Colonel Sir Thomas Holdich's "India," in my humble opinion, is an absolutely perfect book of reference, of concentrated information on populations, their origin and characteristics; geology, meterology, distribution plants with excellent maps printed by Bartholomew; it might be called scientific, but for the charm of the touches of colour the whole way through.
The Murrays' book is very useful, but so dry that you hardly care to open it except in emergency. It has many references to the times of the Conquest of India and the Mutiny, and the editor, an Englishman or Anglicised Scot, frequently gives the names of individuals, soldiers and private people, who distinguished themselves in these times. For example, at the Siege of Seringapatam, where he mentions such well-known names as Baillie, Baird, Campbell, and M'Donald, two-thirds the names of my countrymen, and he calls them "English!" which makes me think of Neil Munro's skipper of "The Vital Spark" and his remark about his Mate, "He wass a perfect shentleman, he would neffer hurt your feelings unless he was trying." Writers in the days of the Mutiny wrote of the feats of the "British troops," their gallantry, and all the rest of it; look upThe Illustrated London Newsof that time, and you will see this is true. Why—confound them all—do they talk of "English" to-day, when they refer to Scots, Irish, and Englishmen, and the people of our Colonies; is it merely casual, or a deliberate breaking of the terms of Union of 1707? Eitherway the effect tends to dis-union, it is ante-Imperial and for Home Rule for "A Little England." Ahem—may that pass as a "digression?"—Now for more nature studies. I saw in the Crawford market this afternoon fresh fish, and dried and unfresh, and the vendors thereof. There were many kinds of so-called fresh fish, but the most were dried, to mere skin and bone, sharks and sprats, piled in baskets orhanging in bundles. Diminutive wrinkled women sat on little bits of wet mat in rows, and chopped the "fresh" fish into little morsels with little choppers by the light of little cruisie oil lamps, that flickered and smoked beside them, and lit up their puckered little chocolate faces, glinted on their teeth and gums scarlet with betel, and threw warm lights on the customers faces, who leant forward to close range and haggled, and, I daresay, said the fish wasn't fresh—and if they had asked me, I'd have entirely agreed with them. Respectable looking Parsi men in tight broad cloth coats and shiny black pointed pot hats did this marketing—not their wives—peered through their spectacles very carefully, down their long noses at each little chunk. I hoped they could smell no better than they could see; and the grotesque little women slipped the minute coppers they secured under the damp mat on the wet stones between their feet. That was all very poor and small and sordid, but the grain sellers were pleasant to look at. They sat in nice clean booths, with around them an endless variety of neat sacks and bowls displaying all kinds of rice and corn and lentils and baskets of bright chillies and many other dried fruits for curries.
To chronicle some more small beer, I may put down here that we dined last night at the Yacht Club. The Yacht Club has little to do with yachting. There are models of one or two native-built boats in the passages and rooms; these have deep stems and shallow sterns, evidently meant to wear, rather than to go about. We did not hear of any yachting going on, why I do not quite know, as I'd have thought The Bay a perfect place for racing, and with its inlets a rather pleasant cruising ground, but perhaps the sun makes sailing uncomfortable. There are both lady and men members. You can live, dress, bath, and entertain your friends, or be entertained by them, hear music, read papers, write, talk, and walk about in pretty grounds, all pleasantly, decently, and inorder, for it is all very open and above board. I do wish we could have such clubs at home, I mean in Edinburgh, instead of our huge dismal men's clubs where never a lady enters, and food, drink, and politics are the only recognised interests.
Here you have talk on everything, and music (of a kind), and see pretty dresses and faces, and when you wish to be lonely, you may be so from choice, not from necessity. To a good club, two rooms I think are essential, a gymnasium and a music room; and where out of France can you find them! The talk, I must say, is principally about one's neighbour, which is quite right; it is a most enviable trait, that of being interested in your neighbour and his affairs. Here, too, when you are tired of people, you can study beasts, they cannot bore you. I think E. H. A. is of this opinion. I have been reading more of his researches into animal life, and find that he says he has fathomed the intellect of a toad; but verily, I cannot believe that! Several of E. H. A.'s acquaintances have come round me as I scribble here in the verandah. A brute, a grey crow perched this moment on the jalousies, and let out that bitter raucous caw, that would waken the Seven Sleepers or any respectable gamekeeper within a mile; abominable, thieving, cruel brutes they are, with rooks they should be exterminated by law. Once they were, in the reign of James the Fourth, I think, for he needed timber for his fleet. The law was then that if a crow built for three successive years in a tree, the tree became the property of the Crown. This has not been rescinded, soFieldplease note and agitate in your country and save your beloved partridges and the eggs of our grouse. Now two green parroquets have gone shrieking joyfully past. I suppose I must believe they are wild, but it takes faith to believe they have not just escaped from a cage; they are uncommonly pretty colour, at any rate, against the blue and white sky; they have taken the same flight at the same time these last three days, anda dove is cooing near, a deliciously soothing sound. Persians say it cannot remember the last part of its lost lover's name, so that is why it always stops in the middle of the co-coo, co—
As it grew to twilight I went over to the Bundar and studied reflections in the calm, lapping water at the steps where so many dignitaries have arrived and departed, and made notes of the colours of the dark stone work and pier lamps against the evening glow and the reflections of boats' lights waggling in the smooth water.
