during the rains, has greatly aided the bringing of it
under cultivation.
At Jeelpigoree we were waited upon by the Dewan,
who governs the district for the Rajah, a boy about
ten years old, whose estates are locked up during the
trial of an interminable suit for the succession, that
has been instituted against him by a natural son of
the late Rajah : we found the Dewan to be a man of
intelligence, who promised us elephants as soon as
the great Hooli festival, now commenced, should be
over.
The large village, at the time of our visit, was gay
with holiday dresses. I t was surrounded by trees,
chiefly of banyan, jack, mango, peepul, and tamarind:
endless rice-fields extended on all sides, but except
bananas, slender betel-nut palms, and sometimes pawn,
or betel-pepper, there was little other cultivation. The
rose-apple, orange, and pine-apple were rare, as were
cocoa-nuts ; there were few date or fan-paims, and only
occasionally poor crops of castor-oil and sugar-cane.
In the gardens I noticed many of the very commonest
Indian ornamental p lan ts; while for food were cultivated
Chenopodium, yams, sweet potatos, and more
rarely peas, beans, and gourds. Bamboos were planted
round the little properties and smaller clusters of
houses in oblong squares, the ridge on which the plants
grew being usually bounded by a shallow ditch. The
species selected was not the most graceful, the stems
being densely crowded, erect, as thick at the base
as the arm, copiously branching, and very feathery
throughout their whole length of sixty feet.
The cottages were remarkable, presenting nothing
hut a low white-washed platform of clay, and an
enormous high, narrow, black, neatly-thatched roof,
so arched along the ridge, that its eaves nearly touched
the ground at each gable; looking at a distance like a
gigantic round-backed elephant. The walls were of
neatly-platted bamboo: each window (of which there
were two) was crossed by slips of bamboo, and wanted
only glass to make it look European; they had besides,
shutters of wattle, that opened upwards, projecting
during the day like the port-hatches of a ship, and let
down at night. Within, the rooms were airy and
clean; one end contained the machans (bedsteads), the
other some raised clay benches, the fire, frequently an
enormous Hookah, round wattled stools, and various
implements. The inhabitants appeared more than
ordinarily well-dressed; the men in loose flowing robes
of fine cotton or muslin, the women in the usual garb
of a simple thick cotton cloth, drawn tight immediately
above the breast, and thence falling perpendicularly to
the kn e e ; the colour of this was a bright blue in
stripes, bordered above and below with red.
I anticipated some novelty from a visit to a Durbar
(court) so distant from European influence as that of
the Rajah of Jeelpigoree. All Eastern courts, subject
to the Company, are, however, now shorn of much of
their glory; and the condition of the upper classes is
greatly changed.
One evening we visited the young Rajah at his
residence, which had rather a good appearance at a
distance, its white walls gleaming through a dark tope