The gentleman who went out on the elephant returned, bringing with him two large wild boars and a young hog. We had the tusks extracted, and gave the meat to the servants, I being too much a Musalmanī myself to eat hogs’ flesh of any sort or description. The Rajpūts will eat the flesh of the wild boar, although they abhor the flesh of domesticated swine.
Mr. Chambers came down to the river, where he had eight boats containing indigo to the value of two lakh. He showed me some fine old casowtee stones covered with Hindoo images, dug up in Gaur, and gave me some specimens of the Gaur bricks; the stones he is sending home to the owner of the factory, Lord Glenelg. From the hill-men in charge of the indigo boats, I procured what is used by them as a salt-box, and was of their own making; merely one joint of a thick bamboo curiously carved and painted, in the hollow of which they carry their salt. They gave me also an arrow for bruising, with a head of iron like a bullet. Thus ended a most interesting visit; and to this account I will add Mr. Chambers’ description of the place, copied from his manuscript.
“THE RUINS OF GAUR.
“The ancient city of Gaur, said to have been the capital of Bengal, seven hundred and fifty years before the commencement of the Christian era, is now an uninhabited waste. It is situated on the east side of the Ganges, and runs nearly in a direction with it from S.E. to N.N.W., about twenty-five miles below Rajmahal. It lies in N. lat. 24° 53′, and in E. long. 88° 14′, and is supposed by Rennell to be the Gangia regia of Ptolemy. It has borne various names; it was formerly called Lutchmavutee or Lucknowtee, as well as Gaur; and when repaired and beautified in 1575, by the great Akbar, who is said to have been particularly attached to this city, it received from him the name of Zennuttabad, from his fancying it a kind of terrestrial Paradise. The extent of the city appears, from the old embankments which enclosed it on every side, to have been ten miles long and two miles broad. These banks were sufficiently capable of guarding it from floods during the rising of the Ganges, when the rest of the country was inundated, as well as defending the place from an enemy, as there are mounds of earth from thirty to forty feet in height, and from one to two hundred feet broad at the base, the removal of the earth forming deep broad ditches on the outside of the banks. Some of these embankments were defended by brickwork. On the outside, the city has two embankments two hundred feet wide, running parallel to each other, at five hundred and eighty feet asunder, probably for greater security against a large lake to the eastward, which in strong weather drives with great violence against it during the season of the inundations. The principal passes through these banks to the city had gateways, two of which, one at the south end, and the other at the north end, are still standing, and the remains of others that have been destroyed are visible. The suburbs extended (there being sufficient vestiges of them to be traced) at least to a distance of four miles from each of those gates. Two grand roads led through the whole length of the city, raised with earth and paved with bricks, terminating with the gate at the south end. Where drains and canals intersected the roads, are the remains of bridges built over them.
“The buildings and mosques must have been very numerous; the rubbish and stones of which still left, point out the places where they stood. The two called golden mosques, and the Nuttee Musjeed, are doubtless the best buildings of that kind.
“In the midst of the city stood a fort, nearly square, and extending about a mile on every side, which had a bank or rampart forty feet high: there is a wall now remaining nearly a quarter of a mile in extent, and in some places between seventy and eighty feet in height, which surrounds a space many feet long and wide, parted into three divisions, and is supposed to have surrounded the king’s palace. The gates leading to the fort, and another to Shah Husain’s tomb are partly left, but covered with trees, and as full of bats and reptiles as the ditches are of alligators.
“The whole of this extensive boundary, including the fort and city, contains innumerable tanks and ponds of various sizes. The Saugur-dighee tank is a mile in length, by half a mile in breadth; three or four others, with this, are the best and largest cisterns of water in the place.
“At one of the tanks the Musselmāns make offerings to the alligators, which has made them so tame, they come to the shore and take away what is offered.
“The following observations on the ruins which still remain sufficiently entire, commence with the great