Famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression startle in thine eyes,
The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law.
Then be not poor, but break it.
G. and I walked down to the stables this morning before breakfast, and found such a miserable little baby, something like an old monkey, but with glazed, stupid eyes, under the care of another little wretch of six years old. I am sure you would have sobbed to see the way in which the little atom flew at a cup of milk, and the way in which the little brother fed it. Rosina has discovered the mother since, but she is a skeleton too, and she says for a month she has had no food to give it. Dr. D. says it cannot live, it is so diseased with starvation, but I mean to try what can be done for it.
Kynonze, Sunday, Jan. 7.
We go on from bad to worse; this is a large village, and the distress greater. Seven hundred were fed yesterday, and the struggle was so violent that I have just seen the magistrate, Mr. ——, who is travelling with us, and asked him for his police. We have plenty of soldiers and servants, but they hardly know what to do; they cannot strike the poor creatures, and yet they absolutely fight among themselves for the food. Captain M. saw three people drop down dead in the village yesterday, and there were several on our line of march. My baby is alive, the mother follows the camp, and I have it four times a day at the back of my tent, and feed it. It is rather touching to see the interest the servants take in it, though there are worse objects about, or else I have got used to this little creature.
This is a great place for ruins, and was supposed to be the largest town in India in the olden time, and the most magnificent. There are some good ruins for sketching remaining, and that is all. An odd world certainly! Perhaps two thousand years hence, when the art of steam has been forgotten, and nobody can exactly make out the meaning of the old English word ‘mail-coach,’ some black Governor-General of England will be marching through its southern provinces, and will go and look at some ruins, and doubt whether London ever was a large town, and will feed some white-looking skeletons, and say what distress the poor creatures must be in; they will really eat rice and curry; and his sister will write to her Mary D. at New Delhi, and complain of the cold, and explain to her with great care what snow is, and how the natives wear bonnets, and then, of course, mention that she wants to go home. Do you like writing to me? I hate writing in general, but these long letters to you are the comfort of my existence. I always have my portfolio carried on in my palanquin, which comes on early, because then, if I have anything to say to you before breakfast, I can say it, and I dare say it would be unwholesome to suppress a thought before breakfast.
Camp, Umreetpoor, Saturday, Jan. 13.
We have had three days’ rest at Futtehghur; rest at least for the horses and bullocks, who were all worn out with the bad roads, and we started again this morning; crossed the Ganges on a bridge of boats, and after five miles of very remarkably heavy sand, with hackeries and dying ponies, and obstinate mules sticking in it, in all directions, we came to a road available again for the dear open carriage and for horses. The others all rode, and I brought on Mrs. A., who has no carriage, and who gets tired to death of her palanquin and elephant.
G. and I went with Y., Dr. D., and A. and M. one morning before breakfast to see a Dr. ——, who is supposed to be very scientific, but his science seems rather insane. He insists upon it that the North Pole is at Gwalior, about thirty miles from here, and that some magnetic stones he brought from there prove it by the direction in which the needle stands on them. One needle would not stand straight on one stone, and he said that stone must have been picked up a little on one side of the exact North Pole. Then he took us to a table covered with black and white little bricks, something like those we used to have in the nursery, and he said that by a course of magnetic angles, the marks of which he discovers on his magnetic stones, any piece of wood that was cut by his directions became immediately an exact representation of Solomon’s Temple.
‘Don’t say it is ingenious! I can’t help it; it is the work of magnetic power, not mine; Solomon’s Temple will fall out of whatever I undertake.’
I looked at G. and the others, but they all seemed quite convinced, and I began to think we must all be in a Futtehghur Bedlam, only they were all too silent. To fill up the pause, I asked him how long he was discovering Solomon’s Temple. ‘Only seven years,’ he said, ‘but it is not my discovery; it must be so according to my magnetic angles. When this discovery reaches Europe (which it will through you, ma’am, for I am going to present you with Solomon’s Temple), there will be an end of all their science; they must begin again.’