The KootÛb, Wednesday, Feb. 23, 1838.

WELL, of all the things I ever saw, I think this is the finest. Did we know about it in England? I mean, did you and I, in our old ancient Briton state, know? Do you know now, without my telling you, what the KootÛb is? Don’t be ashamed, there is no harm in not knowing, only I do say it is rather a pity we were so ill taught. I have had so many odd names dinned into me during the countless years I seem to have passed in this country, that I cannot remember the exact degree of purity of mind (which enemies may term ignorance) with which I left home; but after all that had been said, I expected the KootÛb would have been rather inferior to the Monument. One has those little prejudices. It happens to be the Monument put at the top of the column in the Place VendÔme, and that again placed on a still grander base. It is built of beautiful red granite, is 240 feet high and 50 feet in diameter, and carved all over with sentences from the Koran, each letter a yard high, and the letter again interlaced and ornamented with carved flowers and garlands; it is between six and seven hundred years old, and looks as if it were finished yesterday, and it stands in a wilderness of ruins, carved gateways, and marble tombs, one more beautiful than the other.

They say that the man who built it meant it for one minaret of a mosque—a mosque, you are to understand, always possessing two minarets and three domes. But as some say KootÛb himself built this, and others say that a particular Emperor called Alexander II. has the merit of it, and as nobody knows whether there ever were a KootÛb or an Alexander II., I think it is just possible that we do not know what a man who never was born meant to make of a building that never was built. As it stands it is perfect. We went at six this morning to see a well into which divers are so good as to jump from the height of sixty feet. They seem to fly almost in the air, till they nearly reach the water, and then they join their feet together and go down straight, and the water closes over them. But they come up again, do not be afraid.

We had dispatched all our sights before seven, and had two hours’ good sketching before breakfast, and now it is as hot as ever I felt it in Bengal.

Delhi, Friday, Feb. 25.

Yesterday morning we found there was so much to do and to finish, that we settled to stay on here till Saturday, and to commit the sin for the first time of marching on Sunday, as we have not a day to spare. The heir-apparent of Delhi has been coaxed or threatened into waiting on G., so there was a second durbar to be held to-day, and when it came to the time, the prince had taken to his bed, and had sent for thirteen doctors to say he was too ill to come. However, he changed his mind again and came, and in the meanwhile, half our troops who were out for the durbar were fainting away from the heat. In the afternoon G. had to go and return the visits of the rajahs in the neighbourhood, and we went to see Humayun’s tomb, about six miles off, where we meant to sketch till G. came, but it turned out a failure after all we had heard of it.

However, there were some beautiful white marble tombs in the neighbourhood, carved like lace; and then we went to another well, or rather tank, entirely surrounded by mosques and buildings, on the roofs of which divers were all waiting to jump. We implored and begged they would not take us for the Lord Sahib, and take the fatal plunge in our honour, and the guards went and pushed the crowds off, and declared the Lord Sahib was coming, and we sat down and sketched, and at last, just as we were giving him up, he and all his people arrived, and the divers all bounded off. Some of them jumped from a height of eighty feet, clearing several buildings in their way. It is much the most curious sight I have seen, and I now cannot guess why they did not tumble head over heels twenty times before they reached the water. In the evening we went to a nautch at Colonel Skinner’s. His house is fitted up in the native fashion, and he had all the best singers and dancers in Delhi, and they acted passages out of Vishnu and Brahma’s lives, and sang Persian songs which I thought made a very ugly noise; but Mr. B., who speaks Persian as fluently as English, kept saying, ‘Well, this is really delightful—this I think is equal to any European singing—in fact, there is nothing like it.’

There is nothing like it that I ever heard before, but certainly the words, as he translated them, were very pretty. One little fat nautch girl sang a sort of passionate song to G. with little meaning smiles, which I think rather attracted his lordship, and I thought it might be too much for him if I forwarded to him Mr. B.’s translation. ‘I am the body, you are the soul: we may be parted here, but let no one say we shall be separated hereafter. My father has deserted me; my mother is dead; I have no friends. My grave is open, and I look into it; but do you care for me?’ The dancing is very slow and very dull, but the dresses and ornaments are beautiful.

Saturday, Feb. 26.

We had a melancholy catastrophe last night. There has been a great deal of pilfering in the camp the two last days, which has been the case with every great camp near Delhi, and our people were unluckily more awake than usual. A thief was seen running off with one of the servants’ cooking pots, and pursued. A syce of Mr. T. caught hold of him. The thief turned round and stuck his knife into the man and killed him on the spot. He was dead before they could even fetch Dr. D. The thief is taken, but nobody is ever hanged in this country. Mr. T., who has been agent here for twenty-two years, takes it as a personal affront that we should have been robbed in his district, though I should have thought the affront lay the other way.

Paniput, Feb. 28.

