The Adjutant-bird. 69 cotton blouse, the bright bandanna or many-coloured shawl, worn as sash or girdle, and the gorgeous turban of every variety of pattern, obscure all notice of other costumes. Even the captain's uniform, as he passes up and down on this parade, looks but a mean thing. The Custom-house folks come to us at last, and annoy us as much by their coming as they did by the time they made us wait for them. Everything that has been packed up has to be uncorded and opened out-no small matter, with the thermometer at 90°, and the heat of a moist quality. An Australian on board gets very huffy about it, and taunts the officials of this great India as being only the servants of " a Crown colony," and having no discretionary powers or liberty to exercise them in favour of a free and independent colonist like himself. It was some satisfaction, no doubt, in return for the perspiring and useless trouble that was given, to call India a Crown colony, and so to snub its officials. The landing-place is distant a good two miles from the hotel quarters, to which a gharry takes me—a vehicle that has venetian blind sides for admitting the air and excluding the sun. Tropical trees are plentifully about, as is also the omnipresent crow, with an occasional kite or two. The bird which Calcutta, however, might adopt for its crest is one called the "adjutant"—for some reason best known to military folks. It is really a scavenger, but has a very pronounced Pecksniffian appearance. It is a stuck-up creature in every sense, conspicuously perching itself about on one leg, and looking down on things generally with outswelled chest, and with an air of puffy importance quite Turveydroppish. In my innocence and ignorance I am taken to the Great Eastern Hotel-a vast affair of endless floors and rooms, and distances that lend no enchantment in any way. Getting upstairs is real toil, and my room was located, I found, on the third floor. The lift of the American hotels would have been an unspeakable blessing. Wanting that, I thought several times of getting carried upstairs by the palanquin-bearers. This palanquin is to Calcutta what the jinrikishaw is to Jeddo-the conveyance that is most seen. Anything more cumbrous and unfitted for its purpose than the generality of these things could not be well devised. Its mere dead-weight of heavy wood is nearly ninety pounds. The thing might be made equally as strong of bamboo at one-fourth that weight. It is difficult, however, to alter any fashion of the East. When a fourteen-stone man is added to the burden, the two bearers of it have enough weight to break their collar-bones. They progress with it at a jog-trot. These palanquins are of one and two poles. If of one pole, the forward bearer supports it on the right shoulder and the backward man on his left, changing shoulders as they jog along. The two-polled one distributes the weight on each shoulder, but does not admit of a change. To a European it is at first not a nice sight to see men doing the work elsewhere done by animals. Το parody Byron, one may say that after seeing it once or twice, the eye becomes more Indian and less nice. Some palanquins are shaped to hang between the poles, and admit of the "fare" taking a sitting position; but the most favoured fashion is that of a compressed brougham, in which one has to lie as on a sofa-quite an Asiatic attitude. The drawback of this Great Eastern Hotel is that there is only one being in its height and depth who can talk English or understand it. It is unfortunate that he is on the lower of the four floors. He advises me to get a "boy"-he will get one for me-who smatters broken English, and will be always "within cooey," as Australians say. It has to come to that at last, for white folks are few indeed compared with the multitude of Hindoos that are around one, and I might as well be in a deaf and dumb asylum. Characteristic of all East Indian hotels are the "chits" or paper orders for whatever is wanted, that, with pencil by the side, are always on the table. Next for notice are the hotwater plates that come with every change of dish. India would seem to be the last place in which such things would be expected. Warming-pans would be just as likely. Rice and curries are the staple of all meals, save with the six a.m. Vastness of the Empire. 71 To follow that is the nine a.m. cup of tea and slice of toast. breakfast, the one p.m. tiffin, and the seven p.m. dinner. Finger bowls, having pink flowers floating in the centre, figure at every meal. The day's eating and drinking is then done; smoking, with most folks, now occupies the evening. Thereafter come the candles-always in wide glass envelopes-and the ascent to the big and bare-looking bedroom, with its huge lattice doors and windows. To get to that, one has to pick one's way among the native servants, one of whom, and often two, are lying outside the door of each room. Ere I sleep I have to rise and cover the venetian-blind-like door-windows that admit the starry brightness of the night equally with the air. It seems to me that stars must be more about than usual-I never saw them in such quantity, and looking so bright. It is the leaden, not light, blue of the skies which so helps to the reflection. These be the stars of which poets have sung "Eastward roll the stars of heaven, Westward tend the thoughts of men ; Wander eastward now and then." I dream of the great empire into which I have thus wandered -an empire that is as large as all Europe, if we omit the European Russia; that runs through twenty-eight degrees of latitude, and has more square miles of land than I know how to write without help; that has two hundred and fifty millions of souls, including the Mohammedan women, about whose possession of souls there is a doubt that is yet unsettled-one of the many branches of the "Eastern question." Of this vast country, stretching from the sea that I have left to-day right away to Persia on the far west, and from Thibet and Tartary in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south, the little island. of Britain with its small thirty-three millions is really the It is one of those things that only seems real in dreams! When I say When I say "really the owner," I look upon the ownership of nearly four-fifths as the greater term that includes the lesser. The independent native states that number owner. fifty-three millions of people are only semi-independent, and that only because it is policy to keep them so. As the possessions here of the French at Pondicherry and Portuguese at Goa do not number more than a quarter of a million, they can be looked upon only as girls are in some families in which their brothers do not count them. Is it anything but a dream-all that relates to such romance of a land that has had every great nation of the past at some time for its owner-that belonged alike for a time to Egyptians, Bactrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, Syrians, Turks, Tartars, and Mongols, and in which the Portuguese, Dutch, and French have effected a footing? None of those great nations of the past have held greater power in it than little England, and none have held it longer. It is something wonderful to obtain of such a land even the bald and barren idea that writing can only convey. that there is an object in life. To see it is to satisfy one CHAPTER VII. IN CALCUTTA. ONE'S earliest recollection of India's head-quarters is, I think, connected with the story of its "Black Hole." That fearful narrative gives to most folk an unpleasant impression of the place. It is sometimes read of as the "City of Palaces." It will be never talked of as such by those who have seen it. That name might be appropriately given to Lucknow, the late capital of that King of Oude whose prison palace is seen near to the landing-stairs of Diamond Harbour, but palaces are no distinguishing mark of Calcutta. It consists of a European and a native town. The houses in the European part are roomy, and give room to each other. Those of the native town called the Upper and the Lower Bazaars are small and much crowded together. The European part has wide streets and spacious reserves. The native town has very narrow streets, and dirty ones too, and no greens or gardens are to be seen about it. The houses here are black or brown with dirt, smoke, and age, while those of the European town are resplendent in stucco and whitewash. There is more of plaster than of palaces as its characteristic. There is a sort of Hyde Park between the city and the wharfs, which is known as the Maidann. The side furthest from the water is built over with lofty white stuccoed mansions that stand fifty feet or more apart, and are set back in their gardens. They are the residences of rich native and European merchants, and look to best advantage when seen from the other side of this greenswarded Maidann. The brilliant sun |