rt 
 
 
 14 
 
 GBFT OF 
 HORACE W. CARPENTIER 
 
 PROBSTHAIN & Co. 
 
 Oriental Booksellers 
 
 14. Bury Street 
 
 London W. C. 
 
P^tfV 
 
LETTEKS 
 
 WRITTEN DURING A TRIP 
 
 SOUTHERN INDIA & CEYLON 
 
 WINTER OF 1876-1877. 
 
 With (Original Illustrations. 
 
 (PRINTED FOE PEIVATE CIRCULATION.) 
 
 $onbo« : 
 PRINTED BY C. ROWORTH & SONS. 
 
 NEWTON STREET, HIGH IIOLBORN. 
 1877. 
 
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 PREFACE. 
 
 In the autumn of last year it was proposed to me to 
 accompany my brother, the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at 
 Oxford, on his intended tour in Southern India; the objects 
 he had in view in undertaking the journey being connected 
 with his chair. After thirty-five years and upwards passed in 
 Ihe daily routine of professional life in London, I was glad of 
 such a novel and interesting break. I accepted the proposal, 
 and accompanied him. The following Letters were written 
 as I travelled through the country. They are descriptive of 
 my personal experiences only, and have been collected and 
 are now printed for private circulation, in order to convey to 
 my family and immediate friends the same pleasure which I 
 myself enjoy in looking on rapid sketches from Nature done 
 on the spot and not touched afterwards. The outline of our 
 tour was as follows. We took our passage from Southampton, 
 via the Suez Canal, direct to Bombay. Thence by rail due 
 north to Ahmedabad, in Guzerat, about 300 miles distant 
 from Bombay, and back to Bombay. Thence a fresh start by 
 rail to Madras, stopping at Poona, and visiting the Sanitarium 
 
IV 1'HEFACE. 
 
 of Mahabaleshwur. From Madras to Ootacamund and the 
 Nielgherries, and from thence southwards to Tanjore, Tri- 
 chinopoly, and Madura. From Madura by country roads to 
 the Island of Paumben, and thence by sea to Tuticorin. 
 The rail took us from Tuticorin inland to Palamcottah and 
 Tinnevelly and back to the coast again, and we embarked 
 thence for Ceylon. From Ceylon my brother retraced his 
 steps by rail to Madras, having further information to obtain 
 there. I took the coasting vessel along the Malabar coast to 
 Bombay. We met in Bombay ; and, after a visit to the 
 temples of Ellora, returned together to England via Brindisi 
 and Venice, stopping a week in Cairo en route. The illus- 
 trations are my own. 
 
 C. R. WILLIAMS. 
 
 02, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 May, 1877. 
 
SS. "Nepaul," 
 
 Sxinday, \5th October, 1876. 
 
 It is time I should begin a letter to you, but although it 
 is time I could not have commenced sooner, for the Bay of 
 Biscay completely polished me off, and I only was able to 
 crawl out of my berth during the afternoon of yesterday for 
 the first time. We had a fair run down the Channel, passing 
 the fortifications on both sides of the Solent, which I had 
 never seen before, and the Lighthouse at the extremity of the 
 Needles ; then, dinner over, at which I was as sprightly as 
 possible, admiring the saloon of the ship brilliantly lighted 
 along its whole length of upwards of 100 feet, the lights 
 reflected by mirrors, and more like a Parisian first-class cafe 
 than a thing on the ocean, I turned in. The next morning, 
 resolved to begin my new life as I intended to continue it, I 
 got up at six, and, after pursuing a very devious path to the 
 baths amidships, contrived to have a sea-water bath. But I 
 soon found that we were in the Chops of the Channel — 
 a very different matter from the Solent — and when I got back 
 to my berth I felt quite disabled. There I remained all 
 Friday, all Friday night, and until 2 o'clock yesterday, 
 dreadfully ill. I had no idea that I was such a bad sailor, 
 but then I had never before been so tried. Poor Stanley 
 was worse than myself — not so Monier, who was nothing more 
 than squeamish, and instead of our looking after him he was 
 our friend and nurse, and gave us his advice and assistance 
 on his legs as if he were the ship doctor. We passed 
 Ushant (not visible) about 10 on Friday morning, and then 
 
