Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/456

 jāmadār's assistance, for boat travellers. Lugāoed off a sandbank; the weather has become very cold,—the thermometer this evening 72°, with a sharp wind.

12th.—The river very uninteresting; the villages dirty and disgusting, filled with pigs and most noisy beggars: moored the boats as far away from a village as we could, and were even then obliged to drive off the beggars, whose incessant noise left us neither peace nor quiet.

13th.—Passed a remarkably fine banyan-tree, the roots of which are exposed, from the river having washed away the earth; would have stopped to sketch it, but could not venture on shore amidst such a crowd of clamorous beggars and filthy swine,—such pigs! so lank and lean, and long-legged and thin-flanked, with staring bristles, all busily employed in turning up the earth with their unringed noses! Old wretched beggar-women, with their skeleton bodies and long white hair, are pursuing the budgerow, uttering their monotonous cries for charity. There is a tope of tamarind-trees that looks most inviting at Bar, and the tar or fan palms are remarkably fine—the natives say they are fifty cubits high. There are many spreading banyan-trees near this place, and the scenery of the interior looks very inviting. The large town and mart of Bar is on the right bank of the river, sixty miles above Monghir, and fifty below Dinapūr, a bye depôt for steamers' coals; for twenty miles above and below, all this bank of the river is noted for piggery villages and saltpetre manufactories. Lugāoed a little above Bar.

14th.—After a most uninteresting day among shallows and sand-*banks, moored off Benīpūr: walked towards a light I saw at a distance, and found a police-station. At the side was a burial-ground of the Faithful; some Mahomedan saint was there entombed. The light was burning in the niche of the pillar at the head of the tomb. It was under a most magnificent old banyan-tree, growing on a bank; the river had washed away the ground from its roots, and they were starting forth in all picturesque forms. Four large suckers having fallen to the ground, had each taken root, and had attained the size of a tree—the great branches