… A launch bustles in from theRenownand brings up quickly—a white light between her two brass funnels and green and red side lights. The red light glows on the bare arm of the jack tar at the bow with the boat-hook, and just touches the white draperies of the native passenger as he gets out awkwardly and goes up the steps—a person of importance with attendants, I see, as they come up into the full acetylene light on the quay head, someone very princely to judge by his turban and waist—but a native's waist measurement sometimes only indicates his financial position.
There is considerable variety of type and nationality amongst the few people who sit taking the air on the stone parapet of the Bundar. On my right are two soldiers—one anArgyll and Sutherland, with red and white diced hose and tasselled sporran, a native of Fife to judge by his accent; next him there is aYorkshire Light Infantryman. They chat in subdued voices, people all do here, I suppose it's something in the sea warm air—have you ever noticed how softly they talk in the Scilly Isles at night? It is the same cause I expect—the soft warm atmosphere. They smoke Occidental (American) cigarettes after the manner of all the wise men of the East of to-day. A yard or so along is a bearded turbaned native; he is from up North I think. He sits on the parapet with knees under his chin, and a fierceness of expression that is quite refreshing after the monotonousnegatively gentle expression of the Bombay natives; then beyond him are two Eurasian girls in straw hats and white frocks, and they do look so proper. Further over the Parsi men in almost European kit with their women folk sit in lines of victorias and broughams, and they are silhouetted against the glow of lamps on the lawn of the Yacht Club, under which the white women from the far North-West listen to music and have tea and iced drinks through straws. And the local Parsisseemquite content eating the air in the dusk—one or two of their menkind pay visits on foot from carriage to carriage—they have at least a share in the pom pom of the brass band—and welcome.
By the way, my piper friends who may read this, you will be amused to hear some natives of Sassun objected to having the pipes on the lawn in the afternoon at the Yacht Club—said they "couldn't hear any music in them"—so Queen Victoria's favourite, "The Green Hills of Tyroll" was turned on, in parts, and they were quite happy!
Now dinner, for there goes the Hotel brass band down below—a cada necio agrada su porrada—to me the pipes, the brass band to the Southerner, but for us all dinner—"both meat and music," as the fox said when it ate the bagpipes.[7]
[7]To each fool agreeable is his folly; and, the bag of the pipes is made of sheep-skin you see.
[7]To each fool agreeable is his folly; and, the bag of the pipes is made of sheep-skin you see.
We have home letters to-night; "The Mail" they speak of over the Indian Peninsula has arrived. G.'s maid has a letter from St Abbs from her mother, who is anxious about her, for she says, "There's an awfu' heavy sea running at the Head." Even at this distance of time and sea miles, we find home news takes a new importance, and are already grateful for home letters with details of what is going on there from day to day; trifles there, are interesting to read about here, there's the enchantment ofdistance about them, and they become important by their isolation.
Nov. 22nd.—We conclude, that considering packing, calling on Cook, and a complete absence of any Royal function or Tomasha of any sort, that we have put in a most excellent day, in fact the best day we have had since we landed—and it was spent at sea!—at least the best of it was. I visited the Sailors' Home in the morning, which is a palace here where a sailor man who has the money, and doesn't mind the loneliness and ennui, can live like a prince for a rupee a day, and as comfortably or more so than we can in the Taj for heaps of rupees. Perhaps it was the suggestion of being at anchor in that refuge that made G. and me go off to sea this afternoon, and we are glad we did so. We looked at a steam launch opposite the Hotel which was full of white passengers seated shoulder to shoulder round the stern like soldiers; they were bound for Elephanta and the caves there, and we decided to go too; but they seemed so awfully hot even in shadow of an awning, and so packed and formal that we elected to take time and sail, in a boat of our own, with our own particular piratical crew, and lateen sails, and white awning. We were warned we might have to stay out till late at night! As it is said to be seven miles, I thought with a crew of four men, Krishna, and myself, we might by an effort even row home in time for dinner though it did fall calm!
