In I jumped; Marpeet cracked his whip to mettle up his ticca[[6]] tit—an animal deficient in flesh and blood, certainly, but exhibiting an amazing deal of bone. Away we went. The evening gun had just boomed; the myriad crows of the Fort cawed querulously responsive from the trees; the bugles sounded; the drums beat; the guards at the gates, European and native, were turned out; captains and lieutenants, flushed with tiffin or a nap, swords under their arms, sauntered along to join them. The firefly here and there twinkled in the trees, and the far-off yell of the jackall proclaimed the approach of night, when away we whirled through covered ways and over thundering drawbridges, past scarp, counter-scarp, and glacis, and in a few minutes found ourselves amidst the throng of carriages and equestrians on the Course, the mass of the Government-house, with its capacious dome and lion-crowned gates, rising in front, and the vast semicircle of Chowringhee, with its aggregation of snow-white structures, stretching away far to the right.
What a singular scene here presented itself to my admiring sight! What an admixture of nations, and their several modes and peculiarities—of English turn outs and Indian piebald imitations—with strange equipages, combining European finish with the native original! Carriages and equestrians, walking, trotting, or galloping, passing and repassing!
This is the Hyde Park of the East, where, though less of splendour than in its great prototype, there was far more variety to be seen. There came the Governor-General, the viceroy of British India, open barouche and four (all dignity and gracious bows); cocked hats and feathers flying; black body-guard before and behind, in a long trot; sabres flashing, and scabbards rattling. Near, by way of antithesis, might be seen a palankeen carriage “creepy crawley,” drawn by two enormous bullocks, with monstrous dewlaps, bearing some fat old Portuguese lady, black as Erebus or Nox, to take the air, driver working hard to rouse them to a transient hobble. There, four or five abreast, rode sundry dashing young officers, displaying themselves and their uniforms to the best advantage, “pride in their port, defiance in their eyes;” whilst near, in some open landau or barouche, the “cynosure of neighbouring eyes,” would appear the newly-arrived beauty, the belle of the season, her English roses contrasting with the reigning pallor around, wearing a look of conscious power, and exhibiting herself to the admiring gaze of the gossiping world. Happy creature! all is couleur de rose with you! No thoughts of the future disturb the self-satisfied emotions of thy exulting bosom! And who is he beside her—the handsome young aide-de-camp? With easy bend he leans gracefully towards the carriage, and checks his fiery Arab. Mark how he rattles, and says his agreeable things, with all the airs of a conscious “eligible,” whilst the gratified vanity of the woman sparkles in her eyes and glows in her animated countenance. Here comes an intruder, bound for a distant bazaar—jingle, jingle, jingle! What a contrast! a native ruth or bylie, bullocks in a long trot, a pretty black damsel,
With rings on her fingers,
And bells on her toes—
she of childhood’s song to a nicety—peeping from behind the blinds. “Ah! turn not away those sweet eyes!” Egad, she’s off—driver twisting the tails and goading the quarters of his cattle to “keep up the steam.” There whirl past in tilbury or tandem a brace of recently-arrived writers, regular Meltonians, doing the thing secundum artem, and determined to astonish the crowd. How knowingly, his person obliqued-quarter front, does the driver sit! With what gentlemanly abandon does the drivee loll back in the vehicle! These are high-spirited fellows, who drink their claret, and have never known a care, and “d——n every thing that is low!”
See, with andante movement now advances the ponderous chariot of the great Baboo Maha Raja Spooney Persaud Mullik, the great milch-cow of the lawyers, and who gives his lac at a time from the genuine impulses of a native benevolence; turbaned coachman; Baboo within, wrapped in cashmeres, fat, yellow, and bolt upright as the effigy on a tombstone.
Halloo, there! what’s this? A race—clear the way! There they come, hired for the evening, “two blind uns and a bolter;” heads down, ears viciously inclined. “Go it, my middies!” Look at the reefer in advance—all aback, toes in his horse’s nose, head on the crupper, tugging for bare life to make his craft steer or wear. I thought so—snap go the tiller-ropes—a man overboard—the blue-jacket rolls in the dust: he’s up again, hat rammed over his eyes—but the bolter’s off—catch him who can!
There goes, at a gee-up hobble, a shandry-dan, with two Armenians in it—highly respectable men, with queer velvet caps, and very episcopal-looking aprons—strange mixture of European and Asiatic, neither flesh nor fowl—Topee Wala or Puckree Bund.[[7]] They nod to two gentlemen passing in a gig, of the gimcrack order—gentlemen in white jackets and ditto hats; highly polished men, i.e. in the face, which seems, indeed, to have had the benefit of a bottle of Day and Martin’s real japan blacking—who are they? Valiant Lusitanians, illustrious descendants of Albuquerque and Vasco de Gama—Messrs. Joachim de Reberero and Gomez de Souza, writers in the office of the salt and opium department. Who is this in cords, top boots, and white jacket—a dapper, well-fed little man, on a tall English horse, to which he bears about the same relative proportions that Falstaffs bread did to his sherris sack?—Ay, who?
Come, tell it, and burn ye—