aaa rae ate aps. eee “ja a ; f hee Ss ‘ - Lupe ace y sai ; eae ' fo LT a Perera 5 rene farm reas CORNELL UNIVERSITY The WILLIAM D. SARGENT Collection ° * The “sear,” or “sere,” is the yellow part between the beak and eyes. + The “mails” are the breast feathers. { The “sails” are the wings: the “beams” are the long. feathers of the wing, generally: the two longest are called “ principal feathers,” the two next “flags,” and so on, there being a name for each in ancient falconry. § The tail. |t The toes. a ee VALLEY OF THE INDUS. 77 the wind—chevauchant le vent, as French fal- coners express it, — with the stiffhess.of an eagle, Our old authors are fond of commending the goshawk.* She is, according to them, a “ choice and dainty bird” for the falconer, and their sport with her was right good, she being “ flown at wild goose, hare and coney; nay, she will venture to seize a goat.” I am not prepared to assert that the race of goshawk has, like many other moderns, degene- rated from the spirit and virtue of its ancestors: certainly, however, the descriptions of our modern ornithologists lead one to suspect something wrong. Sebright expresses his surprise that any one should use goshawks for sport: he declares that they cannot fly half as fast as a strong partridge, that they are too slow for an open country, so slack mettled that it requires the most skilful management to make them fly at all, and, finally, that, in his opinion, they are best fitted to catch rabbits. , * This word seems to be derived from “ gross-hawk,” for the same reason that the Orientals call the bird “Shah-baz,” or “hawk-king.” It is the falco palumbarius of Linneeus—a hawk (not a falcon, properly speaking, its wings being shorter than its tail)—and is common to Europe and Asia, generally preferring hilly to very mountainous countries or hot plains. 78 FALCONRY IN THE Others insult the bird by declaring that she was a big sparrow-hawk (of the sub-genus ** Accipiter”), till Cuvier, observing the com- parative shortness and stoutness of the tarsi, together with the moderate length of the middle toe,* opened to her a fresh family, the Asturs. They compare her flight to that of an owl; her conduct, after she has “‘ put in” + her quarry, to a cat’s, and opine that she “acts terrier ” when she ventures into the bush pursuing it. The fact is, that a good goshawk is an excellent bird, but, at the same time, as difficult to find good, as she iscommon. The bad ones so differ. from the best in form as well as spirit, that one is almost tempted to believe the old assertion made about this hawk, namely, that she pairs with the tiercelet, but, at the same time, allows the gallantries of sparrow-hawks, and other low-born cicisbet, The Shahbaz is brought down from the northern hills to Scinde about the commencement of winter. As a hawk of the first year, unmoulted, summed with perfect plume, fresh, strong, and lively, is * The sparrow-hawks have shorter wings, tarsi longer and more slender, a more lengthened middle toe and feebler claws than the goshawk. + To “put in” the quarry is to drive it into a bush. VALLEY OF THE INDUS. 79 an expensive* bird, she is not turned loose when the season is over. During the moult, however, she requires much care, and, besides, she is subject to a variety of dangerous diseases. * * * #* # The “lovely bird” was to act in concert with a cast of tiercelets, and the Ameer promised excellent sport.: There is very little amusement in hare hunting with the goshawk. The timid brute starts, and is struck down generally within the minute. One curious part of the proceeding attracts the prac- tised eye, making one marvel how the bird of prey, in her wild state, manages it. The Shahbaz invariably seizes the hare, fixing her powerful singles in the fur of its back, and, with the talons of the ether foot, she grapples at a tuft of grass, or some projecting twig of a bush, so as suddenly to arrest its flight. When flown at that game she is invariably breeched, a broad leather thong being passed from the right to the left knee, where it is securely buttoned. Were this neglected, the natives assure us there is imminent danger of the hawk’s being split up. Therefore it is probable that, in * Sometimes costing as much as 20/.; a sum in Scinde fully equal to 200/. in England. 80 FALCONRY IN THE a state of nature, the hawk rarely, if ever, flies at a hare. En revanche, most exciting is the pursuit of the Obara. A line of horsemen, following the faleoner, scours the plain, facing the birds, that would otherwise lie or run to rise from their feeding place. Immediately the goshawk is cast off. The quarry slowly mounting — a flight, which the Shahbaz finds the most difficult,— makes for the nearest ridge in sight. The work now begins: riding to hounds, even in Galway, is a joke compared with riding to hawks. You have no “ bullfinches,” true, and no stone walls, there is no timber, and you never come to “ the brook.” But walls may be broken down, hedges have gaps, and five-barred gates yield to the hunting whip. Here your obstacles are more serious ones. A thin curtain of tamarisk conceals the plain, and forms, with its tough and twisted stems, an unseen quickset awaiting every stride : when it is thick, you might as well attempt to ride through half a mile of strong fishing-nets, carefully staked down. Out of cover the ground is gashed with gigantic sun-cracks: where these fissures abound not, deep holes, treacherously concealed by tiny mounds of earth, supply their place, and, every now and then, you come upon a perpendicular banked nullah, some twenty feet VALLEY OF THE INDUS. 