philosophical indifference, to have delighted him in a very extraordinary
manner. True philosophy, however, would have admired the show, while it
condemned the extravagance, and despised the pride and effeminacy which
produced it.
In this manner the court proceeded through Lahore and the plains of the
Pundjâb towards Cashmere; but as their motions were slow, they were
overtaken in those burning hollows which condensed and reflected back
the rays of the sun like a vast burning-glass, by the heats of summer,
which are there little less intense than on the shores of the Persian
Gulf. No sooner had the sun appeared above the horizon than the heat
became insupportable. Not a cloud stained the firmament; not a breath
of air stood upon the earth. Every herb was scorched to cinders; and
throughout the wide horizon nothing appeared but an interminable plain of
dust below, and above a brazen or coppery sky, glowing like the mouth of
a furnace. The horses, languid and worn out, could scarcely drag their
limbs along; the very Hindoos themselves, who seem designed to revel in
sunshine, began to droop, and our traveller, who had braved the climate
of Egypt and the Arabian deserts, writing from the camp, on the tenth day
of their march from Lahore, exclaims, “My whole face, hands, and feet are
flayed, and my whole body is covered with small red pustules which prick
like needles. Yesterday, one of our horsemen, who happened to have no
tent, was found dead at the foot of a tree, which he had grasped in his
last agonies. I doubt whether I shall be able to hold out till night. All
my hopes rest upon a little curds which I steep in water, and on a little
sugar, with four or five lemons. The very ink is dried up at the point of
my pen, and the pen itself drops from my hand. Adieu.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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