Journal of a residence in India / By Maria Graham. Illustrated by engravings.

  • Maria Graham
Date:
1812
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Journal of a residence in India / By Maria Graham. Illustrated by engravings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    136/264 page 108
    JOURNAL OF A [Coast of Malabar. close, we have screens on deck where we spend the day. Our breakfast hour is nine o’clock, after which some one of the party reads aloud till twelve, when we play an hour at whist or back- gammon. I then study till half past two, when we dress for dinner. The evening is spent in reading and walking as much as the short quarter-deck of our vessel will allow, and after sunset in conversation. Yesterday our captain, an old seaman, who has been many years in the Company’s service, and who has been in every port from the Bocca Tigris in China to the ex- tremities of the Red Sea, was giving us an account of some In- dian government expedition, and, endeavouring to fix the date, he said, “ Aye, that must have been when we lay in the river.” I, thinking naturally of the Thames, exclaimed, ‘ I thought you ‘ were then in India.’—“ Well, so I was.”—4 What river do you ‘ mean, then ?’—“ Why, the Tigris, Bussora river, to be sure.” Now, to hear “ far Tigris and Balsorah’s haven,” spoken of with such familiarity by such a man, so completely disenchanted them, and took off the kind of religious respect one acquires for places far off, especially when consecrated by history or fable, that I felt as if the places themselves had been annihilated when the illusions connected with them were destroyed. I should be curious to try if places immortalised by heroic deeds, and the abode of science and philosophy, could thus become uninterest- ing by a nearer inspection ; whether, when the erugo is brushed from the medal, it becomes a common shilling. Surely the plains of Marathon, the Portico and Academy, Pireus and Salamis, could not, on the most intimate acquaintance with their present state and their modern inhabitants, degenerate into common fields, schools, and fishing-towns! But I forget that I am only fami- liarized with places famed in oriental story, celebrated indeed
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3