So we chartered the craft for seven rupees there and back—which was two rupees above proper rate—left our packing undone, and sailed for Elephanta. It was altogether delightful being on the water again the first time for many months—of course being on board a P. & O. steamer doesn't count, as that hardly conveys even the feeling of being afloat. The breeze was light and southerly, so at first we rowed, and the cheery dark faces of the crew beamed and sweated. These coast men arenicer to look at than the natives on shore. They did buck in with their funny bamboo oars, long things like bakers' bread shovels, with square or round blades tied with string to the end of a bamboo, which worked in a hemp grummet on a single wooden thole pin.
What a study they make! Bow, Two and Three, have skull-caps of lemon yellow and dull gold thread, and blue dungaree jackets faded and threadbare. They are young lusty fellows, and Stroke, who is a tough-looking, middle-aged man, with a wiry beard, has a skull-cap between rose and brown, and round it a salmon-coloured wisp of a turban—over them there is the arch of the frogged foot of the lateen sail. All but Bow are in full sunlight, sweating at their oars, he is in the shadow the sail casts on our bow. We recline, to quote our upholsterer, in "cairless elegance" on the floor of the stern, on Turkey red cushions under the shadow of the awning, and I feel sorry we have spent so much time on shore.
We pass under the high stern of a lumbering native craft; its grey sun-bitten woodwork is loosely put together: on a collection of dried palm leaves and coir ropes on the stern, sit the naked, brown crew feeding off a bunch of green bananas. One has a pink skull-cap, and at a porthole below the counter the red glass of a side-light catches the sun and glows a fine ruby red; a pleasant contrast to the grey, sun-dried woodwork. Just as we clear our eyes off her, from seaward behind us comes an Arab dhow, a ship from the past, surging along finely! An out-and-out pirate, you can tell at a glance, even though she does fly a square red flag astern with a white edge. Her bows are viking or saucer-shaped, prettier than the usual fiddle-bow we see here, and her high bulwarks on her long sloping quarter deck you feel must conceal brass guns. From beyond her the afternoon sun sends the shadows of her mast and stays in fine curves down the bend of her sail, the jib-boom is inboard and the jib flat against the lee of the main sail. Shebrings up the breeze with her, and our bamboo oars are pulled in and we go slipping across the water in silence, only the bows talking to the small waves. Now, how sorry we feel for those other globe trotters on the launch, birring along behind a hot, bubbling, puffing, steam kettle—and so crowded, and in this heat too, whilst we extend at our ease in a white and sky-blue boat, with pink cushions, and dreamily listen to the silky frou frou of the southern sea. The crew rest; and one brings out the hubble-bubble from the peak, with a burning coal on the bowl; it is passed round and each of them takes three or four long inhalations through his hands over the mouth-piece, to avoid touching it with his lips, and the smell of the tobacco is not unpleasant, diluted as it is with the tropical sea air. Now it is brought aft to the oldest of our crew, the master I suppose, a grizzled old fellow, who sits on his heels on a scrap of plank out at our stern and steers. He takes four deep inhalations and the mutual pipe is put away forward again. Our elderly "Boy" is a Madrassee, tidy and clerk-like, and a contrast to the pirates; and he does not understand them very well, but he pats the pipe condescendingly as it is passed forward, and puts questions about it with a condescending little smile.
Elephanta comes closer and we see the undergrowth on the hills, and it does not seem very unfamiliar; it is considerate the way in which Nature leads you from one scene to another without any change sudden enough to shock you; in the most out-of-the-way corners of the world I believe, you may find features that remind you of places you have known. Here the few palms on the sky-lineof the low hills, almost accidental features you might say, are all there is to distinguish the general aspect from some loch side at home. Our Stroke points ashore and grins, and says, "Elephanta," and we say, "Are you sure, is it not an island on Loch Katrine?" and he grins again and bobs and says, "Yes, yes Elephanta!"
Sailing from Elephanta.
Sailing from Elephanta.
I thought I'd written a remarkably expressive description of the carvings in the caves; if I did I can't find it, so the reader is spared. But I must say, before jogging on, that they are well worth taking far greater trouble to see than the little trouble that is required. I had heard them often spoken of lightly, but in my opinion they are great works of a debased art. The sculptured groups would be received any dayhors concoursin the Salons for their technique only. There are figures in grand repose, as solemn and dignified as the best in early Egyptian sculpture, others show astonishing vigour, and fantastic freedom of movement and of light and shade. They are cut in the rockin situ, hard, blackish serpentine, which is a soft grey colour on the exposed surfaces. In some parts the carving is as modern in style and free in movement and composition as sometourtmentémodern French sculpture. But here, as in Europe and Egypt, marvellous talent has been used in the name of religion to express imaginings of the supernatural and inhuman, instead of being humbly devoted to the study of the beauty presented in nature.
