18th.—Stags, of the chicara sort, with small straight horns, come down to drink by the river-side; wild geese and cyrus are in flocks on the sandbanks. A slight but favourable breeze has sprung up, we are going gently and pleasantly before it. Nārāngee ghāt,—what a beautiful scene! The river was turned from its channel by the Rajah Buddun Sing, and directed through a pass, cut straight through a very high cliff: the cut is sharp and steep; the cliffs abrupt and bold; some trees; native huts; a temple in the distance; numbers of boats floating down the stream, through the pass; the pinnace and patelī, in full sail, going up it; ferry-boats and passengers; cows and buffaloes swimming the ferry; a little beyond, before the white temple, on a sandbank, are six great crocodiles, basking in the sun. Am I not pleased? One of the fairest views I have seen: what a contrast to yesterday, when my eyes only encountered the sandbank, and the fixture of a salt-boat, our particular enemy! Anchored at Hurrier; fagged and ill from over-exertion.
19th.—We arrived at the city of Betaizor, which is built across the bed where the Jumna formerly flowed. The Rajah Buddun Sing built this ghāt, and very beautiful it is; a perfect crowd of beautiful Hindoo temples clustered together, each a picture in itself, and the whole reflected in the bright pure waters of the Jumna. I stopped there for an hour, to sketch the ghāt, and walked on the sands opposite, charmed with the scene,—the high cliffs, the trees; no Europeans are there,—a place is spoiled by European residence. In the evening we anchored off the little village of Kheil: rambling on the river’s bank, I saw five peacocks in the shimoul (the silk-cotton tree), and called Jinghoo Bearer, who ran off to fetch a matchlock, which he loaded with two bullets; the birds were so unmolested, they showed no fear when I went under the tree with the dogs, and only flew away when Jinghoo fired at them; the report aroused two more peacocks from the next tree; a flock of wild geese, and another of wild ducks, sprang up from the sands; and the solitary chakwā screamed āw! āw! The shimoul is a fine high-spreading tree, the flower a brilliant one; and the pod contains a sort of silky down, with which mattresses and pillows are often stuffed. The natives object to pillows stuffed with silk-cotton, saying it makes the head ache. The large silk-cotton tree (bombax ceiba) is the seat of the gods who superintend districts and villages; these gods, although minor deities, are greatly feared. Punchaits, or native courts of justice, are held beneath the shimoul, under the eye of the deity in the branches. There are fields of kāpās, the common white cotton plant, (gossypium herbaceum,) on the side of the river; the cotton has just been gathered; a few pods, bursting with snowy down, are hanging here and there, the leavings of the cotton harvest: the plant is an annual. In my garden at Prāg are numerous specimens of the Bourbon cotton, remarkably fine, the down of which is of a brown colour.
I have met hundreds of enormous boats, laden with cotton, going down to Calcutta, and other parts of the country; they are most remarkably picturesque. I said the report startled the solitary chakwā. The chakwā is a large sort of reddish-brown wild duck (anas cæsarca), very remarkable in its habits. You never see more than two of these birds together; during the day they are never separate,—models of constancy; during the night they are invariably apart, always divided by the stream; the female bird flies to the other side of the river at night, remains there all solitary, and in the morning returns to her mate, who during the livelong night has been sitting alone and crying āw! āw! The male calls āw! some ten or twelve times successively; at length the female gives a single response, “nā’īch!” Leaving the people, some cooking and some eating their dinners, I rambled on alone, as was my custom, to some distance from the boats, listening to and thinking of the chakwā. The first man who finished his meal was the dhobee, a Hindoo, and he started forth to find me. I questioned him respecting the birds, and he spake as follows: “When the beautiful Seeta was stolen away from the god Rām, he wandered all over the world seeking his love. He asked of the chakwā and his mate, ‘Where is Seeta, where is my love, have you seen her?’ The chakwā made answer, ‘I am eating, and attending to my own concerns; trouble me not, what do I know of Seeta?’ Rām, angry at these words, replied, ‘Every night henceforth your love shall be taken from you and divided by a stream; you shall bemoan her loss the livelong night; during the day she shall be restored.’
