CHAPTER IV.

THE BALL.

The ancient burg, or castle, of Gradiska had been originally on a larger

scale, but, at this period, consisted only of a centre, flanked at right

angles by two wings ending in square towers, large, grey, and massive, and

embattled, with overhanging galleries for sentinels to pace along, while

similar galleries, on a smaller scale, extended along the entire front and

wings of the castle. The central edifice contained, on the ground-floor,

numerous apartments and offices for menials; above which arose a spacious

saloon and other lofty apartments, lighted by windows high above the

flooring, and terminating in the round-headed arches so commonly seen in

the castellated mansions of northern Italy. In this palatial hall

preparation had been busy for the ball, to which the wife of the archducal

counsellor so impatiently looked forward, as an opportunity to eclipse all

rivals by the splendour of her jewels. The hour of reception by the

archduke had arrived. The exterior of the spacious edifice was illuminated

from end to end by nunerous torches, and the capacious staircase was

lighted by a double rank of torch-bearers, in splendid apparel. In the

interior of the vast apartment huge waxen tapers were fixed above the

_chevron_, or zig-zag moulding, which ran round the walls, and connected

the casement of each window. Large crystal lamps, pendant from the point

of each inverted pinnacle on the lofty roof, diffused a flood of brilliant

light, and imparted life and colour to the rich tapestries, portraying

stirring scenes from the Crusades, which covered the walls from floor to

window. Complete suits of armour, exhibiting every known device of harness,

and numerous weapons, fancifully arranged, decorated the spaces between

the windows. And now began to appear, in this scene of splendour, groups

of knights and nobles, arrayed in velvet and cloth of gold, and attending

upon fair dames, sparkling with jewels, and bearing nodding plumes upon

their braided hair. Conspicuous amidst these, and towering above all in

stature, appeared the haughty mistress of Strasolda, attired in a robe of

dark green velvet, which well relieved the fairness of her complexion, and

displaying upon her finely moulded neck and arms a collar and bracelets of

large and lustrous oriental pearls. Her firlgers were bedecked with costly

rings, and upon her head she wore an ornament of singular device, which

soon attracted universal attention. Above the rim of a golden comb, richly

chased and studded with brilliants, arose a peacock with expanded tail.

The body was of chased gold in imitation of feathers, the arching neck was

mosaic work of precious stones, the eyes were sparkling diamonds of the

purest water, and the feathers of the tail glittered with emeralds, rubies,

and sapphires of singular beauty and lustre. So great was the curiosity

excited by the dazzling splendour of these jewels, that the fair wearer

was followed round the room by a train of ladies, anxious to observe at

leisure a display of ornaments so extraordinary, and whispering to

sympathizing ears conjectures not over charitable to the counsellor's wife.

When, at length, she had seated herself upon one of the sofas which lined

the walls, a circle of admiring gazers was formed, whose numbers were

rapidly increased by the attendant cavaliers. While the lady was enjoying

her triumph, a bustle at the entrance of the hall turned every head in

that direction, when the cause appeared in the person of the young

archduke, who entered in full costume, followed by a group of courtiers,

and accompanied by a Venetian cavalier, of tall and commanding person,

with whom he appeared to be in earnest discourse. The stranger was a

large-boned, spare, and powerful man, of middle age, and attired in a

black vest and pantaloons of woven silk, with a short cloak, of the same

hue. The golden hilt of his rapier, and a gold chain and medallion round

his neck, were his only ornaments. His features were large, regular, and

grand, and the gaze of his full dark eyes serene, yet firm and potent; his

complexion pale, and contrasting strongly with a dark beard which circled

his visage like a frame. His high and massive forehead, and well closed

lips, had a character of thought and decision, while his mien and tread

were those of one long accustomed to authority. He seemed a man born after

his time, and worthy to have lived and acted in the high and palmy days of

Venice. After attending the archduke to the steps of the dais at the upper

end of the hall, he made his bow, and began to pace the floor in seeming

abstraction from the gay scene around him. Arrested in his progress by the

numerous groups which, after saluting the archduke, had again collected

around the counsellor's lady, he paused in returning conciousness; and,

looking for the cause of such unwonted attraction, was enabled, by his

lofty stature, to obtain a glimpse of the jewelled lady within the circle.

Her features were unknown to him; but when his careless gaze fell upon the

rare ornament which crowned her redundant tresses, his countenance became

suddenly darkened by some strong emotion. Again, he looked more earnestly,

and with increasing wonder and curiosity. Controlling, by a sudden effort,

all outward evidence of feeling, he watched his opportunity, and at length

penetrating within the crowd, stood for some moments before the object of

attraction, and gazed, as if admiringly, upon her various adornments in

succession; then, bowing gracefully, he addressed to her some words of

compliment upon the splendour and value of the dazzling bird upon her head.

"Fair lady," he continued, "I have a daughter whom I fondly love, and fain

would I bestow upon her youthful beauty such ornaments as yours. But say,

I pray you, where can the cunning hand be found which fashions such

glorious birds? Was it in Venice or Vienna that you bought this materpiece

of art?" Unsuspicious of evil, and bridling at gratified vanity at this

attention from a stranger of such distinguished mien, the spoil-bedecked

fair one replied to him as she had done to others.

"I bought this ornament, some weeks back, in Venice, at the store of a

Greek trader from the Levant."

"Ha!" exclaimed the stranger; "and where dwelt this Greek, that I may see

and ask him for another such?"

The concious lady, embarrassed by such close questioning, and somewhat

alarmed by the kindling glances of the questioner, replied in haste--"Nay,

signor, now I remember better, it was not a Greek I bought these gauds,

but of a trading Jew, who walks the Merceria with a box of jewellry."