81 wide, by thirty in depth, with a suddenness equally startling to your nag and yourself. Acci- dents are the more likely to occur, as during the four miles of best speed gallop, which the Obara, if a good one, is safe to lead you, your vision is, or should be, mostly directed above, not before you. Occasionally you recreate your mind by a retrospective glance, which shows you the field in most admired disorder: here a head sinking into an overgrown ditch, there a pair of heels pro- truding from a bunch of cactus, and there a natural summersault, thrown so high, so far, that it recalls to mind the artificialities of the hippo- drome to cast them into shade. * * * * * “Stop!” said the Ameer, painfully excited ;— “You, Gul Mammad, ride softly round and place yourself behind the brow of that hill. You, Fauju, to the opposite side.” My friend’s acute coup d’eil had marked a pair of antelopes quietly grazing in the bit of green valley far beyond. A glance through the glass assured me that he had not erred: what to the naked eye appeared two formless, yellow marks upon a field of still undried grass, became by means of the telescope, a pair of those beau- tiful little beings our poets call “ gazelles.” £5 82 FALCONRY IN THE Ibrahim Khan disposed his force skilfully. Reserving the falconer and a Kuttewala* with two fierce, gaunt Kelat greyhounds, he stationed his men in a circle concealed from the sharp eyes of the antelopes, leaving a gap to wind- ward of them to prevent the scent reaching their nostrils, and to serve as a trap for them to fall into. Presently the horsemen, emerging from behind the rocks and hill tops, began to advance slowly towards the quarry, and in a moment, the startled animals, sighting the forms of many enemies, sprang high up and bounded towards the only way of escape. As the doe passed us at headlong speed, the Ameer turned round so as to conceal her from the view of the goshawk. A few moments after- wards I gave the signal ; he bent forward over his mare’s neck, and directing the Shahbaz towards the buck as he flew by, threw up the bird from his wrist with a shout. The two greyhounds, free from the leash, dashed forward at that moment. All was hurry and excitement. Horsemen and footmen crowded in pursuit, every man straining his eyes to keep the quarry in full view. The rocky ground, unfavourable to the pur- * A dog-keeper. VALLEY OF THE INDUS. 83 suers, was all the antelope could desire. His long thin legs, almost disproportioned to the size of the body, were scarcely visible, so rapid were their twinkling motions. Here he cleared a huge boulder of rock, there he plunged into the air over the topmost twigs of a euphor- bium bush; here he threaded his way through the pebbly bed of a torrent, there perched for an instant upon a stony ledge, he fearlessly pre- pared to foot the slippery descent beyond. Such a country could not but be puzzling to dogs, though ours were wary old greyhounds that had hunted by sight for years; they fell far behind, and to all prospect the gazelle was lost. “‘She has eaten too much—a blight upon her mother !” cried a furious voice by my side. The Ameer was right. Had his bird been sharper set, the chase would have lost half its difficulty. The Shahbaz, who at first had flown gallantly at the quarry, soon began to check, and as we were riding far behind over the difficult ground, appeared inclined to abandon her game. But when, escaping from the punchbowl of rock, we reached a long level plain of silt, the aspect of affairs improved. At a distance, which was palpably diminishing, we saw the goshawk attacking her game. Now she swooped upon its back, deeply scoring the 84 FALCONRY IN THE delicate yellow coat as she passed by. Then she descended upon the animal’s head, deafening it with her clashing pinions, and blinding it with her talons. This manceuvre, at first seldom prac- tised out of respect,for the dagger-like horns, whose sharp, black tips never failed to touch the pursuer’s balai, or pendent feathers,* was soon preferred to the other. As the victim, losing strength and breath by excess of fear, could no longer use its weapons with the same dexterity, the boldness of the Shahbaz increased. She seemed to perch upon its brow: once or twice it fell, and when it arose, its staggering, uncertain gait gave evidence of extreme distress. Then the dogs, who had become ferocious as wolves, gained sensibly upon their victim. The sound of their approach but added to its terror what it took from its speed. Even before they had fastened their fangs upon its quarters, the unhappy gazelle was stretched. panting and struggling with the Shahbaz straining every nerve to pin its head to the ground. The best proof to me of the Kelat greyhound’s ferocity was the conduct of the Kuttewala when he came up with his charges. Not daring to interrupt with the hand their wrangling and * The balai is the falcon’s tail; the pendent feathers those behind her thighs. AggLMOY iscuS Ww FS100, Tea UA AQ PSUSHAD ATIEZV) SHI AO HLIVAC AHL UAL SPT NUT 44 yoy ¥ ung suDLHT acuoyoRYA eg A og UO MATT VALLEY OF THE INDUS. 