Note 2 — Last Days of Travel.

The chicken, whose “fate had been accomplished,” died as we entered the yard, and was on the table in the fashion of a warm spread eagle in fifteen minutes! After this delicacy is duly discussed, the doolies are emptied of dust, the bedding laid down, and jolt, jolt, creak, creak, grunt, grunt, on we go again, until sleep good-naturedly comes to make us oblivious of all things. The kahars, or bearers, however, take a different view of life, and at every relief a crowd of sniggering darkies assemble, on both sides, with applications for bukshish. At first one hears, “Sahib, Sahib!” in a deprecating tone of voice, mindful of sudden wakings of former Sahibs, sticks, and consequent sore backs, then più forte, “Sahib!” crescendo, “Sahib, Sahib!” and then at last, in a burst of harmony, “Sahib pûrana Baira kûtch bukshish mil jawe?”2 and the miserable doolie traveller, who has been, probably, feigning sleep in sulky savageness for the last ten minutes, makes a sudden dive through the curtains with a stick, an exclamation is heard very like swearing, only in a foreign language, and the troop of applicants vanish like a shot, keeping up, however, a yelping of Sahibs, and Pûrana Bairas, and Bukshishs, until the new bearers get fairly under weigh, and have carried their loads beyond hearing. None but those who have been woken up in this manner from a comfortable state of unconsciousness, to the full realities of doolie travelling in Indian heat and dust, can form an idea of the trial it is to one’s temper; and, from my own feelings, together with the sounds I hear from my companion’s direction, I can testify as to the relief that the use of foreign expletives affords under the affliction.