Going home we sailed into the sunset, and it certainly was pretty late when we got back to dinner; in fact half of our little voyage was in the dark, in heavy dew and with red and green lights passing across our course rather swiftly; we had one white light, and the glow in the men's big pipe. We were pleased with our crew and they were pleased with us for an extra rupee, and altogether we felt very superior having gone in so much better style than other poor people, so down on the bedrock for time that they cannot spare a half-hour here and there.
I don't know very well how we did all our packing and got away from the Taj Hotel to the train, but we did it somehow; and possibly may become inured to the effort after six or seven more months travelling. Now we are reaping the reward of our exertions. Within less than half an hour from Bombay we are right into jungle! I thought of and looked for tigers, and saw in a glade of palms and thorns where there should have been tigers, hoardings with "The Western Indian Army-Equipment Factory" and the like in big letters; so I had just to imagine the tigers, and make studies from life of the Parsis as they wandered up and down the corridor; I can see some point in their women wearing Saris, these graceful veils hanging from the back of their hair, but why do they and Mohammedan men wear their shirt tails outside their petticoats and trousers?—I must look up "Murray."
To right and left we come on open country divided like an irregular draught-board into little fields of less than an acre each, with dykes a few inches high round them; paddy fields, I suppose—the place for snipe and rice. Round those that have water on them are grey birds like small herons, with white showing in their wings when they fly—paddy birds; have I not heard and read of them from my youth up, and of the griffins' bag of them. I have also read and heard of the Western Ghats[8], these mountain slopes we have to climb up east of Bombay, that run right south and which we are now approaching,but I had no idea they were so fantastically like Norman ramparts and buttresses on mountain tops, neither had I an idea that the trees and fields at their feet and up their sides were so green. We rattle along at say fifty miles an hour, not very comfortably, for there is heat and dust; but all along the line are interesting groups of figures to look at. Here is a string of women in red shawls against golden sunlit grass above a strip of blue water, and there again, a man just stopped work sitting at the door of a dusty hut of palm leaves and dry clay. He shades his eyes with his hand as he watches the train pass; how his deep copper-coloured skin gleaming with moisture, contrasts with the grey parched earth; then a group of children bathing and paddling, at this distance they are perfectly lovely. The young people are far more fairly formed than I expected them to be—famine photographs probably account for this; they are black but comely, though possibly closer inspection would dissolve the charm—here are people, men and women, stacking corn or hay round a homestead, a scene I have not heard described or read of in home letters or books about India; how the pictures unfold themselves all hot and new to me, and coloured, and at fifty to sixty miles an hour! Won't mental indigestion wait on good appetite!
[8]Sanskrit "Gati" a way or path—Scottish "gate" is a way or path too.
[8]Sanskrit "Gati" a way or path—Scottish "gate" is a way or path too.
We are going south-east now; Bombay away to our right over the bay, and the Ghat we saw to the south in extended battlements and towers, now shows in profile as one tower, on high and steep escarpments. We are still in the low country. May I liken it to the Carse of Forth extended, with the Kippens on either side, with the features and heat considerably increased. I am told I should not compare homely places I know with places unfamiliar, as it limits the reader's imagination; the Romans did so—said, "Lo! The Tiber!" when they saw the Tay; I must try not to do the same.
And as at home, the people at the stations become lustier and have clearer eyes and are more powerfullybuilt, as we get further from town; that is not saying much here, for the strongest look as if a breeze would blow them over; however, they may have their own particular kind of strength. I know my boy surprised me last night when he started to pack my various belongings; the way he sat down on his heels beside each box and went through the work showed if not strength, its equivalent in agility, and a method entirely his own. He told me, "Yes, Sa, I do same whole camp one night, saddles, horses, bridles, whole lot camp outfit while you sleep." He has been butler to two distinguished generals, so I feel it must be rather a drop for him to valet a mere cold-weather tourist, but he does not show it, which is a point in his favour. It was a little awkward though the other day when he began to beat up to find my profession; I forget what he said exactly. It was something like, "Sahib General?" and I said, "No, no," as if Generals were rather small fry in my estimation, and racked my brains how to index myself. I've read you must "buck" in the East—isn't that the expression?—so a happy inspiration came, and I said with solemnity, "I am a J.P.,—a Justice of the Peace, you understand?" and I could see he was greatly relieved, for unless you have some official position in India you are no one. He went on packing perfectly satisfied, murmuring, "Yes Sahib, I know, Sahib Lord Chief Justice, I know." Ought I to have corrected him? Ought I to have told him seriously that I am an artist!—a professional painter from choice, and necessity? He would have left my ignoble service on the spot; why, even in Britain, Art is reckoned after the Church, and in Belgium, though respectable, it is still only a trade—Peter Paul notwithstanding.
