With this view, having remained some time at Shiraz, admiring but not enjoying the pure stream of the Rocnabad, the bowers of Mesellay, and the bright atmosphere which shed glory on all around, he proceeded to Mineb, a small town on the river Ibrahim, a little to the south of Gombroon and Ormus, on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Maani, whose desire to become a mother had been an unceasing source of unhappiness to her ever since her marriage, being now pregnant, nothing could have been more ill-judged in her husband than to approach those pestilential coasts; especially at such a season of the year. He quickly discovered his error, but it was too late. The fever which rages with unremitting violence throughout all that part of the country during six months in the year had now seized not only upon Maani, but on himself likewise, and upon every other member of his family. Instant flight might, perhaps, have rescued them from danger, as it afterward did Chardin, but a fatal lethargy seems to have seized upon the mind of Pietro. He trembled at the destiny which menaced him, he saw death, as it were, entering his house, and approach gradually the individual whom he cherished beyond all others; time was allowed him by Providence for escape, yet he stood still, as if spellbound, and suffered the victim to be seized without a struggle. His wife, whose condition I have alluded to above, affected at once by the fever, and apprehensive of its consequences, was terrified into premature labour, and a son dead-born considerably before its time put the finishing stroke, as it were, to the affliction of her mind. Her fever increased in violence—medical aid was vain—death triumphed—and Maani sunk into the grave at the age of twenty-three.
A total change now came over the mind of Della Valle, which not only affected the actions of his life, but communicated itself to his writings, depriving them of that dashing quixotism which up to this point constitutes their greatest charm. A cloud, black as Erebus, descended upon his soul, and nine months elapsed before he could again command sufficient spirits or energy to announce the melancholy event to his friend Schipano. He, however, resolved that the body of his beloved wife should not be consigned to the earth in Persia, where he should never more come to visit or shed a tear over her grave. He therefore contrived to have it embalmed, and then, enclosing it in a coffin adapted to the purpose, placed it in a travelling trunk, in order that, wherever his good or bad fortune should conduct him, the dear remains of his Maani might accompany him to the grave. Certain circumstances attending this transaction strongly serve to illustrate the character of Della Valle, and while they tell in favour of his affection, and paint the melancholy condition to which his bereavement had reduced him, likewise throw some light upon the manners and state of the country. Dead bodies being regarded as unclean by the Mohammedans, as they were in old Greece and Rome, and most other nations of antiquity, no persons could be found to undertake the task of embalming but a few old women, whom the auri sacra fames reconciled to the pollution. These, wrapping thick bandages over their mouths and nostrils, to prevent the powerful odour of the gum from penetrating into their lungs and brain, after having disembowelled the corpse, filled its cavities with camphor, and with the same ingredient, which was of the most pungent and desiccating nature, rubbed all its limbs and surface until the perfume had penetrated to the very bones. Pietro, at all times superstitious, was now rendered doubly so by sorrow. Having somewhere heard or read that the bodies of men will be reanimated at the general resurrection, wherever their heads happen to be deposited, while, according to another theory, it was the resting-place of the heart which was to determine the point, and being desirous, according to either view of the matter, that Maani and himself should rise on that awful day together, he gave orders that the heart of his beloved should be carefully embalmed with the rest of the body. It never once occurred to him that the pollinctores (or undertakers) might neglect his commands, and therefore he omitted to overlook this part of the operation; indeed his feelings would not allow him to be present, and while it was going on he sat retired, hushing the tempest of his soul in the best manner he could. While he was in this state of agony, he observed the embalmers approaching him with something in their hands, and on casting his eyes upon it he beheld the heart of Maani in a saucer! An unspeakable horror shot through his whole frame as he gazed upon the heart which, but a few days before, had bounded with delight and joy to meet his own; and he turned away his head with a shudder.
When the operation was completed, the mummy was laid out upon a board, and placed under a tent in the garden, in order to be still further desiccated by the action of the air. Here it remained seven days and nights, and the walls being low, it was necessary to keep a strict and perpetual watch over it, lest the hyenas should enter and devour it. Worn down as he was by fever, by watching, and by sorrow, Pietro would intrust this sacred duty to no vulgar guardian during the night, but, with his loaded musket in his hand, paced to and fro before the tent through the darkness, while the howls of the hyenas, bursting forth suddenly quite near him, as it were, frequently startled his ear and increased his vigilance. By day he took a few hours’ repose, while his domestics kept watch.
