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

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"Moslem! If thy soul belie not thy noble form and features, thou wilt not
withhold thine aid from a bereaved and sorrowing daughter. Before
to-morrow's sunset thou wilt be free, for Austria wars not with the Turk.
Then straight repair to Venice, and there await the Battle of the Bridge.
Take thy stand beneath the portal of St Barbara, and follow the man who
whispers in thine ear,

"STRASOLDA."

"Mashallah!" shouted the enraptured youth, "these lines are from the
Uzcoque maiden; and by the gates of Paradise I'll do her bidding, though
it perils life."

For a time he was tempted to follow her guidance implicitly, and await the
promised release from the authorities of Gradiska; recollecting, however,
the proverbial slowness of Austrian counsellors, and too restless and
ardent to endure suspense, he resumed his purpose of exploring the secret
passage. After he had secured the pannel and replaced the boss, he bade
Hassan follow him and began to descend. The staircase ended in a small
passage round an angle, beyond which he discovered a similar descent,
followed by another angle and staircase, proving that this secret issue
from the castle penetrated through each of the four massive walls which
formed the tower. At length their further progress was stopped by a door,
originally strong and plated with iron, but now so much decayed, that
although fastened by bolts without, the joint strength of the two captives
forced it from its hinges. They now entered a vaulted passage of hewn
stone, low and narrow, and with no visible termination. As they advanced,
the long pent-up and dank unwholesome vapours made it difficult to breathe,
and compelled Ibrahim to pause repeatedly and trim his lamp, which burned
so dimly in this oppressive atmosphere as to be nearly extinguished. After
a while the path began to slope upwards, and erelong they distinguished
moonlight faintly streaming through a tangled mass of ivy which concealed
the remains of an iron grating, broken probably in his patron's successful
attempt to escape by this secret passage from the prison above. Gazing
through the aperture, they perceived not many feet below what had once
been the castle ditch, now dry, and forming a portion of the archduke's
gardens. With a joyous heart and an elastic bound, Ibrahim reached the
soft turf beneath. The more timid and helpless Hassan lowered himself by
clinging to a remaining iron bar, and with the aid of his companion was
soon on his feet, enjoying, with many thanks to Allah, the fresh air of
heaven and the consciousness of escape from captivity. The gates of the
palace gardens being unguarded during the festival, the liberated
prisoners reached the coast without an obstacle, compelled a fisherman to
take them in his bark across the Adriatic, and land them on the Lido,
which forms the outward limit of the port of Venice. Then making free with
an unwatched gondola, they sped across the bay, and were soon in safety,
beneath the roof of a Turkish trader and correspondent of Hassan.

Before their escape was discovered on the following morning, the indignant
Proveditore had departed for Venice, and Strasolda had disappeared.

* * * * *

COLONEL DAVIDSON'S TRAVELS IN INDIA.[5]

[5] _Diary of Travels and Adventures in Upper India_, from Bareilly,
in Rohilcund, to Hurdwar and Nahun, in the Himalaya Mountains;
with a Tour in Bundelcund, a Sporting Excursion in the Kingdom of
Oude, and a Voyage down the Ganges. By C.J.C. DAVIDSON, Esq.,
late Lieut.-Col. of Engineers, Bengal.

The appearance of this work was heralded some three months since, as
divers of our readers may possibly remember, by a species of
puff-preliminary, for which even the annals of Great Marlborough Street
afforded no precedent--being nothing less than the appearance of Mr
Colburn, _in propria persona_, at the bar of the police-office adjoining
his premises, to answer the complaint of the gallant and irate author for
what he was pleased to consider the unwarrantable detention of the MS.
from which his narrative had been printed. It was alleged, in extenuation,
that "the gallant colonel's MS. was so nearly undecipherable, that Mr
Colburn had been put to considerable expense in revising the press;"--and
a mysterious and curiosity-provoking hint was further thrown out, that "it
was the custom of the trade, that, until a work was published, the MS.
should not be parted with by the publisher, as it might turn out that some
part of it was libellous, and in such case the publisher must produce the
MS." In the end the gallant colonel (whom the newspaper reports described
as "very much excited,") took nothing by his motion in regard to the
recovery of the MS.; but though in this respect he may have been somewhat
scurvily treated, we cannot equally sympathize with his complaints of the
work not having been duly _advertised_; for surely all the little "neatly
turned paragraphs" that ever proceeded from Mr Colburn's laboratory, could
not have been so effectual as the method struck out by the impromptu
genius of the colonel himself, in intimating to the public that something
quite out of the common way might be expected from the forthcoming
production thus brought before its notice.

