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 240 - 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 234 - Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life ? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
Page 241 - 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 247 - Philomel ! * Enough, enough, the rustling trees Announce a shower upon the breeze, — The flashes of the summer sky Assume a deeper, ruddier dye; Yon lamp that trembles on the stream, From forth our cabin sheds its beam ; And we must early sleep, to find Betimes the morning's healthy wind. But oh ! with thankful hearts confess Ev'n here there may be happiness ; And He, the bounteous Sire, has given His peace on earth— his hope of heaven !
Page 374 - ... 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 247 - And through the trees yon failing ray Will scantly serve to guide our way. Yet mark, as fade the upper skies, Each thicket opes ten thousand eyes — Before, beside us, and above, The fire-fly lights his lamp of love, Retreating, chasing, sinking, soaring, The darkness of the copse exploring...
Page 246 - 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 68 - It is remarkable, however, to observe how surely all these classes of men in a few generations, even without any intermarriage with the Hindoos, assume the deep olive tint, little less dark than a Negro, which seems natural to the climate. The Portuguese natives form unions among themselves alone, or if they can with Europeans. Yet the Portuguese have, during a three hundred years' residence in India, become as black as Caffres.
Page 373 - 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 157 - 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...

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