1833. Aug. 8th.—The same terrible weather continues, the thermometer 90° and 91° all day; not a drop of rain! They prophesy sickness and famine; the air is unwholesome; the Europeans are all suffering with fever and ague and rheumatism. The natives, in a dreadful state, are dying in numbers daily of cholera; two days ago, seventy-six natives in Allahabad were seized with cholera—of these, forty-eight died that day! The illness is so severe that half an hour after the first attack the man generally dies; if he survive one hour it is reckoned a length of time.

A brickmaker, living near our gates, buried four of his family from cholera in one day! Is not this dreadful? The poor people, terror-stricken, are afraid of eating their food, as they say the disease follows a full meal. Since our arrival in India we have never before experienced such severely hot winds, or such unhealthy rains.

“Every country hath its own fashions[108].” The Hindoo women, in the most curious manner, propitiate the goddess who brings all this illness into the bazār: they go out in the evening about 7 P.M., sometimes two or three hundred at a time, carrying each a lota, or brass vessel, filled with sugar, water, cloves, &c. In the first place they make pooja; then, stripping off their chādars, and binding their sole petticoat around their waists, as high above the knee as it can be pulled up, they perform a most frantic sort of dance, forming themselves into a circle, whilst in the centre of the circle about five or six women dance entirely naked, beating their hands together over their heads, and then applying them behind with a great smack, that keeps time with the music, and with the song they scream out all the time, accompanied by native instruments, played by men who stand at a distance; to the sound of which these women dance and sing, looking like frantic creatures. Last night, returning from a drive, passing the Fort, I saw five or six women dancing and whipping themselves after this fashion; fortunately, my companion did not comprehend what they were about. The Hindoo women alone practise this curious method of driving away diseases from the bazār; the Musulmānes never. The men avoid the spot where the ceremony takes place; but here and there, one or two men may be seen looking on, whose presence does not appear to molest the nut-brown dancers in the least; they shriek and sing and smack and scream most marvellously.

The moonshee tells me the panic amongst the natives is so great, that they talk of deserting Allahabad until the cholera has passed away.

My darzee (tailor), a fine healthy young Musulmān, went home at 5 P.M., apparently quite well; he died of cholera at 3 P.M., the next day; he had every care and attention. This evening the under-gardener has been seized; I sent him medicine; he returned it, saying, “I am a Baghut (a Hindoo who neither eats meat nor drinks wine), I cannot take your medicine; it were better that I should die.” The cholera came across the Jumna to the city, thence it took its course up one side of the road to the Circuit Bungalow, is now in cantonments, and will, I trust, pass on to Papamhow, cross the Ganges, and Allahabad will once more be a healthy place.

“Magic is truth, but the magician is an infidel[109].” My ayha said, “You have told us several times that rain will fall, and your words have been true; perhaps you can tell us when the cholera will quit the city?” I told her, “Rain will fall, in all probability, next Thursday (new moon); and if there be plenty of it, the cholera may quit the city.” She is off to the bazār with the joyful tidings.

The Muhammadans believe the prayers of those who consult magicians are not accepted, and that rain is given by the favour of God, not by the influence of the moon. Muhammad forbade consulting fortune-tellers, and gave a curious reason why they sometimes hit on the truth. “Aa’yeshah said, ‘People asked the Prophet about fortune-tellers, whether they spoke true or not?’ He said, ‘You must not believe any thing they say.’ The people said, ‘O messenger of God! wherefore do you say so? because they sometimes tell true.’ Then his Highness said, ‘Yes; it may be true sometimes, because one of the genii steals away the truth, and carries it to the magician’s ear; and magicians mix a hundred lies with one truth.’ Aa’yeshah said, ‘I heard his Majesty say, ‘The angels come down to the region next the world, and mention the works that have been pre-ordained in Heaven; and the devils, who descend to the lowest region, listen to what the angels say, and hear the orders pre-destined in Heaven, and carry them to fortune-tellers; therefore they tell a hundred lies with it from themselves.’ ‘Whoever goes to a magician, and asks him any thing about the hidden, his prayers will not be approved of for forty nights and days.’ Zaid-Vin-Rhálid said, ‘His Highness officiated as Imām to us in Hudaibiah, after a fall of rain in the night; and when he had finished prayers, he turned himself to the congregation, and said, ‘Do ye know what your Cherisher said?’ They said, ‘God and his messenger know best.’ His Highness said, ‘God said, Two descriptions of my servants rose this morning, one of them believers in me, the other infidels; wherefore, those who have said they have been given rain by the favour of God, are believers in me, and deniers of stars; and those who have said, we have been given rain from the influence of the moon, are infidels, and believers in stars.’” “An astrologer is as a magician, and a magician is a necromancer, and a necromancer is an infidel[110].”

