A Journey to Katmandu | Page 6

deserve great credit for the praiseworthy employment of their
wealth; and making amends as it were for the backwardness of India as
regards hotels, they supply their places to the friendless traveller, in a
way which our frigid friends at home might imitate with advantage. I
look back upon my stay in Benares with the greatest pleasure, and shall
long remember the kindness I there experienced.
There is much to be seen in the Holy City, and the means of
locomotion which I should recommend the sight-seer to adopt are Tom

Johns, or chairs swung upon poles, with or without hoods, as the case
may be. Upon arriving at the Chouk or Market-place, we hired two of
these conveyances and started to see the residence of Cashmere Mull.
But first I must make an attempt, however unsuccessful, to describe the
Chouk: it is a large square, studded with raised oblong platforms
without walls, the roofs being supported by fluted Ionic columns. The
Police Court, in which a Native magistrate presides, forms one side of
the square. On the platforms sit the vendors of shawls, skull-caps, toys,
shells, sugar-cane, and various other commodities; but to enumerate the
extraordinary diversity of goods exposed for sale, or to describe the
Babel of tongues which confound the visitor as he wanders through the
motley crowd, would be impossible.
We turned out of the Chouk down a narrow street about three feet
broad, gloomy from the height of the houses, and unpleasant from the
great crowd and close atmosphere; every now and then we got jammed
into a corner by some Brahminee bull, who would insist upon standing
across the street to eat the fine cauliflower he had just plundered from
the stall of an unresisting greengrocer, and who, exercising the proud
rights of citizenship, could only be politely coaxed to move his
unwieldy carcase out of the way.
We wended our way through pipe bazaars and vegetable bazaars, where
each shopkeeper has a sort of stall, with about three feet frontage to the
street, but of unknown depth, and a narrow balcony supported by
carved wood-work over his head, out of the latticed windows of which
bright eyes look down upon the passengers. Whenever there is a piece
of wall not otherwise occupied in this compact and busy city, you see
depicted, in gaudy colours, elephants rushing along with dislocated
joints in hot pursuit of sedate parrots, or brilliant peacocks looking with
calm composure upon camels going express, who must inevitably crush
them in their headlong career, but the vain birds, apparently taken up
with admiration of their own tails, are blind to the impending danger,
thereby reading a good lesson both to the passers-by and to the
shopkeepers opposite. Now a sudden jerk prevents you from further
moralizing, as you find that you are going round a corner so sharp that
you must get bumped either before or behind. There are ugly women

carrying brass water-vessels, rich merchants on ponies, sirwahs on
horses, here and there in the wider streets a camel or an elephant, but
very seldom, as few streets would accommodate either of them; finally
there are chuprassies who disperse the crowd with their swords in a
most peremptory manner, smiting everything indiscriminately, except
the Brahminee bulls, which, although they are much the most serious
impediments, are left "alone in their glory."
By the exertions of these city police we reached Cashmere Mull's house,
noted as a specimen of antique Oriental architecture.
The court-yard into which we were first ushered reminded me of an old
English "hostelrie;" it was small and uncovered, and round each story
ran a curiously worked balcony, on to which opened doors and
windows, carved with strange devices, and all the nooks and crannies
formed by so much intricate carving were filled with dust and cobwebs.
Passing up a narrow, dark, and steep stone stair, we reached a second
court-yard, upon the balcony of which we emerged, and which was so
very like the last, that I imagined it to be the same, until I remarked that
it was smaller, and, if possible, more dirty. We thence ascended to the
flat roof of the house, and on our way looked through half-open doors
into dark dungeons of rooms, which one would not for the world have
ventured into at night.
There was a raised stage with steps up to it, which we ascended and
found ourselves on a level with a great many similar stages on the tops
of a great many similar houses. A stone parapet about 8 feet high, with
beautiful open carving, enclosed this stage, so that we could inspect our
neighbours through our stone screen with impunity. On the next roof to
where we were was a boy training pigeons, and the numerous crates or