Part 37 (2/2)

[* Moorlee Monowur, a very respectable agricultural capitalist, tells me, that all that his younger brother, Seetaram, told me, about the suttee, if strictly true, and can be proved by a reference to the poor woman's husband and sons, who still survive, and to the people of Bilwa and Lasoora.]

I asked the Amil, ”How he fed, clothed, and lodged his prisoners?” He said, ”We always take them with us in our marches, secured in stocks or fetters. We cannot leave them behind, because we have no gaols or other places to keep them in, and require all our troops to move with us. As to food and clothing, they are obliged to provide themselves, or get their families or friends to provide them, for Government will not let us charge anything for their subsistence and clothing in the accounts.”

”I understand that you and all other public servants who have charge of prisoners not only make them provide themselves with food and clothing, but make them pay for lamp-oil, whether they have a lamp burning at night or not?”--”When they require a lamp they must of course pay for it, sir; prisoners are always a source of much anxiety to us, for if we send them to Lucknow, they are almost sure to be let out soon, on occasions of thanksgiving, or on payment of gratuities, and enabled to punish all who have a.s.sisted us in the arrest; and with hosts of robbers around us, we are always in danger of an attempt to rescue them, which may cost us many lives.” ”If the gaol darogahs at Lucknow had not the power to sell his prisoners, sir,”

said Bukhtawar Sing, ”how should he be able to pay so much as he does for his place? He is obliged to pay five hundred rupees or more for his place, and is not sure of holding it a month after he has bought it, so many are the candidates for a place so profitable!” ”But he gets a share of the subsistence money, paid for the prisoners from the Treasury, does he not?”--”Yes, sir; of the four pice a-day paid for them by the King, he takes two, and sends them to beg through the city for what more they require.” ”If they get more than what he thinks they require from the public or their friends, he takes the surplus from them, I am told?”--”It is very true, sir, I believe.

Fellows, sir, who have no substantial friends, and cannot and will not beg, soon sink under this scanty supply of food.”

_February 27_, 1850--Sutrick, sixteen miles west, over a plain of muteear soil, tolerably well cultivated, and very well studded with trees of the finest kinds, single, in cl.u.s.ters and in groves. The mango-trees are in blossom, and promise well. The trees are said to bear only one season out of three, but some bear in one season, and others in another, so that the market is always supplied, though in some seasons more abundantly than in others. A cloudy sky and easterly wind, while the trees are in blossom, are said to be very injurious. A large landholder told me that they never took a tax upon any of the trees, not even the mhowa-trees, but the owner could not, except upon particular occasions, dispose of one to be cut down, without the permission of the zumeendar upon whose lands it stood. He might cut down one without his permission for building or repairing his house, or for fuel, on any occasion of marriage in his family, but not otherwise. A good many fine trees were, he said, destroyed by the local officers of Government. Having no tents, they collected the roofs of houses from a neighbouring village in hot or bad weather, cut away the branches to make rafters, and left the trunks as pillars to support the roofs, and under this treatment they soon died. He told me that cow-dung was cheaper for fuel than wood in this district, and consequently more commonly used in cooking; but that they gathered cow-dung for fuel only during four months in the year, November, December, January, and February; all that fell during the other eight months was religiously left, or stored for manure. In the pits in which they stored it, they often threw some of the inferior green crops of autumn, such as kodo and kotkee; but the manure most esteemed among them was _pigs' dung_--this, he said, was commonly stored and sold by those who kept pigs. The best muteear and doomut soils, which prevail in this district, are rented at two rupees a kutcha beegah, without reference to the crop which the cultivator might take from them; and they yielded, under good tillage, from ten to fifteen returns of the seed in wheat, barley, gram, &c. There are two and half or three kutcha beegahs in a pucka beegah; and a pucka beegah is from 2750 to 2760 square yards.

Sutrick is celebrated for the shrine of Shouk Salar, alias _Borda Baba_, the father of Syud Salar, whose shrine is at Bahraetch. This person, it is said, was the husband of the sister of Mahmood, of Ghuznee. He is supposed to have died a natural death at this place, while leading the armies of his sovereign against the Hindoos. His son had royal blood in his veins, and his shrine is held to be the most sacred of the two. A large fair is held here in March, on the same days that this fair takes place at Bahraetch. All our Hindoo camp followers paid as much reverence to the shrine as they pa.s.sed as the Mahommedans. It is a place without trade or manufactures; but a good many respectable Mahommedan families reside in it, and have built several small but neat mosques of burnt bricks. There is little thoroughfare in the wretched road that pa.s.ses through it.