Aug. 17th.—The new moon has appeared, but Prāg is unblessed with rain; if it would but fall! Every night the Hindoos pooja their gods; the Musulmāns weary Heaven with prayers, at the Jamma Musjid (great mosque) on the river-side, near our house;—all to no effect. The clouds hang dark and heavily; the thunder rolls at times; you think, “Now the rain must come,” but it clears off with scarcely a sprinkling. Amongst the Europeans there is much illness, but no cholera.

22nd.—These natives are curious people; they have twice sent the cholera over the river, to get rid of it at Allahabad. They proceed after this fashion: they take a bull, and after having repeated divers prayers and ceremonies, they drive him across the Ganges into Oude, laden, as they believe, with the cholera. This year this ceremony has been twice performed. When the people drive the bull into the river, he swims across, and lands or attempts to land on the Lucnow side; the Oude people drive the poor beast back again, when he is generally carried down by the current and drowned, as they will not allow him to land on either side.

During the night, my ayha came to me three times for cholera mixture; happily the rain was falling, and I thought it would do much more good than all the medicine; of course I gave her the latter.

Out of sixty deaths there will be forty Hindoos to twenty Musulmāns; more men are carried off than women, eight men to two women; the Musulmāns eat more nourishing food than the Hindoos, and the women are less exposed to the sun than the men.

Extract from the journal of an officer in the 16th Lancers, at Cawnpore:—

“Aug. 20th.—A most savage and barbarous act was this day committed on our grand parade; several officers and numbers of sipahīs stood round and witnessed it. A Patān of high caste, and of such great muscular powers as to be a celebrated pehlwān or wrestler, was taken up on suspicion of theft. A barkandāz (native policeman) was sent with the prisoner to his house, that he might eat his dinner; the Patān endeavoured to enter his house, when the barkandāz struck him with his shoe on the mouth (the very grossest insult that can be offered to a native). The prisoner managed to get his hands loose, ran into a sword cutler’s (sikligur’s), snatched up the first sword that presented itself, and cut down the barkandāz. The Patān then ran through the city, crying, ‘Now, who will take me?’ When he got on the grand parade he halted, and when told that he could easily escape into the King of Oude’s territories,—‘for what is the Ganges for such a man as you to swim?’—he answered, ‘No; I cannot live after the insult I have received; but I will teach those rascally barkandāz how to insult a Patān.’ He was soon surrounded by numbers of the native police, variously armed, but he kept them all for a length of time at defiance; at last, after receiving a great many wounds, and with his left arm nearly severed, he fell, but still continued fighting desperately; a musket was now sent for, and the third shot killed this brave fellow. An officer, who stood by, and saw this brutal murder committed, told me the prisoner cut down and wounded eleven men, and received upwards of forty wounds. This outrage was committed in broad daylight, in front of the sipahī lines. An occurrence of this nature would, I think, make some little stir in England.”

The same gentleman mentions, “The natives in the bazār and surrounding villages suffer shockingly from cholera, and you can scarcely go into any of the thoroughfares to the ghāts, without seeing several dead bodies being carried to the Ganges. Large groups of women, preceded by their noisy, inharmonious music, are at all hours proceeding towards the river, to offer up their supplications to the Gunga. The Brahmans have forbidden any woman to sleep inside her house, and, I believe, last night every Hindū woman in the city slept in the open air.”

