had previously seen in the
summer as water, with birds swimming and boats rowing upon it, was now
transformed into an immense sheet of ice as hard as rock, on which
thousands of persons, men, women, and children, were actually walking,
running, and figuring in the most extraordinary manner. I saw men pass
with the rapidity of an arrow, turning, wheeling, retrograding, and
describing figures with surprising agility, sometimes on both, but more
frequently on only one leg; they had all a piece of steel, turned up in
front somewhat in the manner of our slippers, fastened to their shoes, by
means of which they propelled themselves as I have described. After much
persuasion, I went on the ice myself; though not without considerable fear;
yet such a favourite sport is this with the English, and so infatuated are
some of these _ice players_, that nothing will deter them from venturing
on those places which are marked as dangerous; and thus many perish, like
moths that sacrifice themselves in the candle flame. They have, therefore,
parties of men, with their dresses stuffed with air-cushions, whose duty
it is to watch on the ice, ready to plunge in whenever it breaks and any
one is immersed."

[8] Bishop Heber, in his journal, also mentions the wonder of his
Bengali servants on their first sight of a piece of ice in
Himalaya, and their regret on finding that they could not carry it
home to Calcutta as a curiosity.

The national theatres were now open for the winter, and the Khan paid a
visit to Covent-Garden; but he gives no particulars of the performances
which he witnessed, though he was greatly struck by the splendour of the
lighting and decoration, and still more by the almost magical celerity
with which the changes of scenery were effected. The scanty notice taken
of these matters, may perhaps be partly accounted for by the extraordinary
fascination produced in the mind of the khan by the charms of one of the
houris on the stage--whose name, though he does not mention it, our
readers will probably have no difficulty in supplying; and it may be
doubted whether the warmest panegyrics of the most ardent of her
innumerable admirers ever soared quite so high a pitch into the regions of
hyperbole as the Oriental flights of the khan, who exhausts, in the praise
of her attractions, all the imagery of the eastern poets. She is described
as "cypress-waisted, rose-cheeked, fragrant as amber, and sweet as sugar,
a stea