Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 by Various

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Gopal was not the only amiable character with whom the colonel became
acquainted at Calpee, as he sought and obtained an interview with a famous
Thug approver, who had retired from the active exercise of his profession,
and was travelling the country in company with a party of police,
denouncing his former associates to justice. We cannot help suspecting,
both from the traits recorded of him, and from the vicinity of Calpee to
his former residence at Jalone, that this personage was no other than the
celebrated Ameer Ali, whose adventures formed the ground of Captain
Meadows Taylor's well-known "Confessions of a Thug;" and as a pendant to
the already published descriptions of him, we here quote the impression he
made upon the colonel. "I expected to see a great man, but at the first
glance I saw that I was in the presence of a master. The Thug was tall,
active, and slenderly formed; his head was nearly oval; his eye most
strongly resembled that of a cobra di capello; its dart was perfectly wild
and maniacal, restless, brilliant, metallic, and concentrated." The
colonel had a narrow escape from irretrievably affronting this eminent
professor of murder, by unguardedly enquiring whether he was in any way
cognizant of a trifling robbery by which the colonel himself had been a
sufferer. "No, sir!" he exclaimed with a look which might have frozen a
less innocent querist; "murder, not robbery, is my profession ... and none
but the merest novices would descend so low as to rob a tent or a
dwelling-house." The colonel, however, expresses a shrewd suspicion, from
circumstances which had come to his knowledge, that his distinguished
visitor's _esprit de corps_ led him to deviate from truth in this
particular--a belief in which Captain Taylor's pages fully bear him out.

The colonel's movements, after quitting Calpee and its attractive circles,
appear to have been somewhat desultory. We find him, successively, at
Murgaon or Murgong, Julalpore, Keitah, &c., without being told what
decided his route; but from some subsequent remarks, it appears probable
that he was engaged on engineering service by order of Government. Between
Julalpore and Keitah he fell in with a gang of _nutts_[9] or gipsies,
whom the beauty of their women (a point to which the colonel is always
alive) did not prevent him from suspecting of an intention to practise
_thuggee_ on his own portly person--a belief in which he was confirmed by
hearing them speak _in another tongue_ among themselves--no doubt the
_Ramasee_, or cant language of the Thugs, subsequently made known to the
world at large by the investigations of Major Sleeman. At Goraree he
purchased some small cups, carved from the variegated serpentine of the
rock on which the town is built; but, on proposing to employ the artist in
making some larger vases, "he told me that he was a very poor man, and his
efforts had never been directed to larger patterns; meaning to infer that
it was impossible he could either try or succeed!" Such is Hindoo nature!

[9] The Indian gipsies are several times mentioned in the journal of
Bishop Heber, who says they are called Kunjas in Bengal. Colonel
Davidson also mentions a race in Bundelcund called Kunjurs who
were in the habit, as he was informed by the Bramins, of
"catching lizards, scorpions, snakes, and foxes," which, if it is
meant that they use them for food, is analogous to the omnivorous
propensities of the gipsies.

