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They have a "State Railway" now in Tirhoot, but at the time I am writing of there was only one pukha road in all the district. The ladies travelled in palanquins, or palkis, as they are more familiarly called. It is a long journey from Bankipore to Segowlie, and three nights were spent in travelling. Bluff old Minden Wilson stood on the bank above the ghat to welcome Mrs. Freeze across the Ganges.
You take your palkis to the bank of the river, for I cannot carry you all and then shut yourselves inside and I will push you into the water." So the brothers took their palkis to the river side and shut themselves in, and each called out "Let me have the deepest place, brother." Then Lelsing pushed them in one by one and they were all drowned.
After staying some days he decided to return home and started off with his wife and grand retinue. When they reached the boundary of the kingdom all the elephants and horses and palkis and sipahis vanished into air, and the princess found that she and her husband had nothing but an old cow to ride upon.
When they reached the boundary of the Raja's kingdom the man woke up one morning and found that a great retinue of elephants and horses and palkis and sipahis had appeared during the night. This was owing to the magic of the cow. So the man mounted an elephant and went in state to the Raja and married his daughter with great ceremony.
On the way they were benighted in the midst of a great jungle twelve kos wide, and the palki bearers declined to go any further in the dark, so they had all to camp where they were. In the middle of the night, suddenly sixteen hundred Rakhases descended on them and swallowed up the whole cavalcade, elephants and horses and palkis and men.
It would seem strange to-day to see Europeans being carried about the streets in palkis, but half a century or more ago they were by no means despised, especially by the newly-out chokras, whose salary was not at all too high.
Looking back, one of the first things that strikes me is the change between then and now in the matter of locomotion. In my early days there were no taxi-cabs, trams, nor even fitton-gharries, the only conveyances for those who had not private carriages being palkis and bund-gharries.
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