An Armenian merchant who resided there told me a story one day which was curious. The King of Pegu was possessed of the most splendid ruby in the world, both as to size and colour. This was well known; it was the boast of the nation. When the Burmahs subdued the kingdom of Pegu, the old king with all his family were taken prisoners, vast treasure was also captured, but the great ruby was not to be found, notwithstanding the torture and beheading of thousands. With the usual barbarity of these countries, the old king, a miserable paralytic little man, was stripped naked and confined in an iron cage, which I saw when I was at Rangoon. In this confinement he lived for ten or twelve years, every festival day being brought out and exposed to the derision of the populace. At last he died, and his body was thrown out to be devoured by the dogs and birds of prey. One of the soldiers who assisted to drag the body out of the cage, turned it over with his foot, and perceived that his right hand grasped a hump of damma, (a sort of pitch,) which curiosity induced the Burmah to force out with the point of his spear. This had been observed before, but the Burmahs, who are very superstitions and carry about them all sorts of charms, imagined it to be a charm for his paralysis or palsy with which he was afflicted, and therefore had allowed him to retain it. But when the Burmah took it up, the weight of it convinced him that it was not all damma: he examined it, and found that it was the great ruby of the Pegu kingdom which had been lost, and which the old man had for so many years, in a state of nudity and incarceration, held in his left hand. I asked one of the Burmah chiefs whether this ruby now in the possession of the King of Ava was so fine as represented: his answer was in truly Eastern hyperbole—“Dip it in the Irrawaddy,” said he, (that is, an enormous river seven hundred miles long and in many parts several miles broad,) “and the whole water will turn to blood.”
I have said that the Burmahs are very superstitious: they have a great variety of charms which they wear about their persons, but there is one custom of theirs which is very singular. They polish rubies; that is, without cutting them in facettes, but merely the stone, whatever its primitive shape, is rubbed down on every side until it is perfectly smooth. They then make an incision in the flesh, generally the arm or leg, put in the ruby and allow the skin to heal over it, so that the stone remains there. Soldiers and sailors in search of plunder will find out any thing, and this practice of the Burmahs was soon discovered; and after the assault and carrying of a stockade, you would see the men passing their hands over the bodies, and immediately they felt a rising in the limb, out with their knives and cut in for the rubies. Indeed, the plunder was more considerable than might be imagined, for every Burmah carried all his wealth about his person.
Another singular custom arising from their superstition prevails among this people. The king has a corps denominated Invulnerables, whose ranks are filled up in this manner:— when a criminal is condemned to death for certain offences, such as robbery, he is permitted to challenge as an invulnerable. This is proved by his standing at a certain distance from several men who fire at him with ball. Should he not be wounded or killed, he is pronounced an invulnerable and enrolled in the corps. In every stockade we attacked, there were always one or two of these men, and they really appeared to believe in their own powers. They generally stood above the timbers of the stockade, dancing and capering as the boats advanced, and continued their extravagance amidst a shower of bullets, exposing their persons in a most undaunted manner. There was one fellow who, dressed in a short red jacket, and nothing else except the cloth round his loins, who was well known to our men; they called him Happy Jack, from the capers which he used to cut, and somehow or another it was his good fortune never to be hit, at least, not that we know of, for taking stockade after stockade, at every fresh attack there was Happy Jack to be seen capering and shouting as usual, and never ceasing to expose himself until the troops had landed and were about to scale the fortress. It was quite amusing to hear the men shout out with laughter, “By heavens, there’s Happy Jack again.” I hope he is alive at this moment; at all events, he deserves to be.
Chapter Twenty Four.
Spa.
Yes, now Spa is agreeable: we have no redoubte open with fools losing their money, no English passants looking after amusement, no valetudinarians drinking the poupon, no Spa boxes crowding every window: we are now as a Spa should be, a coterie of houses in a ravine, surrounded by the mountains of the Ardennes, crowding and shoving up together in mutual protection against the deep snow and the forest wolves. There is something new in this: most of the houses are shut up; the shop-windows are all bare; the snow is two feet deep in the streets; the mountains on every side are white; the icicles hang upon the leafless boughs, and the rivulets are enchained. All is one drear blank; and except the two-horse diligence which heaves slowly in sight three or four hours past its time, and the post, (which is now delivered at nine o’clock instead of noon); there is no such thing as an arrival: the boys slide upon their little sledges down the hills; the cattle are driven home; the church clock strikes; and unless we are enlivened by the crowd assembled round the countryman, who appears with the carcass of a wolf which he has been fortunate enough to kill, we are all quiet, monotony and peace: in fact, Spa, now that it is a desert, has become to me, at least agreeable.
They say, this hard winter promises plenty of wolves; if so, I recommend those who are fond of excitement come here. Indeed, it will be profitable, for if they are active huntsmen, they can pay their expenses. A dead horse costs little, and in Spa, as they give very little to the horses to eat in summer, and nothing at all in the winter, they die fast. You have only to drag the carcass to an outhouse at a little distance from the town, and with your rifle watch during the night. The wolves will come down to prey upon the carrion, and it is hard if you do not kill your couple during the night, and then you are rewarded by the commune. I do not know what the price is now, but when the King of Holland was in possession of Belgium it was one hundred francs for a male, and three hundred francs for a female wolf. Now a brace a night, four hundred francs, or sixteen pounds, is not a bad night’s earning: in Spa it would keep a half-pay officer for three months. There is a curious story here, proving the sagacity of a wolf which came down an hour before dusk into the town, and made off with a child of two years old in her mouth. The cry was raised, and the pursuit immediate. After following her track for many miles, she gained upon them, it became quite dark, and the people returned homewards, melancholy at the fate of the poor child. When they were about half way back, they heard the wail of an infant, and, guided by it, they arrived at a thick bush, where they found the child alive and unhurt. The wolf, finding that her pursuers gained upon her, had deposited the child there, intending to return and make a meal of it upon a more favourable opportunity.
We have had nothing to excite us within these last few days but the death and burial of an old curate. He died in all the odour of sanctity three days ago, and was buried yesterday. He was not loved or even liked, for he wanted that greatest of all gifts—charity. His situation was worth, with offerings, six thousand francs a year,—a large sum in this country: but he did not give to the poor; he exacted from them, and they religiously obeyed him, no one killing a pig or anything else without a present of part of it to the curate. When the old man was told that he could not live, the ruling passion still governed him. He sent for a person to dispose of for him the sundry pieces of pork which he had gathered as presents, then took the extreme unction, and died. His will is not known, but he is supposed to be very rich, and whether he leaves his wealth to some nephews, or to support a hospital here which is at present without funds, is a question of some interest. He was buried in great parade and procession, followed by hundreds holding candles. He was dressed in his best, and every one said that he never looked so clean or so well in his life. He was carried on an open brancard, with his canonical hat on his head, the snow fell fast and settled on his face and clothes, but he felt it not. The funeral was as cold as his charity, the thermometer being exactly 130 below the freezing point. Except the procession of the dead curate and of a dead wolf, we have had nothing to interest us for the last ten days.