85 worrying the prey, he drew from his belt a long cord noosed at both ends, and throwing it over them as if it were a lasso, drew them off with a wariness that looked like the result of much disagreeable experience. The death of the gazelle is now considered the highest triumph of Eastern falconry. As with us, there are amongst them traditions that in ancient times the haute volerie was of a nobler kind,—that the wolf of the woods and the wild sheep of the hills were the favourite quarry of the barons, white and black, who, ignoring or disdaining such poaching tools as musket and matchlock, prided themselves upon the prowess of a hawk as of a son or a second self. Meer Ibrahim Khan Talpur’ the remainder of that day was almost as lively a companion as a subaltern newly returned from “ seeing service.” He slew his antelope some twenty successive deaths, praised to the skies everything that was his especially; more especially his Bashahs, his falconer, his dogs, his dogkeeper; most especially as her due, his goshawk. As regards the latter, a little romancing was allowed to mingle its alloy with the pure vein of veritable history. Every bough we saw on our way home reminded him of some doubtful exploit performed by that same Shahbaz. At dinner, the gazelle steaks 86 FALCONRY IN THE brought her mention prominently forward, and the music, wine, and joviality of the evening elevating him, also tended in no small degree to elevate her and her qualities. At last it was proposed to try her upon one of the wild goats that roam over the deserts separating Cutch from Scinde. ‘* Her success” said the Ameer, ‘is certain.” “Certain,” repeated Kakoo Mall. **Certain,” nodded Hari Chand, whispering: “the gazelle of this year, next year will be a Gorkhar !”’* Whether the sneer has, or has not been jus- tified, I know not. Perhaps it may so happen that in some day to come the Ameer Ibrahim, seduced by the gobemouche auditory of a wonders loving British traveller may point to the bird in question with a— ‘You see that Shahbaz? Well, Wallah ! By the beard of the Prophet I swear to you, five years ago she felled a wild ass. You may be- lieve me; although a Beloch, I do not tell a lie. Billah! A ‘man-with-a-hat’+ was with me when it happened. Ask Burton Sahib, if it did not.” * A wild ass. + Topee-wala, a European opposed to Pugree-wala, a “ man in a turban,” the common Indian and Seindian way of denoting an Asiatic. VALLEY OF THE INDUS. 87 Then will Kakoo Mall, if he be living, ejacu- late “certainly,” and Hari Chand, if he be present, exclaim ‘‘certainly;” and in a word, every man or boy that has ears to hear and eyes to see, will re-echo “certainly,” and swear him- self an eye-witness of the event, to the extreme confusion of Fact and Fiction. POSTSCRIPT. I extract the following few lines from a well known literary journal as a kind of excuse for venturing, unasked, upon a scrap of auto- biography. As long as critics content them- selves with bedevilling one’s style, discovering that one’s slang is “‘ vulgar,” and one’s attempts at drollery “failures,” one should, methinks, listen silently to their ideas of “ gentility,” and accept their definitions of wit,—reserving one’s own opinion upon such subjects. For the British author in this, our modern day, engages himself as Clown in a great pantomime, to be knocked down, and pulled up, slashed, tickled and but- tered a discrétion for the benefit of a manual- pleasantry-loving Public. So it would be weak- ness in him to complain of bruised back, scored elbows and bumped head. Besides, the treatment you receive varies pro- digiously according to the temper and the manifold influences from without that operate upon the gentleman that operates upon you. For in- stance— 90 POSTSCRIPT, “Tis a failure at being funny,” says surly Aristarchus, when, for some reason or other, he dislikes you or your publisher. “It is a smart book,” opines another, who has no particular reason to be your friend. ‘* Narrated with freshness of thought,” declares a third, who takes an honest pride in “ giving the devil his due.” “Very clever,” exclaims the amiable critic, who for some reason or other likes you or your publisher. “There is wit and humour in these pages,” says the gentleman who has some particular reason to be your friend. ‘“‘ Evinces considerable talent.” And— “There is genius in this. book,” declare the dear critics who in any way identify themselves or their interests with you. Now for the extract,— ‘‘Mr. Burton was, it appears, stationed for five years in Scinde with his regiment, and it is due to him to say, that he has set a good example to his fellow-subalterns by pursuing so diligently his inquiries into the language, literature and customs of the native population by which he was surrounded. We are far from accepting all his doctrines on questions of Eastern policy,— POSTSCRIPT. 