Churkaree, the capital of Ruttun Sing Buhadoor, one of the principal of
the numerous rajahs among whom Bundelcund is divided, is described as
"prettily situated on the side of the hill, over a lake covered with the
white lotus flower, and having a very fine appearance from a distance, as
most of the houses have their upper stories whitewashed, and are seen
peeping through the dark-green leafy trees of the country, but the town,
which contains perhaps 15,000 souls, of whom 1000 may be Mussulmen, is
very straggling, irregular, and dirty." The male population were all
fiercely mustached, and loaded with arms; but their repulsive exterior was
more than compensated by the charms of the other sex, all of whom wore
immense hollow ankle bangles of zinc, filled with bits of gravel, which
tinkled as they walked. "I have never seen so many well-formed and
handsome women together as I did at the wells outside the town, drawing
water _a la Rebecca_. Some of their faces were strikingly intelligent, and
their figures eminently graceful. The population is almost purely Hindoo;
and I think the Hindoo females are more delicate in their forms than the
Mussulmanees." The Rajah was, however, absent on a sporting excursion, and
the darogah refused to provide the colonel with lodgings, alleging his
master's orders that no Feringhis should be allowed in the town; and it
was not till after a long altercation, of which the colonel gives himself
greatly the best, that he succeeded in finding quarters in the house of a
_bunneea_ or grocer. But the next day's march (for Bundelcund is almost as
thickly set with sovereign princes as Saxony itself) carried him out of
the realm of this inhospitable potentate into the territories of the Rajah
of Jalone, the once noted patron and protector of Thuggee, by whose agent
he was most politely received at Mahoba, a once splendid but now ruined
city, celebrated for its artificial lakes, which in long-past times were
formed by a famous Rajpoot prince named Purmal, by damming up the narrow
gorges of the hills. "Never had I seen, in the plains of India, a prospect
more enchanting! Conceive a beautiful sheet of calm, clear, silvery water,
of several miles in circumference, occasionally agitated by the splashing
leaps of large fishes, or the gradual alighting of noble swan-like aquatic
birds: its margin broken as if by the most skilful artist; now running
into the centre, and ending in most romantic low rocky hills, covered with
trees and embellished with black, antique Jain temples, deserted probably
for hundreds of years, and at present the retreat of the elegant peafowl;
in other places embanked with huge blocks of cut granite, embrowned by the
shade of magnificent trees, under which small bright Hindoo temples,
carefully whitewashed, might be seen in the shade; or bounded by abrupt
rocky promontories, surmounted by many-pillared temples in ruins, hanging
in the sky. A fine rich sunset gave an exquisite richness and classic
magnificence to the scene. Many little boys with rod and line were
ensnaring the sweet little _singhee_, or the golden _rohoo_ or
carp--bringing back to my heart the days, when, stealing from school, I
was wont to sit on the rocks of the Dee, at Craglug, near Aberdeen,
watching the motion of a float that was not under water once in the
twenty-four hours."

The colonel's laudable habit of associating freely, whenever opportunity
occurred, with the natives, gave him considerable insight into the state
of the country, where the caprices of the native princes were not then
much interfered with, and which consequently, as he says, "was pretty much
in the situation of the Emerald Isle;" and verily if the tale told him by
the Hindoo _gosain_ or priest at Jourahoo, of the murder of his
predecessor in the temple, and the impunity of the robbers, were correctly
related, the Bundelas have not much to learn in the arts of bloodshed and
depredation. "This village being a sort of corner to the territories of
several Rajahs, robberies, murders, and all other diversions, are of daily
occurrence; and when enquiries are made; each territory throws the blame
on its neighbour." The maxim of government most current in Bundelcund,
both with rulers and ruled, seems indeed to have been--

"The good old rule, the simple plan,
That those should take who have the power,
And those should keep who can;"

for while this strange confusion of _meum_ and _tuum_ prevailed among the
peasantry, the country was ruined by the oppressive and irregular
exactions of the rajahs, both zemindars and cultivators flying from their
habitations to escape the levying of the rents, which were often demanded
more than once by different collectors. At Chundla, the colonel was lodged
in the house of an opulent zemindar, who had absconded for the reason just
given; "and one of the thanna servants told me, that, by those means,
Bundelcund was depopulated"--a statement corroborated by the numerous
ruined brick houses remaining in the towns among the miserable hovels of
the present day. The rajahs of Bundelcund are, almost without exception,
of Rajpoot lineage, and thus of a different race from their Bundela
subjects; but the condition of the country is much the same wherever it is
left under the sway of the Hindoo princes, who are exempt even from the
partial restraint which the Koran imposes on the despotism of Mahommedan
rulers. The only effectual cure for the evils reigning in Bundelcund will
be its formal incorporation with the dominions of the Company--a
consummation which, from the refractory spirit shown in the province after
our losses in Affghanistan, is probably not far distant.

