'Up the Country': Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of IndiaEden, Emily
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'Up the Country': Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India
Eden, Emily
Eden, Emily, 1797-1869 -- Correspondence; India -- Description and travel
A letter to you which is to go by the Persian Gulf only departed to-day,
and I believe there will be no regular steamer for nearly six weeks. A
sad interruption to our little communications. A few days after my
letter to you was sealed, G. got the official accounts of the taking of
Candahar, or rather how Candahar took Shah Soojah, and _would have_ him
for its King. There never was anything so satisfactory. I hope M. and
Lord M. will have received and shown you the copies of Sir A. Burnes's
letters; it was such a picturesque description of the business. M. wrote
me a very good account of it. He says:--'Five days ago we poor
politicals were assailed from all quarters, from the commander-in-chief
to the lowest ensign. They were all exclaiming how we had deceived them;
that we had given out that Shah Soojah would be received by the chiefs
and people of his country with open arms; that the resources of the
country would be laid open to the British army--instead of which, he was
opposed by his own countrymen; no chiefs came near him; the army was
starving in a land of milk and honey; in fact, we had deceived
ourselves, and that Shah Soojah's cause was impossible. A little
patience, and the fallacy of these sentiments would be proved. The
sirdars left their late capital with scarcely two hundred followers;
their most confidential servants deserted them, for to the last their
measures were most oppressive, and they were heartily execrated. Every
great chief with numerous followers came out to meet the Shah, and
greeted him on his arrival in his own country with every demonstration
of joy; the poor crowded about him, making offerings of flowers, and
they strewed the road he was to pass over, with roses. Yesterday the
King went to visit the city (we are encamped about two miles from it);
every person, high and low, seemed to strive how they could most show
their devotion to his Majesty, and their delight at the return of a
Suddozie to power. The King visited the tomb of his grandfather, Ahmed
Shah; and the _Prophet's shirt_, which is in keeping of the Mollahs in
charge of the tomb, and which was brought out by the sirdars when they
were trying to raise a religious war against us, was produced, and the
King hugged and kissed it over and over again.
'The populace are the finest race of Asiatics I have seen; the men tall
and muscular, the women particularly fair and pretty, and all well
dressed. It seems as if we had dropped into paradise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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