3 her tell two lies. She promised us a rale | try," and as you confess to yourself the Martha stood nonplussed. I stepped forward to the rescue. "She And you would hold that Molly had honorably kept her word, if she gave you a stick each ?" Approving grins, nods, and asseverations. "Well, let me see. How many of you are there? Five? Will that do?" General delight, and a rush towards the confectioner's. "If you had that young imp in your class Sunday after Sunday," said Martha ungratefully, as we reached her own door, "you would not be so ready to encourage his impudence with sixpences. But I'm glad the day's work is over." From Temple Bar. INDIAN SMELLS AND SOUNDS. MOST people connect the idea of India with certain perfumes. There is the sweet scent of boxes, inlaid and carved, of ebony or sandalwood, or that exhaled from little bottles of attar of roses, with which all are familiar; and do not those who have ever opened a packing-case from India remember well the distinctive something, arising from a variety of - calico, from which the air has long been excluded, camphor, and the like which always makes them exclaim, "Doesn't it smell of India?" causes This, however, is not at all the same thing as that which becomes so intimately associated with the daily life of dwellers in the country. I have often thought about this smell of India, and have observed that it belongs peculiarly to the plains, appearing in a greatly modified form in the hills, which have their own characteristics, and lend the sweet resinous scent of pine-trees to the passing breeze. First, there is the fuel used by the natives, which is scraped from the roads, moulded into round, flat cakes, and sundried on the walls of their houses before it is burnt; and next, the wood and charcoal used for European cooking-fires, coals being an unattainable luxury in the East. Then at nightfall, the sweepings of stables, invaluable in England for dressing gardens, are burned carefully by the native grooms, or saises, and at sundown a heavy cloud of smoke rises near the station, and leaves its taint upon the atmosphere until it is renewed again the following evening. Next in order comes the smell of the hookah, anything but "grateful" and "fragrant" to an English nose. A rank, coarse kind of tobacco, steeped in molasses, is smoked in it with sundry other herbs, and one cannot go far without passing circles of men squatting on the earth and slowly passing on from mouth to mouth the stem of their beloved hookah, while the bowl of the pipe rests upon the ground between them. It has often struck me, as I have watched them smoking, how just these men are in their division of this luxury. I do not know who pays for the tobacco, etc., whether an individual, or the whole group, but nothing can be more impartial than the way in which it is enjoyed. There is no quarrelling or greediness, no attempt to keep the hookah stem too long, or to snatch it from a dilatory neighbor, but on it goes with the precision and regularity of clockwork, sometimes with talk and a little laughter, more frequently with Oriental gravity, but always with courtesy and politeness. Of course the men who smoke together are all of one caste, that would be broken by putting to the lips whatever had touched the mouth of a man of any other caste. You meet the real smell of India at Bombay. Just after you have landed, and are driving from the custom-house to your hotel, it comes upon you with a distinctiveness almost startling. You feel at Other smells of which the Indian air once, "This is indeed a part of the coun- | is redolent are those of ghee and mustard are the jampannies, a mingled set of done yourself." "these men oil, ingredients both used in native cookery; and nothing is more familiar to the nose than the self-asserting nastiness of rancid ghee. The uses of mustard oil are various; the small chirágs, or lippedcups of coarse earthenware with which a native lights his shop or dwelling, and which he sets before his temples, and the shrines of his departed worthies, contain little wicks of cotton floating in this oil. It is used, too, very freely for personal polishing, the good native rubbing him or herself all over with mustard oil before bathing in a tank, and by this means grearly diminishing the cleansing power of the sacred water. It is perhaps partly on this account that the near neighborhood of several natives, sometimes of one only, is not agreeable. A brown skin contains naturally more oil than a white one, and the sun's action upon this, Ganga Ram," she says, especially if it have been further anointed are dirty, they must have a bath. You with mustard oil, is far from pleasant to must see that they are well washed toEuropeans; indeed one wonders that En-morrow; do not trust to them, but see it glishmen who have to administer justice in katcherries and courts of law for hours daily, should be able to do so without any ill effect resulting to their health. There is seldom cause for complaint of any want of personal cleanliness amongst the servants in a well-regulated household. The high-caste Hindoo who probably fills the office of your bearer may not, like the Pharisee of old, eat except he wash. The observance of this rule must make a native dinner-party rather peculiar. Not unfrequently your Hindoo servants ask permission to attend a "big dinner," to be given by those of some other establishment, and a dull kind of entertainment it must be. The hosts provide and cook the