 B 
 
;'„;;;,;•;';''... ( 2 ) 
 
 ■■• : : ,,: /•*. ... 
 fairly entered the Bay of Biscay. Most provoking, the 
 
 weather was fine and even sunny overhead and no wind, but 
 we had arrived at the tail of three weeks of unexceptionably 
 stormy weather coming from the south-west. The " Mon- 
 golia" and the " Pekin," the two ships which had preceded 
 us a week and a fortnight previously, had made bad passages. 
 The " Pekin" had had some of her boats carried away, and 
 shipped a sea at one time of fifty tons, doing a deal of 
 damage. We had no such storms, but we came in for the 
 Atlantic rollers — huge hills of sea, unbroken in surface, 
 careering after each other at intervals of 200 or 300 yards 
 from west to east, whereas our course was from north to 
 south, so these great hills caught us broadside on, causing 
 the ship to roll in a most uncomfortable manner ; and this 
 continued for thirty-six hours, until we had passed Cape 
 Finisterre yesterday afternoon. I had incautiously left the 
 scuttle open just over my berth to get fresh air; the ship 
 rolled her lee side right under this scuttle, and in came the 
 sea at the rate of a dozen fireplugs, drenching my bed and 
 myself as if we had all been soused in the Bay. Ill as I 
 was, I scrambled up, screwed in the bull's-eye, threw off my 
 bedding, and did my best to change my things, and then lay 
 down again in the most damp and miserable condition. 
 Often and often did I ask myself, " Oh, Dolly, why did I 
 leave your lovely valley and luxurious life for such misery as 
 this?" But all is over, and Richard's himself again. We 
 expect to reach Gibraltar late to-morrow night or early 
 Tuesday morning, and so I am writing now in preparation. 
 The vessel is a fine one — 3,600 tons — iron — new this year — 
 600 horse-power — 355 feet long — 40 feet beam — flush deck 
 from end to end, which gives it an appearance of great 
 length. The crew is composed of seven English quarter- 
 masters and forty-three Lascar seamen, six English engineers, 
 thirty firemen (Mussulmans), and fifteen Sidi men or negroes 
 
Sxdlv V*> 
 
 ■\- 
 
 tfv 
 
 J 
 
 ' %u^Ui^2 Oct. 
 
( 3 ) 
 
 for coal shifters. It really is extraordinary that the respon- 
 sible government of this huge and complicated ship should 
 practically be in the hands of thirteen Englishmen only, 
 independently of the officers. The Lascar seamen are puny 
 creatures, dressed in fancy dresses, but all with picturesque 
 turbans, naked feet, and apparently unfit for any physical 
 exertion. The Sidi men are scarcely human — negroes from 
 Mozambique of the coarsest kind — very different type from 
 the Lascars — big, muscular men, semi-nude, some without 
 hair, others with ridges of wool along the head and chin like 
 the furrows of a ploughed field. I would have given a good 
 deal for a photograph of a batch of these fellows, sitting in 
 limp attitudes on the iron grating over the boiler room before 
 we started, grinning and chattering like huge baboons, very 
 soon to descend 35 feet to the very bottom of the ship to 
 keep up the fires below. It is a pandemonium into which, 
 looking down the grating, we see these creatures working 
 in the bright glare of the furnaces at a depth where no air 
 can reach them ; yet, when airing themselves on the grating, 
 they appear in tip-top spirits and as happy as kings. Gladstone 
 or Disraeli might give a good deal to exchange with a Sidi 
 man, if happiness be the sole object of life. 12 o'clock. We 
 have just finished Divine service in the saloon — the captain 
 reading from a cushion covered with the Union Jack. The 
 Lascars have swarmed up the rigging, notwithstanding their 
 naked feet, and have set all the square sails of the ship, and 
 she is bowling along with a rattling breeze aft, a heavy but 
 beautiful sea surging from her bows — such a sea as Melby 
 delights to paint, like molten lead, with touches of colour 
 here and there rivalling the flashes of the finest gems. I am 
 seated on the planks of the live-stock boxes, high above the 
 gunwale, writing this, and every now and then looking off to 
 enjoy the magnificent prospect of sea and sky. From this 
 you will know that I have recovered from the effects of the 
 
