Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/176

 after toil; and Divine Service was performed in the tent of the Governor-General; after which, at 3, I went, on an elephant, to see two most ancient and curious specimens of Hindū sculpture, the figures of Rām and Lutchman, which are about five feet in height, carved on separate stones, and surrounded by a whole heaven of gods and goddesses: the stones themselves, which are six or seven feet high, are completely covered with numerous images; and a devi (goddess), rather smaller, is on one side.

Passing through the bazār at Kanauj was a fearful thing. There lay the skeleton of a woman who had died of famine; the whole of her clothes had been stolen by the famished wretches around, the pewter rings were still in her ears, but not a rag was left on the bones that were starting through the black and shrivelled skin; the agony on the countenance of the corpse was terrible. Next to her a poor woman, unable to rise, lifted up her skinny arm, and moaned for food. The unhappy women, with their babies in their arms, pressing them to their bony breasts, made me shudder. Miserable boys, absolutely living skeletons, pursued the elephant, imploring for bread: poor wretches, I had but little money with me, and could give them only that little and my tears: I cannot write about the scene without weeping, it was so horrible, and made me very sick. Six people died of starvation in the bazār to-day. Lord Auckland daily feeds all the poor who come for food, and gives them blankets; five or six hundred are fed daily;—but what avails it in a famine like this? it is merciful cruelty, and only adds a few more days to their sufferings; better to die at once, better to end such intolerable and hopeless misery: these people are not the beggars, but the tillers of the soil. When I was last at Kanauj the place was so beautiful, so luxuriant in vegetation,—the bright green trees, the river winding through low fields of the richest pasture: those fields are all bare, not a blade of grass. The wretched inhabitants tear off the bark of the wild fig tree (goolèr), and pound it into food; in the course of four or five days their bodies swell, and they die in agonies. The cultivators sit on the side of their fields, and, pointing to their naked bodies, cry, "I am dying of hunger." Some pick