The last evening was spent with veterans in the
ways of camping out, and at three o'clock the next morning I mounted
my horse and began my journey. My road lay through Jaunpoor, and here
I encountered a violent thunderstorm in the middle of the night, with
floods of rain. At the cost of being almost drowned out and blown
away, I learned the expediency of trenching one's tabernacle, and the
wisdom of putting one's confidence in none but brand-new cordage. In
the city of Jaunpoor there is not much to arrest notice, saving its
very durable bridge, dating from the time of Akbar, and the Atala
Masjid, a mosque deformed from a rather ancient Hindoo temple; and the
rest of the district of Jaunpoor which my route lay through was
altogether uninteresting. The borders of the district crossed, after
traversing a narrow strip of Oude I came again to British territory.
This fragment formed a perfect island, so to speak, the domains of the
nawab hemming it in on every side. The one European inhabitant of this
isolated but fertile spot was an indigo-planter, near whose bungalow
and factory I encamped for a night. His establishment was of long
standing, but he had no neighbor within many miles, and there was that
about the place which filled me with a sense of utter dreariness and
depression. Hard by the house was a burial-ground, and wholly by that
house it had been peopled with all its many tenants.
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