down on
dead and even dying animals.

9. Baroda. The Bubu.

After six weeks' rest, having received orders to join his regiment,
which was then stationed at Baroda, he engaged some Goanese servants
and made the voyage thither in a small vessel called a pattymar. It took
them four days to march from the Tankaria-Bunder mudbank, where they
landed, to Baroda; and Burton thus graphically describes the scenery
through which they passed. "The ground, rich black earth... was covered
with vivid, leek-like, verdigris green. The little villages, with their
leafy huts, were surrounded and protected by hedge milk bush, the
colour of emeralds. A light veil, as of Damascene silver, hung over each
settlement, and the magnificent trees were tipped by peacocks screaming
their good-night to the son." The sharp bark of the monkey mingled
with the bray of the conch. Arrived at Baroda, he lodged himself in a
bungalow, and spent his time alternately there with his books and on the
drill ground. He threw himself into his studies with an ardour scarcely
credible--devoting twelve hours a day to Hindustani, and outwearying two
munshis.

At that time it was quite the custom for the officers, married as
well as single, to form irregular unions with the Hindu women. Every
individual had his Bubu; consequently half-caste children were not
uncommon; but Burton was of opinion that this manner of life had
advantages as well as disadvantages. It connected, he says, "the white
stranger with the country and its people, gave him an interest in their
manners and customs, and taught him thoroughly well their language."
Like the rest, Burton had his Bubu. Still, he was no voluptuary.
Towering ambition, enthusiasm, and passion for hard work trampled down
all meaner instincts. Languages, not amours, were his aspiration, and
his mind ran on grammar books rather than ghazels; though he confesses
to having given whole days and nights to the tender pages of Euclid.
Indeed, he was of a cold nature, and Plutarch's remark about Alexander
applies equally to him: "For though otherwise he was very hot and hasty,
yet was he hardly moved with lust or pleasure of the body." When the
officers were not on the drill ground or philandering with their dusky
loves, they amused themselves shooting the black buck, tigers, and the
countless birds with which the neighbourhood abounded. The dances of
the aphish-looking Nautch girls, dressed though they were in magnificent