The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, August, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, August, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
she had kept a loving hold on many another quaint festivity of her
ancestors on the other side of the water. Her prosperity would be none
the worse of a respectful reference to the good things of the past.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Among the causes of decay in the Roman aqueducts, was the strong
concretion formed on the bottom and sides by matter deposited by the
water. No such deposit is made by the water of the Croton.
From Fraser's Magazine.
A JUNGLE RECOLLECTION.
BY CAPTAIN HARDBARGAIN.
The hot season of 1849 was peculiarly oppressive, and the irksome
garrison duty at Cherootabad, in the south of India, had for many
months been unusually severe. The colonel of my regiment, the
brigadier, and the general, having successively acceded to my
application for three weeks' leave, and that welcome fact having been
duly notified in orders, it was not long before I found myself on the
Coimbatore road, snugly packed guns and all, in a country
bullock-cart, lying at full length on a matress, with a thick layer of
straw spread under it.
All my preparations had been made beforehand; relays of bullocks were
posted for me at convenient intervals, and I arrived at Goodaloor, a
distance of a hundred and ten miles, in rather more than forty-eight
hours.
Goodaloor is a quiet little village, about eleven miles from
Coimbatore;--but don't suppose I was going to spend my precious three
weeks there.
After breakfasting at the traveller's bungalow, we started off again.
The bungalow is on the right hand side of the road; and when we had
proceeded about two hundred yards, the bullock-cart turned into the
fields to the left, and got along how it could across country, towards
some low rocky hills, which ran parallel, and at about three miles
distance from the Coimbatore road.
After about two miles of this work, sometimes over fallow ground,
sometimes through fields of growing grain, (taking awful liberties
with the loose hedges of cut brambles, which, however, we had the
conscience to build up again as we passed them,) sometimes over broken
stony ground, and once or twice lumbering heavily through a rocky
watercourse, we at last found ourselves on the grassy margin of a
pretty little stream. Fifty yards beyond it, under the shade of a fine
mango-tree, my little tent was already pitched; in five minutes I lay
stretched on my bed, listening with ravished ears to the glorious
accounts of my old Shikaree, who had just come in, hot and tired, from
the jungle. He had much to tell,--how since he had been out, three
days, he had tracked the tiger every morning up and down a certain
nullah; how the brindled monster had been seen by different shepherds;
and what was still more satisfactory, how he had but yesterday killed
a cow near the spot where the hut had been built. It was now
midday;--how to spend the long hours till sunset?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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