Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/530

 4 that we were obliged to dine by lamp-light; the evening is dull and heavy, the rain is falling in torrents, and the darkness is relieved at intervals by forked lightning; the thunder is distant.

30th.—Very hot during the day, and very oppressive; this damp heat is worse for the health than the dry heat of the hot winds. Heard with regret of the death of Mr. James Gardner, at Khāsgunge.

July 8th.—Engaged a fourteen-oared pinnace, a woolāk of 900 m[)u]ns, a pataila of 600, and a small cook-boat, to take us down to Calcutta.

20th.—We quitted dear old Prāg at 6 under heavy rain and a contrary wind. I bade adieu to a place in which I had spent so many happy days with much sorrow, and without any prospect of ever revisiting the spot.

22nd.—Anchored at Rāj ghāt, Benares: the ghāts have lost much of their picturesque beauty from the height of the river, the water having covered the steps. The Hindū temples that have partially fallen merely show their spiral domes above the waters; and the Ganges is as full of mud as a river may well be; the water is quite thick, of a muddy colour, and a small quantity in a tumbler gives a most marvellous sediment.

24th.—A heavy wind against us; the waves were so high on the Ganga, and the boats rolled so violently, that the natives on deck were quite overcome by sea-sickness, and I was also suffering from mal de mer.

31st.—Picked up a large heavy chest afloat from some wreck. It contained fifty boxes of G. Davis' Chinsurah cheroots, and was marked Jan Mahomed Shah, in the Persian character: the cheroots were all destroyed from having been in the water. Soon afterwards we picked up another chest of the same size and description, with the bottom stove in; also a box of cigars that was floating by the side of it, evidently from the same wreck. Lugāoed off the bāstī of Tipperiah, in the midst of an expanse of water. About 8 the strong easterly wind, which had been blowing all day, veered and sunk; a deep silence fell around—the whole canopy of heaven was covered with a pall