26th.—I was sitting in my dressing-room, reading, and thinking of retiring to rest, when the khānsāmān ran to the door, and cried out, “Mem Sāhiba, did you feel the earthquake? the dishes and glasses in the almirahs (wardrobes) are all rattling.” I heard the rumbling noise, but did not feel the quaking of the earth. About half-past eleven, P.M., a very severe shock came on, with a loud and rumbling noise; it sounded at first as if a four-wheeled carriage had driven up to the door, and then the noise appeared to be just under my feet; my chair and the table shook visibly, the mirror of the dressing-glass swung forwards, and two of the doors nearest my chair opened from the shock. The house shook so much, I felt sick and giddy; I thought I should fall if I were to try to walk; I called out many times to my husband, but he was asleep on the sofa in the next room, and heard me not; not liking it at all, I ran into the next room, and awoke him; as I sat with him on the sofa, it shook very much from another shock, or rather shocks, for there appeared to be many of them; and the table trembled also. My ayha came in from the verandah, and said, “The river is all in motion, in waves, as if a great wind were blowing against the stream.” The natives say tiles fell from several houses. A shoeing-horn, that was hanging by a string to the side of my dressing-glass, swung backwards and forwards like the pendulum of a clock. The giddy and sick sensation one experiences during the time of an earthquake is not agreeable; we had one in September, 1831, but it was nothing in comparison to that we have just experienced. Mr. D— and Mr. C—, who live nearly three miles off, ran out of their bungalows in alarm.

Sept. 5th.—The rain fell in torrents all night; it was delightful to listen to it, sounding as it was caught in the great water jars, which are placed all round the house; now and then a badly made jar cracked with a loud report, and out rushed the water, a proof that most of the jars would be full by morning. From the flat clean pukkā roof of the house the water falls pure and fresh; from the thatch of a bungalow it would be impure. To-day it is so dark, so damp, so English, not a glimpse of the sun, a heavy atmosphere, and rain still falling delightfully. There is but little cholera now left in the city; this rain will carry it all away.

Our friend Mr. S— arrived yesterday: he was robbed ere he quitted Jaunpore of almost all he possessed: the thieves carried off all his property from the bungalow, with the exception of his sola topī, a great broad-brimmed white hat, made of the pith of the sola.

The best sola hats are made in Calcutta; they are very light, and an excellent defence from the sun: the root of which the topī is formed is like pith; it is cut into thin layers, which are pasted together to form the hat. At Meerut they cover them with the skin of the pelican, with all its feathers on, which renders it impervious to sun or rain; and the feathers sticking out beyond the rim of the hat give a demented air to the wearer. The pelicans are shot in the Tarāī.

“Sholā (commonly sola), (æschynomene paludosa), the wood of which, being very light and spongy, is used by fishermen for floating their nets. A variety of toys, such as artificial birds and flowers, are made of it. Garlands of those flowers are used in marriage ceremonies. When charred it answers the purpose of tinder[111].”

How dangerous the banks of the river are at this season! Mr. M— lugāoed his boats under a bank on the Ganges; during the night a great portion of the bank fell in, swamped the dog-boat, and drowned all the dogs. Our friend himself narrowly escaped: his budjerow broke from her moorings, and went off into the middle of the stream.

19th.—The weather killingly hot! I can do nothing but read novels and take lessons on the sitar. I wish you could see my instructor, a native, who is sitting on the ground before me, playing difficult variations, contorting his face, and twisting his body into the most laughable attitudes, the man in ecstacies at his own performance!

CONSUMPTION OF ICE.

One of the most striking instances of the enterprise of the merchants of the present age, is the importation of a cargo of ice into India from the distant shores of America; and it is to be hoped, that the experiment having so far succeeded, it will receive sufficient encouragement here to ensure the community in future a constant supply of the luxury. The speculators are Messrs. Tudor, Rogers, and Austin, the first of whom has been engaged for fifteen or twenty years in furnishing supplies of ice to the southern parts of America and the West Indian islands.

