Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/83

 weaker, are the playthings, the drudges, or the victims of the men; a woman is a slave from her birth; and the more I see of life, the more I pity the condition of the women. As for the manner in which the natives strive to keep them virtuous, it is absurd; a girl is affianced at three or four years old, married, without having seen the man, at eleven, shut up and guarded and suspected of a wish to intrigue, which, perhaps, first puts it into her head; and she amuses herself with outwitting those who have no dependence upon her, although, if discovered, her death generally ends the story.

27th.—How weary and heavy is life in India, when stationary! Travelling about the country is very amusing; but during the heat of the rains, shut up in the house, one's mind and body feel equally enervated. I long for a bracing sea breeze, and a healthy walk through the green lanes of England; the lovely wild flowers,—their beauty haunts me. Here we have no wild flowers; from the gardens you procure the most superb nose-*gays; but the lovely wild flowers of the green lanes are wanting. Flowering trees are planted here on the sides of the roads, and I delight in bringing home a bouquet.

A steamer comes up every month from Calcutta; she tows a tug, that is, a large flat vessel, which carries the passengers. The steamers answer well; but what ugly-looking, mercantile things they are!

I must give an extract from the letter of a friend, describing an adventure, such as you would not meet with in the green lanes of Hampshire:—"The boat was getting on slowly, and I went into the hills at Rajmahal, to get a deer or peacock or jungle-fowl, in fact, something for the kitchen. Some way in the interior I heard a queer noise, which one of my servants said was a deer; as I could not draw the shot in my gun (which is a single barrel flint) to substitute a ball, having only a make-shift ramrod, I consoled myself that the shot was large, and pushed on in the direction of the noise, which still continued. As I came on the upper end of a hollow in the side of the hill, filled with jungle and long grass, some animal jumped up at about fifteen yards in front; he was evidently large, and what