Yesterday we made an expedition to Mirzapore, the great carpet manufactory. We left the camp at a quarter before six, by torchlight, and went nine miles across the country to Mirzapore, leaving the camp to pursue its own straight road. We found the usual assortment of magistrates, judges, collectors, &c. &c., with boats, carriages, and tonjauns: crossed the river; landed G., who went off to see the jail and manufactories. We stuck to the boat to draw a most beautiful ghaut, a mass of temples and carving. When that was done, we went to see the house of a rich native, every inch of which is painted in arabesques, all done by native artists, and very curious. Then we saw the town, and then went to the house of Mr. K., the magistrate, where there was all the society of the place – thirty gentlemen and one lady – and we got some breakfast at ten, when we were on the point of perishing. The excellent Mr. K., like an upright judge as he is, had made out a dressing-room with two sofas and books, and every comfort, for F. and me. Major L. was at luncheon: he is the man who has taken most of the Thugs, and he told me such horrid stories of them. The temple at which they dedicate themselves to the goddess of destruction is in this town. The Thugs offer human sacrifices there whenever they can procure them. We left Mirzapore at four, and overtook our camp at six. It looked pretty by torchlight. We moved on another ten miles this morning, but, where we are, I cannot precisely tell you. I think it sounds like Gugga Gange; at all events, that is as good as the real word.
CHAPTER VI
I SENT off one journal to you two days ago from a place that, it since appears, was called Bheekee. Yesterday we started at half-past five, as it was a twelve miles’ march, and the troops complain if they do not get in before the sun grows hot, so we had half an hour’s drive in the dark, and F. rode the last half of the way. I came on in the carriage, as I did not feel well, and one is sick and chilly naturally before breakfast. Not but that I like these morning marches; the weather is so English, and feels so wholesome when one is well. The worst part of a march is the necessity of everybody, sick or well, dead or dying, pushing on with the others. Luckily there is every possible arrangement made for it. There are beds on poles for sick servants and palanquins for us, which are nothing but beds in boxes. I have lent mine to Mrs. C. G. and I went on an elephant through rather a pretty little village in the evening, and he was less bored than usual, but I never saw him hate anything so much as he does this camp life. I have long named my tent ‘Misery Hall.’ F. said it was very odd, as everybody observed her tent was like a fairy palace.
‘Mine is not exactly that,’ G. said; ‘indeed I call it Foully Palace, it is so very squalid-looking.’ He was sitting in my tent in the evening, and when the purdahs are all down, all the outlets to the tents are so alike that he could not find which crevice led to his abode; and he said at last, ‘Well! it is a hard case; they talk of the luxury in which the Governor-General travels, but I cannot even find a covered passage from Misery Hall to Foully Palace.’
This morning we are on the opposite bank of the river to Allahabad, almost a mile from it. It will take three days to pass the whole camp. Most of the horses and the body-guard are gone to-day, and have got safely over. The elephants swim for themselves, but all the camels, which amount now to about 850, have to be passed in boats: there are hundreds of horses and bullocks, and 12,000 people.
I am sure it would have done Mrs. Trimmer’s heart good to see them all on the beach this evening. I thought of her print of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea – a skimpy representation, but it was the first idea we had of that event. The picture at Stafford House enlarged my notions, and now I think I have come to the real thing, and indeed am a Red Sea Israelite myself.
We crossed the river at seven yesterday morning. The Ganges and Jumna join each other here, and this junction makes the water so uncommonly precious and sacred, that Hindus come here from all parts of the country on pilgrimage. The rich Hindus at a great distance buy the water, and we met strings of pilgrims yesterday carrying jars of it, with which they will travel farther south than Calcutta.
We were met at the ghaut by a large collection of residents. I hate a great station, and Allahabad has a very modern, uninteresting, sandy look about it.
Foully Palace looked particularly unhappy this morning. G.’s furniture, somehow, was deluged, and his whole stock of comfort amounted to one cane chair and a table, and he called us all in to see his eastern luxury. I handsomely offered to lend him the armchair Mr. D. gave me, and which is so continually my companion, ‘my goods, my chattels, my household stuff,’ that I had no doubt it was in ‘Misery Hall.’ I told my little ameer to give it to the Lord Sahib, but he told me afterwards, ‘Ladyship’s chair in river too, but me find arm-chair in other tent, and me put Lord Sahib in it.’ I think I see him fixing G. in his chair. Mine is quite safe, I am happy to say.
In the afternoon G. and I, and a Mr. B., rather a clever man, went to see some tombs about three miles off. You know the sort of people who have tombs worth seeing – ‘Shah Houssein,’ or ‘Nour Jehan,’ or words to that effect.
However, the tombs were there, and F. and I stayed there sketching till it was quite dusk, and kept the carriage, and G. and Mr. B. and Captain M. rode home such a roundabout way that dinner was cold before they got back.
We had church in camp again yesterday. We received visitors on Saturday evening instead of the morning, by way of an experiment, and it answered much better. It all comes more in the natural way of work than in the heat of the day, and we had the band, and tea, and negus, and sandwiches. It was a regular party, much larger than I expected; the great durbar tent was quite full, and they are a more fashioned-looking set here. By coming in the evening G. sees them, which they prefer, and which, strange to say, he likes too. We have thirty-five of them at dinner to-day, and thirty-seven to-morrow. On Thursday they give us a ball, and on Saturday we depart.
Lucknow and Agra were to have been the two incidents of the journey that were to make up for the bore of all the rest. Lucknow has been cut off, because the King cannot meet the Governor-General, and B. cannot reconcile himself to such a breach of etiquette, the poor old man being bedridden. Agra, they say, is in a state of famine and scarcity. If so, of course it would be very wrong to take our great camp there. So we shall not see the Taj – the only thing that, all Indians say, is worth looking at.
Here there is a sort of Dowager Queen of the Gwalior country; her style and title being ‘the Baiza Baee.’ She is very clever, has been handsome, and, some say, is beautiful still. She cannot endure being only a Dowager Baiza Baee; and being immensely rich, she has been suspected of carrying on intrigues amongst her former subjects. She has always been visited by all great potentates, but B. chose to say that neither G. nor we should go to see her. She took this dreadfully to heart, and has been sending ambassadors and letters and presents without end, and asserted that she would be disgraced for ever if she were so slighted. Then B. went to see her himself, and was either talked over, or was ashamed of always putting spokes in everybody’s wheel; he is a spoke himself and nothing else. Now he wants G. to go: however, he cannot get out of his lordship’s head what he has put into it, and G. will not go, but is going to send us – just the very thing Spoke wanted to prevent.
I am so glad, though it is a great deal of trouble to us; but I am glad out of spite.