Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/283

 *ceeds from this lump." He raised the blanket, beneath it was a leper. Lutchman desired the man to quit the grounds. The poor wretch held up his hands and showed his feet; the fingers and toes of which were festering and rotten from the black Arabian leprosy!

I desired he might be carried to the hospital. "We will not touch him," said the servants; "let him go to the leper hospital." I sent the man a rupee. "What is the use of a rupee?" said Lutchman, "he cannot enter the bazār; how can he change it?" I sent him some copper coins. "Perhaps some one of low caste will bring him food and take the ānās," said the carpenter. The poor wretch raised himself, made salām for the money, and crawled away on his knees and elbows.

The next day he was found dead in a field: some of the copper coins had been expended, the remainder and the rupee were on his person.

The man had come up from Calcutta on a boat, had been put ashore under our garden bank, and had crawled up; he had not a cowrie. "There was not even left a sigh in his heart ."

He was totally destitute: but of this I was ignorant, until the next day. The effluvium was so bad, and the danger of infection so fearful, it was necessary to remove him at once from the garden.

There is a pink leprosy very common: I have often seen a man—once I saw two men—bathing amongst a multitude of men and women, their skins were pink, like the pink of salmon; the disease is not catching, I understand, and they are not avoided.

Another leprosy shows itself in white spots on their dark skins. I was practising archery one morning early; suddenly from behind a tree, a woman came to me, and throwing herself on the ground, laid hold of my foot with both hands, and bent her head upon it; saying, "Mercy, mercy, Beebee Sāhiba!" "May you bathe in milk, and be fruitful in children !" A gentleman present caught me by the shoulder, and pulled me back, at the