Shikarpore stands in a barren and desolate-looking plain, which well assorts with the white and mouldering mud walls surrounding the place. This was the general depôt of supplies for the army; but in lieu of the commodious and well-stocked shops we had expected to see, we found the bazaar little superior to Bahawulpore, or even Rohree, except being somewhat larger and more thronged, if possible, than that of the former place.
On entering the busy scene, the first object that strikes the visitor is the pale, business-like money-changer, his anxious forehead bedaubed with the white paint of his caste, peering over the pyramids of silver and copper heaped ostentatiously before him. Opposite, wrangling with half a dozen sepoys, in voices that might wake the dead, stands the noisy, energetic cloth-merchant, extolling his wares amidst the altercation with a fluency that would break the heart of a London Jew clothesman.
On each side, as you struggle onward, are squatted, in the peculiar Oriental fashion, vendors of dried fruits, seeds, spices, opium, cum plurimis aliis; but your good-natured Arab charger halts in despair at the shop where yonder greasy cook is flourishing in his long, bony hands a wooden ladle, with which he bedaubs, in oily costume, a hissing mass of kabobs, or kidneys, which are emitting a savoury odour throughout that quarter of the bazaar, and engaging the attention of an impenetrable cloud of half-famished-looking wretches watching the inviting process. On extricating your embarrassed steed from this difficulty, and moving up another bazaar, at right angles to the former, the ears are saluted with the stunning and monotonous clang proceeding from the anvils of armorers and blacksmiths, who continue their noisy labour with an assiduity that, conjointly with their hissing fires and diabolical countenances, give an unpleasant presentiment of the world below.
Speckle the scene with a number of savage-looking fellows in dingy dresses, with matchlocks slung over their shoulders, a pair of business-like pistols, and a greasy-handled knife stuck in their belt, whilst a broad, iron-handled tolwar brings up the rear, and you will complete the best picture I can afford of Shikarpore bazaar, with its lazy, lounging soldiery.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Sir J. Keane's forces were about three thousand five hundred men, and thirty guns.
[19] A common way of crossing rivers in the East, the pots being bound together by a framework of bamboo.
[20] The reserve force from Bombay, which occupied Scinde soon after our departure, (amounting to about three thousand men,) bore witness to its qualities in both respects.