Ahmed oola Khan--Seeta Khoond--Experimental sanatorium--Parisnath-- India in Greece--Bhootan--Electric telegraph--Sickly season--My illness--Ootacamund--Todas--Climatic notes--Bangalore--Fort--Health unrestored--Benares--Temples--Sitala--Sarnath--Infants’ grave-- Sanitary Commission ceased--Again on sick leave--Cinchona Inquiry-- A railway journey--Bank failure--Events--The Buffs arrive--Sanitary works--Expedition to Abyssinia--The struggle for existence--The _Jumna_--The _Euphrates_--Hurricane--Departure--Trincomalee--Aden-- Suez--Docks “created”--Egyptian troops--Grand Shaloof--Gardens-- Freshwater Canal--Ancient baths--Moses’ Wells--Pyramids of Ghizeh--Sphynx--Temple--Desert cold--Portsmouth.
Visiting Patna in the course of duty, I was present in the court of the magistrate while Ahmed oola Khan, the suspected originator of the Sittana rebellion, was undergoing preliminary examination on a charge of sedition. For thirty years he had been suspected; yet he held a high position under the Indian Government, at one time as a member of the Board of Instruction, then a member of the Municipal Commission, and lastly a Commissioner of the Income Tax. During the Mutiny the Local Commissioner had reason to doubt his fidelity, and reported to Government the grounds upon which his suspicions were founded, the only result as stated at the time being censure for having given expression to them.
An official visit to Monghyr gave me the opportunity of driving to Seeta Khoond, in the near vicinity of that place. The spring so named has a temperature of 180° F., and is one of several in this part of India; but chiefly interesting in that the high priest of the temple connected therewith repeated to us its legendary association with the story of Rama and Seeta,[251] in terms very similar to what a few days before I had read in a compressed edition of the _Ramayana_. Here then is the record transmitted traditionally through many generations of a more or less mythical event, the date of which considerably preceded that of Homer.
As an experiment, barracks for a small number of British soldiers were erected on the summit of Parisnath, in the hope that its elevation of 4,530 feet above sea level might exert a favourable influence on their health. A narrow pathway had recently been cut through the forest[252] by which the hill is covered. Ascending by it we traverse several precipitous ridges, between which deep and thickly wooded valleys intervene. Voices of many birds are heard as we proceed; among them the crow of jungle cock and scream of the coel;[253] black squirrels and lungoors dash rapidly from branch to branch, downwards into the forest beneath us.