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At ten at night fourteen hundred French infantry, a hundred French horse, and nine hundred Sepoys marched out to attack the English, who had no suspicion of their intent. Two hundred marines and five hundred Sepoys proceeded, in two columns. Marching from the Valdore redoubt, one party turned to the right to attack the Tamarind redoubt, which the English had erected on the Red Hill.
Over many a cold and desolate pass, crawling painfully across the wind-swept shoulders of the hills; down many a black mountain-gorge, where the river roared and raced before him like a savage guide; across many a smiling vale, with terraces of yellow limestone full of vines and fruit trees; through the oak groves of Carine and the dark Gates of Zagros, walled in by precipices; into the ancient city of Chala, where the people of Samaria had been kept in captivity long ago; and out again by the mighty portal, riven through the encircling hills, where he saw the image of the High Priest of the Magi sculptured on the wall of rock, with hand uplifted as if to bless the centuries of pilgrims; past the entrance of the narrow defile, filled from end to end with orchards of peaches and figs, through which the river Gyndes foamed down to meet him; over the broad rice-fields, where the autumnal vapors spread their deathly mists; following along the course of the river, under tremulous shadows of poplar and tamarind, among the lower hills; and out upon the flat plain, where the road ran straight as an arrow through the stubble-fields and parched meadows; past the city of Ctesiphon, where the Parthian emperors reigned, and the vast metropolis of Seleucia which Alexander built; across the swirling floods of Tigris and the many channels of Euphrates, flowing yellow through the corn-lands Artaban pressed onward until he arrived, at nightfall of the tenth day, beneath the shattered walls of populous Babylon.
All this time I had not seen our domicile, and when our drive ended under the quivering shadow of large tamarind and algaroba trees, in front of a long, stone, two-storied house with two deep verandahs festooned with clematis and passion flowers, and a shady lawn in front, I felt as if in this fairy land anything might be expected. This is the perfection of an hotel.
This is a land of wonderful fruits, and I eat in quantities pineapple, tamarind, papaw, guava, sweet-sop, star-apple, granadilla, hog-plum, Spanish-gooseberry, and pindal-nut. These are native, but there are also the orange, lemon, lime, shaddock, melon, fig, pomegranate, cinnamon, and mango, brought chiefly from the Spanish lands of South America.
But within that stony girdle lay a landscape soft and lovely as any that arose within the tropical seas. There the plantain waved its leafy crown, the orange shed its rich perfume, and bore its golden fruit aloft upon the desert air, and the light, feathery foliage of the tamarind moved gracefully to the touch of the dallying breeze.
He finds in his surroundings, as plentiful and as free as the water sprinkling before him, such strange neighbors as coffee, the tamarind, mango, pawpa, guava, banana, sapadillo, almond, custard apple, maumec apple, grape fruit, shaddock, Avadaco pear, and other equally new acquaintances.
On the outskirts of the towns are the gardens, enclosed by hedges of castor-oil or cactus, where many kinds of fruits and spices are grown: bananas, pineapple, guava, bael, citrons, etc., are some of the ordinary kinds, while the coco-nut, tamarind, jack, and papaya grow everywhere about the streets and houses.
The appearance of the valleys is remarkable: to form an imperfect idea of it, we must group together the stately palm-tree, the cocoa-nut, and tamarind trees, the clustering mango and orange-trees, the waving plumes of the feathery bamboo, and many others, too numerous to mention.
They found Captain Somers at home, in a neat little room for which he looked too big; a room furnished like the cabin of a ship, and decorated with the various things usually seen in a seaman's dwelling some emu's eggs, a lump of brain coral, baskets of tamarind seeds, and bunches of blackened seaweed.
There is certainly something weird in the loneliness and solitary grandeur of the tree. Next to the palm and ceiba in beauty and picturesqueness of effect is the tamarind tree, with its deep green and delicate foliage, presenting a singular and curious aspect when thickly looped on every branch with hanging chocolate-colored pods.
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