And verily those who have been prepared for a queer volume, will not be
disappointed in the diary of our choleric and corpulent colonel. If ever
the assurance, which seems to be regarded as indispensable in the preface
to works of this class, that the author "wrote the following pages purely
for his own amusement," bore the stamp of unequivocal truth, it is in the
present instance; and, notwithstanding the asseverations of Mr Colburn and
his literary employes, it is difficult to conceive that any revision
whatever can have been bestowed on the rough notes of the writer, since
they were first hastily committed to paper amidst the scenes which they
describe. The style is as rambling and unconnected as the incidents to
which it refers; but wherever the author's devious footsteps lead us, from
the jungles of Bundelcund to the holy ghats of Hurdwar, the principal
figure is always that of the colonel himself, who, in the portly
magnificence of twenty stone minus two pounds, fills up the whole
foreground with himself and his accessories of servants, elephant, stud,
Nagoree cows, and other component parts of the _suwarree_ or suite of a
_Qui-hye_, who can afford to make himself comfortable after the fashion of
the country. The quantity (sometimes not trifling) and quality of his
meals, the consequent state of his digestion, and his endless rows on the
score of accommodations and forage with thannadars, darogahs, kutwals, and
all the other designations for Hindoo and Hindoostani jacks-in-office,
(for to Feringhi society he appears to have been not very partial,) may
doubtless have been points of peculiar interest to the colonel himself,
but are not likely to engage the attention of the world in general, and
had better have been omitted in the revision of the diary, instead of
being chronicled, as they are on all occasions, with wearisome minuteness
of detail. But with all these drawbacks, a man who, as he says of himself,
"has dwelt in India twenty-five years, and traversed it from the snowy
range to Bombay on the west, must have seen something of the country, and
may be supposed to know something of the natives"--among whom, by the way,
he seems to have mingled more familiarly than most Feringhis; and in spite
of all the egotism and rigmarole with which his pages abound, the rambles
of this "stout gentleman" through Upper India, and some other parts of the
country not much visited by Europeans, present us with a good deal of
plain sense and sterling matter, viewed, it is true, with the eccentric
eye of a humorist, and frequently couched in very odd phraseology; but not
the less true on that account. His opinions on all men and all things are
expressed with the same honesty and candour with which he narrates the
various scrapes in which he was involved, while pushing right a-head like
an elephant through a jungle;--and though laughing at him quite as often
as with him, we have found the colonel, on the whole, far from an
unpleasant travelling companion.

Bareilly, on the fronters of Oude and Rohilcund, was the colonel's
starting-point;--and thence on St Patrick's day[6] he set forward for
Hurdwar, at the head of a retinue, the members of which, both quadruped
and biped, he enumerates seriatim, giving the _pas_ to the former--a
precedence perhaps well merited by steeds up to such a welter weight under
the climate of India, over such a set of unredeemed and thriftless knaves
as he describes his native attendants. Accordingly, he gives the names and
pedigrees of the whole stud, from "the buggy mare Maiden-head and my
wicked little favourite Fish-Guts," up to "my favourite brood-mare Fair
Amelia, purchased at a prize sale on the frontier, and bred by the king of
Bokhara, with his royal stamp on her near flank--stands nearly fifteen and
a half hands high, with magnificent action and great show of blood--had,
when taken, four gold rings in her nostrils, now removed and replaced by
silver, which will be stolen by her groom one by one." His first day's
march was to Futtehgunge, ("the mart of victory," being the scene of the
memorable battle in 1774, in which the English, as the bought allies of
the Nawab Shoojah-ed-dowlah, defeated and slew the gallant Rohilla chief,
Hafez-Rehmut;) and here he oracularly announced a discovery in gastronomy,
of which it would be unpardonable not to give our readers the benefit. "I
used my farourite condiment, tomata sauce, with my beef; and _to all who
are ignorant_ of this delicious vegetable I may venture to recommend its
sauce, as at once both wholesome and savoury, if eaten with anything but
cranberry tart or apple pie!" It is melancholy to reflect how often the
best efforts of genius are anticipated and rendered of no avail. The
colonel, when he penned this sentence with a heart overflowing with
Epicurean philanthropy, was evidently unconscious that "chops and tomata
sauce" were already familiar to the British public from the immortal
researches of Mr Pickwick!

