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Then the Mahomedans on board with one accord set up loud lamentations, and began to call upon their saints to succour them. "Oh Ali! Oh Hosein! Oh Káka Sahib! save us," they cried. Whereupon Dilawur, not to be outdone, in his turn commenced yelling and shouting vociferously: "Lumsden Sahib! Oh Lumsden Sahib, save me!"
Eerdmans has recently endeavored to show that the festival of Hosein, celebrated by the Shiitic sect of Mohammedanism in memory of the tragic death of the son of Ali, is in reality a survival of the Babylonian-Phoenician Tammuz festival. The spread of the Tammuz-Adonis myth and cult to the Greeks is but another indication of the popularity of this ancient Semitic festival.
They choose rather to resort to the tomb of Ali, and to that of his son Hosein, whose name is reverenced among them with a feeling approaching to adoration. In Africa, Mohammedanism has very widely prevailed. Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, all the northern parts of this continent, acknowledge its sway. From Arabia and Egypt it spread west and south nearly to the great rivers.
Child, as Stipendiary justice, had the duty of reading the Riot Act to the immigrants, who were marching in procession to the town of San Fernando, contrary, indeed, to the Government proclamation which had forbidden it; and he it was who gave the order to "fire," which resulted fatally to many of the unfortunate devotees of Hosein.
For nearly forty years, namely from their very first arrival in the Colony, the East Indian immigrants had, according to specific agreement with the Government, invariably been allowed the privilege of celebrating their annual feast of Hosein, by walking in procession with their Pagodas through the public roads and streets of the island, without prohibition or hindrance of any kind from the authorities, save and except in cases where rival estate pagodas were in danger of getting into collision on the question of precedence.
His fears were just: Obeidollah, the governor of Cufa, had extinguished the first sparks of an insurrection; and Hosein, in the plain of Kerbela, was encompassed by a body of five thousand horse, who intercepted his communication with the city and the river.
After they had trampled on his body, they carried his head to the castle of Cufa, and the inhuman Obeidollah struck him on the mouth with a cane: "Alas," exclaimed an aged Mussulman, "on these lips have I seen the lips of the apostle of God!" In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
On such occasions the police, who always attended the processions, usually gave the lead to the pagodas of the labourers of estates according to their seniority as immigrants. In no case up to 1884, after thirty odd years' inauguration in the Colony, was the Hosein festival ever pretended to be any cause of danger, actual or prospective, to any town or building.
In a transport of despair his sister issued from the tent, and adjured the general of the Cufians, that he would not suffer Hosein to be murdered before his eyes: a tear trickled down his venerable beard; and the boldest of his soldiers fell back on every side as the dying hero threw himself among them.
So saying, he rose, went home, put on some clothes of better materials, and twisting up his red cotton sash for a turban, he took up his praying-carpet, with a determination to go to the bazaar and sell it for what it would fetch. As he passed the mosque of Hosein, he observed several mollahs, reading and expounding the more abstruse passages of the Koran.
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