Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

FORTY YEARS IN THE WORLD;

OR,

Sketches and Tales,

&c. &c.

N. I.

INDIAN VILLAGE LIFE.

The wind breathed soft as lover's sigh,
And, oft renew'd, seemed oft to die,
With breathless pause between:
O, who, with speech of war and woes,
Would wish to break the soft repose
Of such enchanting scene!

SCOTT.

MANY of the villages in India exhibit all that poets have conceived of rural bliss. Peeping from beneath eternally green canopies, that shade them from the sun's glare, and fan them with umbrageous branches, nothing in idea can exaggerate the charms of such a scene. You often see

[blocks in formation]

the tall palm and the golden plantain growing at the cottage door; the yellow mellon climbing the roof; and the pumpkin creeping and glittering in the garden; whilst the distance is a perfect feast of roses, banyan flowers, fruits, and wonders. You see the pagoda rising through grand vistas of banyan stems; you view the choultry, or dhuramsallah, a place for the accommodation of travellers, supported on pillars of huge stone; you look at the images of Hindoo gods around it with surprise; fine tanks of water, constructed by charitable Hindoos at vast expense, meet your eye, perhaps, near the spot; and you see the village girls, in all the simplicity of scriptural delineation, ready to draw water for you and your camels. The courts of justice, the public seats under the trees, the numbers of children you behold at play, the mirth and gaiety which laugh in every eye-all, every thing, assures you, that happiness is shedding her perfume on the whole. Such pictures you will often be delighted with in travelling over the Honourable East-India Company's possessions. Security and peace have long left industry at ease in the southern parts of

« AnteriorContinuar »