91 especially as regards the treatment of natives; but we are sensible of the value of the additional evidence which he has brought forward on many important questions. Fora young man, he seems to have adopted some very extreme opinions ; and it is perhaps not too much to say, that the fault from which he has most to fear, not only as an author, but as an Indian officer, is, a disregard of those well-established rules of moderation which no one can transgress with impunity.” The greatest difficulty a raw writer on Indian subjects has to contend with, is a proper compre- hension of the ignorance crasse which besets the mind of the home-reader and his oracle the critic. What a knowledge these lines do show of the opportunity for study presented to the Anglo- Indian subaltern serving with his corps! During the few months when I did duty with mine, we were quartered at Gharra, a heap of bungalows surrounded by a wall of milk-bush; on a sandy flat, near a dirty village whose timorous inha- bitants shunned us as walking pestilences. No amount of domiciliary visitings would have found a single Scindian book in the place, except the accounts of the native shopkeepers; and, to the best of my remembrance, there was not a soul who could make himself intelligible in the common medium of Indian intercourse,—Hindos- 92 POSTSCRIPT. tani. An ensign stationed in Dover Castle might write Ellis’s Antiquities; a sows-lieutenant with his corps at Boulogne might compose the Legen- daire de la Morinie, but Gharra was sufficient to paralyse the readiest pen that ever coursed over foolscap paper. Now, waiving with all due modesty the un- merited compliment of ‘good boy,” so grace- fully tendered to me, I proceed to the judgment which follows it, my imminent peril of ‘‘ extreme opinions.” If there be any value in the “ addi- tional evidence” I have “brought forward on important questions,” the reader may, perchance, be curious to know how that evidence was col- lected. So without further apology, I plunge into the subject. After some years of careful training for the church in the north and south of France, Florence, Naples and the University of Pisa, I found my- self one day walking the High Street, Oxford, with all the emotions which a Parisian exquisite of the first water would experience on awaking— at 3 p.M.,—in “ Dandakaran’s tangled wood.” To be brief, my “college career” was highly unsatisfactory. I began a ‘‘reading man,” worked regularly twelve hours a day, failed in everything—chiefly, I flattered myself, because Latin hexameters and Greek iambics had not POSTSCRIPT. 93 entered into the list of my studies,—threw up the, classics, and returned to old habits of fencing, boxing, and single-stick, handling the ‘‘ribbons,” squiring dames, and sketching facetiously, though not wisely, the reverend features and figures of certain half-reformed monks, calling themselves “fellows.” My reading also ran into bad courses,—Erpenius, Zadkiel, Falconry, Cornelius Agrippa, and the Art of Pluck. At last the Affghan war broke out. After begging the paternal authority in vain for the Austrian service, the Swiss guards at Naples, and even the Légion étrangére, I determined to leave Oxford, cotite qui cote. The testy old lady, Alma Mater, was easily persuaded to consign, for a time, to “country nursing” the froward brat who showed not a whit of filial regard for her. So, after two years, I left Trinity without a “little go” in a high dog-cart,—a companion in misfortune too-tooing lustily through a ‘‘ yard of tin,” as the dons stared up from their game of bowls to witness the departure of the forbidden yehicle. Thus having thoroughly established the fact that I was fit for nothing but to be ‘‘shot at for sixpence a day,” and as those Affghans (how I blessed their name!) had cut gaps in many a regiment, the ‘‘ relieving officer” thought proper to provide me with a commission in the Indian 94: POSTSCRIPT. army, and to start me as quickly as feasible for the ‘land of the sun.” So, my friends and fellow soldiers, I may address you in the words of the witty thief,—slightly altered from Gil Blas,—‘ Blessings on the dainty pow of the old Dame who turned me out of her house; for had she shown clemency I should now doubtless be a dyspeptic don, instead of which I have the honour to be a lieutenant, your comrade.” As the Bombay pilot sprang on board, Twenty Mouths agape over the gangway, all asked one and the same question. Alas! the answer was a sad one!— the Affghans had been defeated — the Avenging Army had retreated—peace was restored to Asia! The Twenty Mouths all ejaculated a something unfit for ears polite. To a mind thoroughly impressed with the sentiment that “ Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long,” the position of an ensign in the Hon. E, I. Company’s Service is a very satisfactory one. He has a horse or two, part of a house, a pleasant mess, plenty of pale ale, as much shooting as he can manage, and an occasional invitation to a dance, where there are thirty-two cavaliers to three dames, or to a dinner party when a chair un- POSTSCRIPT. 