From Dacca, where his stay was much longer than he had anticipated, he proceeded up the river. Furreedpoor, his next station, did not long detain him. Near Rajmahal he approached, but did not visit, the ruins of Gour, an ancient city, which almost rivalled Babylon or Nineveh in extent, and which fell to decay, because the Ganges, which once flowed under its walls, changed its bed, and took another direction, six or seven miles south of the city. However, on arriving next day at the town of Rajmahal, to make up in some measure for this loss, he undertook a short excursion to the ruined palace of Sultan Sujah, brother of Araungzêbe. “I was a little at a loss,” says he, “to find my way through the ruins and young jungle, when a man came up, and in Persian, with many low bows, offered his services. He led me into a sort of second court, a little lower on the hill, where I saw two European tombs, and then to three very beautiful arches of black slate, on pillars of the same, leading into a small but singularly elegant hall, opening immediately on the river, though a considerable height above it, through similar arches to those by which we entered. The roof was vaulted with stone, delicately carved, and the walls divided by Gothic tracery into panels, still retaining traces of gilding and Arabic inscriptions. At each end of this beautiful room was a Gothic arch, in like manner of slate, leading into two small square apartments, ornamented in the same way, and also opening on the river. The centre room might be thirty feet long, each of the others fifteen square. For their size I cannot conceive more delightful apartments. The view was very fine. The river, as if incensed at having been obliged to make a circuit round the barrier of the hills, and impeded here again by the rocks under the castle, sweeps round this corner with exceeding violence, roaring and foaming like a gigantic Dee. The range of hills runs to the left-hand, beautiful, blue, and woody.”
From thence he proceeded, as before, up the Ganges, observing whatever was remarkable, making a short stay at each of the European stations on his way, for the purpose of preaching or baptizing, and arrived on the 20th of August at Patna. At this city, which is extensive, and situated in a commanding position, he remained several days, for the purpose of preaching and administering confirmation. He then continued his voyage to Ghazeepoor, famous for its rose-gardens and salubrious air. “The rose-fields, which occupy many hundred acres in the neighbourhood, are described as, at the proper season, extremely beautiful. They are cultivated for distillation, and for making ‘attar.’ Rose-water is both good and cheap here. The price of a seer, or weight of two pounds (a large quart), of the best, being eight anas, or a shilling. The attar is obtained after the rose-water is made, by setting it out during the night and till sunrise in the morning, in large open vessels exposed to the air, and then skimming off the essential oil which floats at the top.” “To produce one rupee’s weight of attar, two hundred thousand well-grown roses are required.” This small quantity, when warranted genuine, for they begin to adulterate it on the spot, costs one hundred sicca rupees, or ten pounds sterling.
A short way farther up the stream, Heber quitted his pinnace, and providing himself with bearers, continued his journey to Benares by land. Of Benares I have already given a brief description in the Life of Bernier. Heber’s stay in it was short. He visited with attention its principal curiosities, and conversed on several points with some of its Brahminical professors, whose belief in Hindooism he regarded as very equivocal. He then continued his voyage up the river to Allahabad, where he dismissed his pinnace, and made the necessary preparations for performing the remainder of his journey by land. Archdeacon Corrie, who had accompanied him from Calcutta, and Mr. Lushington, whom he joined on the way, were now his travelling companions, and with their attendants helped to increase his motley caravan, which consisted of twenty-four camels, eight carts drawn by bullocks, twenty-four horse-servants, ten ponies, forty bearers, and coolies of different descriptions, twelve tent-pitchers, and a guard of twenty sepoys under a native officer. With this retinue, which in the eyes of a European would have had something of a princely air, Heber proceeded by the way of Cawnpoor to Lucknow, the capital of the kingdom of Oude, where he enjoyed the honour of breakfasting with the monarch of this ill-governed state, who, on this occasion at least, appeared desirous of imitating the manners of the English.
At Lucknow Heber separated from his companions; and, accompanied merely by his attendants, directed his course towards the wild districts at the foot of the Himalaya. On arriving at Barelly, not more than fifty miles distant from the nearest range, he vainly looked out for the snowy peaks of this “monarch of mountains;” but, instead, discovered nothing but a ridge of black clouds, and a gray autumnal haze through which no object was discernible. The features of the country now became wild and striking. Forests infested by malaria, tigers, and lions, and half-desolate plains, announced the termination of the fertile provinces of Hindostan, and the approach to a different region. Here “we had,” says Heber, “a first view of the range of the Himalaya,[4] indistinctly seen through the haze, but not so indistinctly as to conceal the general form of the mountains. The nearer hills are blue, and in outline and tints resemble pretty closely, at this distance, those which close in the vale of Clwyd. Above these rose what might, in the present unfavourable atmosphere, have been taken for clouds, had not their seat been so stationary, and their outline so harsh and pyramidical—the patriarchs of the continent, perhaps the surviving ruins of a former world, white and glistening as alabaster, and even at this distance, of probably one hundred and fifty miles, towering above the nearer and secondary range, as much as those last (though said to be seven thousand six hundred feet high) are above the plain in which we were standing. I felt intense delight and awe in looking on them, but the pleasure lasted not many minutes; the clouds closed in again, as on the fairy castle of St. John, and left us but the former gray cold horizon, girding in the green plain of Rohiland, and broken only by people and mango-trees.”
