I.MADRAS.
Illustrated letter
THIS city, though of some interest in many ways, is not one likely to prepossess a visitor in favour of the great Indian Empire. The anchorage is an open roadstead, and the process of landing is most abominable, though worthy of notice.
As soon as the steamer drops anchor she is surrounded by hundreds of huge, unwieldy-looking boats—or rather barges—each manned by a dozen or more naked Indians, who swarm the decks, deafen one with their screams, and pester passengers to take the brass token bearing the number of their licensed ferry-boat. These extraordinary boats are built of bark—sewntogether, not nailed, so that they may stand the shock of being hurled by the waves or breakers on to the strand.
It needs some nerve to submit to this mode of landing, but being the inevitable, one has to submit. The seats in the boat are lower than the gunwale, and to these the passenger has to hold on as best he can; the pullers ply their paddles (not oars) vigorously towards the beach,where the sea breaks furiously. When within fifty or sixty yards from shore the boat is taken up by the rollers. She is steered stem on, the helmsman keeping a sharp eye on each coming wave. The pullers, at his command, back water until a suitable roller appears, when a vigorous pull keeps the boat on its crest until she is carried by it high and dry on the shingle; but ere she grounds the men simultaneously jump over-board and by their united efforts carry boat and contents beyond the reach of the next wave, which, if it overtook it, would annihilate the frail vessel. Each dripping nigger then offers “a back” to passengers belonging to the stronger sex, and “a chair” to the ladies—in this undignified manner did I make my first appearance in the great Indian Empire.
I firmly believe in first impressions, and have no doubt that my landing at Madras “pig-a-back” on a nigger had a baneful influence on my judgment of the place. I certainly did not feel much impressed by it, and was glad to find myself once more on the deck of the Siam, and still more so to feel the motion of the screw as she veered round and shaped her course for Calcutta.
When the steamer reaches the “mouths of the Ganges,” one becomes impressed with a feeling of admiration for this gigantic portion of the British Empire—all one has read or heard of India comes uppermost into one’s mind. A glance at the map now laid on the table of the chart-room of the steamer shows the immensity of that sheet of water pouring into the Bay of Bengal, arising from the melted snow of the Himalayas—that marvellous wallof snow which separates the two great empires, India and China; fertilising an immense territory, upon which swarms a teeming population of three hundred and fifty-four millions of human beings, now subject to the rule of Queen Victoria!—a small hand wielding a mighty sceptre.