THE GREAT GUN AT AGRA.

“The utmost offer that has yet been made for the metal of the great gun is sixteen rupees per maund; it is proposed to put it up now for sale by auction, at the Agra-Kotwallee, in the course of next month; the upset price of the lots to be fourteen ānās per seer.

“The destruction of the Agra gun, our readers are aware, has, for some time past, been entrusted to the executive engineer. As stated in the last Meerut Observer, an attempt was made first to saw, and afterwards it was intended to break it to pieces. In the mean time, it is lying, like Robinson Crusoe’s boat, perfectly impracticable under the fort. Though there is a tradition in the city of its weight being 1600 maunds, it has not been found, on actual measurement, to contain more than 845 mds. 9s., which, at the rate of two lbs. to the seer, would be equal to 30 tons, 3 cwt. 2 qrs. 18 lbs. The analysis of the filings made by the deputy Assay Master in Calcutta was, we understand, as follows:—

Copper.Tin.
129·77·3
292·27·8
388·311·7
Mean91·068·94

“The gun, from its size, is naturally regarded by the native population as one of the lions of our city. Of the Hindoos, too, many are accustomed to address their adorations to it, as they do, indeed, to all the arms of war, as the roop of Devee, the Indian Hecate. Beyond this, Hindoo tradition has not invested the gun with any character of mythological sanctity. The antiquaries of our city, indeed, say that it was brought here by the Emperor Acbar, perhaps from the fortress of Chittore. We have, however, ourselves been unable to find any mention of it in tawareek of that reign, or of any subsequent period. Among its other just claims to be saved from the hands of the Thatheras, we must not forget the fact of its having once fired a shot from Agra to Futtehpoor Sicri, a distance of twenty-four miles. A stone ball now marks the spot where it fell to the student in artillery practice, putting him entirely out of conceit of the vaunted power of Queen Elizabeth’s pocket pistol, which we believe can scarcely carry one-third of that distance. The fellow of the Agra gun is stated to be still embedded in the sands of the Jumna.

“Its destruction seems as unpopular with the natives as it is with the European community. Its doom, however, being, we believe, sealed, we are gratified to think that the proceeds of its sale are to be devoted to the erection of a permanent bridge of boats over the Jumna at this city, the estimate for which, the supposed value of the gun, with an advance of one or two years’ ferry tolls, is expected to meet. The future surplus funds derived from the bridge will probably, we hear, be expended in forming a new branch road from Raj-ghaut to Mynpoory, to unite with the grand trunk now making between Allahabad and Delhi, under Captain Drummond. We shall, however, postpone till another opportunity our remarks on this and other plans to improve the means of communication in this quarter.”—Mofussil Achbar.

“At five o’clock on Wednesday morning, the Great Gun at this place was burst, other means of breaking it up having proved unsuccessful. The gun was buried about twenty feet deep in the ground, and 1000 lbs. of gunpowder was employed for the explosion. The report was scarcely heard, but the ground was considerably agitated, and a large quantity of the earth was thrown on all sides. As far as we can learn, the chief engineer has at length been completely successful. A large portion of the European community and multitudes of natives were present to witness the novel spectacle. The inhabitants of the city were so alarmed, that a considerable portion abandoned their houses, and that part of the town in the vicinity of the Fort was completely deserted.”—Mofussil Achbar, June 29.

July 18th.—Last night, as I was writing a long description of the tēz-pāt, the leaf of the cinnamon-tree, which humbly pickles beef, leaving the honour of crowning heroes to the laurus nobilis, the servants set up a hue and cry that one of our sā’īses had been bitten by a snake. I gave the man a tea-spoonful of eau-de-luce, which the khānsāmān calls “Blue-dee-roo,” mixed with a little water. They had confined the snake in a kedgeree-pot, out of which he jumped into the midst of the servants; how they ran! The sā’īs is not the worse for the fright, the snake not being a poisonous one; but he says the mem sāhiba has burnt up his interior and blistered his mouth with the medicine. I hope you admire the corruption of eau-de-luce—blue-dee-roo! Another beautiful corruption of the wine-coolers is, soup-tureen for sauterne! Here is a list of absurdities:—

An officer in the 16th Lancers told me he was amused the other day by his servant designating the trumpeter a “poh poh walla.”

The gardener has just brought in a handful of the most beautiful scarlet velvet coloured insects, about the size of two large peas, but flattish, and commonly found on reddish sandy soil, near grass; these insects are used as one of those medicines which native doctors consider efficacious in snake bites: they call them beerbotie; the scientific name is mutella occidentalis.

The carpenter, in cutting down the hedge of the garden, found in the babūl and neem-trees such beautiful creatures; they appear to be locusts; the variety and brilliancy of their colours are wonderful. The upper wings are green, lined out with yellow, the under wings scarlet, the body green, yellow, and black: they are most beautifully marked. I have had some prepared with arsenical soap.

Aug. 4th.—I have just received a present of the first number of Colonel Luard’s most beautiful views in India; how true they are! his snake-catchers are the very people themselves. Apropos, we caught a young cobra yesterday in my dressing-room; the natives said, “Do not kill it; it is forbidden to kill the snake with the holy mark on the back of its head,”—a mark like a horse-shoe. However, as it was the most venomous sort of snake, I put it quietly into my “Bottle of Horrors.” They say snakes come in pairs; we have searched the room and cannot find its companion. It is not pleasant to have so venomous a snake twisting on the Venetian blinds of one’s dressing-room.

8th.—Yesterday, at dinner, our friends were praising the fatted quail, and remarking how well we had preserved them. This morning all the remainder are dead, about two hundred; why or wherefore I know not—it is provoking.

We had the most beautiful bouquet on the table last night! an enormous bowl full of flowers, in such luxuriant beauty! some few of which you may find in hot-houses and green-houses at home. With what pleasure I looked at them! and how much amusement taking off the impressions, or practising the black art, as we call it, will afford me!

CHAPTER XXV.
THE CHOLERA.

“IT WAS HAMMERED UPON MY FOREHEAD[106].”

i.e. It was my destiny.

“WHERE IS THE USE OF TAKING PRECAUTIONS, SINCE WHAT HAS BEEN PRE-ORDAINED MUST HAPPEN[107]?”

Hindoo Method of frightening away the Cholera recommended to the Faculty—Death of the Darzee—Necromancy—The New Moon—A Bull laden with the Pestilence—Terror of the Natives—The Patān—An Earthquake—Sola Hats—Importation of Ice from America—Flight of Locusts—Steam Navigation—The Civil Service Annuity Fund—The Bāghsira—Rajpūt Encampment—Hail Storm—Delights of the Cold Weather.

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!