After two or three hours in the train through this sunlit country, we conclude it is worth coming to see; for the last hours have unfolded the most interesting show that I have ever seen from a train in the time. Outside all is new, and inside the train much is familiar; someEnglish people near us sit with their backs to the window and take no notice of the outside world. What high head notes they speak with, and what familiar ground they go over. "Oh! you know Bown, do you—such a good fellah—good thot, I mean—went mad about golf—such a good gaime, you know—what I mean is—you know it's," etc. Quite "good people" too, probably keen on ridin' and shootin' though they may never have shot a foxth or a goo'th, or have even seen a golden eagle. But they seem almost happy, in a jog trot sort of a way, along the old trail—the Midlands to Indiar, and Indiar to the Midlands, withbwidgebetween.
We swing round a curve south-westerly and into a tunnel and out again and up from the plain—up and up—high rocky hills on either side with bushes and trees growing amongst rocks; another Pass of Lennie, I'd like to call it, on a larger scale. Out of the tunnel, we look down a long valley to our right with little dried up fields all over the bottom of it, fading into distant haze. Then another black tunnel opening into grey rock, and on coming slowly out—we are climbing all the time one foot in forty-two—we again look down a valley miles away to our left, and we can see the station Karjat, from which we began this climb up the Bore Ghat.
The aspect of this country makes me think of sport; the rocky hills, dry grass, pools, and cover suggest stalking or waiting for game, but perhaps there is still too much evidence of people—however, I must get the glasses out and see what they will show up.
Kandala station—a white spot, the guard points out to us far above us—then into a tunnel, and out, and we are there. To our right are ridge beyond ridge of hill tops, stretching away into the sunset.
Reader, please draw a breath before this next paragraph.
"The length of the ascent is nearly 16 miles over which there are 26 tunnels with a length of 2,500 yards, eight viaducts, many smaller bridges. The actual height accomplished by the ascent is 1,850 feet, and the cost of constructing the line was nearly£600,000."
"The length of the ascent is nearly 16 miles over which there are 26 tunnels with a length of 2,500 yards, eight viaducts, many smaller bridges. The actual height accomplished by the ascent is 1,850 feet, and the cost of constructing the line was nearly£600,000."
Fairly concentrated mental food, is it not? and only eight lines from one page of "Murray," and there are one hundred and six lines in a page, and six hundred and thirty nine pages in the book!!
The sun sets on our right beyond a plain of stubble fields and young crops and distant hills, and in the sky a rich band of gold, veined with vermillion, lies above a belt of violet, and higher still a star or two begin to glitter in the cold blue. To us newcomers, this first sunset we have seen in India in the open over the high plains filled us with new and almost solemn interest. But why the feeling was new or strange would be hard to say; sunsets the world over are alike in many ways, but the feelings stirred are as different as the lands and the people over which they set.
A little later we (I should say I, in this case) had quite an adventure at a dusky siding in this tableland of the Dekkan. As I hastened to our carriage a beautiful lady bowed to me, a stranger in a far land! And I bowed too, and said, "How do you do, we met on theEgyptof course!" and she said, "You are not Mr Browning!" When I agreed it was only "me"—she expressed some surprise, for she is shortly to visit my brother down the line at Dharwar, and her chaperone had just been staying there. One of us possibly remarked the world is small. Later we all foregathered in an excellent little dining-car on the S. M. R.[9]line, and discussed family histories, and the incident made us feel quite at home. Everyone seems to know everyone else out here, and if they don't they very soon do, and all seem sworn to make the best of each other, and make things "go." It is so admirable; even though you may feel as a newcomer, a little uncomfortable crawling out of the shell of reserve you have brought all the way from home.
[9]Southern Maharatta Railway.
[9]Southern Maharatta Railway.
