The flowers are most overpoweringly sweet, pure white, and double. Native women are extremely fond of decorating themselves with necklaces, ear-rings, and bracelets, formed of freshly gathered flowers.
The champa is a flowering tree (michelia champaca), sweet-scented michelia. From the bud of the champa flower is taken the pattern of the champa-kullee necklaces the Indian women wear; kullee, a bud.
21st.—We have had heavy storms, with hailstones of most surprising magnitude; I wish the wind would change; the new moon has “the old moon in her arms,” and if the wind change not now, we shall still have to endure this dreadful weather. The garden is a cake of parched white earth, all split and cracked.
What plagues these servants are! This morning, one of the cows being very ill, I ordered a mixture for her; at sunset it had not been given to her, because, to use the man’s own words, “he wished to send a man into the district, to dig up a certain sort of rat, which rat, having been mixed up with hot spices, he would give to the cow, and she would be well!”
Very provoking! the animal will die on account of not having had a proper remedy administered in time. One has to fight against the climate and the servants until one is weary of life.
23rd.—Such a disaster in the quail-house! Through the negligence, or rather stupidity, of the khānsāmān, 160 fat quail have been killed.
June 1st.—The Muharram is over; I am glad of it, it unsettles all the servants so much, and nothing is ever well done whilst they are thinking of the Taziya.
4th.—Last night we drove to the churchyard, to visit the tomb of one of the most charming girls I ever met with, who had departed in her youth and beauty’s prime: it was a melancholy visit.
One of the Fitzclarences died at Allahabad, and was buried here, without any name or inscription on the tomb; within the last six months an inscription has been put upon it, by order of Lord William Bentinck.
In the churchyard was a great number of plants of the mādār or ark, (asclepias gigantea,) gigantic swallow-wort. Upon them we found the most beautifully spotted creatures, like enamelled grasshoppers; they appear partial to this plant, the ark; when alive, their spots are most beautiful, in dying, all their brilliancy vanishes. I gathered a quantity of the fine down from the pods of the mādār, and gave it to a gentleman fond of experiments, who says he will weave it as a shawl is woven, and see if it will answer.