heavily at intervals; and the trees were torn up by their roots. At 4 A.M. the storm became so violent, it wrecked twenty large native salt boats just below our house; the river roared and foamed, rising in high waves from the opposition of the wind and stream. Our beautiful pinnace broke from her moorings, was carried down the stream a short distance, driven against the broken bastions of the old city of Prag, which have fallen into the river, and totally wrecked just off the Fort; she went down with all her furniture, china, books, wine, &c., on board, and has never been seen or heard of since; scarcely a vestige has been discovered. Alas! my beautiful Seagull; she has folded her wings for ever, and has sunk to rest! We can only rejoice no lives were lost, and that we were not on board; the sarang and khalāsīs (sailors) swam for their lives; they were carried some distance down the stream, below the Fort, and drifted on a sandbank. The headless image of the satī, that graced the cabin, had brought rather too much wind. When the sarang lamented her loss, I could only repeat, as on the day he carried off the lady, "Chorī ke mal nā'īch hazm hota,"—stolen food cannot be digested: i.e. ill deeds never thrive.
The cook-boat was swamped. On the going down of the river, although she was in the mud, with her back broken, she was sold, and brought the sum we originally gave for her when new;—such was the want of boats, occasioned by the numbers that were lost in the storm! The next morning, three of the Venetians and the companion-ladder of the pinnace were washed ashore below the Fort, and brought to us by a fisherman. We were sorry for the fate of the Seagull; she was a beautifully built vessel, but not to be trusted, the white ants had got into her. The mischief those white ants do is incalculable; they pierce the centre of the masts and beams, working on in the dark, seldom showing marks of their progress outside, unless during the rains. Sometimes a mast, to all appearance sound, will snap asunder; when it will be discovered the centre has been hollowed by the white ants, and the outside is a mere wooden shell. Almost all the trees in the garden were blown down by the gale.