"Just now, methinks, you said a Greek, fair lady; and now you say a Jew.

What next? Why not a Moslem, or perchance _an Uzcoque?_"

At this ominous conclusion, which the stranger muttered in tones of marked

significance, the alarmed culprit started to her feet; and her fierce

temper getting the better of her prudence, she boldly faced the cavalier,

exclaiming, in a louder key than beseemed a courtier's wife--

"And who are you, signor, that dare thus question the lady of an archducal

counsellor?"

"Lady!" he sternly answered, "here I am known to none save your husband's

master; but in Venice men call me the Proveditore Marcello."

And now flashed upon the indignant signora a fearful reminiscence of

Jurissa's unheeded and forgotten warning, to hide her jewels for a time,

and to beware of the Proveditore Marcello. In utter dismay, and nearly

fainting with alarm, she sank upon the sofa, and her eyes expanded into

the wide stare of terror as she gazed at the menacing visage of the

Venetian noble. Unwilling to expose the conscience-striken woman before so

numerous an assemblage, he seated himself beside her, and in tones

inaudible to others thus whispered in her ear--"Lady! but eight days back

the jewels that you wear were mine. That peacock was my own design, and

made for my daughter by a cunning artificer in Candia. Its like exists not

in the world; for the mould was made by my order, and broken as soon as

used. 'Twas mine until the base Uzcoques plundered my baggage. How thus

quickly it passed from them to you, is as well known to me as to yourself.

But mark me, lady! if all these jewels are not delivered at my apartments

in the west wing of the castle ere midnight, I will denounce your husband

and his colleagues as long-suspected and now-proved partakers with the

Pirates of Segna. And, should redress be denied me here, the ambassador of

Venice shall report this infamous collusion before a higher tribunal in

Vienna."

Struck dumb by this terrible denunciation, the fair culprit gasped for

breath, and her evident distress having been watched in growing wonder by

the assembled ladies and cavaliers, the latter began to mutter threats of

vengeance. One of them now stepped forward, and, grasping the hilt of his

rapier, accused the Venetian of having insulted the wife of a nobleman

high in the councils of the archduke, when the Proveditore, looking down

upon the courtier with that riveted and intensely piercing gaze which

staggers the beholder like a sudden blow, and may still be noted in many

of Titian's portraits, answered with brief and startling emphasis--

"Signor! you do me grievous wrong. 'Tis I, and not the lady, who am the

injured party."

Awed by his gathering brow, and the settled, stern, unsparing resolution

which flashed from every feature, and indicated a man confident in his own

resources, the courtiers did involuntary homage to his loftier spirit, and

gave way. The proud Venetian strode through the yielding circle and

quitted the hall, while the counsellor's wife, pleading illness and

fatigue in reply to the pointed and numerous questions of surrounding

friends and enemies, summoned her husband to attend her, and retired to

her apartments.

Meanwhile the young Moslem and his companion in misfortune, who had been

brought prisoners to Gradiska, were confined in one of the massive towers

which flanked the castle. They had arrived not long before the comencement

of the festival, and when going under guard along a corridor in the east

wing, Ibrahim passed the open door of an apartment in which Strasolda was

adjusting the rich jewels of the counsellor's lady before her appearance

in the ball-room. Startled by the approaching tramp of armed men, the

Uzcoque maiden raised her eyes, and beheld the noble and well-remembered

features of the young Turk, whose captive she had been, and whose image

had so strangely reappeared to her through the flitting cloud of smoke in

the cavern. "Mother of Heaven!" she exclaimed, covering her eyes with her

hands; "do I again behold that Moslem youth, ever appearing when least

expected?" Again she gazed; but the prisoners, hurried onward by their

guards, had proceeded to the end of the corridor, where a narrow winding

staircase, fashioned in the immense thickness of the tower wall, led to

their appointed prison, a large square apartment, the sides of which were

panneled to a considerable height, and imperfectly lighted by small

windows, or rather embrasures, perforating a wall many feet in thickness.

