The first place of public resort to which he directed his steps,
appears to have been the Pantheon bazar in Oxford Street, whither the
familiar name perhaps attracted him--"for the term _bazar_ is in use
also among the people of this country;" but he does not appear to have
been particularly struck by any thing he saw there, except the
richness and variety of the wares. On the contrary, he complains of
the want of fragrance in the flowers in the conservatory, particularly
the roses, as compared with those of his native land--"there was _one_
plantain-tree which seemed to be regarded as a sort of wonder, though
thousands grow in our gardens without any sort of culture." The
presence of the female attendants at the stalls, a sight completely at
variance with Asiatic ideas, is also noticed with marked
disapprobation--"Most of them were young and handsome, and seemed
perfect adepts in the art of selling their various wares; but I could
not help reflecting, on seeing so many fine young women engaged in
this degrading occupation, on the ease and comfort enjoyed by our
females, compared to the drudgery and servile employment to which the
sex are subjected in this country. Notwithstanding all the English say
of the superior condition of their women, it is quite evident, from
all I have seen since my arrival, that their social state is far below
that of our females." This sentiment is often repeated in the course
of the narrative, and any one who has read, in the curious work of Mrs
Meer Hassan Ali, quoted above, an account of the strict domestic
seclusion in which Moslem females having any pretensions to rank, or
even respectability, are constantly retained in India, will not be
surprised at the frequent expression of repugnance, whenever the
writer sees women engaged in any public or out-of-doors occupation--a
custom so abhorrent to Oriental, and, above all, to Indian ideas.
We next find the khan in the Zoological Gardens, his matter-of-fact
description of which affords an amusing contrast with that of those
veracious scions of Persian royalty, who luxuriate in "elephant birds
just like an elephant, but without the proboscis, and with wings
fifteen yards long"--"an elephant twenty-four feet high, with a trunk
forty feet long;" and who assure us that "the monkeys act like human
beings, and play at chess with those who visit the gardens. On this
day a Jew happened to be at this place, and went to play a game with
the monkey. The monkey beat, and began to laugh loudly, all the people
standing round him; and the Jew, exceedingly abashed, was obliged to
leave the place." The khan, in common with ourselves, and the
generality of visitors to the Regent's Park, was not fortunate enough
to witness any of the wondrous feats which gladdened the royal eyes of
the Shahzadehs--though he saw some of the apes, meaning the
orang-outan, "drink tea and coffee, sit on chairs, and eat their food
like human beings." * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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