Oct.—We are collecting grass and making hay for use during the hot winds. The people cut the grass in the jungles, and bring it home on camels. We have one stack of hay just finished, and one of straw.
“Bring me the silver tankard.” “I have it not, I know not where it is,” said the khidmatgār. The plate-chest was searched, it was gone.
It was the parting gift of a friend; we would not have lost it for fifty times its value. The servants held a panchāyat, and examined the man who had charge of the plate. When it was over, he came to me, saying, “I had charge of the tankard—it is gone—the keys were in my hands; allow me to remain in your service; cut four rupees a month from my pay, and let another silver cup be made.” The old man lived with us many years, and only quitted us when he thought his age entitled him to retire on the money he had earned honestly and fairly in service.
My tame squirrel has acquired a vile habit of getting up the windows and eating all the flies; if he would kill the musquitoes, it would be a very good employment, but he prefers the great fat flies—a little brute. The little squirrel is the only animal unaffected by the heat; he is as impudent as ever, and as cunning as possible.
Oct. 24th.—A slight earthquake has just taken place—this instant. I did not know what was the matter; there was a rumbling noise for some time, as if a carriage were driving over the roof of the house. My chair shook under me, and the table on which I am writing shook also. I became very sick and giddy, so much so, that I fancied I had fallen ill suddenly. When the noise and trembling ceased, I found I was quite well, and the giddy sickness went off. I never felt the earth quake before. Every one in the house was sensible of it. At the Circuit bungalow, nearly three miles off, it was felt as much as on the banks of the Jumna.
In a native family, if a person be ill, one of the relations takes a small earthen pan, filled with water, flowers, and rice, and places it in the middle of the road or street, in front of the house of the sick person, believing that if any one en passant should touch the offering, either by chance or design, the illness would quit the sufferer and cleave to the person who had touched the flowers or the little pan containing the offering. A native carefully steps aside and avoids coming in contact with the flowers.
To-day, a man was punished for perjury in this manner; he was mounted on a donkey, with his face to the tail of the animal; one half of his face was painted black, the other white, and around his neck was hung a necklace of old shoes and old bones. Surrounded by a mob of natives, with hideous music and shouts, he was paraded by the police all through the town! An excellent punishment.
Our farming operations commenced last September. On the banks of the Ganges, near the fort, we planted thirty beeghās with oats, and expect a crop sufficient to feed our horses and sheep, with plenty of straw to cut into bhoosa. The oats are not so large and heavy as those of England, nevertheless, very good. During the hot weather, we give our horses half oats half gram (chanā); in the cold season, oats and carrots; the latter are remarkably fine, we purchase them by the beeghā. A beeghā, or bīghā, is a quantity of land, containing twenty katthās, or 120 feet square.
In Calcutta, oats are procurable in abundance, and are usually to be had at those stations where there are race-horses; but they are not generally cultivated, and where they are a novelty the natives speak of them as “wheat gone mad.” At Allahabad, the gentlemen at the station cultivate large quantities on the river side.
I have just taken a sketch of a dwarf, a Hindoo, called Bhoodder Ram; he is fifty years of age, is married, and has a tall son, aged twelve years.