The Hindoos wors.h.i.+p any sign of manifested might or power, though exerted against themselves, as they consider all might and power to be conferred by the Deity for some useful purpose, however much that purpose may be concealed from us. ”These invaders, however merciless and destructive to the Hindoo race, say they must have been sent on their mission by G.o.d for some great and useful purpose, or they could not possibly have succeeded as they did: had their proceedings not been sanctioned by Him, he could at any moment have destroyed them all, or have interposed to arrest their progress.” These, however, are the speculations of only the thinking portion. At the bottom of the respect shown to such Mahommedan shrines, by the ma.s.s of Hindoos, there is always a strong ground-work of _hope_ or _fear_: the soul or spirit of the savage old man, who had been so well supported on earth, must still, they think, have some influence at the Court of Heaven to secure them good or work them evil, and they invoke or propitiate him accordingly. They would do the same to the tomb of Alexander, Jungez Khan, Tymour, or Nadir Shah, without any perplexing inquiries as to their creed or liturgy.

_February 28_, 1850.--Chinahut, eleven miles west, over a plain intersected by several small streams, the largest of which is the Rete, near Sutrick. There is a good deal of kunkur-lime in the ground over which we have pa.s.sed today; but the tillage is good where the land is at all level, and the crops are fine. The plain is cut up here and there by some ravines, but they are small and shallow, and render but a small portion of the surface unfit for tillage. The banks of the small streams are, for the most part, cultivated up to the water's edge.

We pa.s.sed the Rete over a nice bridge, built by Rajah Bukhtawar Sing twenty-five years ago, at a cost of twenty-five thousand rupees, out of his own purse. He told me that one morning, in the rains, he came to the bank of this river, on his way to Lucknow from Jeytpoor, a town which we pa.s.sed yesterday, and found it so swollen that he was obliged to purchase some large earthen jars, and form a raft upon them to take over himself and followers. While preparing his raft, which took a whole day, he heard that from five to ten persons were drowned, in attempting to cross this little river, every year, and that people were often detained upon the bank for four or five days together. He resolved to save people from all this evil; and as soon as he got home set about building this bridge, and got it ready before the next rains. It is a substantial work, with three good arches. About two miles on this side of the bridge he pointed out to me the single tree, near a mango-grove, where some eighteen or twenty years ago he overtook a large balloon, which the King, Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, had got made in the Dilkosha Park at Lucknow. It was made, he tells me, by a tall and slender young English gentleman, who visited Lucknow, with his uncle, for the special purpose of constructing and ascending in this machine. ”When it was all ready, sir, the young man got into a small boat that was suspended under it, taking with him a gun and some artificial fish. We asked him what he intended to do with a gun in the clouds; and he told us, that in the sky he was in danger of meeting large birds that might hurt the balloon, and the gun was necessary to frighten them off. As the balloon began to ascend the old gentleman's eyes filled with tears, and I asked him why. He told me, that this young man's father had fallen into the sea, and been drowned; and he was always afraid, when the son went up, that he might never see him alive again.

”The King was sitting at the window in the upper story of the Dilkosha house, with some English gentlemen, when the balloon pa.s.sed up close by, and the gentleman took off his hat and bowed gracefully as he pa.s.sed, at which the King seemed much pleased. I commanded a regiment of Dragoons, and the King told me to take a party of my boldest and best-mounted men and follow the balloon. I selected seventeen, and we were all ready in our saddles. The balloon went straight up, and we lost sight of the man and the boat in which he sat. The machine, though it was sixty feet long, including boat and all, and twelve feet wide, seemed at last to be no larger than a small water-jug. Below we had no wind, but we soon saw the balloon driven by an upper current to the eastward, along the Fyzabad road.

We followed as fast as the horses could carry us, crossed the Goomtee river over the old stone bridge, and pa.s.sed many travellers on the road staring at the extraordinary machine, for they had heard nothing about it, and we had no time to tell them. When we had gone about seventeen miles, the balloon began to descend. It was in the month of March, and the weather was hot, and I had lost three horses before it came to the ground. The young man then began to let go his fish, and they came fluttering down, while the oil-cloths about the balloon made a noise like the growling of a wild beast. Seeing the enormous machine going at this rate, followed by us at full speed, the people along the road, who are always numerous in the morning, became so panic-struck that a great many fell down senseless upon their faces, and some of them could not be got to rise for some hours afterwards.