The following particulars will furnish an idea of the plan pursued in this traffic, and of the cost incurred in it:—

The ice is cut from the surface of some ponds rented for the purpose in the neighbourhood of Boston, and being properly stowed, is then conveyed to an ice-house in the city, where it remains until transported on board the vessel which has to convey it to its destined market. It is always kept packed in non-conducting materials, such as tan, hay, and pine boards, and the vessel in which it is freighted has an ice-house built within, for the purpose of securing it from the effects of the atmosphere. The expense to the speculators must be very considerable, when they have to meet the charges of rent for the ponds, wages for superintendents and labourers, and agents at the place of sale; erection of ice-houses, transportation of the article from the ponds to the city, thence to the vessel, freight, packing, and landing, and the delivery of the article at the ice-house which has been built for it in Calcutta.

The present cargo has arrived without greater wastage than was at first calculated on, and the packing was so well managed to prevent its being affected by the atmosphere, that the temperature on board during the voyage was not perceptibly altered. This large importation of ice may probably give rise to experiments to ascertain in what way it may be applied to medicinal uses, as it has already elsewhere been resorted to for such purposes; but the chief interest the community generally will take in it, will be the addition it will make to domestic comfort.

Sept. 23rd.—Yesterday, at 5 P.M., whilst we were at dinner, a flight of locusts came across the Jumna, from below the fort. The greater part alighted on our compound: those that did not settle on the ground, flew round and round in upper air, while thousands of them descending in streams gave the appearance of a very severe storm of snow falling in large dingy flakes. The air was really darkened; they settled on the thatched roofs of the outhouses, covering them entirely. They were so numerous the whole ground was thickly spread with them. A chaprāsī went out with my butterfly net, and running against the stream of descending locusts, at one attempt caught from twenty to thirty in the net; you may therefore imagine how numerous they were. The bearers ran out, beating brass chilamchees (washhand basons), while others, with frying-pans and pokers, increased the din in order to drive them away, which was not accomplished for half an hour. All the servants, Musalmān and Hindoo, were eager to catch them; the two washermen (dhobees) showed the greatest cleverness in the business; holding a sheet spread out between them, they ran against the flight of descending locusts, caught great numbers, folded the sheet quickly up to secure their prizes, and having deposited them in a jar, spread the sheet for more.

My little terrier Fury caught twenty or thirty, if not more, and ate them raw; it was amusing to see her run at the locusts and catch them so cleverly.

The gentlemen rose from table, and were well repaid for their trouble, never having seen such a marvellous flight of locusts before.

The khānsāmān Suddu Khān said, “In curry they are very good, like prawns, but roasted whole the moment they are caught, they are delicious!” I desired him to bring some to table, but we had not resolution enough to taste them. Little Fury ate them all most greedily, barking and jumping until she had finished them.

Going for our evening drive, such a smell of roasted locusts issued forth as we passed the stables! The flight consisted of red locusts, but amongst them were some of a bright yellow colour. Brown locusts are the most common; the red as well as the yellow are scarce; the red in dying become nearly quite brown.

It is recorded that Ibn-Abu-Awfi said, “I fought seven battles along with the prophet Mahommud, and we used to eat locusts with his highness.”

The khānsāmān prepared many of the bodies with arsenical soap, and filled them with cotton. An enormous death’s head moth flew in at the moment, and experienced the same fate. Moths, locusts, great beetles, and cockroaches are prepared like small birds[112].

They say red locusts predict war, the others famine. The latter prediction is likely to prove true; the little rain that fell made the crops spring up, since which time the sun has killed the greater part of the young plants. All grain is very dear, and the people are exclaiming, “We shall die, if the rain does not fall.”

Famine, earthquakes, pestilence! What do these portend? Let us not sit in judgment man on man, or declare “The hand of God is on the earth, until one-third of the wicked are swept away from the face of it[113].”

