"Eight maunds of wood for each," said Mahmud, "cost two rupees, fourteen annas (one maund equals eighty pounds), but for a rich man's body to be burned by sandal wood at the Rajah's Ghat costs 150 rupees."
The darkness gathered more and more and the pale white figures sitting in rows on the upper steps of the ghat were almost lost, except when now and then more lurid flames rose, dancing up to light them; the rowers bore us on again past more and more little lamps on the water. This time not Hindoo but Mohammedan hands were setting them afloat, and Mahmud said:—"Mohammedans worship all rivers, Hazarat Khizar."
We passed the burning-ghat of rajahs, with its odour of sandalwood and the Vishnu footprints, and once more that holy tank of the Manokanka Ghat, of which the water is believed to be sweat of his body.
CHAPTER X
LUCKNOW
At Lucknow it was Race Week. I had already heard from the famous "Wutzler's," the best hotel, that they had no room; and when I arrived one evening at the capital of Oudh I called vainly at others in a scale of reputation which diminished in accord with my hopes of a bed. I had left Benares the same morning, and after passing land green with various crops, including a great deal of mustard, the train had carried me over plains of grey monotony, only occasionally broken by patches of cultivation, herds of long-eared sheep, long-legged pigs, large black vultures and stray, weary-looking camels.
Surely all Anglo-India had come to Lucknow for the races. I had left a small crowd of English people at the railway station, who had given up hope of finding shelter and were only waiting for a train to take them away again: and believing in the possibilities of canvas, I sought out one after the other, "The Civil and Military," "The Imperial" and "The Prince of Wales'," and then roaming still "without a guide" tried for a tent at the "Eclipse," and at last found one at "The Empress." This last was managed by a thin Mohammedan, who was apparently destitute of any notion of mutual benefits, but rich in appreciation of the fact that every other hostelry in Lucknow was over-full. I certainly obtained a "lodging for the night" at "The Empress," but the fact that with travel-habit I was able to sleep soundly should not be taken as testimony to good accommodation.
The next morning at an early hour I was bargaining with a gharry-wallah who demanded 17 rupees for the day because of the races, and after paying some official calls I went off to see the Residency.
The events of the Mutiny days are so closely identified with every brick in the old red ruins that it would be almost impossible for an Englishman to consider them apart from those associations, but I think if it were possible they would still have more appeal than the extravagant vulgarity of the ugly palaces and other architectural eyesores that were reared so lavishly in Lucknow early in the nineteenth century, and remain for the traveller to stare at for his sins—huge curios of debased art, wearisome to visit and desirable to forget.