food, and cause water to be brought in unexceptionable vessels by a man of proper caste; but when the guests arrive, each man removes his garments, and after performing all the washings that his law enjoins, he sits apart and eats his food alone before resuming them. What is the want of genialty about the very dullest of English dinner-parties compared to this? And the mild Hindoo answers with perfect gravity, "Very well, Mem .Sahib, it shall be done." Next morning after breakfast Ganga Ram appears. "Protector of the poor," he says to his mistress, "some soap is wanted." "Soap? What for?" "Your excellency, it is to wash the jampannies," and by-and-by, when it is time for the lady to be carried out for her afternoon excursion, the jampannies appear at the verandah, their faces shining with broad grins, and soap, and wearing something of the shamefaced expression of a little vain child conscious of its new frock, and longing, yet half fearing, to hear it remarked upon. Dust and dust-storms, the former never absent, give their share of flavor to the smell of India. The distance at which a dust-storm is apparent to the nose is very remarkable. I have smelt one which I could hardly see, when looking towards the plains from a nook in the Himalayas nine thousand feet above the sea-level. The peculiar darkness which accompanies these storms reminds one of the "thick darkness which could be felt" in old days in the land of Egypt. Like many disagreeable things, these dust-storms have their advantages. They come on in the plains during the hot season, when every grain of sand has been scorched through The men who appear to be least ad- and through by the blazing sun, and redicted to the voluntary use of cold water | flects his pitiless rays with wearisome per The men who cook, and wait upon your meals your table-servants are always Mahometans, because no Hindoo can see a Christian eat, or touch his defiling viands; and though the Mussulmans are not compelled by their law to the cleanliness enjoined upon their brethren of another faith, your table-servants seldom fail to practise it. T 3 tinacity, till earth and sky seem parts of one vast oven. Then a wind springs up out of the dead calm, and the dust and sand rise in dense clouds, which are whirled bither and thither, giving the parched earth a little respite from perpetual sunshine, while each tiny atom parts with the heat it had accumulated, and when the wind falls and they settle down again, they have acquired a partial coolness, unspeakably refreshing to animal life. Yet another ingredient in the smell of India is contributed by the ancient garments of the lower people, which look as though they never had been new, and are worn persistently until they drop to pieces; while over and above all these odorous elements is the great and indescribable smell of heat which assimilates them all, and can never be dissociated from them. This same heat intensifies the sweeter scents as yet unmentioned, but which in their season are as much a part of India as their noxious brethren. Who that in the course of a long night journey has crossed one of the broad rivers of upper India, can forget the peculiar, spicy perfume which greeted him from the great trunks of deodar, floating down from the hills to be used as timber, when a scent like incense rose into the night air? In the plains, when the heat towards the end of March and beginning of April is not enough to wither the flowers, though it is sufficient to keep Europeans (not obliged to go out) within doors until nearly sundown, nothing is more refreshing than the evening drive when, as the dusk creeps on, the air grows heavy with perfume from the station gardens, and mangoes, orange-flowers, and roses are giving out their richest odors. I never think of the sweet scents of India without recalling my first night's journey in a dak gharry. It was towards the end of April, and I lay awake with all the windows open, feasting my eyes upon the rich flood of moonlight, and the bright flicker of fireflies amongst the trees that bordered the road; my nose drank in delicious draughts of perfume from the cone-like bunches of bloom upon the mango-trees, from the pale lilac blossoms of the bakain (Melia Azedarach), and a still more luscious sweetness from the queer green and yellow bottle-brush blossoms of the siris; but my ears, alas! less highly favored, were assaulted at each stage by the loud chatter of the natives whilst changing horses, and the kicking and plunging of the untrained steeds, which had sometimes to be frightened into starting off, by wisps of lighted straw: while ever and anon through the night the driver heralded our approach by blasts on his discordant horn, to which the perpetual rattle of the gharry was as a running accompaniment to bursts of vocal music. Nothing can be done in India without noise. To hear any large number of natives together, and to see their frantic gesticulations, one would imagine them to be engaged in a violent quarrel, which might at any moment lead to blows; but no, it is merely amicable bawling, "the way" of the people. If one were near enough to distinguish what is said, it would probably prove to be all about their beloved rupae, the only subject except "Mem Sahibs that one ever does hear talked about by passing natives. The noise at large railway stations is perfectly appalling: the howl, the roar, the chatter and the bustle, is like Bedlam let loose. One can scarcely hear oneself