”We were not far from it when it approached the ground, and swept along on the border of this grove, on our left. Fortunately for the young man, it did not strike any trees. He was dressed all in black, and a very tall, handsome young man he was. As soon as he found himself near enough to the ground, he jumped out, holding one rope in his hand, and tried to stop the balloon, calling out to the people on the road, as loud as he could, _puckaro, puckaro!_--seize, seize! We were then within two hundred yards of it, and at full speed; and, instead of helping the young man, the people on the road, thinking the order was to seize them, fell down flat on their faces, unable to look upon the balloon, or utter a word. They all thought that it was some terrible demon from above come to seize and devour them. When we had headed it a little, we all sprang from our saddles, joined the young man at the ropes, and lashed them round anything we could find, as we were being dragged along. The young man took out his penknife, and gave the balloon a gash in the side, to let out the _smoke_ that inflated it, and it collapsed and stopped. The first thing, sir, that the young man did was to call for fire, take a cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and begin to smoke, while we went to the a.s.sistance of the panic-struck travellers, many of whom were still lying senseless on the ground. We got water, and threw it in their faces; and when they were able to sit up, we mounted the young man upon one of our horses, and took him back slowly to Lucknow. He told me that it was so very cold above, that it gave him a severe headache, and that he found a cigar a good thing to remove it. The King was very glad when we brought him back, and he gave him several thousand rupees over and above the cost of making the balloon, and providing him and his uncle during their stay. They soon after left Lucknow for Lah.o.r.e, and what became of them I know not.”

Pa.s.sing a Mahommedan village, I asked some of the landholders, who walked along by the side of my elephant, to talk of their grievances, whether they ever used pigs' dung for manure. They seemed very much surprised and shocked, and asked how I could suppose that Mahommedans could use such a thing. ”Come,” said Bukhtawar Sing, ”do not attempt to deceive the Resident. He has been all over India, and knows very well that Mahommedans do not keep or eat pigs; but he knows, also, that there is no good cultivator in Oude who does not use the dung of pigs for manure; and you know that there is no other manure, save'

pigeons' dung, that is so good.” ”We often purchase _manure_ from those who prepare it,” said the landholders, ”and do not ask questions about what it may be composed of; but the greater part of the manure we use is the cow-dung which falls in the season of the rains, and is stored exclusively for that purpose. In the dry months, sir, the dung of cows, bullocks, buffaloes, &c., is gathered, formed into cakes, and stacked for fuel; but in the rains it is all thrown into pits and stored for manure.”

Chinahut is the point from which we set out on the 2nd of December, and here I was met by the prime minister, Nawab Allee Nakee Khan, and the chancellor of the exchequer, Maharajah Balkrishun, to whom I explained my views as to the measures which ought to be adopted to save the peaceful and industrious portion of his Majesty's subjects from the evils which now so grievously oppress them.

Here closes my pilgrimage of three months in Oude; and I can safely say that I have learnt more of the state of the country, and the condition and requirements of the people, than I could possibly have learnt in a long life pa.s.sed exclusively at the capital of Lucknow.

Any general remarks that I may have to make on what I have seen and heard during the pilgrimage I must defer to a future period.

At four in the afternoon, I left Chinahut, and returned to Lucknow.

At the old race-stand, about three miles from the Residency, I was met by the heir-apparent, and drove with him, in his carriage, to the Furra Buksh Palace, where we alighted for a few minutes, to go through the usual tedious ceremonies of an Oriental Court. On the way we were met by Mr. Hamilton, the chaplain, and his lady. Dr. and Mrs.

Bell, and Captain Bird, the First a.s.sistant, and his brother and guest. After the ceremony, I took leave of the Prince, and reached the Resident at six o'clock. My wife and children had left me at Peernuggur, to return, for medical advice, to the Residency, where I had the happiness to find them well, and glad to see me. Having broken my left thigh hone, near the hip joint, in a fall from my horse, in April, 1849, I was unable to mount a horse during the tour, and went in a tonjohn the first half of the stage, and on an elephant the last half, that I might see as much as possible of the country over which we were pa.s.sing. The pace of a good elephant is about that of a good walker, and I had generally some of the landholders and cultivators riding or walking by my side to talk with.

END OF THE TOUR.

PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE

RELATING TO THE ANNEXATION OF THE KINGDOM OF OUDE TO BRITISH INDIA.

Camp, Nawabgunge, 5th December, 1849.

My Dear Bird,

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