Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/367

 know best.' His Highness said, 'God said, Two descriptions of my servants rose this morning, one of them believers in me, the other infidels; wherefore, those who have said they have been given rain by the favour of God, are believers in me, and deniers of stars; and those who have said, we have been given rain from the influence of the moon, are infidels, and believers in stars.'" "An astrologer is as a magician, and a magician is a necromancer, and a necromancer is an infidel ."

Aug. 17th.—The new moon has appeared, but Prāg is unblessed with rain; if it would but fall! Every night the Hindoos pooja their gods; the Musulmāns weary Heaven with prayers, at the Jamma Musjid (great mosque) on the river-side, near our house;—all to no effect. The clouds hang dark and heavily; the thunder rolls at times; you think, "Now the rain must come," but it clears off with scarcely a sprinkling. Amongst the Europeans there is much illness, but no cholera.

22nd.—These natives are curious people; they have twice sent the cholera over the river, to get rid of it at Allahabad. They proceed after this fashion: they take a bull, and after having repeated divers prayers and ceremonies, they drive him across the Ganges into Oude, laden, as they believe, with the cholera. This year this ceremony has been twice performed. When the people drive the bull into the river, he swims across, and lands or attempts to land on the Lucnow side; the Oude people drive the poor beast back again, when he is generally carried down by the current and drowned, as they will not allow him to land on either side.

During the night, my ayha came to me three times for cholera mixture; happily the rain was falling, and I thought it would do much more good than all the medicine; of course I gave her the latter.

Out of sixty deaths there will be forty Hindoos to twenty Musulmāns; more men are carried off than women, eight men to two women; the Musulmāns eat more nourishing food than the Hindoos, and the women are less exposed to the sun than the men.