speak sometimes, and one wonders how any of the officials can keep their temper, or get through their work in such a hubbub. The whole thing is needless, there is no real occasion for the uproar. Orientals unfortunately have no idea of time, and every man who intends to take a railway journey arrives at the station some hours before his train will start, and is accompanied by a small crowd of friends and relatives to see him off. He brings with him food, and bundles of all kinds and sizes, which he wishes to carry with him on his journey free of charge, in order to avoid the expense of buying anything at the town to which he is going; he also hopes by judicious bargaining to lower the price of the ticket he is to take, being constitutionally unable to believe in a fixed rate of charges. All these matters must be discussed in the shrillest tones at his command, and although such early comers are not admitted to the platform itself until the time for the departure of their train draws near, they squat down just outside it, and so the chorus swells as more and more groups arrive to join them, and scream about their affairs also. This loud talk is also very rapid, and is accompanied by many gesticulations; but although the tongues are active, the feet are not, and the din is increased by the way in which one man will shriek out all he wants to say to a friend at the other end of the platform, invariably using the vocative case, and prefacing his remarks with, "O Khudabux!" or "O Nawab Ali!" as the name may be. It is rather strange amidst all this up- | them up and down his throat to moisten roar never to hear any whistling, and very them, and then either swallow them irrevseldom any laughter; the little of that ocably himself, or pop them singly into that strikes the ear comes usually from the beak of one of his children, who are hill-men, who belong to lighter-hearted fed in this way until they are quite as big races than their brethren of the plains. as their parents. The knowing sidelong Some of the characteristic noises of fashion in which they hop to pick up morIndia are often spoken of as "hot-weather sels, is very comic. The crows were exsounds." There is the booming note of a tremely regular in their habits. The kind of pigeon heard all day long at inter- morning was evidently devoted to busivals as the heat comes on in the plains; ness, and we saw little of them: between the not unmusical drone of Persian wells three and four P.M. they began bathing in which becomes incessant as the drier relays of six or eight in a little tank in the weather makes more and more frequent compound, wading about, and making a watering needful for the crops; and at great splashing; and when a second set night each little pond and ditch resounds of bathers took their turn, the first flew to with the loud call of bull-frogs, rejoicing and fro in the sunshine to get dry. There probably at having got beyond the tadpole was a tree close to the verandah in which stage, for it is only the young frogs who one or two birds were then posted as senmake the noise. These creatures are yel- tinels, and as soon as we came out they lowish-brown in color, and so numerous cawed to their fellows until the neighborthat the water everywhere is crowded with ing railing was headed by a long black, them, and looks like Scotch broth full of solemn-looking line of crows. They would vegetables. come quite close to our feet to pick up The irritating hum of mosquitoes is by cake unless they saw anything scarlet, no means exclusively Indian, but is heard which always frightened them away. Once too often in the East to be left out of the when one of our party carried out a red catalogue of Indian sounds. The long shawl, the birds kept at so great a disthrilling cry of kites, and the howl of jack-tance from us that we tried the experials, are common to both plains and hills;ment of doing so several times, and aland in the latter, if your house be rather isolated and shut in by trees, you may occasionally hear hyenas near your veran dah. The quiet of the forest by day is very singular, and becomes oppressive in a long and solitary ride. Almost the only singing bird that breaks the silence is the kastúra, a kind of blackbird, whose voice, less sweet than that of his English cousin, may sometimes be heard in spring. These birds are caught by the natives, and brought about for sale in cages wrapped in linen, being supposed to sing with greater energy in the dark. Minas of course are heard chattering in the hills; and there is the cawing of Indian crows, splendid glossy fellows, bigger than common crows at home, but just as hostile as they are to jackdaws, whom they will often drive away from settlements they have a fancy to occupy themselves. The crows winter in the plains, migrating to the hills some time in May to avoid the heat below. They have beautiful shiny plumage with metallic lights upon it, black legs and beaks, and very bright eyes. We used to feed them with stale cakes, and they were very greedy for sweet things, but seldom cared to touch fruit. One bird would swallow two or three bits of cake one after the other, and if they were very dry would move ways with the same result. It is great fun to catch a crow and tie him on his back to a charpoy in the compound, which may be done without hurting him at all. His cries of indignation attract his friends, whom he catches with his feet as soon as they come near him. These being fastened on the charpoy