The air is much lighter up here than down in Bombay;even after a bustling day getting into train, travelling, and seeing a hundred miles of utterly new sights, we feel far less tired than after doing nothing in particular all day on the coast. We stop at a station, Kirkee, three and a half miles from Poona. Here, there is a glove left on the line by the editor of "Murray's Guide," to be picked up by some Scot or Irishman; I have not time just now. He says that Kirkee is interesting as being the scene of a splendid victory over Baji Rao II; his account is concentrated and interesting. The names of the officers mentioned in the paragraph referring to the victory are Scottish and Irish, and he calls it English, instead of British—a little more sand in the machinery of the great Imperial idea.[10]
[10]First condition Treaty of Union 1707:—"I. That the two Kingdoms of England and Scotland shall, upon the first of May next ensuing the date hereof and for ever after, be united into one Kingdom by the name of Great Britain.…"
[10]First condition Treaty of Union 1707:—
"I. That the two Kingdoms of England and Scotland shall, upon the first of May next ensuing the date hereof and for ever after, be united into one Kingdom by the name of Great Britain.…"
"I. That the two Kingdoms of England and Scotland shall, upon the first of May next ensuing the date hereof and for ever after, be united into one Kingdom by the name of Great Britain.…"
Mais en voiture!—This narrow gauge on which we now are, is not half bad. We have a fore and aft carriage, the seats on either side we can turn into beds, and there is a third folding up berth above one of these. After the custom of the country, we have brought razais or thin mattresses, and blankets—an excellent custom, for it is much nicer turning into your own bedclothes at night in a train or hotel than into unfamiliar properties.
… How pleasant it is in this morning light after the night journey to look out on the rolling country. There are low trees, twelve to twenty feet high, with scrub between, and the varied foliage shows an autumnal touch of the dry season. Now we pass an open space with a small whitewashed temple in the middle of a green patch of corn; a goatherd walks on the sand between us and it with his black and white flock; he is well wrapped up, head and all in cotton draperies, as if there was a chill in the morning air, but it looks and feels very comfortable to us in our carriage: the sky is dove coloured, streakedwith pale blue. Now some women show in the crops, the corn stands high over them, and from this distance they are things of beauty. Their draperies are purple or deep blue, and their skins rich brown, set off by white teeth and the glint of silver bangles and brass pots. They have pretty naked children beside them. Every hundred yards or so there is something fascinatingly beautiful, so the early morning hours go past quickly.
Just before Belgaum Station, our delight in watching these new scenes is brought to a fine point by the arrival of a boy with tea and toast, all hot! Positively it is difficult to take it, for here comes a fort we must look at—miles of sloping coppery-coloured crenellated stone wall of moresque design. Graceful trees grow inside, and over its walls you see an occasional turbaned native's head, one is vivid yellow another rose; we pass so close we almost cross the moat, and the women stop washing clothes and look up. More park scenes follow, then market gardens and native cottages of dried mud, and we can see right into their simple domestic arrangements.
At Belgaum our friends of last night get off with their camp equipment, and I make a dive into a brand new suit in haste to bid them good-bye andau revoir, and as I make finishing touches, we steam away and the farewell is unsaid! These three lone ladies have gone to see jungle life; the eldest only recently lost her husband in the jungle—killed and eaten, by a tiger.
The soil in the railway cuttings gets gradually a deeper bronze colour as we go south, about Bombay it was grey or light yellow. Now it is from yellow ochre to red ochre, with a coppery sheen where it is weather-worn. The trees become higher and the glades more like Watteau or Corot scenes, but neither Watteau nor Corot ever saw more naturally beautiful tinted figures; their many coloured draperies are so faded and blended in the strong sun that it is difficult to tell where one coloured cloth begins and another ends.
At Londa we stop half-an-hour or so, and our Boy rolls up our blankets, and rugs, and we endeavour to concentrate attention on a dainty breakfast in a neat little restaurant car of which we are sole occupants. The car is made for two tables, each for four people, and a man and a boy, both very neatly dressed, cook and serve, so you see the line is not yet overrun, and it is still cheap, and comfortable. If I might be so bold as to criticise what you, my Elder Brother, may be responsible for, I'd suggest that the place to sleep on might be made a shade softer.—Yes, we are becoming effeminate, I know—we were becoming so alas, as far back as "the 45," when The M'Lean found his son with a snowball for a pillow; still, we must go with the times, and even if the berths must be hard, at least let them be level. Please note, all soldier men who run railways in India, and receive my blessing in advance.
Our little waiter is a delightful study with his big turban and red band across it with the Southern Maharatta Railway initials in gold, white tunic, and trousers, and red sash and bare feet; and can't he wait neatly and quickly! We have figures to draw everywhere.—Here, within arm's length, at a station, are women porteresses, each a fascinating study of pose and drapery, and from a third class carriage just pulled up, out gushes a whole family, the kids naked from the waist up, and the men almost the same from the waist down. The women are in waspish yellow and deep reds, and they group and chatter in the sun, then heave their baggage, great soft baskets, on their heads—the women do this, the men have turbans, so they can't, and away they all go smiling. But better still, in the shade, there's a group of men and women seated, putting in time eating from heaps of emerald green bananas and sanguine pomegranates—how I wish I could stay for hours to paint!
