Chambers Edinburgh Journal, Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. | Page 3

to a place where he might not have the advantage of seeing
any of them for some years, and would thus run the chance of growing
rusty, he thought he might as well keep his hand in while he had the
opportunity.
After running down the coast till the sun became so uncomfortably hot
as to render an awning over the whole vessel an indispensable
necessary, we suddenly struck into one of the many creeks with which
the Delta of the Indus is everywhere interlaced. The vessel did not
answer her helm well; and as the breadth of the stream did not much
exceed her length, we were for some time running ashore, first on one
bank, and then on the opposite one. However, as the banks were steep,
and composed of a mixture of sand and mud, we were not so much
delayed by these accidents as might have been expected; for after
grounding with a shock sufficient to floor any one unused to the
navigation of the Indus, the tough little craft would slide back of her
own accord into her proper element, and go ahead again as if nothing
had happened. The first time this took place, I was sent on my
beam-ends, and was not a little alarmed into the bargain; but the crew
seemed to take it as a matter of course, and in reply to my anxious
inquiries as to the extent of damage that had been occasioned, they
informed me that she had only brushed the cobwebs off her keel. On
entering the creek, we startled large flocks of wild geese and ducks; and
here and there a pair of pelicans, after gazing at us for a few seconds,
would slowly wing their way to some more sequestered stream,

unprofaned by noisy, smoky civilisation.
As we continued on our course, the landscape--a level plain, that
stretched away for miles till it met the horizon--was covered with
camels grazing upon tamarisk-bushes, which, with a few mangostans,
an occasional specimen of acanthus, and a coarse and scanty herbage,
were the only specimens of the vegetable kingdom that met our gaze.
The scene during the remainder of the afternoon was the same, the
monotony being relieved only when we stopped for half an hour to take
a supply of wood from a large pile collected on the bank for this
purpose, and thus had an opportunity of stretching our legs on terra
firma. At dusk, the steam-boat was run ashore, the steam blown off,
and here we were to remain for the night. The natives immediately
rushed on shore, and began preparing fires to cook their provisions. The
ship's cook had already supplied me with a cup, or rather a tin pot of tea;
but as the growing coolness of the evening, and the example of my
neighbours, rather encouraged my appetite, I resolved to make a second
edition of my evening meal, and accordingly took under my arm the
copper canteen which formed the sum-total of my culinary
apparatus--the lid being my only plate or dish--and furnished with a
supply of tea, sugar, cold meat, and biscuit, made my way to a spot a
short distance off, where I might take my food on the solitary system,
according to the custom that we Englishmen most delight in. When I
had lighted the fire, and put the water on to boil, I cast myself on the
ground, and complacently puffing away at my pipe, gazed at the wild
but picturesque scene before me. The position of the river was marked
out by a semicircle of some fifty or sixty fires, before which dark and
ill-defined figures were ever and anon flitting like phantoms; while, in
the midst, the funnel of the steam-boat loomed tall and black above the
veil of smoke that hung around--like some dark and horrid object Of
heathen idolatry surrounded by its sacrificial fires. The sounds that met
my ear, however, dispelled this somewhat fanciful idea; for in the
stillness of the night voices grow distinct, while forms are indebted to
the imagination for filling up their outlines.
The native passengers, who had remained, silent and dull, in a
constrained position during the whole of the day, felt a load taken off
their spirits as soon as they set foot on dry land; and in a trice the
silence that had hitherto reigned was broken by a very Babel of tongues,

among which could be distinguished the guttural jargon of the Scindian,
the bastard dialect of Mahratti, of the Hindoo from the Deccan, and the
ungrammatical patois of Hindostani, which--although, when
exclusively used, it marked out the Mussulman--was yet the lingua
franca of the whole party; but amidst the unceasing torrent of words,
little could be distinguished, save when the ear was saluted with an