When this melancholy task had been duly performed, he departed, in sickness and dejection, for the city of Lâr, where the air being somewhat cooler and more pure, he entertained some hopes of a recovery. Not many days after his arrival, a Syrian whom he had known at Ispahan brought him news from Bagdad which were any thing but calculated to cheer or console his mind. He learned that another sister of Maani had died on the road in returning from Persia; that the father, stricken to the soul by this new calamity, had likewise died a few days after reaching home; and that the widow, thus bereaved of the better part of her family, and feeling the decrepitude of old age coming apace, was inconsolable. Our traveller was thunderstruck. Death seemed to have put his mark on all those whom he loved. Persia now became hateful to him. Its very atmosphere appeared to teem with misfortunes as with clouds. Nothing, therefore, seemed left him but to quit it with all possible celerity.
Pietro’s desire to return to Italy was now abated, and travelling more desirable than home; motion, the presence of strange objects, the surmounting of difficulties and dangers, being better adapted than ease and leisure for the dissipating of sharp grief. For this reason he returned to the shore of the Persian Gulf, and embarked at Gombroon on board of an English ship for India, taking along with him the body of his wife, and a little orphan Georgian girl whom he and Maani had adopted at Ispahan. As even a father cannot remove his daughter, or a husband his wife, from the shah’s dominions without an especial permission, which might not be granted without considerable delay, Pietro determined to elude the laws, and disguising the Georgian in the dress of a boy, contrived to get her on board among the ship’s crew in the dusk of the evening, on the 19th of January, 1623.
Traversing the Indian Ocean with favourable winds, he arrived on the 10th of February at Surat, where he was hospitably entertained by the English and Dutch residents. He found Guzerat a pleasant country, consisting, as far as his experience extended, of rich, green plains, well watered, and thickly interspersed with trees. From Surat he proceeded to Cambay, a large city situated upon the extremity of a fine plain at the bottom of the gulf of the same name. Here he adopted the dress, and as far as possible the manners of the Hindoos, and then, striking off a little from the coast, visited Ahmedabad, travelling thither with a small cafila or caravan, the roads being considered dangerous for solitary individuals. At a small village on the road he observed an immense number of beautiful yellow squirrels, with fine large tails, leaping from tree to tree; and a little farther on met with a great number of beggars armed with bows and arrows, who demanded charity with sound of trumpet. His observations in this country, though sufficiently curious occasionally, were the fruit of a too hasty survey, which could not enable him to pierce deeply below the exterior crust of manners. Indeed, he seems rather to have amused himself with strange sights, than sought to philosophize upon the circumstances of humanity. In a temple of Mahades in this city, where numerous Yoghees, the Gymnosophists of antiquity, were standing like so many statues behind the sacred lamps, he observed an image of the god entirely of crystal. On the banks of the Sabermati, which ran close beneath the walls of the city, numerous Yoghees, as naked as at the moment of their birth, were seated, with matted hair, and wild looks, and powdered all over with the ashes of the dead bodies which they had aided in burning.
Returning to Cambay, he embarked in a Portuguese ship for Goa, a city chiefly remarkable for the number of monks that flocked thither, and for the atrocities which they there perpetrated in the name of the Church of Rome. Della Valle soon found that there was more security and pleasure in living among pagans “suckled in a creed outworn,” or even among heretics, than in this Portuguese city, where all strangers were regarded with horror, and met with nothing but baseness and treachery. Leaving this den of monks and traitors, he proceeded southward along the coast, and in a few days arrived at Onore, where he went to pay a visit to a native of distinction, whom they found upon the shore, seated beneath the shade of some fine trees, flanked and overshadowed, as it were, by a range of small hills. Being in the company of a Portuguese ambassador from Goa to a rajah of the Sadasiva race, who then held his court at Ikery, he regarded the opportunity of observing something of the interior of the peninsula as too favourable to be rejected, and obtained permission to form a part of the ambassador’s suite. They set out from Onore in boats, but the current of the river they were ascending was so rapid and powerful, that with the aid of both sails and oars they were unable to push on that day beyond Garsopa, formerly a large and flourishing city, but now inconsiderable and neglected. Here the scenery, a point which seldom commanded much of Della Valle’s attention, however picturesque or beautiful it might be, was of so exquisite a character, so rich, so glowing, so variable, so full of contrasts, that indifferent as he was on that head, his imagination was kindled, and he confessed, that turn which way soever he might, the face of nature was marvellously delightful. A succession of hills of all forms, and of every shade of verdure, between which valleys, now deep and umbrageous, now presenting broad, green, sunny slopes to the eye, branched about in every direction; lofty forests of incomparable beauty, among which the most magnificent fruit-trees, such as the Indian walnut, the fawfel, and the amba, were interspersed, small winding streams, now glancing and quivering and rippling in the sun, and now plunging into the deep shades of the woods; while vast flights of gay tropical birds were perched upon the branches, or skimming over the waters; all these combined certainly formed a glorious picture, and justified the admiration of Pietro when he exclaimed that nothing to equal it had ever met his eye. On entering the Ghauts he perceived in them some resemblance to the Apennines, though they were more beautiful; and to enjoy so splendid a prospect he travelled part of the way on foot. The Western Ghauts, which divide the vast plateau of Mysore from Malabar, Canasen, and the other maritime provinces of the Deccan, are in most parts covered with forests of prodigious grandeur, and in one of these Pietro and his party were overtaken by the night. Though “overhead the moon hung imminent, and shed her silver light,” not a ray could descend to them through the impenetrable canopy of the wood, so that they were compelled to kindle torches, notwithstanding which they failed to find their way, and contented themselves with kindling a fire and passing the night under a tree.
