British Policy towards the Rajputs.
Jharāu.
The Mirage.—We had a magnificent mirage this morning: nor do I ever recollect observing this singularly grand phenomenon on a more extensive scale, or with greater variety of form. The morning was desperately cold; the thermometer, as I mounted my horse, a little after sunrise, stood at 32°, the freezing-point, with a sharp biting wind from the north-east. The ground was blanched with frost, and the water-skins, or bihishtis mashaks, were covered with ice at the mouth. The slender shrubs, especially the milky ak, were completely burnt up; and as the weather had been hitherto mild, the transition was severely felt, by things animate and inanimate [767].
It is only in the cold season that the mirage is visible; the sojourners of Maru call it the siya-kot, or ‘castles in the air.’[[11]] In the deep desert to the westward, the herdsmen and travellers through these regions style it chitram, ‘the picture’; while about the plains of the Chambal and Jumna they term it disasul, ‘the omen of the quarter.’ This optical deception has been noticed from the remotest times. The prophet Isaiah alludes to it when he says, “and the parched ground shall become a pool”;[[12]] which the critic has justly rendered, “and the shārābh[[13]] shall become real water.” Quintus Curtius, describing the mirage in the Sogdian desert, says that “for the space of four hundred furlongs not a drop of water is to be found, and the sun’s heat, being very vehement in summer, kindles such a fire in the sands, that everything is burnt up. There also arises such an exhalation, that the plains wear the appearance of a vast and deep sea”; which is an exact description of the chitram of the Indian desert. But the shārābh and chitram, the true mirage of Isaiah, differ from that illusion called the siya-kot; and though the traveller will hasten to it, in order to obtain a night’s lodging, I do not think he would expect to slake his thirst there.
When we witnessed this phenomenon at first, the eye was attracted by a lofty opaque wall of lurid smoke, which seemed to be bounded by, or to rise from, the very verge of the horizon. By slow degrees the dense mass became more transparent, and assumed a reflecting or refracting power: shrubs were magnified into trees; the dwarf khair appeared ten times larger than the gigantic amli of the forest. A ray of light suddenly broke the line of continuity of this yet smoky barrier; and, as if touched by the enchanter’s wand, castles, towers, and trees were seen in an aggregated cluster, partly obscured by magnificent foliage. Every accession of light produced a change in the chitram, which from the dense wall that it first exhibited had now faded into a thin transparent film, broken into a thousand masses, each mass being a huge lens; until at length the [768] too vivid power of the sun dissolved the vision: castles, towers, and foliage melted, like the enchantment of Prospero, into “thin air.”
I had long imagined that the nature of the soil had some effect in producing this illusory phenomenon; especially as the chitram of the desert is seen chiefly on those extensive plains productive of the sajji, or alkaline plant, whence by incineration the natives produce soda,[[14]] and whose base is now known to be metallic. But I have since observed it on every kind of soil. That these lands, covered with saline incrustations, tend to increase the effect of the illusion, may be concluded.[[15]] But the difference between the sarāb or chitram, and the siya-kot or disasul is, that the latter is never visible but in the cold season, when the gross vapours cannot rise; and that the rarefaction, which gives existence to the other, destroys this, whenever the sun has attained 20° of elevation. A high wind is alike adverse to the phenomenon, and it will mostly be observed that it covets shelter, and its general appearance is a long line which is sure to be sustained by some height, such as a grove or village, as if it required support. The first time I observed it was in the Jaipur country; none of the party had ever witnessed it in the British provinces. It appeared like an immense walled town with bastions, nor could we give credit to our guides, when they talked of the siya-kot, and assured us that the objects were merely “castles in the air.” I have since seen, though but once, this panoramic scene in motion, and nothing can be imagined more beautiful.
It was at Kotah, just as the sun rose, whilst walking on the terraced roof of the garden-house, my residence. As I looked towards the low range which bounds the sight to the south-east, the hills appeared in motion, sweeping with an undulating or rotatory movement along the horizon. Trees and buildings were magnified, and all seemed a kind of enchantment. Some minutes elapsed before I could account for this wonder; until I determined that it must be the masses of a floating mirage, which had attained its most attenuated form, and being carried by a gentle current of air past the tops and sides of the hills, while it was itself imperceptible, made them appear in motion.
But although this was novel and pleasing, it wanted the splendour of the scene of this morning, which I never saw equalled but once. This occurred at Hissar, where I went to visit a beloved friend—gone, alas! to a better world [769],—whose ardent and honourable mind urged me to the task I have undertaken. It was on the terrace of James Lumsdaine’s house, built amidst the ruins of the castle of Firoz, in the centre of one extended waste, where the lion was the sole inhabitant, that I saw the most perfect specimen of this phenomenon: it was really sublime. Let the reader fancy himself in the midst of a desert plain, with nothing to impede the wide scope of vision, his horizon bounded by a lofty black wall encompassing him on all sides. Let him watch the first sunbeam break upon this barrier, and at once, as by a touch of magic, shiver it into a thousand fantastic forms, leaving a splintered pinnacle in one place, a tower in another, an arch in a third; these in turn undergoing more than kaleidoscopic changes, until the “fairy fabric” vanishes. Here it was emphatically called Harchand Raja ki puri, or ‘the city of Raja Harchand,’ a celebrated prince of the brazen age of India.[[16]] The power of reflection shown by this phenomenon cannot be better described than by stating that it brought the very ancient Agroha,[[17]] which is thirteen miles distant, with its fort and bastions, close to my view.
The difference then between the mirage and the siya-kot is, that the former exhibits a horizontal, the latter a columnar or vertical stratification; and in the latter case, likewise, a contrast to the other, its maximum of translucency is the last stage of its existence. In this stage, it is only an eye accustomed to the phenomenon that can perceive it at all. I have passed over the plains of Meerut with a friend who had been thirty years in India, and he did not observe a siya-kot then before our eyes: in fact so complete was the illusion, that we only saw the town and fort considerably nearer. Monge gives a philosophical account of this phenomenon in Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt; and Dr. Clarke perfectly describes it in his journey to Rosetta, when “domes, turrets, and groves were seen reflected on the glowing surface of the plain, which appeared like a vast lake extending itself between the city and travellers.” It is on reviewing this account that a critic has corrected the erroneous translation of the Septuagint; and further dilated upon it in a review of Lichtenstein’s travels in Southern Africa,[[18]] who exactly describes our siya-kot, of the magnifying and reflecting powers of which he gives a [770] singular instance. Indeed, whoever notices, while at sea, the atmospheric phenomena of these southern latitudes, will be struck by the deformity of objects as they pass through this medium: what the sailors term a fog-bank is the first stage of our siya-kot. I observed it on my voyage home; but more especially in the passage out. About six o’clock on a dark evening, while we were dancing on the waste, I perceived a ship bearing down with full sail upon us so distinctly, that I gave the alarm, in expectation of a collision; so far as I recollect, the helm was instantly up, and in a second no ship was to be seen. The laugh was against me—I had seen the “flying Dutchman,”[[19]] according to the opinion of the experienced officer on deck; and I believed it was really a vision of the mind: but I now feel convinced it was either the reflection of our own ship in a passing cloud of this vapour, or a more distant object therein refracted. But enough of this subject: I will only add, whoever has a desire to see one of the grandest phenomena in nature, let him repair to the plains of Merta or Hissar, and watch before the sun rises the fairy palace of Harchand, infinitely grander and more imposing than a sunrise upon the alpine Helvetia, which alone may compete with the chitram of the desert.