Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/54

 certainly I should not admire a small one. All the vessels to-day were at anchor; not a sail was to be seen but the white sails of the Seagull, and the dark ones of the cook boat, the latter creeping along the shore, her mānjhī following very unwillingly.

My sarang says the quantity of sail I oblige him to carry during high winds, has turned "his stomach upside down with alarm."

3rd.—For some hours the next morning the gale continued so violently, we could not quit the bank; a gentleman came on board, and told me, by going up a stream, called the Kalī Nadī, I should escape the very powerful rush of the Ganges; that I could go up the Nadī twenty miles, and by a canal, cut in former days, re-enter the Ganges above.

I asked him to show me the ruins of Kannouj; we put off; it was blowing very hard: at last we got out safely into the middle of the stream. About a mile higher up, we quitted the roaring and rushing waters of the Ganges, and entered the placid stream of the Kalī Nadī. Situated on a hill, most beautifully wooded, with the winding river at its feet, stands the ancient city of Kannouj; the stream flowing through fine green meadows put me in mind of the Thames near Richmond. In the Ganges we could scarcely stem the current, even though the wind, which was fair, blew a gale; in the Nadī we furled every sail, and were carried on at a good rate, merely by the force of the wind on the hull of the vessel, and the non-opposition of the gentle stream. My friend told me he had once thrown a net across the Kalī Nadī, near the entrance, and had caught one hundred and thirty-two great rhoee fish. On the hill above stands the tomb of Colonel ; who, when Lord Lake's army were encamped here on their road to Delhi, attempted on horseback to swim the Nadī, and was drowned.

In the history of Kannouj, it is said, "Rustum Dista, King of the Persian province of Seistan, conquered India; he, for his great exploits, is styled the Hercules of the East; unwilling to retain so distant an empire as a dependent on Persia, he placed a new family on the throne. The name of the Prince raised to the empire by Rustum was Suraja, who was a man of great