 b2 
 
( 4 ) 
 
 Bay and am delighting in the scene. Live-stock boxes remind 
 me to tell you that we have a large number of live sheep on 
 board, coops on coops of ducks and poultry, and a few turkeys 
 and geese ; a cow with her calf, poor things ; the calf is tied 
 to the head of the box so as to induce the cow to give her 
 milk, but not to the calf. Poor cow, so soft and sleepy-eyed, 
 in a small wooden box, such a different field to that which is 
 her due. Old Mair would declare that he never saw " sich 
 a byre" in all his life. We have also a horse, several dogs, 
 and a monkey. Our passengers number about 150 first- 
 class and 30 second. There are amongst them Lady Napier 
 of Magdala, Colonel Mostyn of the 23rd Fusiliers, Captain 
 Curzon and several civilians, some of whom are known to 
 Monier. A good many we shall drop at Gibraltar, and 
 then the crowd will be diminished. At present we have two 
 breakfasts, one at 8.30, the other at 9 ; and two dinners, one 
 at 5, the other at 6. To attend to these, there is a capital 
 caboose and staff of cooks. Here again, the chief only is 
 English, the others natives, with twenty stewards and 
 waiters, a mixed lot of English, Portuguese, Maltese, &c. 
 The dinners are excellent — soup and fish, two entrees, two 
 joints, always curry, the condiments being ground daily for 
 it, sweets and dessert. All this is found by the company 
 for the passage-money — wines and liquors extra. There is 
 also the purser or head purveyor — an intelligent man —with 
 whom only, amongst the officers, I have had any talk. He 
 says that this is a fair average passage ; only twice in his 
 experience of fifty voyages has he had it smooth : once 
 he was caught in the P. k 0. SS. "Zambesi" in a gale 
 off Cape Finisterre — she went through it, but the " La 
 Plata" of the same size turned tail to run before the wind, 
 and a huge sea fell on her poop and literally crushed her 
 down to the bottom. Two other large steamers foundered 
 in the same gale. I can quite imagine it from the enormous 
 
( 5 ) 
 
 size and violence and velocity of the waves I have myself now 
 witnessed. I forgot, — we have also on hoard the Thakore 
 of Limrie, a chief of Kattywar, but he has not been seen 
 since he appeared on deck in gorgeous apparel at South- 
 ampton. 
 
 My fear now is that we shall arrive at Gibraltar about 
 midnight to-morrow, and so lose the sight of it, and, perhaps, 
 the opportunity of landing. You will know, however, from 
 receiving this that we have arrived, and that the most dis- 
 agreeable part of our voyage is over. 
 
 I have given you an egotistical story here, but it will be 
 acceptable to you. I do not change my affections with the 
 sky — they are still at home and as warm as ever. 
 