Here they were left to their reflections, and to what comfort they could

derive fron a lamp and a supply of provisions. Hassan, wearied with his

journey, hastily swallowed his supper, and, stretching himself upon a

paillasse, soon forgot his calamities in sound repose. Ibrahim, more

vigilant and less apprehensive of future evil, as the Turks and Austrians

were then at peace, paced awhile along the floor of his spacious prison,

musing on the peerless charms of the Uzcoque maiden. From time to time he

gazed upon the walls and windows as if calculating the chances of escape,

when gradually the peculiar and regular design of the panneling caught and

fixed his attention. It was divided by prominent mouldings into oblong

squares, from the centres of which projected large diamond-shaped bosses

of carved oak. This peculiarity at length roused into action some

reminiscences of the early life and adventures of his beloved patron, the

pacha of Bosnia, to the recital of which he had often, in his boyhood,

listened with eager delight. These recollections, at first shadowy and

indistinct, became gradually more vivid and accurate, until finally the

full conviction flashed upon him that his benefactor, when taken prisoner

in his youth by the Austrians, had been confined in this very tower and

room, and, by a singular discovery, had been enabled to liberate himself

and his fellow-prisoners. The pacha, then a subordinate in rank, in

endeavouring to reach the level of one of the embrasures, had mounted upon

the shoulders of a comrade, and was supporting himself by a firm grasp of

the large boss in the centre of the pannel, when suddenly he felt it

turning round in his hand. Surprised to find it not a fixture, he pulled

it towards him, and found that it slowly yielded to the impulse. Drawing

it out of the socket, he saw it followed by an iron chain, which for a

time resisted all his efforts, but at length gave way, and he heard a

grating sound like the drawing of a rusty bolt. Suddenly the entire pannel

shook, and then the lower end started back sufficiently to betray a recess

in the wall. Hastily descending on his comrade's shoulders, and pushing

back the pannel, he discovered that it was supported by hinges, and was

doubtless intended to conceal a secret issue from the castle, which he

soon ascertained, and effected his escape. These facts were all that the

memory of Ibrahim could supply; but they were enough to guide him in his

search, and he immediately proceeded to sound the pannels in succession

with his fist. Commencing with the southern or outer wall, which he

supposed more massive and more likely to contain a secret passage, he

sounded each pannel, and perceiving in the corner one more reverberation

than in the others, he roused Hassan from his slumbers. "Hassan! Hassan!"

he exclaimed, "Arouse thee, man! and listen to good tidings." The awakened

sleeper gazed with half-opened eyes upon his excited companion, and would

have dropped to sleep again had not a few words of explanation and the

hope of escape fully roused him. Having with some difficulty perched his

rotund person upon the ample shoulders of Ibrahim, he followed his

directions and grasped the wooden boss, which, to the inexpressible

delight of both, yielded, as it had done forty years before to the captive

Turk, and displayed the iron chain. Bidding Hassan replace the boss,

Ibrahim determined to postpone his attempt until the festival had

collected all the guards and menials into the central edifice and its

approaches. An hour before midnight, when the young Moslem expected the

revelry would be at its height, Hassan again mounted upon his shoulders,

and after many strenuous efforts, at length succeeded in drawing up the

bolt. The pannel receded some inches, and Ibrahim raising it still further,

seized the lamp and entered a small oblong recess in the wall, which was

not less than ten or twelve feet in thickness. Perceiving no outlet, he

examined the wooden flooring, and soon discovered a trap, which, when

raised by the ring attached, exposed to view a steep and narrow descending

staircase, leading apparently to some sally-port beyond the castle ditch.

After carefully trimming his lamp, he was about to lead the way into this

dark abyss, when a sound, sharp and sudden, as of something falling in the

adjacent prison, caught his ear. Retracing his steps, he re-entered the

apartment, where, after a brief search, he found beneath one of the

embrasures a paper folded round a large pebble. Hastily opening it, the

following lines, written in the _lingua Franca_ so common in the Levant,

were visible.

"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 propriâ personâ_, 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 employés, 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 ghâts 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, (£160,000,) 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 (£6000) 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--Ghât 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."

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 _à 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 Jourâhoô, 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 dâk_ (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 suzerainté 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

ghât 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 Ghât,

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 ghâts 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 Piyâdâsee--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

_à 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.

[10] May 1841.

The subject of the manufactures and products of India, is not, however,

the only point connected with the internal administration, respecting

which some inconvenient facts find their way to light in the colonel's

pages--and with one or two of these revelations, we shall conclude our

extracts. The majority of those Anglo-Indian employés, who have favoured

the world with "Reminiscences" and "Narratives," are singularly free from

the charge of what is familiarly termed "telling tales out of school."

According to their account, nowhere is justice so efficiently administered,

or its functionaries so accessible, as in our Indian empire; but here,

whether from the native frankness of the colonel's disposition, or from

his having nothing more to hope or fear from the old Begum in Leadenhall

Street, we find this important subject placed, on several occasions, in

rather a different light from that in which it is usually represented. It

is well known that Sir David Ochterlony, a short time before his death,

discovered by mere accident that he was enrolled as a pensioner to a large

amount on the civil list of almost every native prince in Upper India,

from the emperor of Delhi downwards--his principal moonshee, or native

secretary, having thrown out intelligible hints, as though from his master,

that such douceurs would not be without their use in securing his powerful

interest at Calcutta--the moonshee himself quietly pocketing the proceeds.

This was certainly an outrageous instance; but it is the direct interest

of every native subordinate to screen his own misdeeds and extortions, by

promoting to the utmost, in his European superior, that inaccessibility to

which he is naturally but too much inclined--and the extent to which this

system of exclusion is carried, may be inferred from the following

anecdote. The colonel had been requested by a native landholder of high

respectability, to introduce him to the house of a civilian; and on asking

why he could not go by himself, was told, "I dare not approach the very

compound of the house he lives in! If his head man should hear that I

ventured to present myself before the gentleman without his permission, he

would immediately harass me by some false complaint, or even by

instituting an enquiry into the very title-deeds of my estate, which might,

however falsely, terminate in my ruin. It is not long since I paid eleven

hundred rupees to ---- to suppress false claims, which, if they had

actually gone into court, would have cost me ten times the sum."

Of the practical effects of criminal punishments, the colonel does not

speak more highly. "In the real Hindoostanee view of the subject, a

convict in chains is nearly a native gentleman--a little roué,

perhaps--employed on especial duties in the Company's service, for which

he is well fed, and has little labour. A jail-bird can easily be

distinguished after the first six months, by his superior bodily condition.

On his head maybe seen either a kinkhâb (brocade) or embroidered cap, or

one of English flowered muslin, enriched with a border of gold or silver

lace. Gros de Naples is coming into fashion, but slowly.... Was he

low-spirited, he could, for a trifling present, send to the bazar, and

enjoy a nautah from the hour the judge went to sleep till daybreak next

morning--nay, under proper management, he might be gratified by the

society of his wife and family.... See him at work, the burkandauze

(policeman) is smoking _his_ chillum, while he and his friends are sound

asleep, _sub tegmine fagi_. All of a sudden there is an alarm--the judge

is coming! up they all start, and work like devils for ten or fifteen

seconds, and then again to repose. This is working in chains on the roads!

