Page:Narrative of a journey through the upper provinces of India etc. (Volume III.).djvu/390

348 excepted, eats readily of the flesh of whatever has been offered up to one of their divinities, while among almost all the other castes, mutton, pork, venison, fish, any thing but beef and fowls, are consumed as readily as in Europe. Again, I had heard all my life of the gentle and timid Hindoos, patient under injuries, servile to their superiors, &c. Now, this is doubtless, to a certain extent, true of the Bengalees, (who, by the way, are never reckoned among the nations of Hindostan, by those who speak the language of that country,) and there are a great many people in Calcutta who maintain that all the natives of India are alike. But even in Bengal, gentle as the exterior manners of the people are, there are large districts close to Calcutta, where the work of carding, burning, ravishing, murder, and robbery, goes on as systematically, and in nearly the same manner, as in the worst part of Ireland, and on entering Hindostan, properly so called, which in the estimation of the natives reaches from the Rajmahal hills to Agra, and from the mountains of Kemaoon to Bundelcund, I was struck and surprised to find a people equal in stature and strength to the average of European nations, despising rice and rice-eaters, feeding on wheat and barley bread, exhibiting in their appearance, conversation, and habits of life, a grave, proud, and, decidedly, a martial character, accustomed universally to the use of arms and athletic exercises from their cradles, and preferring, very greatly, military service to any other means of livelihoods. This part of their character, but in a ruder and