 Monday morning, I am yet able to add to my letter. The 
 i6th Oct. climate improves every day, and I am writing 
 
 in my usual place on deck under a brilliant sky, a warm sun, 
 and the (now) indigo sea sparkling beneath me. All the 
 rolling swell has ceased, and the ship is passing rapidly 
 through the water with scarcely any motion. Stanley 
 appeared in public life for the first time this morning at 
 breakfast, and I hope will now hold his own. For myself 
 I have forgotten the anguish of the Bay, and am in high 
 health, appetite and spirits. One needs an appetite for the 
 sake of the living on board. Our breakfast this morning 
 was haddock, rumpsteak and onions, sausages, savoury 
 omelette, curry, and various collaterals. At 1 we have 
 tiffin of various dishes, and at 5 dinner. How the cooks 
 manage it would puzzle even Pickett, good cook as she is — 
 tell her I remember her here off the coast of Portugal — but 
 certain it is that these meals, two breakfasts and two dinners, 
 mind, are served up each day to 150 people hot and well 
 dressed from a kitchen not so large as ours in Green Street. 
 We sighted land for the first time yesterday afternoon 
 
( 6 ) 
 
 about 5. It was the high land at the entrance to the Tagus; 
 then night closed on us, and this morning we awoke to a 
 brilliant sunrise lighting up the splendid cliff's of Cape 
 St. Vincent. It was a glorious sight. We ran close to these 
 grand perpendicular walls of rock, of a rich burnt sienna 
 colour, crowned with lighthouses at intervals, and all radiant 
 in the morning sun. Now we are running straight for 
 Gibraltar, which I fear will be reached after dark to-night, 
 and so we shall be cramped for time to land and see what 
 we ought to see there. But the sight of the Rock from the 
 ship will almost suffice for me. We must all come out to 
 Gibraltar for the winter if we can manage it. You shall 
 hear from me again. from Malta. 
 
( 7 ) 
 
 SS. ' r JSrEPAUL," Mediterranean, 
 
 Wednesday, 18th October, 1876. 
 
 This, ray second letter to you, is commenced whilst we 
 are running before a prosperous wind, but with a sea and 
 sky as murky as any our English coast can boast, and it is 
 raining heavily, varied by thunder and lightning. Not 
 Mediterranean weather certainly, and very different to what 
 Monier experienced last October. The temperature is cool 
 as a consequence ; according to Adelaide's thermometer, now 
 hanging up in our cabin, 60°. But let me hasten to Gibraltar. 
 We arrived there at 2 o'clock yesterday morning, of course 
 quite dark. I could not rest in bed, and so soon as the 
 screw stopped I slipped on an overcoat over my nightgown 
 and ran up the steps of the forehatch to see what I could see. 
 Nothing definite, only the dim outline of Algesiras Bay and 
 of the Rock and the lights of the town reflected in the water; 
 all pretty, but it might have been Wapping or Dover, so I 
 turned into bed again and remained there till dawn. At 6 
 I dressed and went on deck again and saw more clearly the 
 outline of the celebrated Rock rising abruptly at the back 
 of the town (not the best point of view of the Rock) and of 
 Ape's Hill, corresponding with the rock on the other side 
 of the Straits, the two being the two pillars of Hercules. 
 Whilst endeavouring to make out the landscape I observed a 
 Levanter, or one of the sharp Mediterranean squalls, coming 
 on, and in a moment the gust came down and the bay was 
 broken up into foam. Colonel Mostyn told me that they 
 had had no rain at Gibraltar for eight or nine months, and 
 that it was expected and anxiously. October was the month 
 for it. So here it came as we came, and a great bore for us. 
 
( 8 ) 
 
 However the squall ceased, and directly afterwards I heard 
 a gentleman on board inquiring for us, and it proved to be a 
 clerk from Mr. Cuby, a resident merchant in Gibraltar, to 
 whom Frank Hallett had written to announce us. He had 
 got a boat alongside, which he and our three selves got into, 
 and we landed at the pier, where Mr. Cuby himself met us. 
 He had a carriage and guide waiting for us on the pier, so 
 no time was lost, and never was time more valuable, for we 
 landed at 6.30, and the " Nepaul" was to start for Malta at 9. 
 We drove through the streets of the narrow town, occupying 
 a narrow flat slip of land at the base of the Rock, up to the 
 entrance to the gallery commanding the Spanish frontier. 
 Along this gallery we were conducted by an artilleryman, 
 and from two successive platforms on to which the gallery 
 debouched we had a glorious view over the neutral ground 
 or neck of land which makes the Rock a peninsula bounded 
 by the Bay of Algesiras on one side and the Mediterranean 
 on the other, with the Spanish mountains beyond. 
 