The remainder of the colonel's notes on Bundelcund relate principally to
his visits to the ancient hill-fortresses of Ajeegur and Kalingur, both
formerly occupied in force by the British, but now--with the exception of
a havildar's (sergeant's) party of sepoys posted at the former, and a
single company at the latter--garrisoned solely by the _lungoors_, or
large black monkeys, whom the colonel found holding solemn assembly in the
Jain temples and the hall of audience, built by the famous Rajah Purmal at
Ajeegur. While exploring his way along the ruined and overgrown ramparts,
he had a narrow escape from the fangs of a large venomous serpent, ("the
_Katula Rekula Poda_, No. 7 of Russell,") on which he was on the point of
treading, and which, in commendable gratitude for its forbearance; he
allowed to glide off unharmed by his fowling-piece; "but he was the first
reptile that ever escaped without the chance of losing his life at my
hands." On the road to Kalingur he had an interview with a petitioner, who
offered him 400 rupees in cash, or a large diamond, for his interest in a
certain case then pending before the judge at Bandah; "but I explained to
my client that I was not in that line of business, and as I saw he had no
intention of insulting me, we parted friends." Kalingur, which was taken
by the British after a long siege in 1812, stands on a rock towering
"upwards of 850 feet above the plain below, and probably about 3000 feet
above the level of the sea;" but its strength as a fortress is as nothing
in comparison to its sanctity, which entitles every one, who resides there
only as long as it takes to milk a cow, to especial beatitude--the object
of veneration being a _lingam_ of black stone enshrined in a temple, the
guardianship of which is jointly vested in five resident families of
Bramins. "At this time," says the colonel, "the place is not worth keeping,
the country being so thoroughly impoverished and desolate;" and he
accordingly, after viewing the marvels of the locality, pursued his way to
Banda, and thence _laid a dak_ (or travelled by palanquin with relays of
bearers) to Calpee, "there to sit from nine to four, writing filthy
accounts of bricks and mortar, square feet, cubic feet, and running feet,
rupees, annas, and pie; squabbling with wrinkled unromantic villains,
whose cool-tempered and overwhelming patience amply deserve their unlawful
gains--I mean as labourers in the vineyard of villany."

"A sporting excursion in Oude," in the spring of 1836, comes next in order
of time; and in regular order we accordingly take it, though it has
pleased either Mr Colburn or the colonel to place it after the voyage down
the Ganges. The colonel left Lucknow, March 2; and three days later the
whole party rendezvoused at Khyrabad, consisting of "Mrs, Miss, and
Brigadier Churchill, Colonel Arnold, Major Cureton, Lieut. Waugh, Dr Ross
of her Majesty's 16th Lancers, and the writer of these amiable records;"
to whom was soon after added, in the capacity of guide and hanger-on, "Sam
Lall, by birth a Chuttree or Rajpoot, by profession a zemindar, and by
inclination a sycophant and shikarree, (hunter.)" Indian field sports,
with their concomitants of hogs, hogdeer, jungles, elephants, tigers, and
nullahs, have been of late years rendered so familiar to stay-at-home
travellers, that we shall but concisely notice the colonel's exploits in
this forest campaign, which present no remarkable novelty, though detailed
_con amore_, and with the two-fold zest of a sportsman and an epicure.
With all deference, indeed, to the colonel, we have shrewd doubts whether
the latter feeling was not the predominant one; for the death of a tiger,
nine of which fell during the three weeks' foray before the rifles of
himself and his companions, is evidently chronicled with less of
heart-felt enthusiasm than characterises his encomiums on the hogdeer soup,
the delicate floricans and black partridges, (in the preparation of bread
sauce, for which, with his own hands, he earned immortal renown,) and the
other materials for good living poured forth from the cornucopia of an
Indian game-bag. His gastronomic fervour during this jaunt reaches at
times an ecstatic pitch, which, as old Weller says, "werges on the
poetical." "For him (the gastronomist) the dark rocks and arid plains of
the dry Dekkan produce their purple grapes, and cunning but goodly bustard;
for him burning Bundelcund its wonderful rock pigeon and ortolan
inimitable; the Jumna, most ancient of rivers, its large rich Kala banse,
and tasty crabs; for him yields the low and marshy Terace her elegant
florican; the mighty Gunga its melting mahaseer; the Goomtee its exquisite
mullet. And shall he not eat and delight in her fruits? ... Let the ass eat
its thistles, and the swallow its flies _au naturel_; you and I, reader,
know better!"

