How extraordinary does this utter solitude appear! I have just been outside the bungalow: there is none of that confused murmuring sound which is almost universal in England. Every noise is distinctly heard: a child's voice, or a dove's coo, appears to break the intensity of the silence. And then, the thought that, excepting a few barbarians, there is not a human being within a day's journey! The whole feeling is exciting, but oppressive. Millions of black heathens interpose between me and a single European; and yet, with one brace of pistols and a good thick stick, I feel myself perfectly secure. But I will give an instance of the power which each European possesses over these people.
When I went to Balasore with the L.'s, we had four palanquins, and consequently forty bearers. At one place, where we stopped to change men, Mrs. L. sent a man to my palanquin to say that she wanted to speak to me. I at once walked across to the spot where her palanquin stood. The night was as dark as pitch, with a nasty drizzling rain. The red flaming torches disclosed a group of from eighty to a hundred natives, with their long black hair and immense mustachios, naked, except a cloth round their loins.
As we changed bearers here, there was of course a double set present. We had four palanquins--one containing a native nurse and three of Captain L.'s children; another, Captain L. and one child; another, Mrs. L.; and the fourth was my own. On one side of the road was a dense thicket, or jungle; on the other, a deep canal, called by the natives a "nullah;" and these, as well as the dusky group, were flittingly lighted by the torches of the mussalchees. Every man, as is the custom, had a long stick in his hand. We were many hours' journey from any European; Captain L. was totally enfeebled by sickness; and, in short, I was the only person who could have attempted to knock a man down.
[Sidenote: SOCIAL RELATION OF EUROPEANS AND NATIVES.]
But mark the power of white skin (not but that mine is getting somewhat mahogany colour): when I bent down to learn what Mrs. L. wanted, she was too faint and weak to speak loud, and the abominable babbling of the hundred men about us prevented the possibility of my hearing what she said.