Our Halting-Place Was In An Ancient Serai, With A Dilapidated
Garden, Containing The Remains Of Some Rather Handsome Fountains.
It
was situated on a rock, several hundred feet above the river which
separated us from the town; and,
From our elevated position, we had
a fine view of the whole place, and got an insight into the manners
and customs of the inhabitants, without their being at all aware of
our proximity.
The women and children appeared to be dressed quite in the Tartar
style: the women with little red square-cornered fez caps, with a
long strip of cloth thrown gracefully over them, and either pyjamas
of blue stuff with a red stripe, or a long loose toga of greyish
cloth, reaching nearly to the feet. The little girls were quite of
the bullet-headed Tartar pattern, of Crimean recollection, but wore
rather less decoration. The Crimean young ladies generally had a three
cornered charm suspended round their necks, while the youthful fashion
of Rajaori, scorning all artificial adornment, selected nature only
as their mantua-maker, and wore their dresses strictly according to
her book of patterns. After enjoying a delightfully cool night in
our elevated bedroom, we started for "Thanna."
Our path led through a gradually ascending valley, cultivated, for
the rice crop, in terraces, and irrigated by a complicated net-work
of channels, cut off from the mountain streams, and branching off
in every direction to the different elevations. The ground was so
saturated in these terraces that ploughing was carried on by means of
a large scraper, like a fender, which was dragged along by bullocks,
the ploughman standing up in the machine as it floundered and wallowed
about, and guiding it through the sea of mud.
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