In fact, after a man is once used to the comforts of an Indian prison,

there's no keeping him out!"

All this, no doubt, is broad caricature--but "ridentem dicere verum quid

vetat?" a motto which the colonel could not do better than adopt for any

future edition of his eccentric lucubrations. And so Rookhsut! Colonel

Sahib! may your favourite tomata sauce never pall upon your palate; and

though perhaps you would hardly thank us for the usual oriental good wish,

that your shadow may continue to increase, may it at least never be

diminished by that worst of all fiends, indigestion!

* * * * *

BELFRONT CASTLE.

A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.

One half of the world was surprised that Reginald Belfront married Jane

Holford--and the other half was equally surprised that Jane Holford

married Reginald Belfront; for, considering the experience that both

halves of the world must have had, it is amazing how subject they still

are to surprise. To us, who have not the pleasure to belong to either half,

there is very little surprising in the matter. Reginald had been for some

time on a visit at the house of a distant relation--old Sir Hugh de Mawley.

He had wandered through the great woods of the estate, and found them very

tiresome; had strolled in the immense park, and found it dull; and, in the

long evenings, had sat in the stately hall, and listened to the endless,

whispered anecdotes of his host, and found them both intolerable. No

wonder he started with joyful surprise when, one day in the drawing-room,

he heard the rustle of a silk gown; caught the glancing of some beautiful

real flowers on the top of a bright-green bonnet; and, more wonderful than

all, the smile of the prettiest lips, and the glances of the clearest eyes

he had ever seen in his life. The gown, the bonnet, the smiles, and eyes,

all belonged to Jane Holford; and Reginald, who had, up to this time, made

no great progress in the study of comparative physiology, now made such

rapid strides, that he could have told you every point in which the

possessor of the above-named attributes differed from the stiff and prim

Miss de Mawley, who had hitherto been the sole representative of the

female sex in Mawley Court. The neck and shoulders--the chin--nose--arms--

ankles--feet--not to mention the hair and eyebrows--of the new specimen,

were minutely studied; and, in spite of the usual antipathy he entertained

against all scientific pursuits, he felt a strong inclination to be the

owner of it himself, in order to pursue his investigations at full leisure.

He was no genius--hated books--disliked clever people--but prided himself

on his horsemanship, his play at quarterstaff, his personal strength, and,

above all, in his fine old castle in a somewhat inaccessible part of

Yorkshire, which had remained in the possession of his family ever since

the Conquest. Jane, on the other hand, had no castle to boast of; and

probably had no ancestor whatever at any period preceding the year 1750,

when her grandfather had bought an estate near Mawley Court--which had

gone on improving with the improvement of the times, till her father found

himself the possessor of a rent-roll of fifteen hundred a year, four sons,

and six grown-up daughters. It will easily be believed that no objections

to the match were raised on the part of a middle-aged gentleman, with so

many reasons for agreeing to the marriage settlement proposed by Reginald

Belfront; consisting, as it did, of a jointure to the widow, and the use

of Belfront Castle for life, without the remotest allusion to any portion

or other contingent advantage on the other side; and as Jane herself was,

if possible, still more satisfied on the subject than her father, all the

arrangements were rapidly made, and in less than three months after the

apparition of the silk gown and other etceteras in the drawing-room, the

indissoluble knot was tied, and Miss Cecilia, the second daughter, was

advanced to the dignity of Miss Holford, vice Jane--promoted.

The church was all decked out with roses and other pleasing emblems of the

unfading nature of connubial bliss; wreaths of sunflowers, with the same

comfortable moral, were hung up over the great gate of Mawley Court; while

Miss de Mawley, representing in her own person the evergreens omitted in

the garlands, received the happy couple on their return from the ceremony

at the head of all the female domestics, from the housekeeper down to the

kitchenmaid, and led the bride and bridegroom to the table in the great

hall, where old Sir Hugh was sitting in great state. They kneeled down

before his chair; and, laying his hand on their heads, he began blessing;

but not having practised that style of oratory so much as he ought, it

rapidly degenerated into a grace--and, as lunch in the mean time was

brought in, and the Holford family, and one or two of the neighbours who

had been present at the ceremony, had now arrived, the eloquence of Sir

Hugh was not altogether thrown away. There were several speeches and

toasts, and sundry attempts at jocularity; and Sir Hugh began the story of

the French countess and the waterfall at Fountainbleau; and Reginald

availed himself of the somnolency of the rest of the party to slip out

with his bride without being observed, just as the royal family began to

suspect the secret--and, long before the incensed husband sent the

challenge, the happy pair were careering onward as fast as the postboy

could drive, on the first stage of their wedding tour.

A month afterwards they were in a country inn in Wales. The window at

which they sat commanded a view of the beautiful vale of Cwmcwyllchly--a

small river glided down in winding mazes, hiding itself behind wooded

knolls, and brawling over rocks in the most playful and picturesque manner

imaginable. The sun had begun to set, and was taking a last look at the

prospect, with his vast chin rested on the top of Penchymcrwm, presenting

to the poetical mind an image of a redfaced farmer looking over a

five-barred gate--every thing, in short, that is generally met with in

Tourists' Guides, as constituting a splendid view, was assembled on this

favoured spot; and yet Jane heaved a deep sigh, and appeared to take no

notice of the landscape.

"You're tired, my love," said Reginald; "you have walked too far up these

Welsh mountains."