[6] The year is not specified; but as the Ramazan is subsequently
said to have ended March 25, it must have been in the year of the
Hejra 1245, ansering to A.D. 1830.

Rampore, in the territory of which the colonel now found himself, is still
a semi-independent state, the Nawab of which has a revenue of sixteen lacs
of rupees, (L160,000,) while the city, being without the pale of English
law, is "a city of refuge, a very Goshen of robbers, ... the streets are
crowded with a mob of very handsome, idle, lounging fellows, having
generally the fullest and finest jet-black beards and black mustaches in
the world. Many of these were handsomely dressed, and many (which struck
me as a very curious fact) appeared clean!" These were the Pathans and
Rohillas, partly descended from the original Moslem conquerors of India,
and partly from those who have more recently migrated from Affghanistan
and the adjoining countries. The most athletic and warlike race among the
Indian Mahommedans, and too proud of their blood to exercise any
profession but that of arms, they are found in every town throughout Upper
India, swaggering about with sword, shield, and matchlock, in the retinues
of the native princes, and ready to join any enterprise, or flock to the
standard of any invader, through whose means any prospect is afforded of
shaking off the Feringhi yoke, and resuming their ancient predominance in
the country which their forefathers won by their swords from the idolaters.
"They hate us with the most intense bitterness, and can any one be
surprised at it? We have taken their broad lands foot by foot." Few if any
of these turbulent spirits are found in our European regular native army;
their dislike to the cumbrous accoutrements and awkward European saddles
operating equally, perhaps, with the severity of the drill and discipline
to deter them; but they form the strength of the various corps of
irregular horse--a force which, of late years, has most judiciously been
greatly increased in numbers, and the uniform dashing bravery of which in
the field, strongly contrasts with the misconduct of one at least of the
regular native cavalry regiments in the late Affghan war. "I have seen,"
(says the colonel,) "a lineal descendant of Pathan Nawab's serving in the
ranks of Hearsay's horse, as a common trooper on twenty rupees a-month,
out of which he had merely to buy and feed his horse, procure clothes,
arms, and harness, and sustain his hereditary dignity! By his commander
and his fellow-soldiers he was always addressed by his title of Nawab
Sahib!"

The small-pox was committing dreadful ravages in Rampore and its
neighbourhood; and though vaccination was performed gratis at Bareilly,
the fatalist prejudices of the natives, even of those of rank and
education, prevented them from availing themselves of the boon. All the
instances of the colonel, in behalf of a charming little girl, four years
old, whose mother and sister had already taken the infection, could get
from her father nothing more than a promise "to think of it! If it's her
fate----" said he. "'You fool!' said I, in my civil way," (and the
colonel's _brusquerie_ was here, at least, not misplaced,) "'if a man
throws himself into the fire or a well, or in the path of a tiger, is he
without blame?'" Such apathy seems almost unaccountable to English minds;
but it may find a parallel in Lady Chatterton's story of the Irish parents,
[7] who, after refusing to spend fourpence in nourishment for a dying
child, came in deep grief after its death to their employer, to solicit an
advance of thirty shillings to _wake the corpse_! Perhaps some ingenious
systematists might hence deduce a fresh argument in favour of the alleged
oriental origin of the Irish.

[7] Rambles in the South of Ireland; ii. 143.

The colonel's next stage was to Moradabad, another Pathan city, but under
the _raj_ of the Company, where, in a visit to a native original, named
Meer Mahommed, he was greatly delighted by his new friend's introduction
of the English word _swap_ into a sentence of Hindoostani. And on the 25th
he reached Dhampore, where the welcome proclamation, "that the new moon
had been seen," terminated the fast of the Ramazan, to the uncontrollable
joy of the Mussulmans, who would have been subjected to another day's
abstinence if it had not been perceived till the succeeding evening. The
colonel, however, slyly remarks, that "it was very odd that the _Hindoos_
could not see the new moon," and hints that their imperfection of vision
was shared by himself, but it was otherwise decided by the Faithful; and
he proceeded, amid the noisy rejoicings of the Moslem feast of _Bukra-Eed_,
(called by the Turks Bairam,) by Najeena, the Birmingham of Upper India,
to Nujeebabad. Here resided, on a pension of 60,000 rupees (L6000) a-year
from the English government, the Nawab Gholam-ed-deen, better known by the
nickname of Bumbo Khan, a brother of the once famous Rohilla chief
Gholam-Khadir. Though past eighty years of age, and weighing upwards of
twenty stone, he had not lost, any more than the equiponderant colonel,
his taste for the good things of this world; and our traveller, on
partaking of the Nawab's hospitality, records with infinite zest the
glories of a peculiar preparation of lamb, called _nargus_, or the
narcissus. But, alas! the reminiscences of the nargus were less grateful
than the fruition, and the remorse of the colonel's guilty stomach (as
poor Theodore Hooke, or some one else, used to call indigestion) continued
to afflict him all the way to Hurdwar; and may probably account, by the
consequent irritation of his temper, for various squabbles in which he was
involved on the route.