 We rejoined the carriage on the flat and drove to the 
 neutral ground, from which, looking back, we had a view of 
 the Rock, and then to the market place in the town, through 
 which we walked, and an exciting scene it was, as indeed, 
 though in a modified degree, was the whole of the town. 
 Spaniards pouring into the market on huge mules gaily 
 caparisoned; mules with flag-basket panniers full of produce, 
 some carrying casks of wine ; mules which had delivered 
 their burthen, tethered in long rows along the streets ; 
 Spaniards in the orthodox costume of their country, black 
 squat hats, gay sashes ; Moors got up in turbans, tunics and 
 slippers ; Jews and Rabbis in long robes and peculiar head 
 gear ; all mixed up with our own soldiery in various uniforms. 
 Then there were brilliant tomatoes, brinjalls, figs, grapes, 
 gourds and melons, and other produce in keeping. Flocks 
 of goats ready to be milked, horses, country carts, all jostling 
 
( 9 ) 
 
 each other, and forming an exciting scene for a man just 
 landed from Green Street, Grosvenor Square. I will not 
 dilate on the Rock itself — it is one of the wonders of the 
 world. In colour it was brown, for the long dry weather 
 had burnt it up. The foliage at the base, too, consisting of 
 fig trees with trunks as big as my body, date, palm, castor 
 oil tree, pepper tree, cactus, prickly pear, was dried up. 
 But in spring, as the face of the Rock is covered with tufts 
 of vegetation, the colours must be very varied and lovely. 
 Then we drove back through the town to the Alameida, or 
 pleasure garden, and finally at 9 to the pier, where we found 
 Mr. Cuby again, waiting to say farewell. He would not 
 hear of our paying. " All is paid for," he said, and then 
 we pulled back in the same boat to the " Nepaul." Just as 
 we re-embarked the rain commenced again, and we weighed 
 anchor in wind and rain, getting our last view of the Rock 
 as we rounded Europa Point, as Turner might have wished 
 to paint it, veiled in mist and mystery. The same weather 
 has followed us, and we caught but a cloudy outline of the 
 Sierra Nevada on the Spanish coast yesterday, and a similar 
 glimpse of the mountains on the African coast to-day. As 
 I write, it has been raining for four hours, and no sign of 
 ceasing as yet. There is a sea on, but not making much 
 impression on this large vessel. I think these two sights, 
 Cape St. Vincent as we saw it in the morning sun, and 
 Gibraltar, will remain with me to my dying day. What is 
 in store for me remains to be proved, but those two are 
 enough for the greediest traveller. At Gibraltar we parted 
 with Colonel Mostyn, Captain Curzon and Mr. Verner, the 
 former commanding the 23rd (Colonel Bunbury's old 
 regiment), the two latter in the Rifle Brigade. With- all 
 these we made friends. Verner is a capital artist, and 
 produced his book of caricatures, over which we had some 
 merriment. Colonel Mostyn is a son of the old lord of 
 
