Travels in India (Tavernier) 13.3

13.3

The English clergyman had at first protested that he was unable to consent that Christians should be present at such spectacles, and when he beheld that from a piece of dry wood these people in less than half an hour had caused a tree of four or five feet in height to appear, with leaves and flowers, as in springtime, he made it his duty to break it, and proclaimed loudly that he would never administer the communion to any one of those who remained longer to witness such things. This compelled the President to dismiss the jugglers, who travel from place to place with their wives and children, like those whom we in Europe commonly call Egyptians or Bohemians ; and having given them the equivalent of ten or twelve écus, they withdrew very well satisfied. Those who wish to see Cambay, in order to reach it, do not go out of their way for more than about five or six coss, or thereabouts ; and when you are at Broach, instead of going to Baroda, which is the ordinary route, you make directly for Cambay, from whence afterwards you reach Ahmadābād. Except for business, or out of curiosity, you do not take this route, not only because it is longer, as I have said, by five or six leagues, but principally on account of the danger which there is in passing the end of the gulf.