95 expectedly falls vacant. But some are vain enough to want more, and of these fools was I. In India two roads lead to preferment. The direct highway is “service ;” — getting a flesh wound, cutting down a brace of natives, and doing something eccentric, so that your name may creep into adespatch. The other path, study of the languages, is a rugged and tortuous one, still you have only to plod steadily along its length, and, sooner or later, you must come to a “ staff appointment.” Bien entendu, I suppose you to be destitute of or deficient in Interest whose magic influence sets down you at once, a heaven-born staff officer, at the goal which others must toil to reach. A dozen lessons from Professor Forbes and a native servant on board the John Knox, enabled me to land with éclat as a griff, and to astonish the throng of palanquin bearers that jostled, pushed, and pulled me at the pier head, with the vivacity and nervousness of my phraseology. And I spent the first evening in company with one Dossabhoee Sorabjee, a white-bearded Parsee, who, in his quality of language-master had ver- nacularized the tongues of Hormuzd knows how many generations of Anglo-Indian subalterns. The corps to which I was appointed, was then in country quarters at Baroda in the land of 96 POSTSCRIPT. Guzerat ; the journey was a long one, the diffi- culty of finding good instructors there was great, so was the expense, moreover fevers abounded, and, lastly, it was not so easy to obtain leave of absence to visit the Presidency, where candidates for the honours of language are examined. These were serious obstacles to success; they were sur- mounted however in six months, at the end of which time I found myself in the novel position of ‘ passed interpreter in Hindostani.” My success,—for I had distanced a field of eleven,—encouraged me to a second attempt, and though I had to front all the difficulties over again, in four months my name appeared in orders | as qualified to interpret in the Guzerattee tongue. Meanwhile the Ameers of Scinde had ex- changed their palaces at Hyderabad for other quarters not quite so comfortable at Hazaree- bagh, and we were ordered up to the Indus for the pleasant purpose of acting police there. Knowing the conqueror’s chief want, a man who could speak a word of his pet conquests’ ver- nacular dialect, I had not been a week at Kurrachee before I found a language-master and a book. But the study was undertaken invitd Minervd. We were quartered in tents, dust- storms howled over us daily, drills and brigade parades were never ending, and, as I was acting POSTSCRIPT. 97 interpreter to my regiment, courts martial of dreary length occupied the best part of my time. Besides, it was impossible to work in such an atmosphere of discontent. The seniors abhorred the barren desolate spot, with all its inglorious perils of fever, spleen, dysentery, and congestion of the brain, the juniors grumbled in sympathy, and the staff officers, ordered up to rejoin the corps—it was on field service—complained bitterly of having to quit their comfortable appointments in more favoured lands without even a campaign in pros- pect. So when, a month or two after landing in the country, we were transferred from Kurrachee to Gharra—purgatory to the other locale—I threw aside Scindee for Maharattee, hoping, by dint of reiterated examinations, to escape the place of torment as soon as possible. It was very like studying Russian in an English country town; however, with the assistance of Molesworth’s excellent dictionary, and the regimental Pundit, or schoolmaster, I gained some knowledge of the dialect, and proved myself duly qualified in it at Bombay. At the same time a brother subaltern and I had jointly leased a Persian Moonshee, one Mirza Mohammed Hosayn of Shiraz, — poor fellow, after passing through the fires of Scinde unscathed, he returned to his delightful land for a few weeks to die there !—and we laid the foun- F 98 POSTSCRIPT. dation of a lengthened course of reading in that most elegant of oriental languages. Now it isa known fact that a good staff appoint- ment has the general effect of doing away with one’s bad opinion of any place whatever. So when, by the kindness of a friend whose name hes modesty prevents my mentioning, the Governor of Scinde was persuaded to give me the tem- porary appointment of Assistant in the Survey, I began to look with interest upon the desolation around me. The country was a new one, so was its population, so was their language. After reading all the works published upon the sub- ject, I felt convinced that none but Mr. Crow and Capt. J. McMurdo had dipped beneath the superficies of things. My new duties com- pelled me to spend the cold season in wandering over the districts, levelling the beds of canals, and making preparatory sketches for a grand survey. I was thrown so entirely amongst the people as to depend upon them for society, and the ‘‘ dignity,” not to mention the increased allowances of a staff officer, enabled me to collect a fair stock of books, and to gather around me those who could make them of any use. So, after the first year, when I had Persian at my fingers’ ends, sufficient Arabic to read, write, and converse fluently, and a superficial POSTSCRIPT. 99 knowledge of that dialect of Punjaubee which is spoken in the wilder parts of the province, I began the systematic study of the Scindian people, their manners and their tongue. The first difficulty was to pass for an Oriental, and this was as necessary as it was difficult. The European official in India seldom, if ever sees anything in its real light, so dense is the veil which the fearfulness, the duplicity, the prejudice and the superstitions of the natives hang before his eyes. And the white man lives a life so distinct from the black, that hundreds of the former serve through what they call their “term of exile,” without once being pre- sent at a circumcision feast, a wedding, or a funeral. More especially the present gene- ration, whom the habit and the means of taking furloughs, the increased facility for enjoying ladies’ society, and, if truth be spoken, a greater regard for appearances if not a stricter code of morality, estrange from their dusky fellow sub- jects every day and day the more. After trying several characters, the easiest to be assumed was, I found, that of a half Arab, half Iranian, such as may be met with in thousands along the northern shore of the Persian Gulf. The Scindians would have detected in a moment the difference between my articulation and their 100 POSTSCRIPT. own, had I attempted to speak their vernacular dialect, but they attributed the accent to my strange country, as naturally as a home-bred Englishman would account for the bad pronun- ciation of a foreigner calling himself partly Spanish, partly Portuguese. Besides, I knew the countries along the Gulf by heart from books, I had a fair knowledge of the Shieh form of worship prevalent in Persia, and my poor Moonshee was generally at hand to support me in times of difficulty, so that the danger of being detected,—even by a “real Simon Pure,”’—was a very inconsiderable one. With hair falling upon his shoulders, a long beard, face and hands, arms and feet, stained with a thin coat of henna, Mirza Abdullah of Bushire—your humble servant, gentle reader —set out upon many and many a trip. He was a Bazzaz, a vender of fine linen, calicoes and muslins ;—such chapmen are sometimes admitted to display their wares even in the sacred harem by “fast” and fashionable dames ;—and he had alittle pack of bijouterie and virtd reserved for emer- gencies. It was only, however, when absolutely necessary that he displayed his stock-in-trade; generally, he contented himself with alluding to it on all possible occasions, boasting largely of his traffic, and asking a thousand questions concerning POSTSCRIPT, 101 the state of the market. Thus he could walk into most men’s houses quite without ceremony ;—even if the master dreamed of kicking him out, the mistress was sure to oppose such measure with might and main. He secured numberless invi- tations, was proposed to by several papas, and won, or had to think he won, a few hearts; for he came as arich man and he stayed with dig- nity, and he departed exacting all the honours. When wending his ways he usually urged a return of visit in the morning, but he was seldom to be found at the caravanserai he spe- cified—was Mirza Abdullah the Bushiri. The timid villagers collected in crowds to see a kind of Frank ina sort of Oriental dress, riding spear in hand, and pistols in holsters, towards the little encampment pitched near their settlements. But regularly every evening on the line of march the Mirza issued from his tent and wandered amongst them, collecting much information and dealing out more con- cerning an ideal master,—the Feringhee supposed to be sitting in state amongst the Moonshees, the Scribes, the servants, the wheels, the chains, the telescopes and the other magical implements in which the camp abounded. When travel- ling, the Mirza became this mysterious person’s factotum; and often had he to answer the F3 102 POSTSCRIPT. question how much his perquisites and illicit gains amounted to in the course of the year. When the Mirza arrived at a strange town, his first step was to secure a house in or near the bazaar, for the purpose of evening conver- sazioni. Now and then he rented a shop and furnished it with clammy dates, viscid molasses, tobacco, ginger, rancid oil and strong-smelling sweetmeats; and wonderful tales Fame told about these establishments. Yet somehow or other, though they were more crowded than a first- rate milliner’s rooms in Town, they throve not in a pecuniary point of view; the cause of which was, I believe, that the polite Mirza was in the habit of giving the heaviest possible weight for their money to all the ladies,—particularly the pretty ones,—that honoured him by patro- nizing his concern. Sometimes the Mirza passed the evening in a mosque listening to the ragged students who, stretched at full length with their stomachs on the dusty floor, and their arms supporting their heads, mumbled out Arabic from the thumbed, soiled, and tattered pages of theology upon which a dim oil light shed its scanty ray, or he sat de- bating the niceties of faith with the long-bearded, shaven-pated, blear-eyed and stolid faced genius loci, the Mullah. At other times, when in merrier POSTSCRIPT. 103 mood, he entered uninvited the first door, whence issued the sounds of music and the dance ;—a clean turban and a polite bow are the best “ tickets for soup” the East knows. Or he played chess with some native friend, or he consorted with the hemp-drinkers and opium-eaters in the esta- minets, or he visited the Mrs. Gadabouts and Go-betweens who make matches amongst the Faithful, and gathered from them a precious budget of private history and domestic scandal. What scenes he saw! what adventures he went through! But who would believe, even if he ventured to detail them ? The Mirza’s favourite school for study was the house of an elderly matron on the banks of the Fulailee River, about a mile from the Fort of Hyderabad. Khanum Jan had been a beauty in her youth, and the tender passion had been hard upon her, at least judging from the fact that she had fled her home, her husband, and her native town, Candahar, in company with Mohammed Bakhsh, a purblind old tailor, the object of her