Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/428

 which were delicious. I purchased a saw-fish, a sting-ray, or bat-fish, a sea-porcupine, a halfmoon-fish, and some others.

"Mem want some she-asses?" "What?" "She-asses, Mem; many got, Mem buy, I bring she-asses." They turned out to be sea-horses, which appear to be abundant at Madras, as well as all sorts of monstrous and queer fish. A juggler on board was displaying some of his tricks. He finished by sitting down on the deck, when he passed the blade of a sword down his throat, as far as the hilt, and during the time the blade was in his body, he let off fireworks, which were on the four corners of two pieces of wood that were fixed in the form of a cross on the hilt of the sword, and which spun round upon it. It was a disgusting sight, and an unpleasant one, as it sometimes causes the death of the juggler. Some of the passengers, on their return to the "Robarts," complained much of the heat, and of the musquitoes on shore, also of the badness of the inns, which are not sufficiently good to aspire to the name of hotels. The daunās or donies, as we call them, are numerous at Madras; they are country vessels, coasters, and traders, and are commanded by a sarhang, who wears the undress of the katmiram men; the crews are native—the vessels are short, thick, clumsy, and marvellously ugly.

It is interesting to trace the descendants of Milton; his grandson was parish-clerk of Fort St. George, at a very remote period. Milton's youngest and favourite daughter Deborah married a Mr. Clarke; she is said to have been a woman of cultivated understanding, and not unpleasing manners; known to Richardson and patronized by Addison, who procured a permanent provision for her from Queen Caroline. Her only son Caleb Clarke went to Madras in the first years of the eighteenth century, and it appears from an examination of the Parish Register of Fort St. George that he was parish-clerk there from 1717 to 1719, and was buried there on the 26th of October of the latter year.

22nd.—Captain Elder, finding the wind would not answer for getting out beyond the shipping, turned the head of the "Robarts" in shore, and cut through a crowd of donies, country