"I hope to get used to climbing," answered Jane; "there are plenty of

hills at Belfront--aren't there?"

"Yes, we have plenty of hills; but why don't you call it home, Jane?"

"Because I have never lived there," she replied; "and a place can scarcely

be called home that one has never seen."

"But you have never said you wished to see it."

"Oh, but I have wished it all the same--may we--may we go--home?"

She said the word at last, and Reginald was delighted.

"Home! to be sure--to-morrow, at daybreak; for, to tell you the truth, I

don't care sixpence for fine views--in fact, I don't think there is any

difference between any two landscapes--except that there may be hills in

one, and none in another, or woods, or a river--but they are all exactly

the same in reality. So, let us go home, my love, as fast as we can, or

I'm very much afraid Mr Peeper won't like it."

"Mr Peeper?" enquired Jane. "Who is Mr Peeper?"

"You will know him in good time," said Reginald; "and I hope he will like

you."

"I hope he will--I hope all your friends will like me--I will do every

thing in my power to please them."

"You're a very good girl, Jane; and Mr Peeper can't help but be pleased,

and I am glad of it; for it ought to be our first study to make ourselves

agreeable to _him_."

"Agreeable to Mr Peeper!" thought Jane. "How strange that I never was told

about him before this moment! Does he live in the castle, Reginald?" she

asked.

"Certainly. One of his family has lived there ever since one of mine did;

so there is a connexion between us of a few hundred years."

"Have you any other friends who live in the castle?" enquired the bride.

"I don't know whether Phil Lorimer is there just now or not; he has a room

whenever he comes; and a knife and fork at table."

"Who is he?"

"A capital fellow--full of wit--and makes funnier faces and better songs

than any man in Yorkshire. You will like Phil Lorimer."

"And I hope he will like me!"

"If he don't, I'll break every bone in his body."

"Oh! I beg you won't," said the bride with a smile, and looking up in

Reginald's face to assure herself he spoke in joke. It was as earnest a

face as if it had been of cast-iron; and she saw that Mr Lorimer's only

chance of preserving a whole skin was to like her with all his might.

"Is there any one else?"

"There's Mr Peeper's assistant, Mark Lutter--a clever man, and a great

scholar. I hate scholars, so he dines in the servants' hall, or far down

the table--below the salt."

"Are you serious?" enquired Jane.

"Do you not like scholars?"

"What's the use of them? I never could see what they were good for--and,

besides, Mr Peeper hates them too."

"Then why does he keep this man as his assistant?"

"Because if he didn't, the fellow would rebel."

"Well, you could turn him off."

"We never turn any body off at Belfront Castle. If they go of their own

accord, we punish them for it if we can--if they stay, they are welcome.

Mr Peeper must look to it, or Lutter will make a disturbance."

"What a curious place this castle must be," thought Jane, "and what odd

people they are that live in it!" She asked no more questions, but

determined to restrain her curiosity till she could satisfy it on the spot;

and, luckily, she had not long to wait. Next day they started on their

homeward way. As they drew nearer their destination, Jane's anxiety to

gain the first glimpse of her future home increased with every mile. She

had, of course, formed many fancy pictures of it in her own mind; and, as

love lent the brush and most obligingly compounded the colours, there can

be no doubt they made out a very captivating landscape of it between them.

"At the top of the next hill," said Reginald, "you will see the keep."

Jane stretched her head forward, and looked through the front window as if

she could pierce the hill that lay between her and home. On went the

horses; but the next hill seemed an incredible way off; it was now getting

late, and the shadows of evening, like a flock of tired black sheep, began

to lie down and rest thenselves on the vast dreary moor they were

travelling over. At last Jane felt that they were beginning an ascent; and

a sickly moon, that seemed to have undergone a severe operation, and lost

nearly all her limbs, lifted up her pale face in the sky. The wind, too,

began to whistle in long low gusts, and Reginald, who was not of a

poetical temperament, as we have already observed, was nearly asleep. They

reached the hill top at last, and a great expanse of rugged and broken

country lay before them.

"Where is it?--on which hand?" said Jane.

"Straight before you," replied the husband; "it is only three miles off;

the high-road turns off to the left, but we go through fields right on."

Jane looked with almost feverish anxiety. At a good distance in front,

rose a tall black structure, like the chimney of a shot manufactory--a

single, square, gigantic tower--throwing a darker mass against the

darkened sky, and sicklied o'er on one of the faces with the yellow-green

moonlight. There were no lights in it, nor any sign of habitation; and

Jane would have indulged in various enquiries and exclamations, if the

carriage had allowed her; but it had by this time left the main road, and

sank up to the axles in the ruts; it bounded against stones, and wallowed

in mire alternately; and all that she could do, was to hold on by one of

the arm rests, as if she had been in the cabin of a storm-toss'd ship.

"For mercy's sake, Reginald, will this last long?" she said, out of breath

with her exertions.

"We are about a mile from the drawbridge. I hope they have not drawn it

up."

"Could we not get into the castle if they have?"

"We might fall into the moat if we tried the postern."

"Oh, gracious!--is there a moat?"--and instinctively she put her hand to

her throat, for her mother had brought her up with a salutary dread of

colds, and she felt a sensation of choking at the very name.

At this moment, the agonized carriage, after several groans that would

have moved the heart of a highway commissioner, gave a rush downward, and

committed suicide in the most determined manner, by dashing its axle on

the ground--the wheels endeavouring in vain to fathom the profundity of

the ruts, and the horses totally unable to move the stranded equipage. The

sudden jerk knocked Reginald's hat over his eyes against the roof of the

carriage, and Jane screamed when she felt the top of her bonnet squeezed

as flat as a pancake by the same process, but neither of them, luckily,

was hurt.