Ikery, the bourn beyond which they were not to proceed towards the interior, was then an extensive but thinly-peopled city, though according to the Hindoos it once contained a hundred thousand inhabitants. Around it extended three lines of fortifications, of which the exterior was a row of bamboos, thickly planted, and of enormous height, whose lifted heads, with the beautiful flowering parasites which crept round their stems to the summit, yielded a grateful shade. Here he beheld a suttee, visited various temples, and saw the celebrated dancing girls of Hindostan perform their graceful but voluptuous postures. He examined likewise the ceremonial of the rajah’s court, and instituted numerous inquiries into the religion and manners of the country, upon all which points he obtained information curious enough for that age, but now, from the more extensive and exact researches of later travellers, of little value. Returning to the seacoast, he proceeded southward as far as Calicut, the extreme point of his travels. Here he faced about, as it were, turned his eyes towards home, and began to experience a desire to be at rest. Still, at Cananou, at Salsette, and the other parts of India at which he touched on his return, he continued assiduously to observe and describe, though rather from habit than any delight which it afforded him.
On the 15th of November, 1624, he embarked at Goa in a ship bound for Muskat, from whence he proceeded up the Persian Gulf to Bassorah. Here he hired mules and camels, and provided all things necessary for crossing the desert; and on the 21st of May, 1625, departed, being accompanied by an Italian friar, Marian, the Georgian girl, and the corpse of Maani. During this journey he observed the sand in many places strewed with seashells, bright and glittering as mother-of-pearl, and in others with bitumen. Occasionally their road lay over extensive marshes, covered thickly with reeds or brushwood, or white with salt; but at this season of the year every thing was so dry that a spark falling from the pipe of a muleteer upon the parched grass nearly produced a conflagration in the desert. When they had advanced many days’ journey into the waste, and beheld on all sides nothing but sand and sky, a troop of Arab robbers, who came scouring along the desert upon their fleet barbs, attacked and rifled their little caravan; and Della Valle saw himself about to be deprived of his wife’s body, after having preserved it so long, and conveyed it safely over so many seas and mountains. In this fear he addressed himself to the banditti, describing the contents of the chest, and the motives which urged him so vehemently to desire its preservation. The Arabs were touched with compassion. The sight of the coffin, enforcing the effect of his eloquence, interested their hearts; so that not only did they respect the dead, and praise the affectionate and pious motives of the traveller, but also narrowed their demands, for they pretended to exact dues, not to rob, and allowed the caravan to proceed with the greater part of its wealth.
On arriving at the port of Alexandretta another difficulty arose. The Turks would never have allowed a corpse to pass through the custom-house, nor would the sailors of the ship in which he desired to embark for Cyprus on any account have suffered it to come on board. To overreach both parties, Pietro had the body enveloped in bales of spun cotton, upon which he paid the regular duty, and thus one further step was gained. After visiting Cyprus, Malta, and Sicily, where he remained some short time, he set sail for Naples. Here he found his old friend Schipano still living, and after describing to him the various scenes and dangers through which he had passed, moved forward towards Rome, where he arrived on the 28th of March, 1626, after an absence of more than twelve years.