“He asked of the stars, ‘Where is Seeta?’ the silent stars hid their beams. He asked of the forest, ‘Where is my beloved?’ the forest moaned and sighed, and could give him no intelligence. He asked of the antelope, ‘Where is she whom I seek, the lost, the beloved?’ The antelope replied, ‘My mate is gone, my heart is bowed with grief, my own cares oppress me. Her whom you seek mine eyes have not beheld.’”
It is true the birds invariably live after this fashion: they are great favourites of mine, the chakwās; and I never hear their cry but I think of Seeta Rām.
21st.—The wind westerly and bitterly cold. Loon or noon, from which salt is made, is in large quantities on the river-side. We lugāoed at Aladīnpoor, the village of Ullah-o-deen, or Aladdin, as you call it; and I can think of nothing but his wonderful lamp. I walked through the village; the moment the people caught sight of me and the chaprāsīs, away they ran and hid themselves. In the middle of the village we found some young men sitting on the ground round a fire, warming their hands over the blaze: they did not show any fear, like the rest of the villagers, and I talked to them for some time. They pointed out their fields of the castor-oil plant, all nipped by the frost. I requested them to let me buy a couple of kids to give to the dāndees, a kid feast would warm them such a cold evening. This morning I saw men brushing what is called noon off the clayey banks of the river: they steep it in water, then boil it, when a very good salt is produced. We sometimes use it at table. A poor man in this way brushes up a little noon, and makes enough for his own consumption, which is of great advantage to him. The natives consume salt in large quantities.
All day long I sit absorbed in modelling little temples, or ghāts, or some folly or another, in khuree, a sort of soap-stone. I can scarcely put it aside, it fascinates me so much. I cannot quit my soap-stone. Any thing I see, I try to imitate; and am now at work on a model of the bā’olī (great well) at Allahabad. Captain K⸺ gave me a tomb he had modelled in soap-stone, and some tools. I copied it, and have since modelled a temple on a ghāt and the bā’olī aforesaid; the stone is easily cut with a saw, or with a knife, and may be delicately carved. That bought in the bazār at Allahabad, weighing two or three sēr, is generally of a darkish colour, because the men who bring it from the Up Country often use it to form their chūlees (cooking places) on the road; it becomes discoloured by the heat. A relative sent me some khuree (soap-stone) from a copper mine hill, near Baghesur on the road to Melun Himalaya, which is remarkably pure and white.
A great deal of the clayey ground on the river’s edge that we have passed to-day looks like a badly frosted cake, white from the loon or noon. A little more work at the soap-stone, and then to rest.
23rd.—I could scarcely close my eyes during the night for the cold, and yet my covering consisted of four Indian shawls, a rezaī of quilted cotton, and a French blanket. A little pan of water having been put on deck, at 8 A.M. the ayha brought it to me filled with ice. What fine strong ice they must be making at the pits, where every method to produce evaporation is adopted! I am sitting by the fire for the first time. At 8 A.M. the thermometer was 46°; at 10 A.M. 54°. The dāndees complain bitterly of the cold. Thirteen men on the goon are fagging, up to their knees in water, against the stream and this cold wind; this twist in the river will, however, allow of half an hour’s sail, and the poor creatures may then warm themselves. I will send each man a red Lascar’s cap and a black blanket, their Indian bodies feel the cold so bitterly. When the sails are up my spirits rise; this tracking day by day against wind and stream so many hundred miles is tiresome work. My solitude is agreeable, but the tracking detestable. I must go on deck, there is a breeze, and enjoy the variety of having a sail. At Pukkaghur eight peacocks were by the river-side, where they had come for water; on our approach they moved gently away. They roost on the largest trees they can find at night. I have just desired three pints of oil to be given to the dāndees, that they may rub their limbs. The cold wind, and being constantly in and out of the water, makes their skin split, although it is like the hide of the rhinoceros; they do not suffer so much when their legs have been well rubbed with oil. What a noise the men are making! they are all sitting on the deck, whilst a bearer, with a great jar of oil, is doling out a chhattak to each shivering dāndee.
24th.—Another trouble! The river is very broad, with three great sandbanks in the centre, and there is scarcely any water among the divided channels. Two great cotton boats are aground in the deepest part. They must be off ere there will be room for the Seagull. Whilst the cook-boat anchors, the washermen will set to work to wash the clothes on the river’s edge, and will dry them in the rigging; and the crews of both vessels will unite to cut the pinnace through the sand. Noon: the cotton boats are off; the dinghee is moving about, sounding the passage.