The great fair of Hurdwar was in full swing at the colonel's arrival, with
its vast concourse of Hindoo devotees from all parts of India, to whom it
is in itself a spot of peculiar sanctity, besides lying in the way to the
shrine of Gungotree, (the source of the Ganges,) in the Himmalaya--its
crowds of merchants and adventurers of all sorts, even from Uzbek Tartary
and the remote regions of Central Asia--Seiks by thousands from the Punjab,
with their families--Affghan and Persian horse-dealers--and numerous
grandees, both of the Hindoo and Moslem faith, who repair hither as to a
scene of gaiety and general resort. The colonel found quarters in the tent
of a friend employed in the purchase of horses for government, and seems
to have entered with all his heart into the humours of the scene; his
description of which, and of the varied characteristics of the motley
groups composing the half million of human beings present, is one of the
most graphic and picturesque sketches in his work. "Huge heaps of
assafoetida, in bags, from the mountains beyond Cabool--tons of raisins of
various sorts--almonds, pistachio nuts, sheep with four or five
horns--Balkh[8] cats, with long silken hair; of singular beauty--faqueers
begging, and abusing the uncharitable with the grossest and most filthy
language--long strings of elderly ladies, proceeding in a chant to the
priests of the Lingam, to bargain for bodily issue--Ghat priests
presenting their books for the presents and signatures of the European
visitors--groups of Hindoos surrounding a Bramin, who gives each of them a
certificate of his having performed the pilgrimage"--such are a few of the
component parts of the scene; but the colonel's attention seems to have
been principally fixed upon the horses, and the tricks of the _dulals_ or
brokers, to whom the purchase is generally confided, it being almost
hopeless for an European to make a personal bargain with a native dealer.
But among the greatest curiosities in this way were some _tortoiseshell_
ponies--for we can call them nothing else--a peculiar race from Uzbek
Tartary, which we never remember to have heard of before. "They were under
thirteen hands high, and the most curious compound of colours and marks
that can be imagined. Suppose the animal pure, snowy white; cover the
white with large, irregular, light bay spots through which the white is
visible; in the middle of these light bay let there be dark bay marbled
spots; at every six or eight inches plant rhomboidal patches of a very
dark iron-grey; then sprinkle the whole with dark flea-bites! There's a
_phooldar_, ( flower-market,) as they call them;" and we agree with the
colonel that such an animal would be a fortune at Bartlemy fair.

[8] In the original "bulkh," which we have ventured to amend as
above. The Oriental words and phrases are, in several instances,
very incorrectly printed; but whether the fault rests with the
colonel's "undecipherable" MS., or the correctors of the press, it
is not for us to decide.