All the three Residencies are agog about steam navigation once again. I think there is a fair chance of success, if the whole of the funds are voted in support of the Bombay scheme, by which communication might be established in fifty days; and if the overland dāk from Bombay was put on a more speedy footing, we might hear from England within two months. Nearly £15,000 has been already subscribed, and the work of collection still goes on: the newspapers are flattering the rich baboos, and dependent and independent Rajahs, and some have given their thousands.

The interference with the Company’s charter, that people in England may drink their tea cheaper, which result, however, appears doubtful, and that the surplus population may come out to colonize, and cholerize, has done the Service no benefit. Economy is still the rage, and we of the present day have nothing to look to but the pension from our Civil Annuity Fund, after twenty-two years’ actual residence, of £1000, for which we are to pay one-half, or 50,000 rupees, when we can hoard up as much. The generality of men’s lives after twenty-two years’ residence, and twenty-five of service, three years of these being allowed for furlough, which few are able to take, is scarcely worth five years’ purchase. Numbers, of course, do not live out their time; and if they have subscribed for twenty-one years and eleven months, the whole goes to the fund, principal and interest.

Nov. 3rd.—There are some most wondrous animals called Gungun Medha, or Bāghsira, the latter Hindoo word meaning tiger-headed, from the shape of the animal’s horrible head. I was told they could be dug out of the sands on the river-side. I therefore sent the jamadar and a cooly across the river this morning, and they brought back eight or nine of these beasts; their wings curl up in a most singular fashion, and make them appear as if they had four curly tails, all close together; their great jawbones are edged like a coarse saw. They are very fierce; they fight, kill each other, and the conqueror eats up his adversary. Their legs and wings are most remarkable. We put two under a wire dish-cover, and they fought fiercely, although, from having been dug up some hours, they were not as active as at first. They bite terribly; it is necessary to seize them by their backs like crabs to avoid a bite.

I had some Sarāta lizards dug out of the sands near the Parade ground; they are not half as curious as these tiger-headed beasts, which are in thousands in the sandbanks, their holes six or seven feet deep. A Rajpūt Rana of high degree has pitched his tents in Alopee Bāgh: nineteen guns were fired in honour of his arrival. This great man has a numerous retinue: to bathe at the sacred junction of the rivers has brought him to Prāg. I drove a young lady through his encampment the other evening; many of his people came out of their tents, and absolutely ran on by the side of our carriage, staring at us as if we were bāgh-siras (grylli monstrosi), or animals as wonderful.

Their astonishment was great, occasioned most likely by the sight of unveiled ladies driving about. Passing through the encampment was a service of danger; it was difficult, in keeping clear of the teeth of the camels, not to run against a number of stalls where cakes and sugar were displayed for sale. No sight do I like better than a native encampment; the groups of strange-looking men, the Arab horses, the camels, elephants, and tents are charming. No country can furnish more or so many picturesque scenes as India.

Dec. 5th.—People talk of wonderful storms of hail. I have just witnessed one so very severe, that had I not seen it, I think I should scarcely have believed it. At ten at night a storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning, came on; the hail fell as thick as flakes of snow,—I can scarcely call it hail, the pieces were ice-bolts. I brought in some which measured four inches and a half in circumference, and the ground was covered some inches deep; it appeared as if spread with a white sheet, when by the aid of the lightning one could see through the darkness around. The old peepul-tree groaned most bitterly, the glass windows were all broken, the tobacco-plants cut down, the great leaves from the young banyan-tree were cut off, and the small twigs from the mango and nīm trees covered the ground like a green carpet. It was a fearful storm. The next morning for miles round you saw the effect of the hail, and in the bazār at eight A.M. the children were playing marbles with the hailstones.

31st.—I trust we have now become acclimated, for we have nearly passed through this year,—the most fruitful in illness and death I recollect, both among civilians and soldiers,—without much sickness. I have had fever and ague. My husband has suffered from acute rheumatism, and the little pet terrier, Fury, has been delicate, but we are all now re-established. I am on horseback every morning rejoicing in the cold breezes, feeling as strong and full of spirit as the long-tailed grey that carries me; and Fury is chasing squirrels and ferrets, and putting the farm-yard to the rout.