- dating the whole country, until it reached the Jumna just above
the Fort, leaving the latter completely insulated. Our house, being close to the bank of the Jumna, escaped, but was on every side surrounded by water. M. mon mari had two large boats anchored near, to receive himself, his horses, his flocks, and his herds, should the river rise any higher. The Bāndh burst on the 23rd of August; it swept away the villages of Kyd and Mootī Gunge, carrying away all the thatched huts, the brick houses alone escaping. The Jumna rose to within seven feet of the top of the very high bank on which the chabūtara (terrace) in our garden is placed. The damage done to the crops and villages is estimated at four lākh; besides this, the force of the water rushing upon the bastion of the Fort has caused it to fall in; it will cost forty or fifty thousand rupees to repair the bastion.
6th.—Ill: my ayha is so kind and so careful of me: what a good servant I find her! Apropos—grain is at present very dear at Landowr; gram, twelve seer per rupee.
"One wife is enough for a whole family[1]." "Where do you live?" said I to one of my servants, a Paharī (mountaineer), who had just deposited his load of rhododendron wood, or, as he calls it, flower wood, in the verandah. "Three days' journey from this, in the pahar (mountain,)" said the man. "Are you married?" said I. The man looked annoyed; "Who will marry me? How can I have a wife? there are but three of us." Having heard of the singular customs of the Paharīs with regard to marriage, I pursued my interrogation. "Why cannot you marry?" "We are only three brothers; if there were seven of us we might marry, but only three, who will marry us?" The greater the number of the family the more honourable is the connexion, the more respected is the lady. "But who claims the children?" "The first child belongs to the eldest brother, the second to the second brother, and so on, until the eighth child is claimed by the eldest brother, if there be a family of seven."
I have heard that the Hill women destroy their female
- ↑ Oriental Proverbs, No. 126.