Among the distinguished visitors to Hurdwar at this season of festivity
was the noted Begum Sombre, or Sumroo, whose face the colonel compares to
that of an old Scotch highlander, and her person to a sackful of shawls,
and who declared "that the Duke of Wellington _must_ be at heart a
Catholic, _because_ he emancipated the Catholics!" He also renewed his
gastronomic friendship with his friend Bumbo Khan, with whom the
recollections of past indigestion did not prevent him from feasting on
_mahaseer_, a delicious fish found in this part of the Ganges; and on this
occasion his Apician ecstasies are not alloyed by subsequent
regrets--"even now the recollection soothes me"--and he recommends such of
his readers as are yet ignorant of this luxury to start forthwith for
Hurdwar and repair the omission. The fair ended April 13; and the colonel
having previously succeeded in disposing of his buggy to a potentate whom
he calls "the Kheerea Thunnasir Rajah," (we believe, the ruler of one of
the Seik protected states,) and buying a stout Turcomani pony for the
hills, started the same day on the road to Suharunpoor. He favours his
readers, _en passant_, with some exceedingly original speculations
touching the Mosaic deluge, in reference to the hills about Hurdwar, which
do not speak very highly for his attainments in geology, though in some
other branches of natural history, and particularly in botany, he appears
to be no mean proficient. The journey was disturbed by attempts to steal
the colonel's new purchase, (which was not, like the rest of the stud,
distinguished from the horses of the country by having its tail cut,) and
by a quarrel at Secunderpore with a thannadar, or native police magistrate,
whose European superior's neglect of the colonel's complaint he charitably
attributes to "some (I hope slight) derangement of the stomach." At
Suharunpore he visited the well-known botanist Dr Royle, the curator of
the Company's botanic garden there, then engaged in those labours on the
Flora of the Himmalayas which have been since given to the world; and at
Boorea, leaving the British territory, he entered that of the protected
Seik states, whose petty chieftains are secured in their semi-independence
by the treaty with Runjeet in 1809, which confined the ruler of Lahore to
the right bank of the Sutlej. But their reception of the colonel did not
appear to indicate any great degree of gratitude for these favours to the
British nation, as represented in his person; for not one of the five Seik
chiefs, "each of whom has his own snug little fort close to the city,"
would supply him with a lodging; and it was only by perseverance and
ingenuity that he secured a place to lay his head, after long wrangling
with the subordinate functionaries. Matters improved, however, as he
advanced further into the country; and, at the little mountain-city of
Nahun, he was most hospitably received and entertained by the young rajah,
Futteh Pur Grass Sing, "who had been educated almost entirely under the
kind and fatherly superintendence of Captain Murray," the commissioner of
the Seik states, and whose frank and gentlemanlike manners, "so unlike
those of the ghee-fed wretches of the plains," did honour to his guardian's
precepts. The town of Nahun, which is 3600 feet above the level of the
sea, is described as clean and well paved; and the rajah, whose revenue
had been increased under the management of Captain Murray from 37,000 to
53,000 rupees, was highly popular, and by the colonel's account deservedly
so, with his subjects. He earnestly pressed "the fat gentleman" (whose
caution in mounting an elephant, while two men on the other side of the
howdah balanced his weight, vehemently excited his risibility) to return
to the plains through Nahun, and have a month's shooting with him in the
valley; but whether the invitation was accepted or not remains untold,
as--"Alas for the literature of the age! when I was ordered to Bundelcund,
a vile thief entered my tents at night, and robbed me of my second volume;
and thus did I lose my carefully written account of the sub-Himmalayan
range, which cost me fully eight months' labour."

Thus abruptly terminates the first part of the colonel's travels, and at
the commencement of the second we find him crossing the Jumna to Calpee,
the frontier town of Bundelcund, a wild and unsettled province, prolific
in Thugs and bad characters of all sorts, and principally inhabited by a
peculiar race called Bundelas, who have never been perfectly reconciled to
the British supremacy, and who, at this present writing, are kept quiet
only by the presence of a force of 15,000 men. Calpee is said to be the
hottest place in India, the thermometer in June, according to the colonel,
standing even on a cloudy day at 145 degrees--a degree of heat almost
incredible; and it is also the principal mart for the cotton, which the
rich black soil of Bundelcund produces of finer quality than any other
part of Hindostan. But, notwithstanding its commercial inportance, the
town was at this time left to the government of a native Darogah or chief
of police, the nearest European courts being at Hameerpore, thirty miles
distant, and the state of society seems to have been somewhat singular.
Among its most conspicuous members is "Gopal, the celebrated robber,
murderer, and smuggler, a tall athletic man about forty-two years of age,
with a most hideous muddy eye, having the glare of hell itself. It is said
that he has always fifteen servants in stated pay, and can in a few hours
command the services of three hundred armed and desperate men; and the
strength and vigour of the Calpee police may be estimated by the fact,
that he has been known to walk into the house of a rich merchant in the
centre of the town, when he was surrounded by his servants and family; he
has very coolly selected the gold bangles of his children, and silenced
the trembling remonstrances of the Mahajun by threats of vengeance; nor is
this a solitary instance. When he murders, he is equally above all
concealment; as in the recent case of a sepahee returning home with his
savings, who was waylaid and murdered by our hero in open day. He very
coolly gave himself up, acknowledging that he had killed the sepahee, who
had first assaulted him. It was proved on the trial, that the sepahee was
wholly unarmed, and he was condemned to be hung by the court of Hameerpore
on his own confession, but released, _from want of evidence_, by the
Sudder Court at Calcutta. Their objection was excellent, though curious;
that if his confession was taken, it must be taken altogether, and not
that part only which could lead to his conviction. He was released, and
now walks about in his Sunday clothes, a living evidence of British
tenderness."

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