Out of Londa the trees get finer and taller, and you see real live bamboos in great masses of soft grey-green, their foliage a little like willows at a distance. One cannot butthink of big game; surely this is the place for sambhur if not for tiger: and there are trees like Spanish chestnuts with larger leaves and elms, and between the tall trunks are breaks of under cover, over which we get a glimpse now and then of rolling distant jungle and indigo blue hills against a soft grey sky.
Nacargali—Tavargatti—little stations one after the other all the way, a station about every six miles—still through bamboo forest—I think the bamboos must be 70 to 90 feet high. Now and then we pass glades with water. At one pool little naked boys and girls are herding cattle, white and cream coloured cows, and black hairless buffaloes, whose skins reflect the blue sky. The mud banks are brown and the water yellow, and there's bright green grass between the red mud and the soft green of the bamboos. Put in the little brown-skinned herds, one with a pink rag on his black hair, and that is as near as I can get it with the A.B.C., and there is not time nor sufficient stillness for paint.
With pencil in my journal I have little hasty scribbles—one half done and the other begun. There is a group of women, with waistcloths only, standing on a half-submerged tree trunk in greenish water washing clothes, one stands the others squat, and beyond are cattle and bamboos. Along the side of the track there are wild flowers, creepers, and thorns with little violet flowers, and others of orange vermilion, and every here and there are ant hills, three orfour feet high, of reddish soil shaped like rugged Gothic spires or Norman towers. On the telegraph wire are butcher birds, hoopoos, kingfishers, and a vivid blue bird a little like a jay, the roller bird I believe. The king crow I am sure of—I saw and read about him in Bombay; he is the most independent and plucky little bird in India, fears nothing with wings! He is black, between the size of a swift and a blackbird, with a long drooping tail turned out like a black cock's at the end. I don't think he troubles anyone unless they trouble him and his wife, then he goes for them head first, and the wife isn't very far behind and gets a dig in too. There are doves and pigeons galore, and just before we came to Dharwar across a clear space there cantered a whole family circle of large monkeys! What a lovely action they have, between a thoroughbred's and a man's. Theyworeyellowish beards and black faces and black ends to their tails, which they carry high with a droop at the end.
Alnaver.—We pass iron trucks with native occupants—not bad looking—paler in colour I think than the natives at Bombay. Acres of cut dry timber, long bits and shortbits, are here for the engine's fuel. The smoke of it makes a pleasant scent in the hot dry air. The country becomes a little more open and not quite so interesting perhaps. Kambarganvi—flatter and less picturesque—nullahs, open ground and cattle, thin jungle on rolling ground extending to a distant edge of table land. We pass a pool full of buffalo, only their heads are visible above the muddy green water; on the shores and on their backs are little brown nude girls with yellow flowers round their necks; then Dharwar and the Elder Brother on the platform, and we heave a sigh of relief at the end of the first chapter of our Pilgrimage in India.
Dharwar
Dharwar Stationis not so unlike one we know within two and a half miles of the centre of Scotland. It is almost the same size but there is no village. Though not imposing, I understand it is the nerve centre of some 1,500 miles of The Southern Maharatta Railway.
As we pull up my brother, Colonel and Agent on the platform, remarks, "Well, here you are, you're looking well—have you any luggage?" and in a twinkling we are driving away, leaving the "little pick" of luggage to the boy to bring up leisurely. G.'s maid drives off in a princely padded ox cart or dumbie, and we get into a new modern victoria. I am not sure which is the most distinguished, perhaps the dumbie; it is at any rate more Oriental, and its bright red and blue linings, white hood, and two thoroughbred white oxen make a very gay turn-out.
The Agent's bungalow is wide-spreading, flat-roofed, with deep verandah supported on white-washed classic pillars, and surrounded by a park. There are borders of blooming chrysanthemums and China asters, and trees with quaint foliage, and flowering creepers about the house. The flower borders seem to tail away into dry grass and bushes and trees of the park, and that changes imperceptibly into dry rolling country with scattered trees and bushes.
Lunch is served by waiters in white clothes and bare feet, "velvet footed waiters" to be conventional,and there is a blessed peace and quietness about our new surroundings. For weeks past we have ever heard our fellows' voices all the day long; what a contrast is this quiet and elbow room to the crowd on the P. & O. and the gun firing and babel of Bombay.
