Muttra, Sunday, Dec. 8.
We came on in the evening to camp, and found G. at a durbar receiving a Vakeel from the Bhurtpore Rajah and a visit from Luckund Chund, the richest banker in India. He has two millions of money in Company’s paper at Calcutta, and only draws the interest once in four years. He is a jeweller also by trade, and has some very handsome emeralds in camp to dispose of. He brought 101 trays of presents, which gladdened Mr. C.’s heart. We had a large congregation this morning, as there is a troop of artillery here, and the English soldiers looked so well and homelike at church.
Goverdun, Monday, Dec. 9.
These have been very good sight-seeing days, and I think I like Hindus just now better than Mussulmauns. They consider trees sacred, and that makes their country so much prettier. We went to a beautiful tomb this afternoon surrounded by old temples and tombs belonging to the Bhurtpore Rajah. The inside of one temple is painted with the original siege of Bhurtpore and Lord Lake running away—the Europeans were originally painted running away without their heads, but that has been rectified. Then we went to what they call a chuttree, or something of that kind, a place where there has been a suttee, and there are some lovely temples built over the ashes. There never is time enough for sketching, which is a pity.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Dieg, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1839.
THE Bhurtpore Rajah came out to meet G. to-day with a pretty retinue, odd-looking carriages and horses covered with gold, but he is a fat, hideous young man himself. We went in the afternoon to see the palace at Dieg, which the rajahs used to live in before the siege of Bhurtpore, but they make no use of it now, which is a pity. The gardens are intersected in all directions by fountains, and the four great buildings at each side of the garden, which make up their palaces, are great masses of open colonnades with baths, or small rooms screened off by carved white marble slabs, and the fountains play all round the halls, so that even in the hot winds, Mr. H. says, it is cool in the centre of these halls. It was a very pretty sight to-day, from the crowds of people mixed up with the spring of the waters; and the Mahrattas wear such beautiful scarlet turbans covered with gold or silver cords, that they showed it off well.
There is a Colonel E. come into camp to-day: he is the Resident at Gwalior, and is come to fetch us. He is about the largest man I ever saw, and always brings his own chair with him, because he cannot fit into any other. He has lived so entirely with natives that I fancy he very seldom sits on a chair at all, and I suppose he is, as —— says, very shy of white females, for it was impossible to get an answer from him. It is a curious fact that the very * * *
Khoomberee, Wednesday, Dec. 11.
I would give anything to know what curious fact I was going to tell you. You never will know it now, that is certain. To finish off Colonel E., I must mention that the officer who commands his escort is called Snook, and that his godfathers, to make it worse, called him Violet. He is a little man, about five feet high, and is supposed to have called out three people for calling him Snooks instead of Snook. I am giving up my plan of leaving G. at Agra. He has cut off a month of his tour, and means to go straight to Calcutta from Gwalior, which is seven marches longer than my road, and with six days there, he would only be thirteen days later than me; the old khansamah has set his face steadily against it. He says, I have no business to leave the Lord Sahib, and that if I take away one steamboat full of baggage and servants, he cannot make show enough at Gwalior. Moreover, I am so well this year, I have no excuse for idleness, when it would be so generally inconvenient; and I do not like to leave G. and F. for two months, now that it only saves thirteen days. We shall all be at Calcutta by the first of March now.