"We must get out and walk," said the husband; "it isn't more than half a

mile, and we will send Phil Lorimer, or some of them, for the trunks."

He put his arm round Jane's waist, and helped her over the almost

impassable track.

"We must try to get the road mended," said Jane.

"It has never been mended in our time," was the reply; and it was said in

a tone which showed that the fact so announced was an unanswerable

argument against the proposition of the bride.

"A few stones well broken would do it all," she urged.

"We never break stones at Belfront," was the rejoinder; and in silence,

and with some difficulty, they groped their unsteady way. At last they

emerged from a thick overgrown copse, in which the accident had happened,

and, after sundry narrow escapes from sprained ankles and broken arms,

they reached the gate. It was an immense wooden barrier, supported at each

end by little round buildings--like a slice of toast laid lengthways

between two half pounds of butter. It was thickly studded with iron nails,

and the round piers were of massive stone, partly overgrown with ivy, and

as solid as if they had been formed of one mass.

"Does any body live in those lodges?" enquired Jane.

"There is a warder in the inner court," said Reginald. "These are merely

the supporters of the outer gate."

"And how are we to get in?"

"We must blow, I suppose." And so saying, Reginald lifted up a horn that

was hung by an iron chain from one of the piers, and executed a flourish

that made Jane put her fingers to her ears.

In a short time the creaking of an iron chain--whose recollection of oil

must have been of the most traditionary nature--gave intimation that its

intentions were decidedly hospitable; and with many squeaks and grunts the

enormous portal turned at last on its hinges, and exposed to view a narrow

winding road between two walls, which, in a short time, conducted the

visitors to a long wooden bridge over a piece of stagnant water--the said

bridge having only that moment been let down from the lofty position in

which its two halves were kept by an immense wooden erection, which bore

an awful resemblance to a scaffold. When they got over the bridge,

Reginald turned round, and, imprinting a kiss on the pale cheek of the

astonished bride, said--

"Welcome home, dear Jane. This is Belfront Castle!"

Jane looked round a spacious courtyard, and saw a square of low

dark-looking buildings, with the enormous tower she had seen from the top

of the hill rearing its thick head above all at one corner. They proceeded

across the roughly-paved quadrangle, and entered a low door; ascended

three steps, and opened another door. They then found themselves in a

large and lofty hall, with fitful flashes of red light flickering on the

walls, as the flame of the wood fire on the hearth rose or fell beneath

the efforts of a half distinguishable figure, extended at full length on

the floor, and puffing the enormous log with a pair of gigantic bellows.

In the palpable obscure, Jane could scarcely make out the persons of the

occupants of the apartment; but when the flame burnt up a little more

powerfully than usual, she observed the figure of a tall man dressed in

black, who shook hands with Reginald, and bowed very coldly and formally

to her, when he was introduced as Mr Peeper. He seemed about fifty or

sixty years of age, but very much enfeebled. He stooped and coughed, and

was very infirm in his motions; but when the red glare from the hearth

fell upon his eyes, they fixed themselves on Jane with such a piercing

expression, that she turned away her face almost in fear. His hair was

snow-white, and yet it was impossible to decide whether he was a man of

the years we have stated, with the premature appearance of age, or a

person of extraordinary longevity, retaining the vigorous eyes and active

spirit of youth. However it was, Mr Peeper was too harsh and haughty in

his approaches, and exacted too much deference from the youthful bride, to

be very captivating at first. He said no welcome to the new-comer, and was

stiff and unkind even to the owner of the castle. Candles were soon

brought in, and Jane took the opportunity of looking round. The individual

who had been busy blowing the fire now rose from his humble position, and

was presented to the lady as Phil Lorimer. He bowed and smiled, and was

proceeding with a compliment, in which, however, he advanced no further

than the summer sun bringing out the roses, when Reginald pushed him out

of the hall, with orders to get the luggage brought in from the carriage,

and to be back in time for supper. Phil Lorimer seemed a man of thirty,

strongly built, with a sweet voice and friendly smile; but what station he

filled in the household--whether a servant, a visitor, a poor relation, or

what he could be, Jane could not make out, either from his manner or the

way he was treated.

"Mr Lorimer is very good-natured--very obliging, to take care of the

luggage, I am sure," said Jane.

"Better that than talking nonsense about roses," replied Reginald. "Did

you expect us this evening, Mr Peeper?"

"I did, Mr Reginald, and have invited a few of the neighbours to meet you."

"Who are coming?"

"Sir Bryan De Barreilles, Hasket of Norland, Maulerer of Phascald, and old

Dr Howlet. They will be here soon, so you had better make haste."

"I had better not appear, love," said Jane; "no ladies are coming, and

among so many gentlemen my presence might be awkward."

"By no means," replied the husband. "It wouldn't be right, Mr Peeper, for

my wife to be absent from the supper-table?"

"Certainly not. It is to see _her_ the neighbours are coming."

Is this Mr Peeper to have the control of all my actions? thought Jane. Who

can he be?

She took another glance at the object of her thoughts, but caught his eye

fixed on her with the same penetrating brightness as before; and she cast

her looks on the ground; and, whether from anger or fear, she felt her

cheeks glowing with blushes.

"You will not be long gone, if you please," he said to Jane as she retired

to change her dress.

"You don't seem pleased to see us, Mr Peeper," said Reginald, when Jane

had gone to her room under the guidance of a very tall old woman, who

walked before her, holding out a tremendously long candle, as if it were a

sword, and she was at the head of a military procession.