Delhi turned out a very unwholesome place. All the servants have been taken with attacks of fever and sickness; the sudden hot days after the cold weather disagree with them. Our camp has grown much larger. There are more hangers-on. Mrs. —— has taken charge of a little niece and two nephews who lost their mother suddenly, and she is taking them up to the hills—I never saw such sickly little things. I see another little European girl every morning on the line of march, who has evidently nobody but bearers to take charge of her, probably going up to a school at Mussoorie, where parents who are too poor to send children home now send them. I forget whether I told you a story Mr. T. told me about the way in which children travel here, and which strikes me as very shocking, and would probably strike you more. I believe I have told it to you twice already in hopes of making your motherly hair stand on end. He said a palanquin was brought to his house containing three little children—a little girl nine years old and two smaller brothers. They were going up to Mussoorie, had been travelling three days, and had about a week’s more journey. They had not even their names written on a piece of paper, or a note to the magistrates of the district, but were just passed on from one set of bearers to the other. You know the bearers are changed every eight miles like so many post horses, and it constantly happens on a dÂk journey that the bearers get tired, or the fresh set are not at their posts, and the palanquin is put down on the road and the traveller left to help himself. The bearers who brought these children to Mr. T.’s, said they thought the children were tired, and so they had brought them to an European house for a rest. Mr. T. had them washed and dressed, and fed them and kept them half a day, when he was obliged to send them away for fear they should lose their dÂk. He said they were very shy, and would hardly speak, but he made out their names and gave them notes to other magistrates, and some months afterwards he saw them at school at Mussoorie; but it is an odd way of sending children to school. I should like to see you packing off your three youngest boys for the chances of these naked half savages taking them and feeding them and looking after them on the road, without even a servant to attend to them.

When we came into camp this morning we found Mr. ——, whose turn it had been to come on with the guard of honour, perfectly desperate. His tent had been entirely stripped in the night, he and his bearers remaining in a profound sleep while the thieves cut entirely away one side of the tent, and carried off over his head a large camel-trunk and all his other boxes, with his sword, gun, and pistols. It was a sad loss for a poor lieutenant in the army, but luckily the police recovered most of his things in the course of the day, except, as he says with a most sentimental sigh, ‘a few rings of no value in themselves, but of value to me, and a few chits.’ The magistrate, Mr. ——, treats with the greatest contempt the idea of recovering any sentimental goods. ‘I assure you,’ he says, ‘the dacoits at Pannyput have no idea of sentiment.’ Probably not—but that does not console Lieut. —— for the loss of his chits.

Kurnaul, March 2.

We arrived here yesterday; a great ugly scattered cantonment, all barracks, and dust, and guns, and soldiers; and G. had a levÉe in the morning, and we were ‘at home’ in the evening; and the officers of four regiments, with their wives and daughters, all came and danced. The fashions are even again behind those of Delhi. Mrs. V. appeared in a turban made I think of stamped tin moulded into two fans, from which descended a long pleureuse feather floating over some very full sleeves. Mrs. Z. did not aspire to anything fanciful, but was simply attired in a plain coloured gown made of a very few yards of sarcenet. We are going to dine with the General to-day—a dinner of sixty people.

Yesterday as we were stepping over the street to luncheon, there appeared an interesting procession of tired coolies carrying boxes—our English boxes that had come plodding after us from Allahabad. I was in hopes Mr. D.’s bonnets would have come out of one of them, but we heard in the evening that they are at least a month off, and in the meantime the unpacking of these was immense fun. There were two boxes of books, and I had just come to an end of the last set, and now there is Mrs. Gore’s ‘Stokeshill Park,’ and ‘My Aunt Dorothy,’ and some French novels, and, above all, dear Charles Lamb’s Letters, which I have been sighing for and have begun upon instantly. I cannot imagine what number of hill-bearers will take our goods up to Simla. Major J. has written for 1,500, and they are already at work taking the first division of goods up. Our camp will break up almost entirely in a few days. We three, with two aides-de-camp, the doctor, and one secretary, are going through the Dhoon, a sort of route that will not admit of a large party. It is a very pretty road, and likely to be cooler than the actual plains.

The rest of the camp and most of the servants will pursue the straight road. I long to get into the hills more than ever. It is grown so very hot now, quite as bad as Calcutta in May. I believe we shall not be able to take Wright and Jones this route, which will make them very unhappy. St. Cloup told me yesterday that he had at last had a letter from Madame St. Cloup, which had made him very happy, and that she was in an excellent place with a relation of ours. Poor woman! she little knows what a faithless man he is. However, he bought her a beautiful gold chain at Delhi, and he said that now he had had this letter, he had ‘quelque envie de lui acheter des boucles d’oreilles,’ but that he thought it would be better to take them home. It would make her more glad to see him.