“The Afghāns, in their own traditions, claim descent from Saul, King of Israel, and the ten tribes; they invariably allow the beard to grow, and shave a broad stripe down the centre of the head; the beard gives an appearance of gravity and respectability to the lowest of the people. The Afghāns are good horsemen, and appear to have fine hands on their bridle; and they never tie their horses’ heads down with a martingale. In this country there is a strong useful description of horse, which reins up well, and appears to go pleasantly, but the best of these are brought from Herat. Here they shoe their horses with a broad plate of iron, covering the whole sole of the foot, with the exception of the frog.
“What I have said of the Afghāns of Candahar will apply to all we have seen; but perhaps at Cabul the men may be shorter and more thickly set. I have never seen a more hardy, sturdy-looking, or more muscular race, and the deep pomegranate complexion gives a manly expression to the countenance. Of the women we have seen nothing, but hear they are beautiful; those taken at Ghuznee were certainly not so; they are frequently met walking in the city, or riding on horseback seated behind a man, but universally so closely veiled that you cannot detect a feature of the face, or in the slightest degree trace the outline of the figure. It is a pity Dost Muhammad was not selected as our puppet king, for Shah Sūjah is neither a gentleman nor a soldier, and he is highly unpopular among his subjects, who—but for our support—would soon knock him off his perch.
“My squadron was on picquet near a village surrounded with gardens, with a clear rapid stream of water running through it; and in this village, between two or three miles north-east of Ghuznee, is the tomb of the great Shah Mahmoud, which has stood upwards of eight hundred years, and which is an object of particular veneration to all true believers. The entrance from the village is by a low coarse doorway, which leads to a small garden; a paved footway conducts to an arched building, undeserving of notice: on either side the footpath are hollowed figures of sphinxes in white marble, and seemingly of great antiquity, and through these sphinxes water used to flow from the mouth; above them also, there were other small fountains. From the building I have mentioned, a rudely constructed vault or passage—a kind of cloister—leads to another small garden, at the end of which stands the mausoleum of the Sultan Mahmoud, the doors of which are said to have been brought by the Sultan as a trophy from the famous Hindoo temple of Somnaut, in Guzerat, which he sacked in his last expedition to India; they are of sandal-wood, curiously carved, and, considering their very great age, in fine preservation, although they have in two or three places been coarsely repaired with common wood. These doors are, I should think, about twelve feet high and fifteen feet broad; and are held in such estimation, though it is upwards of eight hundred years since they were removed from Guzerat, that, it is said, Runjeet Singh made it one of his conditions to assist Shah Sūjah in a former expedition, that he should give up the sandal-wood gates; but this was indignantly rejected. In truth, I saw nothing particular about these doors, and if I had not been told of their age, and of their being of sandal-wood, I should have passed, taking them for deal, and merely observed their carving. Over the doors are a very large pair of stag’s horns (spiral), and four knobs of mud, which are the wonder of all true Musalmāns, who firmly believe in the miracle of their having remained uninjured and unrepaired for so many centuries. The mausoleum itself can boast of no architectural beauty, and is very coarsely constructed. The tombstone is of white marble, on which are sculptured Arabic verses from the korān, and various coloured flags are suspended over it, so as to protect it from dust. Against the wall at the head of the tomb is nailed up the largest tiger’s skin I ever saw, though it had evidently been stretched lengthwise. When the picquet was relieved I rode into Ghuznee by the Cabul road, by the side of which, at some distance from each other, are two lofty minarets,—one, I should think, one hundred, and the other one hundred and twenty feet in height: these are built of variously-shaped bricks, elaborately worked in various devices: the base of both these pillars is octangular, and rises to half the height, looking as if it had been built round the pillar itself, which is circular; or as if the pillar had been stuck into this case: the easternmost pillar is the highest and most elaborately decorated. I think I before observed that these minarets at a distance look like prodigious eau-de-cologne bottles. The mausoleum of Sultan Mahmoud, and these minarets, are now the only remains of the ancient city of Ghuznee; and nothing further exists to show the magnificence of the Ghuznee kings, or to mark the former site of a city which eight centuries ago was the capital of a kingdom, reaching from the Tigris to the Ganges, and from the Jaxartes to the Persian Gulf. The present town is computed to contain about six hundred miserable houses. So much for greatness!—Such in the East is the lapse of mighty empires.”
CHAPTER LX.
DEPARTURE FROM ST. HELENA.
Quitted St. Helena—The Polar Star—Drifting Sea-weed—The Paroquets—Worship of Birds—A Gale—The Orange Vessel—The Pilot Schooner—Landing at Plymouth—First Impressions—A Mother’s Welcome—The Mail Coach—The Queen’s Highway—Dress of the English—Price of Prepared Birds—The Railroads—The New Police—English Horses—British Museum—Horticultural Show—Umberslade—Tanworth—Conway Castle—Welsh Mutton—Church of Conway—Tombstone of Richard Hookes, Gent.—The Menai Bridge—Dublin—Abbeyleix—Horns of the Elk—Penny Postage—Steam-Engines—Silver Firs—Moonāl Pheasants—The Barge run down—Chapel of Pennycross—The Niger Expedition—Schwalbach—Family Sorrows—Indian News—The Birth of the Chimna Rājā Sāhib—Captain Sturt’s Sketches—Governor Lin—The Bāiza Bā’ī consents to reside at Nassuk—Fire in her Camp—Death of Sir Henry Fane—Church built by Subscription at Allahabad—Governor Lin’s Button—The ex-Queen of Gwalior marches to Nassuk—Price of a Gentleman—Death of the old Shepherd from Hydrophobia—Pedigree of Jūmnī, the Invaluable.
1839, March 19th.—A fine and favourable breeze bore the “Madagascar” from St. Helena, and gave us hopes of making the remainder of the voyage in as short a space of time as that in which the first part had been accomplished. The only really good fruit we got at James’s Town was the plantain. Some mackerel was baked and pickled on board, but we were recommended not to eat it after the first day, as the St. Helena mackerel, if kept, is reckoned dangerous.
April 11th.—How glad I was to see the polar star, visible the first time this evening! I thought of my dear mother, and how often we had watched it together; and the uncertainty of what might have occurred during my voyage to the dear ones at home rendered me nervous and very unhappy. The southern hemisphere does not please me as much as the northern; the stars appear more brilliant and larger in the north.
18th.—The ship was passing through quantities of sea-weed, supposed to be drifted from the Gulf of Mexico; it is always found in this latitude. The children amused themselves with writing letters to their mother, and sending them overboard, corked up in empty bottles.
May 7th.—Polidorus, the great pet parrot, died; the pitching of the vessel and the cramp killed the bird, in spite of the warmth of flannel: of our four birds one only now survived; and very few remained of twenty-four paroquets brought on board by the crew. A flight of paroquets in India, with their bright green wings and rose-coloured necks, is a beautiful sight.