"No, sir," replied Mr Peeper; "I am not pleased with the person you have

brought here. You have gone too far from home for a wife. None of the

Belfronts have ever married out of Yorkshire, and it may give rise to

troubles."

"I am very sorry my wife's relations would not allow me to send for you to

perform the ceremony."

"It is a bad omen," said the old man; "my predecessors have married your

predecessors without a break since the conquest. It bodes no good."

"I trust no harm will happen, and that you will soon forget the

disappointment."

"None of my family forget, but we will not _talk_ of it." So saying, he

turned away, and arranged a goodly array of bottles on the sideboard.

Reginald sat down on an oak chair beside the fire, and gazed attentively

into the log.

In the mean time, Jane had followed her gigantic conductor through half a

mile of passages, and reached a small room at one end of the quadrangle,

and through the window (of which half the panes were broken, as if on

purpose) she caught the melodious murmur of a rapid river, that chafed

against the foundation walls of the castle. On looking round, the prospect

was not very encouraging. Tattered tapestries hung down the walls, and

waved in a most melancholy and ghost-like fashion in the wind; the floor

was thinly littered over with some plaited rushes, to supply the place of

a carpet; and a few long high-backed oak chairs kept guard against the

wall. The fire had died an infant in its iron cradle, the grate; and the

curtain of the bed waved to and fro in mournful sympathy with the tapestry

round the room. Jane was so cold that she could hardly go through her

toilette, simple as it was; but having at last achieved a very slight

alteration in her dress, and left her bonnet on the head of an owl, which

formed the ornament of one of the high-backed chairs, she endeavoured to

retrace her steps; and after a few pauses and mistakes, she found her way

once more into the hall.

The guests in the mean time were assembled and had seated themselves at

table. On Jane's entrance they all rose, and on being respectively named

by their host, bowed with cold and stately courtesy, and sat down again.

The four strangers seemed all of the same ages, fifty or thereabouts--tall,

hale, and dignified in their manners. Sir Bryan de Barreilles had a patch

on his right eye; Hasket of Norland a deep scar on his forehead, that cut

his left eyebrow into two parts, and gave a very extraordinary expression

to his rigid countenance; Maulerer of Phascald had the general effect of

very handsome features, marred by the want of his nose; not that there was

actually no nose, but that it did not occupy the prominent position it

usually holds on the human face divine, but was inserted deep between the

cheeks--in fact, was a nose not set on after the fashion of a knocker, but

a fine specimen of _basso-relievo_, indented after the manner of Socrates's

head on a seal, and would probably have made a very fine impression. Dr

Howlet was perfectly blind, and from the tone in which he was addressed by

the other gentlemen, Jane concluded he was also very nearly deaf. Besides

these, there were present Mr Peeper, at the foot of the table next to

Reginald, and on the other side of him a thick square-built man, with a

fine hilarious open countenance, who was perhaps of too low a rank to be

introduced to the lady of the castle--no other in fact than the

redoubtable Mr Lutter, of whom Jane had heard on her journey home.

After the serving men, with some difficulty, had brought in the supper,

consisting of enormous joints of meat, hot and cold, and deposited on the

sideboard vast tankards of strong ale and other potent beverages, Mr

Peeper rose, and folding his hands across his breast, and bending forward

his head with every appearance of devotion, muttered some words evidently

intended to represent a grace; but so indistinct that it was utterly

impossible to make the slightest guess at their meaning, whereupon they

all fell to with prodigious activity, and cut and slashed the enormous

dishes as if they had been famished for a year. Mr Lutter, after making an

observation that true thankfulness was as much shown by moderate enjoyment

of good gifts as by long prayers said over them, made a most powerful

assault on the cold sirloin, and, of all the party, was the only one who

had the politeness to send a helping to Jane. She was tired and hungry,

and felt really obliged by the attention, but could scarcely do justice to

the viands from surprise at the conversation of the guests.

"Ho, ho!" said Sir Bryan de Barreilles, "I once knew a thing--such a thing

it was too--ho! ho!" And partly the vividness of the recollection, and

principally an enormous mouthful of beef, produced a long fit of

coughing--"'twill make you laugh," he continued--"'twas a rare feat--ho!

ho!--even this lady will be pleased to hear it."

Jane bowed in expectation of an amusing anecdote.

"One of my tenants was going to be married; his bride was a very young

creature, not more than eighteen, and on the wedding-day, as I always was

ready for a joke in those days--ah! 'tis thirty years ago, or more--I

asked the bridal party to the Tower. Ho! ho! such laughing we had!--Giles

Mallet and Robin Henslow fought with redhot brands out of the fire, till I

thought we should all have died; and Giles--the cleverest fellow and the

wittiest, ho! ho!--such a fellow was Giles!--he took up the poker instead

of the fir-log, and watched his opportunity, ho! ho!--it was redhot too--a

good stout poker as ever you saw--and ran it clean through his cheek--you

heard the tongue fizz! as it licked the hot iron--'twas a famous play. How

Robin roared, to be sure, and couldn't speak plain--ho! ho! Well, the

games went on; and nothing would please some of the young ones but we

should see the Oubliette. 'Twas a dark hole where my forefathers

imprisoned their refractory vassals, and sad stories were told about

it--how that voices were heard from the bottom of it, and groans, and

sometimes gory heads were seen at the top of it, looking up to the

skylight, and struggling to escape, but ever tumbling back into the deep

dark hole, with screams and smothered cries; a rare place for a man's

enemies--but it had not been used for many years. Well--nothing would do,

but when we were all merry with ale, we should all go and see the

Oubliette, and a kiss of the bride was promised to the one who should go

down the furthest. Now, the stone steps were very narrow at best; and were

all worn away--and that was the best of it--all along the passages we went,

and past the dungeon grating, till we came to the open mouth of the

Oubliette. Ho! ho! how you'll laugh. Down a step went one--no kiss from

the bride for him--two steps went another--some went down six steps, and

one bold fellow went down so far that we lost sight of him in the darkness.

