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The zemindar to whom the Warreners' guide conducted them, after crossing the Ganges, received them kindly, and told them that the safest way would be for them to go on in a hackery, or native cart, and placed one at once at their disposal, with a trusty man as a driver, and another to accompany them in the hackery.
There are spare horses led by grooms, and watermen and water-carriers march alongside their bullocks. Among the miscellaneous concourse appears the head-servant, or khansamah, mounted generally on some steed discarded by his master, while his inferiors either walk on foot, or get a lift in a hackery, or on the back of a camel; but all trudge along with cheerfulness, and alacrity.
The divers coming the greatest distance were the negroes and Arabs from Aden and the Persian Gulf, most of whom landed at Colombo from trading steamers, and made their way by small boat or bullock hackery to the Cadjan City.
I was leaving the ship at Colombo, but induced the French lady to accompany me on shore, the children being bribed with the promise of a ride in a "hackery" or trotting-bull carriage. None of the party had ever left France before. As we approached the landing-stage, which was, as usual, black with baggage-coolies waiting for a job, the French children began howling at the top of their voices.
As for bad luck, the name was, in effect, equivalent to the thing itself, for it cut him out of many opportunities in the theatrical market, with people not above the superstitions of their guild; also it produced in him a discouragement, a self-depreciation, which kept the quality of his work down to the level of hopeless hackery.
Another opportunity is to travel two days by post-cart to a village one never heard of, transferring there to a bullock hackery that may take him through jungle roads to the cadjan metropolis provided he is able to give instructions in Tamil, or a college-bred coolie can be found who knows English.
The villagers repeated that the Sepoys had all fallen back, and that there would be a great fight at Futtehpore. The English force was small, but a large body were on their way up from Allahabad. The boys started at daybreak, and had proceeded about three miles when a body of cavalry were seen rapidly approaching. The driver of the hackery put his head inside the leather curtain of the vehicle.
I went seventy miles in a bullock hackery, the most unpleasant mode of travelling I conceive that can exist; then one hundred miles in a rickety phaeton with a pair of horses, which was in a slight degree less intolerable; and after visiting Mahabuleshwa, the hill station of Bombay, I reached that mercantile emporium itself, not a little pleased at seeing the sea on the English side of India.
Indeed, scarcely an accident happened worth the relation, save one, which I pledge my word was an absolute fact. A small hackery, or cart, belonging to some of the followers of the camp, fell down a precipice upwards of eighty yards deep, the sides of which were studded with trees of an enormous size.
It is really something novel, in the line of hackery, to see those sedate fellows sitting on their little droskys awaiting a customer. The force of competition, however, has of late years committed sad inroads upon their dignity, and now they are getting to be about as enterprising and pertinacious as any of their kindred in other parts of the world.
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