Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/177

 out the roots of the bunches of coarse grass, and chew them. The people have become desperate; sometimes, when they see a sipāhi?] eating they rush upon him to take his food; sometimes they fall one over the other as they rush for it, and having fallen, being too weak to rise, they die on the spot, blessed in finding the termination of their sufferings. The very locusts appear to have felt the famine; you see the wings here and there on the ground, and now and then a weak locust pitches on a camel. Every tree has been stripped of its leaves for food for animals. The inhabitants of Kanauj, about a lākh of people, have fled to Oogein and to Saugar. The place will be a desert; none will remain but the grain merchants, who fatten on the surrounding misery. There is no hope of rain for five months; by that time the torments of these poor wretches will have ended in death;—and this place is the one I so much admired from the river, with its rich fields, and its high land covered with fine trees and ruins!

I returned to the ancient Hindū building that had so much interested me, to sketch it at leisure, and was thus employed, when I was surrounded by numbers of the starved and wretched villagers. I performed my task as quickly as possible, and whatever errors there may be in the performance, must be attributed to the painful scene by which I was surrounded; some of the poor people flung themselves on the ground before me, attempting to perform pā-bos, that is, kissing the feet; wildly, frantically, and with tears imploring for food; their skeleton forms hideously bearing proof of starvation; the very remembrance makes me shudder. I quitted the ruin, and returned to my tents. To-morrow we quit Kanauj, thank God! It is dreadful to witness and to be unable to relieve such suffering.

I picked up a curious piece of ancient sculpture, Mahadēo, with Pārvatī in the centre, and a devi on each side, which I brought to my tent on the elephant. Considering it too heavy to carry about on the march, we buried it at night under a peepul tree, and shall take it away on our return home, if it will please to remain there.