The small-pox was committing dreadful ravages in Rampore and its neighbourhood; and though vaccination was performed gratis at Bareilly, the fatalist prejudices of the natives, even of those of rank and education, prevented them from availing themselves of the boon. All the instances of the colonel, in behalf of a charming little girl, four years old, whose mother and sister had already taken the infection, could get from her father nothing more than a promise "to think of it! If it's her fate----" said he. "'You fool!' said I, in my civil way," (and the colonel's _brusquerie_ was here, at least, not misplaced,) "'if a man throws himself into the fire or a well, or in the path of a tiger, is he without blame?'" Such apathy seems almost unaccountable to English minds; but it may find a parallel in Lady Chatterton's story of the Irish parents, [7] who, after refusing to spend fourpence in nourishment for a dying child, came in deep grief after its death to their employer, to solicit an advance of thirty shillings to _wake the corpse_! Perhaps some ingenious systematists might hence deduce a fresh argument in favour of the alleged oriental origin of the Irish. [7] Rambles in the South of Ireland; ii. 143. The colonel's next stage was to Moradabad, another Pathan city, but under the _raj_ of the Company, where, in a visit to a native original, named Meer Mahommed, he was greatly delighted by his new friend's introduction of the English word _swap_ into a sentence of Hindoostani. And on the 25th he reached Dhampore, where the welcome proclamation, "that the new moon had been seen," terminated the fast of the Ramazan, to the uncontrollable joy of the Mussulmans, who would have been subjected to another day's abstinence if it had not been perceived till the succeeding evening. The colonel, however, slyly remarks, that "it was very odd that the _Hindoos_ could not see the new moon," and hints that their imperfection of vision was shared by himself, but it was otherwise decided by the Faithful; and he proceeded, amid the noisy rejoicings of the Moslem feast of _Bukra-Eed_, (called by the Turks Bairam,) by Najeena, the Birmingham of Upper India, to Nujeebabad. Here resided, on a pension of 60,000 rupees (£6000) a-year from the English government, the Nawab Gholam-ed-deen, better known by the nickname of Bumbo Khan, a brother of the once famous Rohilla chief Gholam-Khadir. Though past eighty years of age, and weighing upwards of twenty stone, he had not lost, any more than the equiponderant colonel, his taste for the good things of this world; and our traveller, on partaking of the Nawab's hospitality, records with infinite zest the glories of a peculiar preparation of lamb, called _nargus_, or the narcissus. But, alas! the reminiscences of the nargus were less grateful than the fruition, and the remorse of the colonel's guilty stomach (as poor Theodore Hooke, or some one else, used to call indigestion) continued