( io ) 
 
 our county, and we consequently had some subjects in 
 common. It is surprising how soon one gets to look on 
 a ship as one's home. I now know every turn and corner 
 of the " Nepaul," and find our cabin as comfortable as any 
 state room on terra firma ; more especially as our Gibraltar 
 friends leaving us has enabled the captain to give us separate 
 cabins. Noises which at Dolly would awaken the dead are 
 here almost necessary to sleep. The ship is worked by 
 steam, sails hoisted, anchors and heavy things moved by 
 means of a steam winch, not by manual labour. This thing 
 works often at night with a crash and clatter which at Dolly 
 would be audible at Llanelltyd. I seldom hear it. Then 
 we have the racket and singing of sailors, cackling of hens, 
 barking of dogs, scrubbing of decks, quarterly bells, bump- 
 ings and thumpings from causes unknown, but they are 
 as nothing. One noise we in the fore part of the ship 
 escape, and that is the grind and motion of the screw ; not 
 that that would be any grievance. On the other hand there 
 are many comforts, — the sea-bath in the morning. I slip 
 on my dressing-gown at six every morning and hurry to one 
 of the half-dozen marble baths in the ship, turn on a huge 
 brass cock, and out rushes a volume of sea-water fit to knock 
 you down, often sparkling with phosphorescence. There is 
 a black attendant on the baths, and one also on the w.c.'s, 
 which latter are admirably contrived and conducted. We 
 have plenty of clean towels and fresh water, soap, &c, &c, 
 and our bed-room steward is in and out constantly to clean 
 up and make tidy and to minister to our wants in every 
 way. Our pleasantest passengers are Colonel Chamier, one 
 of the Deputy Commissioners of Oude, Captain and Mrs. 
 Greig and his sister — he was formerly in the 92nd regiment, 
 but is now attached to the Forest Department in the North- 
 western Provinces, — Mr. Bernard, one of the Commissioners 
 of the Central Provinces, Mr. Willock (a son of old Sir 
 
( II ) 
 
 Henry), also in the Civil Service and high up, and two or 
 three pleasant young officers and civilians. 
 
 Thursday, Awoke ahout midnight by the hoarse sound of 
 
 19th Oct. t |j e f g_ norn , a noise which, as distinguished 
 from the others, struck on my nerves as the note of alarm, 
 and woke me up immediately. I looked out of the port-hole 
 and found the rain descending in torrents and the weather 
 dark and thick, engines slowed and occasionally stopping 
 altogether. A strange sensation is that of an unseen and 
 unintelligible danger in a dark night on the sea. This con- 
 tinued for an hour, but proceeded from nothing except the 
 caution of the captain. This morning the weather has taken 
 up, and we are running before a grand breeze, directly aft, 
 with all our square sails set, — the sea being much more of 
 the deep sapphire colour peculiar to the Mediterranean, the 
 big waves crested with white foam ; the dim outline of the 
 African coast visible, as were the lights of Algiers as we 
 passed that place about 7 o'clock yesterday evening, — ther- 
 mometer in our cabin 70°. The day is one to be remembered 
 from the extreme beauty of the sea and sky. No words can 
 describe the colour of the sea, crisped and frothed up by the 
 fresh breeze, so that the top of every sapphire wave had its 
 flash of emerald or chrysolite. We hope to make Malta by 
 midnight to-morrow, where this will be posted. 
 
 Friday, We have experienced every variety of Mediter- 
 
 20th Oct. ranean weather except a calm. This morning we 
 have a brisk breeze on our beam and are bowling along with 
 all sails set fore and aft; the sea is in considerable commotion, 
 sufficient to disable several of our passengers, — not myself, 
 fortunately. The pace of the ship is too good for us, for we 
 shall arrive at Malta about 7 o'clock this evening, coal in the 
 night, and be off early, I fear, on Saturday morning. The 
 
( 12 ) 
 
 captain advises us to go to the opera, built, if I remember 
 right, by Edward Barry, and that we must do, but I should 
 have preferred daylight and the streets of the town. This 
 morning at 8 we passed the Island of Pantalaria, the scene 
 of Shakespeare's Tempest — at least, there is no one to con- 
 tradict the assertion — a volcanic island rising from both sides 
 of the sea into a double cone, of a lovely violet colour as we 
 saw it. Our next land will be Malta. There is a young officer 
 on board, a Captain Maurice of the 101st Regiment, now 
 quartered at Malta. I have given him my card, and he has 
 promised to call when next in England. I hope, also, to 
 keep several others on board as friends hereafter. We saw 
 several small shoals of flying fish during our run yesterday 
 trying to escape from the ship; they spring out of the water 
 like silver swallows, skim along the surface for a considerable 
 distance, I should say 150 or 200 yards, and then splash 
 down again— not so large as I expected them to be, but 
 brighter and more silvery. Every one is pleased with the 
 ship, which is seaworthy and fast and clean, and sweet inside, 
 and the captain has our confidence, partly because he is not 
 too sociable or communicative. 
 
