“Oh, pilgrim! this is not your home,—
Look upwards for thy place of rest.”
A tear trembled in Miss Belfield’s eye as she read her brother’s verses; they had touched some tender chord, and the feelings they expressed were evidently in unison with her own; she arose and retired to her cabin, her head slightly averted, to conceal her emotion. As she passed, the captain fondly stretched out his hand towards her; she seized and pressed it—it was all the commentary she made.
The ruins of Rajmahal are not very extensive, nor are the buildings of any extraordinary magnitude or beauty; nevertheless, some mosques, and two or three old gateways, in the Moorish style of architecture, which seems everywhere to have preserved its original character—from Delhi to Morocco—are highly picturesque.
Captain Belfield, who was well acquainted with the place and its history, acted as our Cicerone, pointing out the most remarkable buildings; amongst these, by far the most considerable was the palace erected by that crafty and most consummate villain Aurungzebe, of which there are some very considerable remains, halls, baths, courts, &c., also the tomb of Meerun, the assassin of Surajah Dowlah.
Rajmahal was the residence and capital of the unfortunate Sultan Sujah, one of the brothers of Aurungzebe. The tragic end of this prince, amongst the wilds of Arracan, is touchingly related by the accurate historian Bernier, whose history of this family is a perfect romance. The relator has traversed the wild forests in Arracan towards Myamootie, where the hapless Mogul prince is supposed to have met his fate.
There are Mahomedans naturalized in Arracan, who differ in many respects from the aborigines, though they wear a similar garb. They are supposed to be descendants of those followers of Sultan Sujah, who escaped the massacre described by Bernier, and were retained in slavery by the Mughs.
When the city of Arracan was captured by the British, the head of the Mahomedan inhabitants, singularly enough, bore the name of Sujah. The writer remembers him well, and a wily fellow he was, playing, on the approach of the army, a well-managed double game, with British and Burmese, which was to benefit himself, whichever party succeeded.
Poor Sultan Sujah! the howling forests of Arracan must have presented a melancholy contrast to the marble halls of the palace of Aurungzebe! Like Sebastian of Portugal (to whose fate his own bore some resemblance), he was long believed to be alive, and fondly looked for by his adherents in India, and several impostors appeared to personate him.
Rajmahal has long fallen from its palmy state, and what remains of the town is ruinous, and thinly inhabited. Leaving this place, we continued our route, having the woody ranges of hills on our left, at various distances from the bank of the river.