Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/50

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NOTES AND QUERIES. L u s. i. JAS. ]3, 1910.

The squirrel at Lis morning meal And morning sports so lithe and free ; No shadow o'er the grass may steal With lighter, quicker steps, than he : Racing along the cocoa leaf, You see him through its ribs of green ; Anon the little mime and thief Expanded on the trunk is seen.

These cocoa trees not fair in woods.

But singly seen, and seen afar

When sunset pours his [? its] yellow floods,

A column, and its crown a star !

Yet dowered with wealth of uses rare,

Whene'er its plumy branches wave,

JSome sorrow seems to haunt the air,

Some vision of a desert grave.

Ceylon ! Ceylon ! 'tis naught to me HOAV thou wert known or named of old, As Ophir. or Taprobane, By Hebrew king, or Grecian bold ; To me, thy spicy wooded vales, Thy dusky sons, and jewels bright, But image forth the far-famed tales, But seem a new Arabian night.

And when engirdled figures crave

Heed to thy bosom's dazzling store,

I see Aladdin in his cave ;

I follow Sinbad on the shore.

Yet these, the least of all thy wealth,

Thou heiress of the eastern isles,

Thy mountains boast of northern health,

There Europe amid Asia smiles.

Were India not where I must wend, And England where I would return, To thee my steps would soonest tend, Ev'n now, I feel my spirit yearn, Not as the stranger of a day, Who soon forgets where late he dwelt, But as a friend, who, far away, Feels ever what at first he felt.

M. J. FLETCHER

(late Miss Jewsbury}.

The word " late " here does not, of course, refer to the writer's death, which took place less than a month after the appearance of the poem ; but its use seems almost like a presage of doom.

I can find no further reference of any kind in The Colombo Journal to the Fletchers; but, according to Mr. Espinasse, they arrived at Bombay in March, 1833. This writer adds :

" Mr. Fletcher had been ' gazetted ' to Shola- pore, but for some reason or other he proceeded to Kurnee, on the Malabar Coast, near Severn- droog, once the scene of a famous English naval victory, and where his peculiar charge was to be that of ' the society in camp at Dapoolie,' and then the head-quarters of Anglo-Indian military invalids."

By " Kurnee " is meant Karnai, a port in the Dapoli tdluka of Ratnagiri District, Bombay, and certainly not on " the Malabar Coast." " Severndroog " stands for Suwarndrug, the " golden fortress," or Janjira, which is

a little north of the port (see the ' Imp. Gaz. of India,' xiii.). Dapoli town is about five miles from the sea. In 1818 it " was- constituted the military station of the Southern Konkan. In 1840 the regular troops were withdrawn, but a veteran battalion was retained till 1857 " (ibid., xi.).

Mrs. Fletcher's first impressions of India both of Bombay, which was left in a native boat on 27 March, and of Suwarndrug were most unfavourable, according to the extracts from her diary printed by Mr. Espinasse ; but after a couple of months, she seems to have become more reconciled to her lot, and to have ceased spending her time, as she quaintly puts it, " in conjugat- ing the verb ' I hate India,' in every mood r form, tense, and person."

But just as Mrs. Fletcher had become accustomed to barren and desolate Karnai (she had never visited Dapoli), her husband was ordered to Sholapur ; and off the couple set, climbing the steep ascent to- Mahableshwar, where they were at the beginning of May, and descending on the other side of the ghat to Satara, which was reached on the 6th of the same month. Here the Fletchers rested a month, and then resumed their journey, along the road that runs almost due west and east between Satara and Sholapur. " On the 10th of June," says Mr. Espinasse, " the travellers were at ' Mussoor-Pelonne ' (?) where the Journal contains the ominous jotting: ' I had an attack of semi-semi-cholera, only demi-semi.' ' " Mussoor-Pelonne " looks- like a combination of the names of the two towns Mhaswad and Piliw (or perhaps Bhalawani), which would be traversed on the way to Sholapur.

The Fletchers reached their destination on 17 June, to find " drought famine sweeping off: the natives " ; and after a terrible period of three months the un- fortunate couple were once more on the march, Mr. Fletcher having broken down in health, and been allowed, under medical certificate, to return to Karnai. But Mrs, Fletcher, at any rate, was fated never again to see that place of tombs.

The last entry in her diary, which Mr, Espinasse quotes almost in full, is dated ".On March Babelgaum (?), September 26, 1833." I think the place here named (which Mrs. Fletcher describes as " a fresh Durma villa " an error, probably, for " Durmasalla," i.e., dharms'ald, resthouse) must be Ahirbabulgaon, a village a little to the north of Pandharpur, before