The “Doab,” between the Ravee and Chenab, is a little better cultivated, and more fertile, than that which we had passed. Its soil is sandy, and in its centre the wells are but twenty-five feet deep. Their temperature averaged about 70° of Fahrenheit. In the morning, vapour or clouds of smoke ascended from them, till the atmosphere was sufficiently heated to hide it. At this season the climate is cold and bleak, frequently rainy, and always cloudy. The wind generally blows from the north. Sugar. The sugar-cane thrives here; and they were now expressing its juice, which is extracted by placing two wooden rollers horizontally on the top of each other, and setting them in motion by a pair of oxen. They turn a wheel which acts on two lesser ones, placed vertically at right angles to it, and these communicate with the wooden rollers. While I examined one of these machines, the head man of the village explained it; and then made me a present of some “goor,” or coarse sugar, the first-fruits of the season. He was an ignorant Jut: his son accompanied him. When I enquired into the knowledge of the boy, and advised his being sent to school, he replied, that education was useless to a cultivator of the soil. The same opinion, I am sorry to say, prevails in higher quarters; for Runjeet and his son are equally unlettered, and they object to the education of the grandson, who is otherwise a promising boy.
A Seik chief.
At Ramnuggur we had a visit from a venerable Seik chief, of eighty-two, who had fought in the wars under the grandfather of Runjeet Sing. His beard was silvered by age; but he was a hale old man, and appeared in an entire suit of white clothes, which in this country mark the old school as distinctly as the queue and Spencer of England. The garrulity of years had overtaken him; yet he gave us a lively account of his early career, and the increasing power of the Seik nation. “It had been predicted,” he said, “in their Grinth, or Bible, that wherever there was a horse or a spear, there would be chiefs and soldiers in the land. Every day serves to verify the prediction,” continued he; “since the number of converts to the Seik creed increases, and now averages about 5000 yearly.” When political aggrandisement follows the religious supremacy of a sect, it requires little prediction or foresight to know that that sect will increase. With the Patan invasion the Hindoo became a Mahommedan; and with the Seik power both he and the Hindoo have become Seiks, or Sings. The genuine Sing, or Khalsa, knows no occupation but war and agriculture; and he more affects the one than the other. The follower of Baba Nanuk is a merchant. The Seiks are doubtless the most rising people in modern India. Our venerable acquaintance spoke of the degeneracy of the land; but the vigorous government and tone of the people do not countenance his opinions.
Seiks. Peculiarities of the tribe.
There is a curious subject for speculation in the appearance of the Seik people, and their general resemblance to each other. As a tribe they were unknown 400 years ago; and the features of the whole nation are now as distinct from those of their neighbours as the Indian and the Chinese. With an extreme regularity of physiognomy, and an elongation of the countenance, they may be readily distinguished from the other tribes. That any nation possessing peculiar customs should have a common manner and character, is easily understood; but that, in such a short period of time, some hundred thousand people should exhibit as strong a national likeness as is to be seen among the children of Israel, is, to say the least of it, remarkable.
Cross the Chenab.
We crossed the Chenab, or Acesines, by the usual ferry, which is about three miles from the village. It was three hundred yards wide, and had a depth of nine feet for two thirds of the channel. Its banks are low on either side, and speedily inundated in the hot and rainy seasons. We are informed that Alexander the Great had to move his camp precipitately from the Acesines, which Arrian describes to be a rapid river. During the rains it is so, but the current did not now exceed one mile and a half an hour; and it is passable by a ford. The temperature of this river was 53°, and lower than the three other rivers of the Punjab which we had already crossed—the Sutlege, Beas, and Ravee.
Diseases. Opinions regarding them.
We halted at a mosque on the right bank of the river, but our quarters must not be mistaken for a St. Sophia. These buildings consist of mud walls, over which a terrace roof is formed by wooden rafters, also covered with mud. The “faithful” are luxurious enough to have a fireplace inside, to heat the water used in their ablutions. Our violations of a place so holy was, in some degree, compensated by the liberal distribution of our medicines. Some noxious wind, as the people had it, had lately blown over this country, which, with the arrival of such a personage as a Firingee (European) physician, made every person sick. As in other countries, the ladies had the most numerous catalogue of complaints; and if the doctor did not actually cure, I believe he worked on their imaginations, which is of some consequence. The people are much afflicted with a disease called “Noozlu,” (literally defluxion,) which I thought meant cold. They describe it as a running at the nostrils, which wastes the brain and stamina of the body, and ends fatally. It is attributed to the salt used in the country, which is procured from the salt range. There is much eye disease in the Punjab, which may be caused by the nitrous particles on the banks of its different rivers. Ask a native for an explanation of it, or any other complaint, and he will tell you that it, and all other inflictions, are the punishment of offences committed by ourselves, or in the former state of our being. In the doctrine of metempsychosis, they have, at all events, found a future state of punishments, and, as optimists, I hope, rewards.