warmest affections. * Ah, he is a regular old hyena now,” would the Joan exclaim in her outlandish Persian, pointing to the venerable Darby as he sat at squat in the cool shade, nodding his head and winking his eyes over a pair of pantaloons which 104: POSTSCRIPT. took him a month to sew, “a regular old hyzna now, but you should have seen him fifteen years ago, what a wonderful youth he was!” The knowledge of one mind is that of a million—after a fashion. I addressed myself particularly to that of ‘* Darby ;” and many an hour of tough thought it took me before I had mastered its truly Oriental peculiarities, its regular irregularities of deduction, and its strange monotonous one-idea’dness. Khanum Jan’s house was a mud edifice occupy- ing one side of a square formed by tall, thin, crumbling mud walls. The respectable matron’s peculiar vanity was to lend a helping hand in all manner of affaires du ceur. So it often happened that Mirza Abdullah was turned out of the house to pass a few hours in the garden. There he sat upon his felt rug spread beneath a shadowy tamarind, with beds of sweet-smelling basil around him, his eyes roving over the broad river that coursed rapidly between its wooded banks and the groups gathered at the frequent ferries, whilst the soft strains of mysterious, philosophical, transcendental Hafiz were sounded in his ears by the other Meerza, his companion, Mohammed Hosayn—peace be upon him! Of all economical studies this course was the cheapest. For tobacco daily, for frequent POSTSCRIPT. 105 draughts of milk, for hemp occasionally, for the benefit of Khanum Jan’s experience, for four months’ lectures from Mohammed Bakhsh, and for sundry other little indulgences, the Mirza paid, it is calculated, the sum of six shillings. When he left Hyderabad, he gave a silver talisman to the dame, and a cloth coat to her protector: long may they live to wear them! * * * * * Thus it was I formed my estimate of the native character. I am as ready to reform it when a man of more extensive experience and greater knowledge of the subject will kindly show me how far it transgresses the well-esta- blished limits of moderation. As yet I hold, by way of general rule, that the Eastern mind— I talk of the nations known to me by personal experience—is always in extremes; that it ignores what is meant by “golden mean,” and that it delights to range in flights limited only by the ne plus ultra of Nature herself. Under which conviction I am open to correction. * * * * * In conclusion, a word with the critic about his “particular mode of spelling Indian proper names.” As long as the usus “ Quem penés arbitrium est et jus, et norma loquendi,” spells or mispells Mecca, Delhi and Bombay 106 POSTSCRIPT. after its own arbitrary fashion, so long from maps, reports and works intended for popular use, it will reject Makkeh or Mukku, Dihli or Dihlee, Mombai or Bombaee. This is only reasonable ; why should we write Naples “Napoli” or Austria ‘“ Oesterreich?” Besides the vulgar one, there are two systems for Romanizing the Oriental alphabet: that of Sir W. Jones,—as he proposed it, or as it has been modified by later authorities,— elegant enough and scholar-like, but unintelligible to any save the linguist; and secondly, Dr. Gilchrist’s Ultimatum,” clumsy, unsightly and, withal, uncommonly hard to be understood. We re- quire another, free from the defects of its pre- decessors, but how the want is to be supplied I know not. En attendant, in a work intended for the general reader, I write the word as he would write it himself, were it read out to him, and as he would find it in his map, ‘“ Scinde.” When composing for the Orientalist, that is or is about to be, I adopt the common modification of Sir W. Jones’s system as used by the Indian lexicographers, and indite the name Sindh or Sindhu. And I venture to opine that the brain which finds any absurd confusion in these two different ways must be itself the generator of that absurdity and confusion. POSTSCRIPT. 107 I conclude as I began, with ascribing this introduction of irrelevant matter, upon a very uninteresting subject, to the “extreme opinions” formed, one is puzzled to say where, but pro- pounded with much majesty by king We from his proper throne—the four legged stool. And so, long-suffering reader, fare thee well! FINIS. LONDON : Printed by Samuz, Bentizy and Co., Bangor House, Shoe Lane. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLES, This Series of Works is Illustrated by many Hundred Engravings ; every Species has been Drawn and Engraved under the immediate inspection of the Authors; the best Artists have been employed, and no care or expense has been spared. A few copies have been printed on larger paper, royal 8vo. THE QUADRUPEDS, by Proressor Bey. A new edition preparing. THE BIRDS, by Mr. Yarnett. Second Edition, 3 vols. 41. 14s. 6d. COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE EGGS OF BIRDS, By Mr. Hewirtson. 2 vols. 4/. 10s. THE REPTILES, by Prorrssor Bzxu. Second Edition, 12s. 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JOHN VAN VOORST, 1, PATERNOSTER ROW. WORKS PUBLISHED BY MR. VAN VOORST. 