One day, while wading on their elephants through a deep marsh in pursuit
of a tiger, the chasseurs suddenly stumbled upon a pleasant family
party--"a labyrinth of huge boa-constrictors or pythons, sound asleep,
floating on a bed of crushed _nurkool_, (a gigantic species of reed,) the
least of them twenty feet long, and two feet in circumference. A more
beautiful natural mosaic cannot be imagined: they appeared, from being wet,
as if recently varnished. Perhaps they were from twenty to thirty in
number, and occupied a spot of about twenty feet square. No sooner did the
dreadful glistening reptiles hear the click of my rifle, and feel its ball,
than they shot forth with all their vigour, and diving, disappeared in an
instant under the matted roots of the tall nurkool, and, although I tried,
I could not get another glimpse." One of these giant serpents, seventeen
feet long, and eighteen inches in circumference, which the colonel calls a
small one, was shot a few days afterwards by Colonel Arnold. The marsh and
jungle swarmed with peacocks, jungle-fowl, and wild-fowl of all sorts,
affording glorious sport; and, besides the smaller kinds of deer, several
specimens occurred of a magnificent species of stag with twelve-tyned
horns, called _baru-singa_--apparently allied to the _sambur_ and _rusa_
of the Dekkan. The comparatively small number of tigers killed was,
however, a source of disappointment; since the utility of these battues,
in which the superior fire-arms and appliances of the English are brought
into action for the destruction of these ferocious animals, may be
estimated from the damage done by them in the wilder parts of India,
"which is beyond the belief even of Indo-European residents, and must,
consequently, appear an exaggeration to distant Englishmen. General (then
Captain) Briggs, when resident at Dhoolia in Candeish, in 1821, where his
potails, or head men, were obliged to keep a register of the oxen
(exclusive of sheep and goats) destroyed in their villages, reported that
no less than 21,000 had been killed in three years! As no register is kept
in Oude, it is impossible to register the number."

On the banks of the Mohun-nuddee the party was joined by Rajah Ruttun Sing,
a chief holding a considerable tract of country under the suzerainte of
Oude, who favoured them with his company while they remained in his
district--a compliment which he expected to be acknowledged, as he
distinctly intimated on taking leave, by the gift of a valuable
fowling-piece; but this modest request was parried by the rejoinder, that
none of their guns were good enough for his highness! During one of the
halts, an incident occurred which strongly illustrates the inhuman apathy
of the Hindoos towards any one not connected with them by the ties of
caste. A man was found sitting under a tree near the camp, uttering
strange cries, and the servants were desired to order him to withdraw;
"they returned, saying carelessly that he was a _nutt_, or gipsy, who had
been robbed." A robbery _from_ a gipsy was such a strange contradiction of
terms, that the colonel went personally to enquire into the matter, when
he was horror-struck by finding, that the man had been, not only plundered
of his earnings by a band of Bunjarras, but frightfully mutilated and
wounded, a trifle which the Hindoo servants had not thought worth
mentioning. The poor wretch's arm was amputated by Dr Ross; and, being
carried with the camp and carefully tended, he was at last dismissed, with
a fair prospect of recovery, and with a gift of sixty rupees subscribed
among the party; but not even the example of the _sahibs_ could teach the
Hindoos humanity, and only the peremptory commands of Dr Ross could
prevail upon his bearer to place a mattress under the sufferer! On their
return march, the party were further honoured by visits from several
rajahs and zemindars, all of whom were "loud in complaint against the
extortions of the aumils, who constantly attempted to gather more, and
sometimes twice and a half as much, as the stipulated rent, in consequence
of which the zemindars were compelled to rebel;" a view of the political
condition of Oude which naturally results from its anomalous position,
under a sovereign nominally independent, who is at once too weak to
control his own subjects, and fearful of diminishing the shadow of
authority left to him by calling in the only available aid. On the 29th of
March the party again reached Khyrabad, the appointed place of their
separation, as it had been of their meeting; and here the narrative, as
before, breaks off abruptly.

