Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 5Twain, Mark
General
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 5
Twain, Mark
Equator -- Description and travel; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 -- Travel; Voyages around the world
After dinner I and my
mother slept inside the room, and Tookaram slept on a cot near his
brother-in-law, Yessoo Mahadhoo, just outside the door. That was
not the usual place where Tookaram slept. He usually slept inside
the room. The body of the deceased remained on the loft when I went
to sleep. The room in which we slept was locked, and I heard that
my paramour, Tookaram, was restless outside. About 3 o'clock the
following morning Tookaram knocked at the door, when both myself and
my mother opened it. He then told me to go to the steps leading to
the quarry, and see if any one was about. Those steps lead to a
stable, through which we go to the quarry at the back of the
compound. When I got to the steps I saw no one there. Tookaram
asked me if any one was there, and I replied that I could see no one
about. He then took the body of the deceased from the loft, and
having wrapped it up in his saree, asked me to accompany him to the
steps of the quarry, and I did so. The 'saree' now produced here
was the same. Besides the 'saree', there was also a 'cholee' on the
body. He then carried the body in his arms, and went up the steps,
through the stable, and then to the right hand towards a Sahib's
bungalow, where Tookaram placed the body near a wall. All the time
I and my mother were with him. When the body was taken down, Yessoo
was lying on the cot. After depositing the body under the wall, we
all returned home, and soon after 5 a.m. the police again came and
took Tookaram away. About an hour after they returned and took me
and my mother away. We were questioned about it, when I made a
statement. Two hours later I was taken to the room, and I pointed
out this waistband, the 'dhotur', the mattress, and the wooden post
to Superintendent Nolan and Inspectors Roberts and Rashanali, in the
presence of my mother and Tookaram. Tookaram killed the girl Cassi
for her ornaments, which he wanted for the girl to whom he was
shortly going to be married. The body was found in the same place
where it was deposited by Tookaram."
The criminal side of the native has always been picturesque, always
readable. The Thuggee and one or two other particularly outrageous
features of it have been suppressed by the English, but there is enough
of it left to keep it darkly interesting. One finds evidence of these
survivals in the newspapers. Macaulay has a light-throwing passage upon
this matter in his great historical sketch of Warren Hastings, where he
is describing some effects which followed the temporary paralysis of
Hastings' powerful government brought about by Sir Philip Francis and his
party:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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