( 13 ) 
 
 SS. "Nepacl," 
 
 Saturday, 2\st October, 1876. 
 
 I like to write to you whilst scenes are fresh in my 
 memory, and for that reason I commence my letter within 
 three hours after leaving Malta, although there is no prospect 
 of my being able to post it until we reach Suez, and that will 
 not be for four or five days yet. You are always in my 
 thoughts, and the great resource of my sea-going life is to 
 hold converse with you in this way. We arrived at Malta 
 at 9 o'clock last night, after an unusually quick run from 
 Gibraltar, attended, however, with a good deal of sea at 
 times. Although we were off the mouth of the harbour at 
 9, we were more than an hour getting in. The night was 
 dark, the entrance small, and our vessel long, and the captain 
 missed his shot the first time, and we were nearly on the 
 rocks, but he backed astern full speed and we made a retreat 
 and gyration, and eventually steamed in and anchored in the 
 quarantine harbour. It was too late to land — some did — 
 but we thought it prudent to get some sleep and begin early 
 this morning. The captain had alarmed us by saying that 
 he intended to coal as fast as he could and be off by 6 o'clock 
 this morning. But I remonstrated with him against such 
 unnecessary haste and entreated him to give us tourists an 
 opportunity of seeing the place. Whether from courtesy or 
 from necessity the notice was issued at night that the ship 
 would not sail till 1 2 o'clock to-day. The captain is not to 
 be blamed for over-anxiety, for their mail contract obliges 
 them to be at Suez waiting there for the Brindisi mail, and 
 the transit through the Canal is always one of great uncer- 
 tainty, getting stuck oneself or following some other vessel 
 who has stuck immediately before you, and so they like to 
 
( 14 ) 
 
 take time by the forelock. We remained on board therefore, 
 and were amused at night by watching the crowd of shore 
 boats cluster round the ship, in shape like gondolas, with 
 high prows and sterns, each one carrying a lantern which lit 
 up the forms of the swarthy Maltese boatmen and caused all 
 sorts of pretty effects in the dark water. We were, moreover, 
 close to the land, and the scene at night was very striking. 
 We dressed at 6 this morning, and were disappointed to meet 
 with rain and heavy sky. The temperature was sultry in 
 the extreme, betokening storm. Nevertheless, we landed at 
 once, selected a guide from the swarms who pounced down 
 on us, and walked successively to the Church of St. John, 
 the only peculiar feature of which was the mosaic pavement 
 made of marbles of varied colours and precious stones, 
 recording the names, arms and military feats of the knights 
 of the Order. Then to the armoury, opera house, &c, after- 
 wards taking a carriage to the gardens of St. Antonio, four 
 miles off, which enabled us to see something of the country. 
 The whole island is a volcanic rock, with scarcely any vege- 
 tation — except in the gardens of St. Antonio there is not a 
 tree worthy of the name. The whole place is identical with 
 the photographs and drawings I have seen of Jerusalem or 
 Damascus — a dry, burnt-up tufa soil, walls of the same based 
 on the natural rock, the prevailing colour being yellow ; the 
 houses built of the same rock, yellow also, and all flat-roofed. 
 All round are the frowning fortifications which guard the 
 two harbours, and form a hard framework to a dry rectangular 
 burnt-up picture. The streets, however, when once inside 
 them, are picturesque. Except the two main streets, they 
 are orientally narrow and steep, with many picturesque 
 projections in the shape of balconies, oriel windows, &c. 
 The population is more Italian than Spanish, the vehicles, 
 both by sea and land, being decidedly Italian. We had 
 rain throughout our tour, but no storm, and after we had 
 
