Murri

“ The Murri, exercising his right of taking a wife, can compel the woman to go with him, and if necessary beat her. When a Murri goes to take a wife by force, he is accompanied by his comrades, [28] who on this occasion have access to her. In any set fight between him and her kindred the weapons would be agreed upon. If a single combat, it would be club and shield; but if otherwise, he would have to defend himself against several spears thrown at him all at once. If he is defeated, and unable to fight any longer, he loses her. ”

“ Although marriages generally follow the above rules, yet in certain cases Murri can marry Butha, and Kubbi may take Ippatha as his spouse— a similar liberty being allowed the men of phratry B. Again, where there is no objection arising from nearness of kin, a Murri man may marry a Matha woman, but her totem must be different from his, and she must belong to a distant family. This applies to the men of every section. ”

“ Although they would not have to ascend to the greatest heights of the mountains to reach the pass by which Murri was to lead them to the Whanga valley, they had still a most difficult climb to accomplish. Their horses vastly increased the difficulty of their labours, though it must be owned that at times they scrambled like dogs up places that no horse but a colonial bred one would think of attempting. Had the boys been without them they could have reached the pass in half the time, and with less than half the labour that it took them with the horses. ”

“ They wait until he comes and takes her. If, however, her relations find that his hands are stained with blood of her kindred, then they object to her marriage. In such a case the Murri comes by stealth and usually alone, and carries her off. Her relations, ascertaining where he is camped, send a message to him and demand that he shall meet their champion in single combat. This he must do if he wishes to retain his wife. It might be that the man, being a warrior, would openly go to the camp of her parents, and, taking her, offer to fight any man, the best in her tribe. ”

“ But when Murmur asked for more work, he told him to travel to his troll’s castle, where no one dared go, and to remain there until he had built a bridge across the sound, so that people could cross. If he could do that, he would reward him well, yes, he would even give him his daughter, said the king. He would attend to it, said Murmur.
Yet no human being had ever returned thence alive; all who had gotten so far, lay on the ground dead, and crushed to a jelly, and the king thought, when sending him there, that he would never see him again. ”

“ But the troll was not out in the open, and the mountain was closed, so Murmur could not get it. So he joined a party of stone-breakers, who were working at a mountainside, and worked along with them. They had never had such a helper, for Murmur hewed away at the rocks till they burst, and stone bowlders as large as houses came rolling down. But when he was about to rest and eat up the first cart-load of his provisions, it had already been eaten up. “I have a good appetite myself,” said Murmur, “but whoever got hold of it has an even better one, for he has eaten up the bones as well!” ”

“ Yet, no matter how he played, Murmur always won; for he made a cross on the cards. And after he had won all the devil had with him, the latter had to give him some of the gold and silver that was in the castle.
In the midst of their game the fire went out, so that they could no longer tell the cards apart.
“Now we must split wood,” said Murmur. He hewed into the block of pine-wood with his ax, and drove in the wedge, but the tree-stump was tough, and would not split at once, though Murmur gave himself all manner of pains.
“You are supposed to be strong,” he said to the devil. ”

“ I do not mean to say, that after all one has heard of it, there is not a shade of disappointment as one enters the valley by the Murree route; for it is not until you are fairly in the midst of the valley that you appreciate its beauty. To say that it is like an emerald set in silver, is to give but the faintest idea of the exquisite beauty of that bright green plain, with its broad stream, the Jhelum, running through it, and encircled on every side by snow-capped hills. Beautiful as a whole, it is far more so in its details. ”

“ The Murray, thus combining within its basin nearly the entire drainage of the province of Victoria, with a large portion of that of New South Wales, and much of the eastern part of South Australia, appears to have been unknown to British Colonists before 1830, when Captain Charles Sturt, of the 39th Regiment—one of the most ardent and intrepid explorers the world has ever seen—whilst tracing the source, or rather course, of the Murrumbidgee, by order of the Sydney Government, came upon this noble river ”

“ John Muir, or Mure, of Auchindrane, was a gentleman of an ancient family and good estate, in the west of Scotland, bold, ambitious, treacherous to the last degree, and utterly unconscientious,—a Richard the Third in private life, inaccessible alike to pity and remorse. ”

“ Periodically it, overflows, causing wide inundations. The principal tributaries of the Murray are those from New South Wales, including the Edward River, the united streams of the Murrumbidgee and Lachlan, and the Darling or Callewatta. In 1829 Captain Sturt traced the Murrumbidgee River till it debouched into the Murray, which he followed down to Lake Alexandrina, but he was compelled, after great hardships, to return without discovering its mouth. ”

“ The Murray is a noble stream; but, at the present day, not a particularly interesting, or, at any rate, a highly picturesque river. The banks throughout are pretty, sometimes even romantic, but from the sameness of the forest trees—consisting chiefly of gum tree glades—and the expanse of flooded surface through which, at this season, the vessel passed, the scenery cannot but be regarded as generally tame. ”

“ Sir Humphry went this morning to the river and fished for some hours, but in vain. [Pg 134] This, added to an exorbitant bill brought in by the host, determined him to proceed, and we left Murrau at four in the afternoon. The scenery of the valley of the Murr is always of the same kind; mountains clad with fine woods diversified with fields and villages, and the river winding through the valley. We passed on our road two old feudal castles, rearing their grey walls out of the wood. At the next station, Neumarkt, we found ourselves on the same road which we had traversed on our way to Carniola. ”

“ For two hundred years it endured the attacks of the Moors of Granada, acting meanwhile as a buffer to the Christian kingdom.
Murcia to-day seems a survival of the Middle Ages. The legend goes that Adam returning to earth recognised the province as the only relic of the world he left. The Murcians are a conservative people, clinging to the beliefs and ideas of their forefathers, untouched by the march of thought. Religion is the changeless background of their lives, and often its picturesque ceremonies completely hold the stage. ”