7 Just published, post 8vo., 6s. 6d. GREAT ARTISTS AND GREAT ANATOMISTS. A Biographical and Philosophical Study. By R. Knox, M.D., F.R.S.E., Lecturer on Anatomy, and Corresponding Member of the “* Académie Na- tionale ” of France. ‘« Whatever Dr. Knox writes is as sure to manifest certain qualities as Cayenne is to be hot, or champagne to effervesce. Paradoxical he generally will be; some- what too free-spoken he is of necessity; but dull he neither is nor has been. He would probably take it no great compliment to be called one of the most vigorous and picturesque writers upon scientific subjects living ; the higher claim to making science rather than writing about it being, more probably, his ambition. Be it so: a man may judge others sharply, and yet mistake himself. The book before us is smart, pungent, racy, and inconsecutive, beginning anywhere, ending nowhere, and flying off on all occasions, and at all manner of tangents, everywhither. It takes us to a series of Mount Pisgahs—always something in prospect, and always nothing in possession. It is the play of ‘‘ Hamlet’? without the Prince through- out—biographies with the life omitted—Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hiliare, Leonardo da Vinci and ‘Michael Angelo, each, like an over-dressed girl, the least part of themselves. Yet a better book might easily have been a worse one. We don’t talk of any mere birth-death-and-marriage biography. No one but “ friends of the deceased’’ care to read this. But we mean that a French éloge or an Italian report, that kept close to the subject, and exhibited its object rather than its author, might bea good composition, and yet want many of the merits of Dr. Knox’s. We are unwilling to believe that Dr. Knox neither knows nor cares one bit about the Fine Arts. We admit that he writes as if he did. He even seems to understand them. But how can his opinion be worth having? He is Saxon, and it is as much part and parcel of his creed that no Saxon can understand any- thing but political liberty and the pence-table, as it was the belief that no daugh- ter of a Jew had anything but a bastard hope of being saved. For a man abso- lutely incapacitated from approaching the L , he writes very well about it. ‘This work,’ we are told in the Preface, ‘is composed of two parallel Biographies. The first comprises the ‘ Life and Labours of George Cuvier and Geoffroy (St. Hilaire), the men who have most contributed to the development of the true relation of Anatomy to the Science of Living Beings. In the second part, the reader will find a brief history of the relation of Anatomy to the Fine Arts. In the parallel biographies of Leonardo, Angelo, and Raphael, the Author is convinced that ample materials exist for the decision of the long-protracted sy in respect of the relation of Anatomy to the Arts of Sculpture and Design. He is, at the same time, well aware that long prior to the great men whose lives he has here sketched, others existed with minds equal if not superior to them, but who, from pursuing other studies and other aims than the Be itical game of life, constitute, notwithstanding, an epoch or era, less brilliant, less fiery, perhaps more durable, than the epochs of Czesar, of Alexander, and Napoleon. Such was Aristotle, and such the men whv carved the Venus, the Laocoon, and the Apollo. But of the lives of these latter, little or nothing is known; they left no writings explanatory of the Canons of Art; the works of the great masters in painting have disappeared, whilst the matchless sculptures alone remain to attest a power of mind and a civilization which we scarcely yet comprehend. Although the Canons of Art must have been well understood by them as their discoveries, yet it is certain, that, however admirably they appreciated the relation of Anatomy to Art, they had never studied Anatomy. To some this will appear a paradox ; but if those who think so will favour me with a perusal of this work, they will, I hope, find the paradox solved.’ ‘Not a bit of it. There is no solution at all. There is a good deal of dashing writing, truthful remark, audacity of assertion, and well-turned episode instead— and, considering that paradoxes in general are neither easily solved, nor very plea- sant reading in their solution, the substitute is as good as the reality.””— Weekly News, May 1st, 1852. JOHN VAN VOORST, 1, PATERNOSTER ROW. . WORKS PUBLISHED BY MR. VAN VOORST. Just published, feap. 8vo., 5s. THE VEGETATION OF EUROPE: ITS CONDITION AND CAUSES. By Arruur Henrrey, F.L.S., &. “ Proressor Henfrey’s name is a guarantee for the merit of his present volume on the Botanical Geography of Europe. Although more peculiarly calculated to at- tract the attention of the botanical student, yet it will be found possessed of much interest for the general reader. The mode in which the original distribution of plants over the surface of the globe may be supposed to have been effected, and the laws or influences which still regulate their diffusion and their limitation, are investigated and explained, with great discrimination and lucidity, in the earlier chapters; while the remaining, and much larger portion of the work is occupied by illustrations of the principles thus propounded. These illustrations are de- rived from an elaborate survey of every European country, from the frozen plains of Lapland to the glowing region of Southern Italy—from the alpine peak to the alluvial marsh. We would gladly transcribe many instructive, and many eloquent passages, but our limits restrict us to one or two extracts :— “