w,
Nor wants that little long.[4]

And certainly there is no climate in the world where man wants less
than in this of India generally, and Upper India particularly. The
peasant lives in the open air; and a house to him is merely a thing
to eat and sleep in, and to give him shelter in the storm, which
comes upon him but seldom, and never in a pitiless shape. The society
of his friends he enjoys in the open air, and he never furnishes his
house for their reception or for display. The peasantry of India, in
consequence of living and talking so much in the open air, have all
stentorian voices, which they find it exceedingly difficult to
modulate to our taste when they come into our rooms.

Another thing in this part of India strikes a traveller from other
parts--the want of groves of fruit-trees around the villages and
along the roads. In every other part of India he can at every stage
have his tents pitched in a grove of mango-trees, that defend his
followers from the direct rays of the sun in the daytime, and from
the cold dews at night; but in the district above Agra, he may go for
ten marches without getting the shelter of a grove in one.[5] The
Sikhs, the Marathas, the Jats, and the Pathans destroyed them all
during the disorders attending the decline of the Muhammadan empire;
and they have never been renewed, because no man could feel secure
that they would be suffered to stand ten years. A Hindoo believes
that his soul in the next world is benefited by the blessings and
grateful feelings of those of his fellow creatures who unmolested eat
the fruit and enjoy the shade of the trees he has planted during his
sojourn in this world; and, unless he can feel assured that the
traveller and the public in general will be permitted to do so, he
can have no hope of any permanent benefit from his good work. It
might as well be cut down as pass into the hands of another person
who had no feeling of interest in the eternal repose of the soul of
the planter. That person would himself have no advantage in the next
world from giving the fruit and the shade of the trees to the public,
since the prayers of those who enjoyed them would be offered for the
soul of the planter, and not for his--he, therefore, takes all their
advantage to himself in this world, and the planter and the public
are defrauded. Our Government thought they had done enough to
encourage the renewal of these groves, when by a regulation they gave
to the present