Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/133

 taste, and such as only a Baboo would have approved. It was won by Absentee, one of the horses I had seen in the stable the day before, contrary to the calculation of all the knowing ones in Calcutta.

17th.—The inhabitants of Calcutta gave a ball to the Miss Edens. I was too ill to attend.

30th.—Dined with an old friend at Alipūr, some two miles from Calcutta. The coachman being unable to see his way across the maidān (plain), stopped. The sā'īses, who were trying to find out where they were, ran directly against the walls of the hospital; the fog was so dense and white, you could not see a yard before you; it made my cough most painful, and the carriage was two hours returning two miles.

Feb. 4th.—I spent the day at the Asiatic Society. A model of the foot of a Chinese lady in the collection is a curiosity, and a most disgusting deformity. The toes are crushed up under the foot, so as to render the person perfectly lame: this is a less expensive mode of keeping a woman confined to the house, than having guards and a zenāna—the principle is the same.

Having bid adieu to my friends in Calcutta, I prepared to return to Allahabad, and took a passage in the Jellinghy flat. The servants went up the river in a large baggage boat, with the stores, wine, and furniture. I did not insure the boat, insurance being very high, and the time of the year favourable. The horses marched up the country.

March 6th.—I went on board the Jellinghy flat, established myself and my ayha in a good cabin, and found myself, for the first time, located in a steamer. She quitted Calcutta in the evening, and as we passed Garden Reach, the view of handsome houses in well-wooded grounds, which extend along the banks of the river, was beautiful. The water being too shallow at this time of the year for the passage of the steamer up the Bhaugruttī, or the Jellinghy, she was obliged to go round by the sunderbands (sindhū-bandh). The steamer herself is not the vessel in which the passengers live; attached to, and towed by her, is a vessel as large as the steamer herself, called a flat, built expressly to convey passengers and Government treasure. It is divided into