Then the bridegroom, a stout young yeoman--thought it shame to let anyone

beat him in daring, for so rich a prize as a kiss from the rosy lips of

his bride, and down--down--he went--step after step--till finally, far

down in the gloom, we heard a loud scream--such a scream--ho! ho! I can't

help laughing yet when I think of it--and in a minute or two, whose voice

should we hear but Giles Mallet's! _There_ was Giles, hollowing and

roaring for us to send down a rope but _how_ he had got down, or _when_ he

had gone down, nobody knew. However, a rope was got, and merrily, stoutly,

we all pulled, but no Giles came up. Instead of him, we drew forth the

bridegroom! but such a changed man. His eyes were fixed, and his face as

white as silver--his mouth was wide open, and his great tongue went

lolling about from side to side--and he shook his head, and mumbled and

slavered--he was struck all of a sudden into idiocy, and knew nobody; not

even his bride. She was sinking before him, but he never noticed her, but

went moaning, and muttering, and shaking his head. Ho! ho! 'twas the

comicalest thing I ever saw. And when Giles came up he explained it all.

Giles had gone down deeper than any of them, and waited for the others on

a ledge in the cavern; and just when the bridegroom reached it, Giles

seized him by the leg, and said--'Your soul is mine'--ho! ho! 'Your soul

is mine,' said Giles--and the bridegroom uttered only the loud, long

scream we had all heard, and stood and shook and trembled. 'Twas a rare

feat; and if you had come down last year"--he added, turning to Jane--"you

would have seen the bridegroom going from door to door, followed by all

the boys in the village--he never recovered. There he went, shake, shaking

his head--and gape gaping with his mouth. "Twas good sport to teaze him.

I've set my dogs on him myself; but he never took the least notice. 'Twas

a good trick--I never knew better."

"And the bride?" enquired Jane.

"Oh, she died in a week or two after the adventure! A silly hussy--I

wished to marry her, by the left hand, to my forester, but she kept on

moping and looking at the idiotical bridegroom, and died--a poor fool."

"Ah! we've grown dull since those merry times," said Hasket of Norland,

looking, round the empty hall, and then towards Reginald, as if

reproaching him with the absence of the ancient joviality. "There were

three men killed at my marriage--in fair give and take fight--in the hall,

at the wedding supper. There is the mark of blood on the floor yet."

"I lost my eye at the celebration of a christening," said Sir Bryan de

Barreilles. "My uncle of Malmescott pushed it in with the handle of his

dagger."

"I got this wound on my forehead at a feast after a funeral," said Hasket

of Norland. "I quarreled with Morley Poyntz, and he cut my eyebrow with an

axe. 'Twas a merry party in spite of that."

"The Parson of Pynsent jumped on my face at a festival in honour of the

birth of Sir Ranulph Berlingcourt's heir," said Maulerer of Phascald. "I

had been knocked on the floor by the Archdeacon of Warleileigh, and the

Parson of Pynsent trode on my nose. He was the biggest man in Yorkshire,

and squeezed my nose out of sight--a rare jovial companion, was the Parson

of Pynsent, and many is the joke we have had about the weight of his foot.

Ah! we have no fun now--no fighting, no grinning through a horse-collar,

no roasting before a fire, no singing"--

"Yes," said Reginald, "we have Phil Lorimer."

"Let him come--let us hear him," said some of the party.

"I hate songs," said Dr Howlet; "and think all ballads should be burned."

"And the writers of them, too," added Mr Peeper, with a fierce glance

towards the fireplace, from which Phil Lorimer emerged.

"Oh no! I think songs an innocent diversion," said Mr Lutter, "and

softening to the heart. Sit near me, Mr Lorimer."

"Make a face, Phil," cried the knight; "I would rather see a grin than

hear your ballad."

"Jump, Phil," said Hasket of Norland, applying his fork to Phil's leg as

he passed, "you are a better morris-dancer than a poet."

Phil, who was imperturbably good-natured, did as he was told. He opened

his mouth to a preternatural size, turned one eye to the ceiling, and the

other down to the floor, till Sir Bryan was in ecstasies at his

achievement. He then sprang to an incredible height in that air, and

danced once or twice through the hall, throwing himself into the most

grotesque attitudes imaginable, and the table was nearly shaken in pieces

by the thumpings with which the party showed their satisfaction.

"Now then, Phil; here's a cup of sherry-wine--drink it, boy, and sing a

sweet song to the lady," said Reginald.

"Songs are an invention of the devil," said Mr Peeper.

"Unless they are sung through the nose," said Mr Lutter, with a sneer.

"You approve of songs then?" inquired Mr Peeper, with a fierce look.

"Certainly," said Mr Lutter, "when their subject is good, and the language

modest."

"Then you are an atheist," retorted Mr Peeper.

"What has a ballad to do with atheism?" enquired Mr Lutter, looking angry.

"You approve of wicked songs, and therefore are an atheist."

"A man is more like an atheist," retorted Mr Lutter, "who is ungrateful to

God for the gift of song, and shuts up the sweetest avenue by which the

spirit approaches its Creator. I admire poetry, and respect poets."

"Any one who holds such diabolic doctrines is not fit to remain in

Belfront Castle."