become in their turn traps for fresh birds, and a more ludicrous sight than this setting a crow to catch a crow, can hardly be imagined. When released, the birds fly off as though nothing had happened to them. I wonder if they quarrel about it afterwards. A plaintive sound, familiar to the hills at night, is made by a tiny owl, said by the natives to be the smallest of its kind, but it is a shy bird, and even they very rarely see it. Strange wild cries may be sometimes heard there from flocks of cranes flying swiftly back to the plains, from their summer home in Kashmir, on the approach of cooler weather. They are immense creatures, as big as turkeys, with soft grey plumage, touched on the wings with black. In winter they may constantly be seen standing in the fields on their tall, stilt-like legs. Their flesh is dark and solid, and very good to eat; they are called koonj, or koolin, by the natives. During the rainy season the forest re sounds with the peculiar noise of treefrogs, large insects with dark, substantial bodies, and black wing-cases spotted with yellow and blue. They crowd the branches, and if you venture out to take advantage of a fine interval between the showers, your ears are almost deafened by their din, which is something like that of sharpening steel instruments, mixed with hissing and chirping. Tree-frogs are not found in the plains nor in the hills at any other season. So much for the natural sounds of India. There are some artificial ones equally familiar, such as the noise of little native drums called tom-toms, which are beaten everywhere on all occasions; and in the hills the sound of shepherds' pipes, which resembles that of Scotch bagpipes, though on a smaller scale. Two pipes, about a foot and a half long, with holes like those in a flute, are held to the mouth, and breathed through alternately, and a skilful player will contrive to draw forth a great variety of notes, which, at a little distance, have a sweet wild sound, greatly in accordance with the hill scenery. A frightful noise is produced by Brahmins blowing on the sacred shell they call a sunk, a blast which is supposed to keep away all evil spirits. We were once misguided enough to inquire of some native officials what instruments of music their town possessed, and were waited upon next day, in consequence, by all the musicians of the place. First came a group of nine women who sang some wild and plaintive strains in unison in a minor key; one of them kept time by occasionally snapping her fingers, while another performed a rude accompaniment on a small barrel-shaped drum, the ends of which were covered with goatskin. The head-dress of some of these singers was peculiar, and consisted of folds of calico over the head and round the throat, rather like the drapery of some orders of nuns, and similar to that given by painters to St. Anna, and other holy women of the Bible. The grouping of these people, as they sat close together on the ground, was extremely picturesque; and listening to the sad sweetness of their strains, one could easily imagine such to have been the appearance and the melody of the daughters of Jerusalem as they lamented by the waters of Babylon. The singing ended, a man was seen to rise in the background, lifting an enormous brazen trumpet nearly as long as himself, on which he blew two most terrific blasts, excruciating to English ears. These sounds were prolonged, and seemed to sink down through a long wailing discord inexpressibly painful to listen to, but not unfrequently to be heard in that district of the Punjab. The effort of blowing this trumpet is considerable, and we were glad to make this an excuse for hearing no more of it, and submitted with the best grace we could to a performance on the tom-tom, while two more men exercised their lungs upon horrid little trumpets of a smaller size. When these were dismissed, we had a kind of duet all on one note from two men, one of whom beat a small drum open at one end, like a very deep tambourine, while the other played upon something like a four-stringed banjo. The lower part of this instrument was made of a gourd, and two of the strings were passed through blue glass beads, while the other two were raised by cowries of different sizes; the banjo was further adorned by the green-and-gold label from some English cotton-reel or piece of calico, stuck on the stem by way of orna ment. Perhaps this concert was an unusual amount of native music for English people to hear at once, but no one can be long in India without meeting with some of it. There is also the monotonous chanting to be heard from the Hindoo and Sikh temples, and the singsong reading of their holy books; the "Shabash!" or "Bravo!" with which natives encourage each other in the performance of any physical labor, such as turning the wheels of a gharry which has stuck fast; the grunt of the dhoolie-bearers, and the "Chale jao, jaldi, jaldi” (“ Go on, quickly, quickly "), of the bangby-wallahs, or parcel-carriers, whom one meets constantly on the roads; and the clanging and rattle of the postman's badge of office, heard before he himself becomes visible; and these, though only lesser murmurs amongst the many sounds of India, are as characteristic as any of them, nor can any one who has been in the country recall vividly to mind his own experiences, or relate them to his friends, without remembering at the same time the atmosphere of smells and sounds in which he lived in India. S. M. G. |