CHAPTER TWENTIETH.

CONTENTS.

The Lamp is extinguished.

"It is a fearful thing,

To love what Death may touch-a fearful thing
That Love and Death may dwell in the same world!"

"I know thou art gone, where thy forehead is starred,
With the beauty that dwelt in thy soul;
Where the light of thy loveliness cannot be marred,
Nor thy heart be flung back from its goal!

I know thou hast drank of the lethe that flows,

Through a land where they do not forget,

That sheds over memory, only repose,

And takes from it, only regret!"

"If I could keep thee as thou art,
All cold, and all serene,

I still might press thy lifeless heart,
And where thy smiles had been!

Even while thy cold, bleak corpse I have,
Thou seemest still my own-

Heman.

Anonymous.

But there I lay thee in the grave

And am indeed alone !"

Wolfe.

My business did not detain me more than a week at Lahāu,r and we lost no time in returning to our boats at Bâreki, or rather at Gandasingwāla, the village on the Panjâb side of the ghất, where our boats lay.

Let me be forgiven if I linger over those days, every event of which is burned into my memory; and which now, when I look back on them seem to have comprised an age. They have left me the withered being that I am; perhaps more fondly and fancifully tenacious of my sorrow than I ever was of my happiness.

How that rough tree was fondly grasped,
And how, while love his branches clasped,
In close embrace,

All lovingly he lent his power,

To prop and feed the gentle flower
That gave him grace;

Till not one twig, or leaf, or spray,

Of all the forest king's array,

But was with its own tendrils curled,
And with its own sweet blossoms pearled.

A flame within the forest sprung;
On burning wings it swept along,
Leaving the traces of its wrath,
Blackness and ashes in its path,
It breathed upon the tree
Dried up his verdant leaves and shoots,
But left unscathed his vigorous roots-
But where was she?

The lovely flower that round him grew,
And from his breast her life blood drew;
Whose tendrils, till in death grown cold,
Had ne'er relaxed their loving hold,
Low on the ground was laid!

The naked stem,

Blackened and bare, still braved the storm,
Unchanged his stature and his form,

But reft of every gem.

He asked no other flower to come,

And twine around his leafless home

The circling mouths that o'er him flew,

Bathing his withered boughs with dew

Sunshine, and rain, and breeze might bring,
But brought to him no second spring.

Before we resumed voyage down the river, I paid another visit

to Kasur, where my reception was very different from that I had met a few days before. Shâm Singh had received a royal parwānnûh, and could no longer refuse me admission, having also had proof that the Maharajah would not be trifled with; the Chief felt that it behoved him, by a double por tion of assiduity, to make up for his former churlishness. Still, he could not conceal how irksome my presence was, and I did not feel inclined to remain long where I was an unwelcome guest.

During this visit, I gleaned some particulars of a place that contains much to interest the traveller; the impression left by my first hasty survey of the town and country was confirmed on closer inspection; I now ascertained that, of a fertile and extensive territory, but a small proportion is cultivated, and that the whole is sub-let by Shâm Singh to a farmer, for less than a third of the revenue it might easily yield. The population is much like that described in the last Chapter but one, as inhabiting Firozpûr in both places the same causes have worked the same effects; constant aggression, continual raids made or suffered, insecurity of life and property have made Kasûr even more a desert than the neighbouring estates; and where in the Panjâb can real good cultivation be found? or where the old and hereditary cultivators and village Chiefs? No where-every thing is done loosely, and as by people fed from hand to mouth, while the rural population will all tell you that they are settlers, that they have come from the West and South West, allured by promises of rich lands and liberal terms; they came and found a country wasted and desolated by the Persians, the Mahrâthâs, the Affghâns, and the Sikhs. One part or other of Northern Hindustân has been continually exposed to the sword, but all the invaders passed through the Panjâb; it has therefore suffered the most, and bears to this day in almost every quarter, testimony to the blighting effects of war, and its train of ills, pestilence and famine among them.

Though this is not the place to enter into either the statistics, or the romance of Kasur and its territory, they have too many interesting recollections attached, for us thus summarily to pass by this city of the dead, this mighty mass of ruin.

