Cabool: A Personal Narrative of a Journey to and Residence in That City in the Years 1836, 7, and 8 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Cabool: A Personal Narrative of a Journey to and Residence in That City in the Years 1836, 7, and 8

On the 24th of December we quitted Vikkur, and, entering the Secam, now the favoured branch, had a pleasant sail for two days between its well-wooded banks. There, in the morning, the larks sang as clearly and loudly as in Europe, and their notes, with the slow hollow sounds of the bells hanging from the necks of the buffaloes, as we wandered among the tamarisk-shrubs, were soothing to our ear. It was here that we added the pelican to'our small collection of natural history. This bird is often tamed in the Delta of the Indus. It stood four feet high, mea sured nine feet eight inches from tip to tip of its wings, and was the largest bird, except the ostrich, which I had ever seen. The pelican of the Gulf of Persia and the Red Sea is white, but on the Indus it is of a grayish brown. This bird swallows with difficulty, and only when the fish is so placed that it will descend endways into the stomach.

In our wanderings on shore we always visited the rajs, or villages of the inhabitants, and every one left his occupations on our approach to greet us with a good-humoured smile. If any of 11s killed a crow oh the wing, no difficult task assuredly, we were pronounced Hakim and bad shah, ruler and king. The round flat turban of the Juts, and their peculiar expression of countenance, calm and placid, present a study for the penal They are industrious, and very expert in reed or basket work, which they weave from the twigs of the tamarisk, and fit into all their vessels, thus rendering them dry and comfortable. At one of these villages we purchased from our boatmen two loads of fish, about eighty in number, for one rupee. The distribution was made with great pains: the fish were first divided into two lots; an indifferent person then took two bits of clay of different sizes, the parties guessed, and they were delivered accordingly. Each lot was again subdivided into three more shares, and much the same ceremony gone through; after which the fishes were With all haste transferred to the cooking-pot, the men chopping off the scales with an axe - a'formidable instrument for so delicate an affair. The fish were chiefly what are called dumbree.

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