Among the passengers, there were two or three persons of my own standing, and on the quarter-deck a small group of officers, one of whom was accompanied by his wife. The lady had certainly no reason to grumble at the inattention of her companions. The fair sex, although much more plentiful at the time I speak of than ten years ago, was still rather scarce in these parts, ladies being few and far between in the stations beyond Kurâchee. With a praiseworthy desire to make the most of the honour, the skipper was bustling about, giving all sorts of orders that might in any way conduce to the comfort of his fair passenger, and apparently in a state of mental agony when a momentary turn of the vessel would render the awning and screens ineffectual in preserving her from a chance ray of the sun. Two young subalterns were tumbling over one another in the anxious endeavour to be the first to bring a footstool; a couple of their seniors were standing by, rubbing their hands and smiling blandly, to keep their minds in a fit state for the perpetration of a compliment on the first possible occasion; while even the grim old major was trying very hard to unbend: not that it was a part of his principles to be particularly gallant to the ladies, but as he was going to a place where he might not have the advantage of seeing any of them for some years, and would thus run the chance of growing rusty, he thought he might as well keep his hand in while he had the opportunity.
After running down the coast till the sun became so uncomfortably hot as to render an awning over the whole vessel an indispensable necessary, we suddenly struck into one of the many creeks with which the Delta of the Indus is everywhere interlaced. The vessel did not answer her helm well; and as the breadth of the stream did not much exceed her length, we were for some time running ashore, first on one bank, and then on the opposite one. However, as the banks were steep, and composed of a mixture of sand and mud, we were not so much delayed by these accidents as might have been expected; for after grounding with a shock sufficient to floor any one unused to the navigation of the Indus, the tough little craft would slide back of her own accord into her proper element, and go ahead again as if nothing had happened. The first time this took place, I was sent on my beam-ends, and was not a little alarmed into the bargain; but the crew seemed to take it as a matter of course, and in reply to my anxious inquiries as to the extent of damage that had been occasioned,
they informed me that she had only brushed the cobwebs off her keel. On entering the creek, we startled large flocks of wild geese and ducks; and here and there a pair of pelicans, after gazing at us for a few seconds, would slowly wing their way to some more sequestered stream, unprofaned by noisy, smoky civilisation.
As we continued on our course, the landscapea level plain, that stretched away for miles till it met the horizonwas covered with camels grazing upon tamarisk-bushes, which, with a few mangostans, an occasional specimen of acanthus, and a coarse and scanty herbage, were the only specimens of the vegetable kingdom that met our gaze. The scene during the remainder of the afternoon was the same, the monotony being relieved only when we stopped for half an hour to take a supply of wood from a large pile collected on the bank for this purpose, and thus had an opportunity of stretching our legs on terra firma . At dusk, the steam-boat was run ashore, the steam blown off, and here we were to remain for the night. The natives immediately rushed on shore, and began preparing fires to cook their provisions. The ship's cook had already supplied me with a cup, or rather a tin pot of tea; but as the growing coolness of the evening, and the example of my neighbours, rather encouraged my appetite, I resolved to make a second edition of my evening meal, and accordingly took under my arm the copper canteen which formed the sum-total of my culinary apparatusthe lid being my only plate or dishand furnished with a supply of tea, sugar, cold meat, and biscuit, made my way to a spot a short distance off, where I might take my food on the solitary system, according to the custom that we Englishmen most delight in. When I had lighted the fire, and put the water on to boil, I cast myself on the ground, and complacently puffing away at my pipe, gazed at the wild but picturesque scene before me. The position of the river was marked out by a semicircle of some fifty or sixty fires, before which dark and ill-defined figures were ever and anon flitting like phantoms; while, in the midst, the funnel of the steam-boat loomed tall and black above the veil of smoke that hung aroundlike some dark and horrid object Of heathen idolatry surrounded by its sacrificial fires. The sounds that met my ear, however, dispelled this somewhat fanciful idea; for in the stillness of the night voices grow distinct, while forms are indebted to the imagination for filling up their outlines.