The present town occupies the enceinte of one of the twelve Pathan forts of modern days, while the remains of the ancient city

lie in massive ruins for miles to the North and East. The Kasur territory being opposite the Bârake of Ferozpur ghat, and between the other two great thoroughfares of invasion, Hureki and Pâk Patan, suffered perhaps more than any other portion of the frontier except Ferozpûr from predatory inroads; 'what man failed to do, nature completed. The Sutluj in its wanderings, though it has perhaps increased the Kasûr lands, has, by throwing up beds of sand, destroyed many rich locations, while the Byâs, a river that improves instead of deteriorates the lands on its banks, has completely forsaken the Kasûr territory, and instead of, as of old, uniting with the Sutluj at Kasur, now does so some thirty miles higher up at Hureki.

As the traveller approaches Kasur from the Khâdar of the Sutluj, his eye is attracted in the far distance by the high kankery bank of what must have been the old bed of the Byâs, rising two hundred feet above the Khâder, sprinkled with da te trees, and the highest cliff capped by a faqir's tukiya close to the ruins of an ancient tower; the last remnant of the castles of the old Rajput lords, when Kasûr was a Hindû principality; and when, as history, or rather as local legends, say, a King of Delhi came, wooed and won the daughter of the Prince, and by degrees conv erted his bride, her father, and subjects to the tenets of Mahom ed. It was not always thus persuasively that Islam gained her converts. The legend is probably correct, for all along this border, and indeed from the Jamnā to the Attak, are tribes after tribes of converted Hindus, still bearing their old Pagan designations, and retaining many of their prejudices and customs; the same village often containing Hindu and Mahommedan, Rajpūts, Jāts, &c., calling each other brethren, and on certain occasions associating, and even sometimes inter-marrying.

The Rajput dynasty fell under an inroad of Affghâns and their descendants, the Pathân Chiefs were as already narrated, driven out by the Sikhs. The many forts still in repair with the many others of the Pathân times now crumbling to the dust, tell of the troubles and insecurity of their day, and the desolation of the whole country for miles around tell the same tale as does Sirhind and old Lahâur.

Had time permitted, I would gladly have prolonged my stay at a place so full of tradition, and presenting such peculiarities of custom and character; but we had a long trip before us, and the cold

weather, that golden season in Hindustan, was slipping away. We, therefore, resolved to continue our course down the river, and started for Bareke, our little fleet gliding down the stream, at the rate of about three-and-a-half miles an hour. Thirteen miles from Bareke we came to Memdot, a Sikh dependency, the name of which has already been brought before the reader in Chand Khân's list of disaffected States. The Khán is a reluctant vas sal of Lahaur; but considering me as a Sahib in the Maharajah's favour, Jamâl-û-din Khān thought it worth while to be on the river bank with his brother and son, and all he could muster of his retainers, some fifty foot and half as many horse, to do me honour, and invite me to his castle. I declined the invitation on the plea of haste, but received him with respect; and, under a sémiānah hastily pitched, talked for an hour with the Chief. He is a fine-looking man, of good and manly features; a sportsman and liking all Franks, or, at least, professing to do so, he asked me for a chit, which I gave, not exactly to the effect he desired, but such as in reason I could give; he produced very many for my inspection, some of them pretty considerably absurd, and watched my countenance while I read them, which fortunately I observed, or I might have hurt his feelings by the amusement that I could with difficulty conceal.

The town of Memdot is a miserable collection of huts; the fort is an old, imposing-looking place, but of no strength, and fast crumbling to pieces; they are on the edge of the Kâdir, and run a fair chance by a freak of the river, to be soon bodily carried away.

What has been said of misrule at Kasûr and elsewhere, may, to the full extent, apply to Memdōt : indeed more amply; for, instead of attempting to irrigate his extensive and rich lands bordering on the river, Jamāl-u-din Khân has tried to increase his revenues by resuming the rights of the village head men; he has consequently very much lessened his income, decreased his population, and rendered those who remain thoroughly discontented.

Jumal-u-din Khan's territory yields to him, one way and another, fines, one-half of all crops, transit duties, and adalat, the yearly sum of fifty thousand rupees; and this from a tract of country not less than sixty miles long, bordered all the way by the Sutluj, and capable, in all its breadth, of being irrigated from that river.

About eight miles below Bâraki, we entered the Bahawal