… It is overcast and still; away to the east over the rolling bushy country are heavy showers, but at this spot trees and crops faint for water. We doze in the verandah and wake and doze again, and wonder how this silence—can be real, even the birds seem subdued. We notice E.H.A.'s friends are here in numbers, Mina birds, the Seven Sisters, King Crows, and one of his (E.H.A.'s) enemies comes in as I write, a yellow-eyed frog; he hops in on the matting and looks and looks—I like the unfathomable philosophy in its golden eye. And my brother stops reading Indian politics and calls me outside to see a Horn Bill—all beak, and little head or body to speak of, he sways on a leafless tree and scraiks anxiously for his friends; they are generally in companies of three or four. A little later, as I write beside a reading lamp in G.'s room, a lizard takes a position on the window, and out of the outer darkness comes a moth and lights on to the outside of the pane, and the lizard pecks at it—neither the moth nor the lizard understand glass—peck, peck, every now and then—trying to get through to the moth—how delightfully human—the perpetual endeavour to get Beyond, without the will or power to see the infinite reflections of the Inside.
As we speculate to-night as to where some of our neighbours on the "Egypt" may have got to by this time, the post comes in with letters from this one and the other. One is from Mrs Deputy-Commissioner. A few days ago we were altogether in Bombay, melting in the heat, and now we are towards the south of this Peninsula, and she writes from its farthest north: we are in a hot parched country, whilst she and the D.-C. are in camp,sitting over a huge fire of logs in a pine forest. She writes, "To-morrow we enter a valley where five bears have recently been seen and pheasants abound," and the day after "we shall be at the top of the pass, 9,000 feet. Rosy snows and golden mists far below us melt into purple depths." … So this day's journal closes with pleasant thoughts of relatives and pleasant friends in many distant parts of this wide land.
… Sunday.—We arrived here on Friday—the silence is almost oppressive. Great grey clouds roll up from the east all day till evening, when they form solid bluish ranks; each cloud threatens rain which never falls. The stillness in the bungalow is only broken by the occasional cheep, cheep, cheep of the house lizard, a tiny little fellow that lives behind picture frames and in unused jugs and corners. His body is only about an inch and a half long, but his clear voice fills the large rooms and emphasies the silence. Outside it is as quiet; there is the chink—chink of the copper-smith bird, like a drop of water at regular intervals into a metal bowl.
The Colonel and G. rode at 8A.M., and I biked. It is not such interesting country here as what we came through in the train—rolling, stoney, with friable red soil, and hard to ride on. Many dusty roads meet at all angles; along these you meet herds of buffalo and cows driven leisurely by boys or men. Some cows, of errant natures, have logs dangling by a rope from their necks amongst their feet; they can't go off very fast or far with the encumbrance. They stir up the dust as they go along, and it falls and lies on the children till their dark skins have a bloom like sloe-berries. There are all sorts of birds to look at—kites, crows, vultures, hawks, eagles; with these you can't expect to see game birds, though it looks an ideal country, though perhaps a little waterless, for pheasants and partridges. When I stop I see the side of the road swarms with insect life, ants of various, kinds, black and red, small and big, pegging along thelevel, and up and down trees, as if the world depended on each individual's particular bustling. There are white ant hills like ragged heaps of raw chocolate—very hard and strong. I don't know what they are built for—I must consider the matter like the sluggard some day, if I have time, or read about them if that is not a bigger order. What strikes you at first about the white ant is that you never see it unless you lay its works open. His hard-sun-baked protections run up the tree stems or wherever he goes and conceals and protects his soft, white, fleshy body, and if you prise this casing open you may see him getting away as fast as his little legs will take him; really he is a termite you know, like a "wood louse or worm," and not an ant. A wonder of the world is how he gets the liquid secretion to fasten the grains of sand together to make his earthen tunnels. If he goes to the top of a house to remove furniture or the like, he builds his tunnel all the way up; and in a thirsty land the top storey of a sun-bitten house does not seem the place to get water: but I must leave this subject to the disquisitions of men of more leisure and greater abilities, and proceed to make some observations on, and jottings of, the figures on the road. Here are women bringing up great round earthenware vases on their heads and little round brass bowls in their hands, going and coming from a muddy pool in the centre of a waste of dried mud. They go slowly, the walking is rough for bare feet, for the clay is hard and baked and pitted with cows' feet marks. They drink and wash their bowls in the dregs in the pond, the water already so dirty that a self-respecting duck would not swim in it, and wade about stirring up the mud, then fill their bowls and march away with it for domestic uses—this sounds bad, but it looks a great deal worse. The figures though are charming, with balanced bowl on head, and draperies blown into such folds as a Greek would have loved to model … But their faces!—Phew! when you see them closely, are frightful!
It is difficult to catch their movement; they are so restless. All people who wear loose draperies seem to be so; witness Spanish women, and the Spanish type of women in our Highlands and Ireland, how they keep constantly shifting their shawls.