[4] The Himalaya mountains have been said, by some other travellers, to be visible, in clear weather, from Patna, a distance of two hundred miles. The fact appears to be by no means improbable. From the window of the library in which these pages are written, the snowy mountains of Switzerland and Savoy—Mont Blanc, the Great and Little St. Bernard, and the peaks of St. Corvin and St. Gothard—are almost constantly visible during the prevalence of the south-west wind. From the appearance of these mountains a tolerable idea may be formed of the aspect of the Himalaya. During summer thin vapours commonly obstruct the view, except in the early dawn; and if, as sometimes happens, the white peaks appear in the afternoon, when the sun’s rays are streaming upon them from the west, they are generally, by the unpractised observer, mistaken for clouds. But in the cool autumnal mornings just before the sun rises above the horizon, Mont Blanc, though one hundred and twenty-five miles distant, is painted with astonishing distinctness upon the sky, and towering above the sea of white vapour which overspreads the great plain of Burgundy and rises almost to the summit of the Jura, seems but a few leagues distant. A little before sunset it presents a totally different aspect. Instead of the dusky mass which we beheld in the morning, we discover the “monarch of mountains” clothed in dazzling white, rising far above every surrounding object; while the glittering pinnacles of the inferior mountains seem to stretch away interminably to the right and left, until their peaks are confounded and lost in the dimness of the horizon. The Mont St. Gothard, which is very distinctly visible, at least during clear weather, is distant one hundred and seventy miles from the point of observation. With respect to Mont Blanc, its whole aspect, when viewed through a good telescope, is so admirably defined, that every inequality in its surface is clearly discernible, so that an excellent sketch of it might be taken from my library. The dark chain of the Jura, which conceals its base, and stretches from Geneva almost to the Rhine, increases by contrast the magnificence of the view, which, for extent and grandeur, falls very little short, perhaps, of any landscape in Europe.
Next day, soon after sunrise, he saw distinctly, painted on a clear blue sky, the prodigiously lofty pinnacles of these mountains, the centre of earth,
Its altar, and its cradle, and its throne,
which, as he justly observes, “are really among the greatest earthly works of the Almighty Creator’s hands—the highest spots below the moon—and overtopping by many hundred feet the summits of Cotopaxi and Chimborazo.” To approach these mountains, however, from the south, the traveller has to traverse a belt of forest and jungle, where the air is impregnated with the most deadly qualities. “I asked Mr. Boulderson if it were true,” says Heber, “that the monkeys forsook these woods during the unwholesome months. He answered that not the monkeys only, but every thing which has the breath of life instinctively deserts them, from the beginning of April to October. The tigers go up to the hills, the antelopes and wild hogs make incursions into the cultivated plain; and those persons, such as dâkbearers, or military officers who are obliged to traverse the forests in the intervening months, agree that not so much as a bird can be heard or seen in the frightful solitude.” Yet the insalubrity of these districts is not of any ancient date. Thirty years ago, though fever and ague were common, the plains were populous and productive, and considerable progress was made in reclaiming the forest; but the devastation consequent upon the invasion of Meer Khan, in 1805, checked the course of population, which has never since been able to recover itself.
Through this deadly region Heber passed with all possible rapidity, though the majestic trees which bordered the road, the songs of the birds in their branches (for it was now November), and the luxuriant vegetation which on all sides covered the soil, conferred a kind of syren beauty upon the scene, which tempted the wayfarer to a fatal pause. At length, after a long, fatiguing march, they found themselves upon rising ground, at the entrance to a green valley, with woody mountains on either side, and a considerable river running through it, dashing over a rocky bottom, with great noise and violence. The scenery now put on features of surpassing beauty. Mountains, precipices, narrow romantic dells; with rivers which were sometimes seen, and sometimes only heard rolling at the bottom of them; trees inhabited by innumerable white monkeys and singing birds, and copses abounding in black and purple pheasants. When they had climbed up to a considerable height upon the lower range of the mountains, there burst suddenly upon their sight the most awfully magnificent spectacle which the earth furnishes for the contemplation of man. Language always fails to convey an adequate conception of the tumultuous delight experienced in such positions. The mind, wrought upon by history, by poetry, by a secret hungering after the sublime, instantaneously feels itself in the presence of objects which, by their prodigious magnitude and elevation, enhanced by an idea of their unapproachableness, seem for a moment to surpass the most ambitious aspirations of the imagination, and in reality carry our thoughts
Extra flammantia mænia mundi.