,then to try the middle of the river. To this measure we were much inclined, as the stream we thought would of itself be enough to carry our vessel down, while the wind (with the driver and jib) would serve to steady us. We soon found, however, that the pinnace, from its want of keel, had no guidance or stability in the water; that she neither answered to her helm, nor in the least bore up against the wind; nay, that the stream itself had not so much hold on her shallow construction as the wind had, even when all the sails were down. I urged them to try their oars; but the sea ran so high, and the vessel rolled so much in the middle of the stream, that these too were useless, or nearly so. We tried to regain the shore from which we had parted, but found this difficult, without a very serious loss of ground. Under these circumstances it seemed still advisable to stretch over to the western bank, which we had prematurely quitted; and accordingly we stood across for the sandy island, which, on our arrival, we found divided by a broad channel. Our Serang was very coolly going to establish himself for the night on the first land which he touched; but I insisted on his at least proceeding over the next broad stream, so as to get in a favourable direction for towing next day, and for remaining with a weather-shore during the night. He obeyed, and we at 5 o'clock again took up our quarters on a sandy beach, the very likeness of Southey's Crocodile island, being pretty nearly the spot where we should have been yesterday evening, had our Serang known where he was. The only interesting occurrence was the capture of a very large and beautiful iguana, or lizard, 2 feet 9 inches long, with five toes on each, foot, and a forked tongue, beautifully marked with tiger-like stripes of yellow and black. It was basking on the river bank, but was no sooner disturbed than it ran into the water, then, seeing the boats, instead of diving, it began to creep up the bank again, when one of the boatmen caught it in a snickle. They were all much afraid of it, and spoke of its bite as poisonous, which, from its appearance, I am little inclined to believe. It did not, indeed, seem to have any

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teeth at all. Stowe rambled about the island, and waded through a marsh after some widgeons, and shot two; on cutting them up an egg was found in each. This supply will not be unseasonable to our rapidly decreasing larder.

July 1.-This morning, the wind being more moderate, we continued our course to the western bank of the river, without any great loss of ground, and then proceeded favourably enough by towing. The river soon became free from islands of any sort, and expanded into the most noble sheet of fresh water I ever saw, I should guess not less than four miles wide. The banks are tolerably high when we are near them, but while we creep along the one, the other is only seen as a long black line on the horizon. Of course, though the view is striking, it is not picturesque, and it would soon weary us, which could hardly be the case with the beautiful Chundnah.

I had the delight to-day of hearing again from my wife, and this is worth all the fine scenery in the world.

The fishermen are a finer race here than those in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, and their boats better. They have also large seines, like those on the Hooghly. Yet many circumstances in their equipments are extremely rude. Many have for sail a mat, or cloth, suspended between two bamboos, one on each gunwale, like the New-Zealanders; and one skiff passed us scudding under a yet simpler contrivance, two men standing up in her, and extending each a garment with his feet and hands. I have seen some such representations of Cupids and Venuses on gems, but little thought that the thing had its prototype in real life, and was the practice of any modern boatmen.

The noise of the Ganges is really like the sea. As we passed near a hollow and precipitous part of the bank, on which the wind set full, it told on my ear exactly as if the tide were coming in; and when the moon rested at night on this great, and, as it then seemed, this shoreless extent of water, we might have fancied ourselves in the cuddy of an Indiaman, if our cabin were not too near the water. About half past five we stood across the river, which ran really high, and washed the decks handsomely, and brought to amid rice, indigo, and sugar fields, near the native town of Jaffiergunge, and had an interesting walk, though it was too late for a long one. The people were cutting indigo, which they then packed in large bundles, and loaded in boats. It both looked and smelt something like new-made hay, though with rather a stronger flavour. A good deal of wild celery was growing on the bank, which Abdullah said the people of this country boil and eat in large quantities, believing it to be

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VIVACITY OF THE NATIVE INDIANS.

very wholesome. The night-blowing stramonium was also abundant.

July 2.-We entered the river of Jaffiergunge, called Commercolly in Rennell's map, which here, however, as in other places, probably from some alteration in the course of the stream, is utterly useless. The country all populous, highly cultivated with rice, sugar, cotton, and indigo; and though woody, the banks are not oppressed with such exuberant and heavy arborage as those of the Hooghly. We passed a considerable indigo factory, with a very pretty house attached to it. There seemed more machinery, and more activity here, than in any which we have seen. The appearance of the workmen, whose naked limbs and bodies were covered with the blue dye, was very singular.

The wind favoured our progress to-day; and though the Serang did not care to abandon his trusty tow-line, the men had light work, and were in high spirits. On passing a banian tree, where were an old mat and a pitcher, one of them ran forwards without giving any notice of his intentions, drew the mat round his loins, placed the potsherd by his side according to rule, and so ridiculously imitated the gestures of a "Yogi," (a religious medicant,) singing all the time in the dismal tune which they use, putting his hands over his head, sprinkling earth on his face, &c. that his comrades were quite disabled from their work with laughing, and I was myself exceedingly amused. Indeed, not having seen him run forwards, I really at first supposed him to be the person he counterfeited, and wondered at the irreverent mockery with which so holy a man was treated, till in a few minutes he sprang up, threw his mat and handful of ashes at his comrades, and catching up his truncheon of bamboo, resumed his place in the team with an agility and strength which urged all the rest into a round trot. This is only one out of twenty instances which every day offers, of the vivacity of these fellows, who are, in fact, always chattering, singing, laughing, or playing each other tricks. Yet I have met many people in Calcutta who gravely complain of the apathy and want of vivacity in the natives of India. My own observation, both of these men and of the peasants and fishermen whom we pass, is of a very different character. They are active, lively, gossiping, and laborious enough when they have any motive to stimulate them to exertion. Had I an indigo plantation, I would put them all to task-work; and I am sure that, with due inspection to prevent fraud, few labourers would surpass them in steady work, and still fewer would equal them in cheapness. Their habit of coming late to their labour, and breaking off early, arises from the