The furniture of the room consists of a table, a sideboard, and a large screen of common cloth, stretched on a frame of sissoo-wood (a sort of coarse rose-wood). It is about seven feet high and seven across, and is placed before the door of the garden. On the sideboard stands a flat candlestick, with a glass shade to keep the insects from the flame. The candle is wax; we cannot use tallow for two reasons: the climate of India is so hot that the candles would not remain upright, and the sheep here have very little fat upon them. On the table are two Indian table-lamps. I hardly know how to describe them. The lower part is like an upright candlestick, on which is placed a glass cup half filled with water, the other half with cocoa-nut oil. In the bottom is a little bit of lead with two thin cotton wicks in it, which reach a little above the surface of the oil. These are alight. Over the whole is a large inverted bell-glass to keep off the insects, which at present swarm around. Every minute I hear the mosquitoes buzzing about my ears; then they settle on my face, and on my clothes, through which they are enabled to bite with ease. This keeps me in a continued fidget.
There is also an incessant whistling all around from what we call crickets, though they are somewhat different from those in England. A number of large grasshoppers, about two inches long, of a light green, are hopping about on the table, and occasionally on my paper. On the wall are several long-tailed lizards: they are only slightly venomous; and, though extremely ugly, we are always glad to see them, because they eat the mosquitoes. Round the ceiling are circling three large bats, which my mungoose, sitting in a corner, keeps watching. Should one fall, he would seize and devour him in an instant. A wild cat came through the room just now, and took a peep at me; but the mungoose growled, and it ran way. It was small; but it has been very destructive in the poultry-yard.
OLD CUTTACK.
But I must now return to what I was telling. The place which we came upon in the jungle is called Old Cuttack; and it deserves the name, for I do not suppose it has been inhabited for the last thousand years. It appears from what little I saw of it to be a most wonderful place, and certainly proves that the population in the olden times must have been very numerous, and far advanced in mechanical arts. It consists of a deep ravine, the sides of which are composed of a dark rock of extreme hardness, and containing a great quantity of iron. On one side it has been made perfectly smooth, although certainly not less than seventy feet in height: on the other are numerous steps and staircases, cut out of the solid rock. The stone does not seem to have been broken off and then chiselled smooth, but it appears as if the steps had been cut out in solid pieces.
On the summit are the remains of houses built of large blocks, all perfectly smooth, saving from the effects of time and weather. Scattered about are heaps of rock, as if collected for building. At a little distance on the banks of the river is a sort of seawall, which I have not yet seen, but in which, they tell me, many of the masses of rock are sixteen or eighteen feet long.
All this appears doubly wonderful when you remember that the natives now, almost naked, build their houses of mud, without windows, and with a miserable thatch; that their fireplaces are nothing but little holes in the ground; and that in most respects they are absolute savages. Either they have very much degenerated, or, which is more probable, the race which built these mighty works is swept away.
[April 17, 1843.]
I was in doubt concerning the Chena Poojah, but it appears that the hooks are fastened to a cord, which cuts into the body, and literally causes the blood to flow in streams. They say also that it is the victims themselves that pass the spears into their bodies, and not the priests.