The concluding part, in order of time, of the colonel's lucubrations,
contains his narrative of a voyage on the Ganges, from Allahabad, by
Dhacca, to Calcutta; but the features and incidents of this navigation
have been so frequently described by travellers of all sorts and kinds,
from Bishop Heber and Captain Bellew to our own much-esteemed Kerim Khan,
that we shall devote but brief space to it. He quitted Allahabad, as he
informs us, December 5, 1839, so deeply regretted by the native population,
that they determined to perpetuate his memory by the erection of a new
ghat or landing-place, every brick of which was to be stamped with the
letter D--a distinction which he had, no doubt, deserved by the
_bonhommie_ towards both Hindoo and Moslem, which forms one of the most
favourable traits in the jovial colonel's character. The Tribeenee Ghat,
immediately below Allahabad, where the streams of the Jumna and the Ganges
unite, is one of the holiest spots in India; to which pilgrims resort from
all quarters, in the hope of securing paradise by dying at the junction of
the sacred waters. The spirit of religious exclusiveness prevails here as
well as in other places; and the colonel mentions his having been once an
eyewitness of some rough treatment received by a _chumar_, or
leather-dresser, (one of the lowest castes,) at the hands of some high
caste sepoys, who were highly indignant that so mean a carcass should
presume to defile the holy ground! Leaving the ghats and devotees behind
him, however, and floating down the stream in his capacious three-roomed
budgerow, he passed Mirzapoor, Chunar, and even the holy city of Benares,
(which he perversely spells Bunarus,) without halting; and reached without
adventure or mishap the mouth of the Goomtee, where his attention was
attracted by a party of eighteen young elephants, the property of the king
of Oude, bathing in the river. "Of all animals, saving the Bundela goat,
there is none that suffers more from change of climate than the elephant:
of the numbers caught on the eastern frontier, probably not one in four
survives a journey to Delhi. Bred in the darkest and most gloomy forests,
they are in a great measure sheltered from heat by the eternal moisture of
the cool shady bower under which they rove; and are then expected to bear
all on a sudden the most intense heat, acting directly on their jet-black
skins, when brought into the plains of Upper India. A very clever native
told me he could make money by any thing but young elephants." Another
curious fact relative to the elephant, mentioned in a subsequent chapter
on the authority of Captain Broadfoot of the Madras commissariat, is, that
both wild and tame elephants are extremely subject to a pulmonary disease,
which proved on dissection to be tubercular--in fact, consumption! It was
found to yield, however, to copious bleedings, if taken in its early
stages.

The colonel's pages, at this point, are filled with digressions and
dissertations on subjects somewhat miscellaneous--Aberdeen pale ale--the
enormities of Warren Hastings' government--the late James Prinsep and the
moral precepts of the Rajah Piyadasee--and a most incomprehensible
rhapsody about "a red mustached member of the Bengal civil service," of
which we profess ourselves utterly incompetent to make either head or tail,
and strongly recommend the colonel to expunge it if the work reaches
another edition. The voyage presents no incidents but the usual ones of
pelicans, alligators, and porpoises: and on January 15, he arrived at
Dhacca, "the once famous city of muslins." But the muslin trade has now
almost wholly disappeared; and with it "the thousands of families of
muslin weavers, who, from the extreme delicacy of their manufacture, were
obliged to work in pits, sheltered from the heat of the sun and changes of
the weather; and even after that precaution, only while the dew lay on the
ground, as the increasing heat destroyed the extremely delicate thread."
The jungle is in consequence advancing close upon the city, which is thus
rendered almost uninhabitable from malaria--the only manufacturers which
continue to flourish being those of violins, bracelets, made from a
peculiar shell resembling the _Murex tulipa_, and--idols for Hindoo
worship!