“ But Murray, probably deeming retreat more hazardous than attack, disregarded the order, and posted his men strongly at the village of Clifton to await the approach of the dragoons. The sun had set, but the dragoons continued their march by moonlight, and the semi-obscurity favoured the highlanders, who, led by Murray, and disregarding the enemies' fire, rushed upon them with their claymores and drove them back with great loss. Murray thereupon hastened to obey the prince's orders, and joined the main body. ”

“ The descent into the valley of the Murr is very precipitous, and this valley is by no means so beautiful as that of the Drave, though the Alps are higher and their summits more thickly clothed in snow; the fine woods around their bases are wanting, so that the valley seems cold and barren. ”

“ Such is the province of Murcia in the twentieth century. When vegetation depended only on the sun and very infrequent rain, the land can have been very little better than an arid wilderness. And yet its possession has from the earliest times been a matter of keen dispute. To the early inhabitants have always been ascribed those{37} simple guileless virtues with which the eighteenth century endowed the noble savage. Like the high-souled inhabitants of More’s “Utopia,” they used the gold and silver, in which their mountains abounded, for the meanest articles of domestic use. ”

“ It rained steadily, and a cold wind swept down the river valley as we began to make our slow way up the long, long hill.
I never knew milestones so extraordinarily far apart as those which mark the distance between Kohala and Murree. There are twenty-five of them, distributed along a weary winding road which extends without an apparent variation of gradient from Kohala to the Murree cemetery. The rise from the river level to Murree is 5000 feet, and this, in a heavy landau over a road often deep in red mud, is a heavy strain on equine endurance and human patience. ”

“ Murray continued in the army so long as his health would permit, but being violently seized by an indisposition, which terminated in a bilious fever that precipitated him to the gates of the grave, he was, by the Physician of the Brigade, conducted to Gloucester; and no sooner was his health re-established, than his strongest feelings were powerfully excited, by the sufferings of the sons and daughters of want in that town. War of any description, is particularly oppressive to its inhabitants, seated upon the margin of the ocean, their subsistence is principally derived from the deep. ”

“ Murray, in his exaggerated dread and humility, thought that the question who was to be minister must really have been settled before the young man left. Mr. Murray said nothing, but that did not embarrass Mr. Lloyd.
"I shall soon settle," he continued, "the hash of some of those frightened old fogies who want things to go on in the old, humdrum way. It's a fine place, and a magnificent chapel, and can be made a popular cause: and I'll make it, too, when I'm among them. Good, rousing, popular stuff—that's the thing to make a success; don't you think so, Murray?" ”

“ The former scrambled up the vessel, but the female was compelled to swim to the shore. The man being asked why he had not attempted to assist his dusky helpmate, answered, with the utmost composure, “Plenty cold; black lubra walk well!” So much for native gallantry. The blacks on the Murray are not now so numerous as formerly, infanticide prevailing among them, it is said, to a great extent; indeed, we observed but one child in our passage up to the Murrumbidgee. ”

“ I believe I stated, in its proper place, that I did not think the Darling could possibly be 200 feet above the sea, and as far as my observations bear me out, I should estimate the bed of the Murray, at its junction with the new river, to be within 100. It would appear that there is a distance of 300 miles between the Murray River at this place, and the Darling; a space amply sufficient for the intervention of a hilly country. No one could have been more attentive to the features of the interior than I was; nor could any one have dwelt upon their peculiarities with more earnest attention. ”

“ Her spirits rose as she realised the power she was exerting. She felt a little impatient at the thought of Murad. After all, she was a great lady, a lady of the harem of Ahmed Ali, the richest Turk in Damascus. She was dressed in delicate silks, and the jewels blazed on her arm. She was queen of the harem, and the beloved of its lord. He was most desirable to her and to all women, and, but for Murad, who seemed to stand like a black shadow between, she would have lain upon his breast with pure delight. ”

“ Can you wonder, gentlemen, that I bewail my evil destiny? Am I not justly called Murad the Unlucky? Here end all my hopes in this world! Better would it have been if I had died long ago! Better that I had never been born! Nothing I ever have done or attempted has prospered. Murad the Unlucky is my name, and ill fate has marked me for her own."
III.
The lamentations of Murad were interrupted by the entrance of Saladin. Having waited in vain for some hours, he now came to see if any disaster had happened to his brother Murad. ”

“ Clambering up a steep slope, crawling under an overhanging rock, spreading out like a flying squirrel and edging along an inch-wide projection while fingers clasped knobs above the head, bending about sharp angles, pulling up smooth rock-faces by sheer strength of arm and chinning over the edge, leaping fissures, sliding flat around a dangerous rock-breast, testing crumbly spurs before risking his weight, always going up, up, no hesitation, no pause—that was Muir! ”

“ Thereupon the young man went out, bewildered and unknowing whither he should wend, for that he had sojourned in the gaol a year or so and indeed his condition was changed and his favour fouled, and he abode walking and turning round, lest Al-Muradi come upon him and cast him into another calamity. When Al-Muradi learnt his release, he betook himself to the Wali and said, "O our lord, we are not assured of our lives from that youth, because he hath been freed from prison and we fear lest he complain of us." Quoth the Chief, "How shall we do?" ”

“ Murray was in every sense begotten of the Spirit. Born anew.
As they rode along in the early dusk of the mid-winter [Pg 294] afternoon the minister marvelled at this new-born Christian, and the simple, childlike way in which he had grasped great truths and accepted them, which even scholars found difficult to believe. Taught of God, that was what he was. Not with the knowledge of men, but of the spirit.
They rode into Marlborough five minutes before time for the evening service, and stopped only long enough to pick up Mrs. Summers and move on to the church. ”