“It was in the reign of John Dandolo, 1285, that gold zecchini (sequins) were first struck in Venice. But before they could be issued, the Doge had to obtain the permission of the Emperor and the Pope. These zecchini bore the name and image of the Doge, at first seated on a ducal throne, but afterwards he was represented standing; and, finally, in the latter times of the Republic, on his knees, receiving from the hands of St. Mark the standard of the Republic.”
The necklace, which was a wedding present to the bride, consisted of three rows of silken cords, as thickly studded with these coins as it was possible to put them on, the longest string reaching to the knees: it was very heavy, and must have been valuable. Another Mahratta lady wore a necklace of the same description, but it consisted of a single row, which reached from her neck to her feet: people less opulent wear merely one, two, or three putlīs around the neck.
An old Muhammadan darzī of the Shī’ā sect asked me one morning to be allowed to go to the bazār to purchase a putlī (a doll) to bind upon his forehead, to take away a violent pain in his head. This request of his puzzled me greatly: at the time I was ignorant that putlī was also the name of the charmed coin, as well as that of a doll. He told me he had recovered from severe headache before in consequence of this application, and believed the remedy infallible. The Bā’ī mentioned that she struck mohurs and half mohurs at Gwalior, in her days of prosperity. I showed her some new rupees struck by the East India Company, with the king’s head upon them, which, having examined, she said, “These rupees are very paltry, there is so little pure silver in them.”
5th.—The ladies of the station held a fancy fair at the theatre for the benefit of the Blind Asylum, which realized one hundred and eighty pounds.
8th.—Sir Charles quitted this station for Agra, leaving Allahabad to return to its usual routine of quietness. The thermantidotes have been stopped, rain has fallen plentifully, the trees have put on their freshest of greens, and the grass is springing up in every direction. How agreeable, how pleasant to the eye is all this luxuriant verdure!
The report in the bazār is, that a native of much wealth and consideration went into his zenāna tents, in which he found two of his wives and a man; the latter escaped; he killed both the women. A zenāna is a delightful place for private murder, and the manner in which justice is distributed between the sexes is so impartial! A man may have as many wives as he pleases, and mistresses without number;—it only adds to his dignity! If a woman take a lover, she is murdered, and cast like a dog into a ditch. It is the same all the world over; the women, being the weaker, are the playthings, the drudges, or the victims of the men; a woman is a slave from her birth; and the more I see of life, the more I pity the condition of the women. As for the manner in which the natives strive to keep them virtuous, it is absurd; a girl is affianced at three or four years old, married, without having seen the man, at eleven, shut up and guarded and suspected of a wish to intrigue, which, perhaps, first puts it into her head; and she amuses herself with outwitting those who have no dependence upon her, although, if discovered, her death generally ends the story.
27th.—How weary and heavy is life in India, when stationary! Travelling about the country is very amusing; but during the heat of the rains, shut up in the house, one’s mind and body feel equally enervated. I long for a bracing sea breeze, and a healthy walk through the green lanes of England; the lovely wild flowers,—their beauty haunts me. Here we have no wild flowers; from the gardens you procure the most superb nosegays; but the lovely wild flowers of the green lanes are wanting. Flowering trees are planted here on the sides of the roads, and I delight in bringing home a bouquet.
A steamer comes up every month from Calcutta; she tows a tug, that is, a large flat vessel, which carries the passengers. The steamers answer well; but what ugly-looking, mercantile things they are!
I must give an extract from the letter of a friend, describing an adventure, such as you would not meet with in the green lanes of Hampshire:—“The boat was getting on slowly, and I went into the hills at Rajmahal, to get a deer or peacock or jungle-fowl, in fact, something for the kitchen. Some way in the interior I heard a queer noise, which one of my servants said was a deer; as I could not draw the shot in my gun (which is a single barrel flint) to substitute a ball, having only a make-shift ramrod, I consoled myself that the shot was large, and pushed on in the direction of the noise, which still continued. As I came on the upper end of a hollow in the side of the hill, filled with jungle and long grass, some animal jumped up at about fifteen yards in front; he was evidently large, and what the great composers of the ‘Sporting Magazine’ term, of a fulvous colour; he was decidedly, in the opinion of the beaters, a very heavy deer, of three or four mŭns. Hark forward! was now the word, as the same great composers would again say; we crossed a hollow road, entered the jungle on the opposite side, a little below the direction the animal had taken, and had not gone fifteen yards when up rose, without hurry, a handsome large tiger, just out of arm’s length, and a little from behind me; his gait was slunk and shuffling; I saw at once that he was going from me, and, owing to that circumstance, I passed in review his sleeky flank and black stripes with much pleasure. I was a good deal excited, it being my first wild beast sight au naturel; I almost felt an inclination to slap my shot at him.”
The sketch, entitled “[The Spring Bow],” was taken in the Rajmahal hills, not far from the jungle in which my friend saw the tiger; the bête sauvage represented in it might perhaps have been the very one whose sleeky flank and black stripes he viewed with so much pleasure.