It is recorded that Ibn-Abu-Awfi said, “I fought seven battles along with the prophet Mahommud, and we used to eat locusts with his highness.”
The khānsāmān prepared many of the bodies with arsenical soap, and filled them with cotton. An enormous death’s head moth flew in at the moment, and experienced the same fate. Moths, locusts, great beetles, and cockroaches are prepared like small birds[112].
They say red locusts predict war, the others famine. The latter prediction is likely to prove true; the little rain that fell made the crops spring up, since which time the sun has killed the greater part of the young plants. All grain is very dear, and the people are exclaiming, “We shall die, if the rain does not fall.”
Famine, earthquakes, pestilence! What do these portend? Let us not sit in judgment man on man, or declare “The hand of God is on the earth, until one-third of the wicked are swept away from the face of it[113].”
All the three Residencies are agog about steam navigation once again. I think there is a fair chance of success, if the whole of the funds are voted in support of the Bombay scheme, by which communication might be established in fifty days; and if the overland dāk from Bombay was put on a more speedy footing, we might hear from England within two months. Nearly £15,000 has been already subscribed, and the work of collection still goes on: the newspapers are flattering the rich baboos, and dependent and independent Rajahs, and some have given their thousands.
The interference with the Company’s charter, that people in England may drink their tea cheaper, which result, however, appears doubtful, and that the surplus population may come out to colonize, and cholerize, has done the Service no benefit. Economy is still the rage, and we of the present day have nothing to look to but the pension from our Civil Annuity Fund, after twenty-two years’ actual residence, of £1000, for which we are to pay one-half, or 50,000 rupees, when we can hoard up as much. The generality of men’s lives after twenty-two years’ residence, and twenty-five of service, three years of these being allowed for furlough, which few are able to take, is scarcely worth five years’ purchase. Numbers, of course, do not live out their time; and if they have subscribed for twenty-one years and eleven months, the whole goes to the fund, principal and interest.
Nov. 3rd.—There are some most wondrous animals called Gungun Medha, or Bāghsira, the latter Hindoo word meaning tiger-headed, from the shape of the animal’s horrible head. I was told they could be dug out of the sands on the river-side. I therefore sent the jamadar and a cooly across the river this morning, and they brought back eight or nine of these beasts; their wings curl up in a most singular fashion, and make them appear as if they had four curly tails, all close together; their great jawbones are edged like a coarse saw. They are very fierce; they fight, kill each other, and the conqueror eats up his adversary. Their legs and wings are most remarkable. We put two under a wire dish-cover, and they fought fiercely, although, from having been dug up some hours, they were not as active as at first. They bite terribly; it is necessary to seize them by their backs like crabs to avoid a bite.
I had some Sarāta lizards dug out of the sands near the Parade ground; they are not half as curious as these tiger-headed beasts, which are in thousands in the sandbanks, their holes six or seven feet deep. A Rajpūt Rana of high degree has pitched his tents in Alopee Bāgh: nineteen guns were fired in honour of his arrival. This great man has a numerous retinue: to bathe at the sacred junction of the rivers has brought him to Prāg. I drove a young lady through his encampment the other evening; many of his people came out of their tents, and absolutely ran on by the side of our carriage, staring at us as if we were bāgh-siras (grylli monstrosi), or animals as wonderful.
Their astonishment was great, occasioned most likely by the sight of unveiled ladies driving about. Passing through the encampment was a service of danger; it was difficult, in keeping clear of the teeth of the camels, not to run against a number of stalls where cakes and sugar were displayed for sale. No sight do I like better than a native encampment; the groups of strange-looking men, the Arab horses, the camels, elephants, and tents are charming. No country can furnish more or so many picturesque scenes as India.
Dec. 5th.—People talk of wonderful storms of hail. I have just witnessed one so very severe, that had I not seen it, I think I should scarcely have believed it. At ten at night a storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning, came on; the hail fell as thick as flakes of snow,—I can scarcely call it hail, the pieces were ice-bolts. I brought in some which measured four inches and a half in circumference, and the ground was covered some inches deep; it appeared as if spread with a white sheet, when by the aid of the lightning one could see through the darkness around. The old peepul-tree groaned most bitterly, the glass windows were all broken, the tobacco-plants cut down, the great leaves from the young banyan-tree were cut off, and the small twigs from the mango and nīm trees covered the ground like a green carpet. It was a fearful storm. The next morning for miles round you saw the effect of the hail, and in the bazār at eight A.M. the children were playing marbles with the hailstones.