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The drivers of the bullock-carts were startled at the noiseless appearance by their side of a body of horsemen; still more startled, when suddenly that phantom-like troop halted and dismounted.
A torrid drowse is in the receding landscape. The people move leisurely, as befits the world where there is no preparation for frost and no urgent need of laborious apparel. There are tardy bullock-carts, unconscious donkeys, and men pushing vehicles.
When a string of a dozen or more bullock-carts follow each other in close succession the jingling of the bells rings out cheerfully. In fact, an additional reason why people like to have bells on their bullocks is that the Hindu is mostly timid at night, and the sound of the bells is a kind of companionship, and may do something towards warning off evil spirits.
No bullock-carts had come, so G. and I sat on her saddle-box and sketched a departing caravan of mules and ponies, each laden with two bales of cotton, a Chinaman to every four ponies. There were eighty-four ponies, and they filed away, jingling into the morning mist that hung low on the sand flat.
We'll get two bullock-carts down there, and we'll stick him in one of them, with Sidiki the interpreter tied to him. Sidiki won't like it, but he's only a Beluchi anyway! You get in the other, and get all the sleep you can. You and I'll take turns sleeping all the way to Jailpore, so's to be fresh, both of us, and fit for anything by the time that we get there!" "I am ready, sahib."
At one of the worst turnings we met several bullock-carts filled with iron pyrites from the copper-smelting. The custom of the drivers of these carts is to stop at the bottom of a steep bit of hill, and then put five or six pairs of oxen to draw up one cart. The process is a slow one, but is better for the oxen.
Two bullock-carts, which collect scraps and refuse from the white staring streets, are the only carts in the city, and with the exception of a dozen 'rikshas are the only wheeled vehicles the inhabitants have seen. I have never visited a city which so impressed one with the fact that, in appearance, it had remained just as it was four hundred years before.
In the streets the life of the people is only a slight amplification of that of the villages, the shops with their attendant customers marking the principal difference, while in bullock-carts of more ornamental design than those of the villages, the families of the well-to-do enjoy their outing.
He passed on with a word of greeting, turned his horse when he reached a wood a little in front, and allowed them to pass, and then rode back to the troop. "Four bullock-carts full of wounded, sahib." "The very thing," Major Warrener exclaimed; "nothing could be more lucky."
"Two chief Clergymen, and the Schoolmaster and Scholars, with some hundreds of citizens and many young people" went out to meet them; there, in the open field, stood the Salzburgers, with their wives and their little ones, with their bullock-carts and baggage-wains," pilgriming towards unknown parts of the Earth. "'Come in, ye blessed of the Lord!
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