Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/541

 such an occasion, and these articles are provided for years; head and heel ropes for the horses, and even wooden pegs to secure them, and the bullocks, are sent with the lady, that nothing may be wanting.

The Prince took his bride to his tents, and a remarkable ceremony was there witnessed by Mr. Vigne, which he thus relates:—

"I was admitted, as a great favour, to see a custom, peculiar, I believe, to the Timūrians, and which perhaps no European ever saw before. Immediately after the marriage ceremony the bridegroom has the bride taken to his home; but before she quitted her palanquin, which was set down close to it, she thrust her bared foot—a very pretty one, and dyed with henna at the extremities—through the sliding doors, and the bridegroom touched her great toe with the blood of a goat, which I saw him kill with his own hands, whilst yet in his bridal dress and turban, by then and there cutting its throat. When this was done, the bride withdrew her foot, and I made my bow, and the bride and bridegroom retired to their inner apartments."

By the time the procession had quitted the gates of the zenāna, I was very glad to return to my own rooms to bathe preparatory to breakfast. I had eaten nothing during the night but cardamums and prepared betel-nut: had smoked a little of Colonel Gardner's hooq[)u], and had drank nothing but tea. Mr. Gardner prepared some pān for me in a particular fashion: I ate it, and found it very refreshing. Pān, so universally eaten in India, is made of the leaf of the piper betel, a species of pepper plant, called pān supéarie and betel-nut; but this betel-nut is not the nut of the piper betel, but of the areca catechu, a palm fifty feet in height. The betel-nut is cut up in small bits and wrapped up in the pān-leaf with lime cuttie, which is a bitter gum resin, an astringent vegetable extract, the produce of a species of mimosa (chadira) catechu Japonica; called kuth by the natives, and some slaked lime, or chunā. Pān at marriage feasts is tied up in packets of a triangular shape, and covered with gold and silver leaf and enamelled foil of bright colours: the lime cuttie dyes the gums and tongue a deep red.