Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/313

 exactly to all the other wives to keep the peace. A wife, when in a rage with her husband, if on account of jealousy, often says, 'I wish I were married to a grass-cutter,' i. e. because a grass-cutter is so poor he can only afford to have one wife.

"My having been married some thirty or forty years, and never having taken another wife, surprises the Musulmāns very much, and the ladies all look upon me as a pattern: they do not admire a system of having three or four rivals, however well pleased the gentlemen may be with the custom."

Colonel Gardner admired the game of "La Grace." I requested him to take a set of sticks and hoops for the ladies of his zenāna: he told me afterwards they never took any pleasure in the game, because it was not the dastūr, the custom.

The account of the style in which affairs are conducted amused us exceedingly.

"I wish I were married to a grass-cutter!" To enable you to comprehend the sort of person to whom a begam, an eastern princess, wishes herself united, in order to avoid the pangs of jealousy, I introduce a portrait of Chungua, the grass-cutter of my horse Mootee, the Pearl of the Desert.

A cloth wrapped round the head in the form of a turban, and another cloth bound round the loins, is the usual dress of the lower orders, if dress it may be called. But it gives no idea of impropriety; the natural hue of the skin being of itself a sort of mahogany coloured covering.

Every horse has a sā'īs to groom him, and a grass-cutter to bring in his daily allowance of dūb-grass: this grass is a most luxuriant creeper; it is jointed, and shoots out to a surprising length, covering a great space of ground in the rains: the men grub it up close to the roots; nevertheless the portion that remains in the earth soon springs up, you cannot eradicate it: in the hot winds, the men grub up the roots, wash them, and give them to the horses: sometimes the people have to go four or five miles to bring it in, and are therefore exposed very much during the hot weather. Their pay is three rupees or three and a half per month, on which they feed and clothe themselves.