The colonel remained at Dhacca till February 4, awaiting ulterior orders
from headquarters, and had, consequently, abundance of leisure for making
himself acquainted with the place and its people. These researches,
however, were not always unattended with danger; for on one occasion,
while viewing the city from an elevated building, a piece of plaster was
struck from the cornice near where he stood by a matchlock ball--a
delicate hint that the Mussulmans disliked being overlooked. The Nawab,
apparently the son of Bishop Heber's acquaintance, Shumseddowlah, still
resides in the palace of his ancestors, but is described as an extravagant,
uneducated youth, who has mortgaged away his income from 5000 to 200
rupees per mensem--that is, from L.6000 to L.240 per annum. The
inhabitants were a mixture of almost all the creeds and nations of
Asia--Chinese, Thibetans, Mugs from Arracan, Burmese, Malays, etc.; but
the great majority are Hindoos, whose sanguinary goddess Kalee is adored
in not less than fifty temples. The Greeks and Armenians also have each a
church, the services of which, as described by the colonel, are conducted
in much the same form as at Constantinople:--"But among the (Armenian)
matrons only was any appearance of devotion visible; one of them, most
gorgeously appareled in the Armenian fashion, with a magnificent tiara of
jewels on her brow, and wearing a superb shawl, threw herself on the
ground, with her head sunk between her arms, towards the altar, and
remained in that position nearly five minutes. The others, being dressed
_a l'Anglaise_, with stiff stays and fashionable bonnets, could not afford
to indulge in such a position." The Armenians were formerly numerous in
Dhacca, and are still an influential and wealthy body; the Greeks are now
"few and far between," but in the palmy days of Dhacca they were a
flourishing community.

Dhacca was a place abounding in strange characters from all parts of the
world; and among others whom the colonel encountered, was a singular
specimen of a cosmopolite, a native of Fez, who called himself a Moslem,
but whom our friend vehemently suspected of being a Jew. He had been
almost as great a traveller as his countryman the famous Sheikh Ebn Batuta,
whose wanderings are immortalized in the pages of Maga,[10] and came last
from Moulmein, with a cargo of black pepper and rubies. He had resided
seventeen years in India, and proposed to the colonel, whom he claimed as
a brother, "since from his own home he could reach England in ten days,"
that they should jointly freight a vessel with valuables, and go _home_
together! And, among other scattered facts, a casual encounter with some
Chinese in the employ of the Assam Tea Company, whom the colonel
considerably astonished by addressing them in their own language,
introduces "the very curious fact," that at Tipperah, a civil station not
more than fifty or sixty miles from Dhacca, the natives have from time
immemorial used the tea which grows there abundantly, and is prepared
after a fashion of their own. "And yet" (continues the colonel--and we
fear there is too much truth in his remarks) "the existence of the
tea-plant is but a recent discovery! Any other nation would have
established a tea-manufactory at Tipperah, immediately after the first
settlement, and the Yankees would have 'progressed' railroads and
steam-boats for its success. India is at this moment a mine of unexplored
wealth. No sooner had steam-boats appeared than coal has been discovered
in every direction!" The manufacture of native iron in Bengal, which had
been pressed upon Lord Hastings, as the colonel seems to imply, by himself,
and at first warmly adopted by him, was objected to in the council, and
ultimately abandoned, "on the grounds that it would militate against the
commercial interests of Great Britain--that is, against the profits of
those India stockholders, possessing votes, who followed the trade of
ironmongers!" There is many a true word spoken in jest; and this and other
side-cuts of the colonel at the shortsighted proceedings of the Bahadurs
at Calcutta, though sometimes queerly worded, contain now and then some
unpalatable facts. The administration of the present Governor-General has
shown at least some _promise_ of a better state of things--and if the
impulse now given to the development of the resources of India be steadily
followed up, this reproach will erelong be taken away. The receipt of his
final orders, however, which pointed out China as his destination, put an
end to the colonel's speculations; and re-embarking on the stream of the
Booree Gunga, he passed, with little incident worth noticing, through the
numerous branches of the river, and the picturesque jungles of the
Soonderbunds, and arrived safely, after an absence of twenty-one years, at
the city of palaces--and there we leave him.

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