( 15 ) 
 
 done the place we were done ourselves in the attempt to 
 shop and buy a few mementoes of the visit. Lace, coral and 
 sponges seem to be the staple of the island, and the sellers of 
 them are Jews, the most exacting of their race. I went into 
 a shop and asked the price of some lace. " This veil," the 
 rascal replied, " is 30s. Observe the work (placing it against 
 some white paper) ; not like the rubbish the fellows sell on 
 board the steamboat, — finest Maltese work, observe the Maltese 
 cross," &c, &c. " Very good," I said, and then taking up 
 three collars and cuffs, and two lengths of lace for trimming, 
 and two other veils, I put them altogether with the original 
 veil and said, "now I'll give you 15s. for the lot." Such an 
 outcry proceeded from the rascal, but I stood to my guns. 
 My next move was to take up my hat and walk out of the 
 shop. He doubled round the counter in no time, and pulled 
 me back. £5, he said, was the cost price of the lot, but he 
 would take £4: 10s. "Nonsense," I said, "I'll give you 
 17s. 6d." It ended in my getting the whole for a pound; 
 and I believe he did me after all. This very same fellow 
 afterwards appeared on the deck of our ship, before we sailed, 
 with his pack of goods, and was hard at work, with a host 
 of his co-vendors, dealing with the passengers, all of them 
 invariably beginning with £8 or £10, and handing over the 
 article eventually for £1 or £1 : 10s. And after all the lace 
 has a suspicious Nottingham look about it. 
 
 We returned to our vessel by 12 o'clock, and here we are 
 on our way and out of sight of land, steaming to Port Said. 
 The temperature of Malta was that of a hothouse, and I was 
 running down with moisture. Thermometer in our cabin 
 on our return 80°. This accounts for the oleander in full 
 flower, orange trees in great profusion and full of fruit, 
 pepper tree, palm, prickly pear, &c, all of which are indige- 
 nous in the island. 
 
( 16 ) 
 
 Sunday. A dreadful sirocco has been blowing all last 
 night and all to-day; the heat at 80 e , and yet a cold wind. 
 Several passengers are laid up with it, added to which we 
 have had a cloudy sky and rolling sea. There has been bad 
 weather all about us, and the sea is up in consequence. We 
 had a decent service in the morning with a good choir, 
 previous to which the ship's crew mustered on deck, the 
 quartermasters and Lascars in file on one side, the firemen 
 and stokers on the other, the negroes turning out in long 
 snow-white gowns, headed by their chiefs, who wore gold- 
 braided jackets, so different from their work-day attire. 
 They looked so strange, the two long rows of blacks dressed 
 so picturesquely, the Lascars in blue with red turbans, the 
 negroes in white and scull caps of fancy cut and colours. 
 Did you observe how appropriate the Psalm of the day was 
 to my condition at this moment ? We cannot, however, 
 think of each other doing the same thing at the same time. 
 My London watch makes it 7 p.m., whereas our time here 
 is 8.30, an hour and a-half's difference. 
 
 Monday. Fickle Mediterranean! the sirocco has gone, the 
 sea has subsided, the temperature fallen, and we are rejoicing 
 in blue sky and a sea of ultramarine. The first really calm 
 sea we have had since we left England. The ladies have 
 put on their finery, the gentlemen clean shirts, and the deck 
 has assumed the aspect of Kensington Gardens on a summer 
 afternoon. Thermometer at 2 p.m. in our cabin 76°. To-day 
 you are at Wokingham. How different our relative sur- 
 roundings ! Every stage brings more and more novelty to 
 me. On Wednesday we shall be in the Canal, and actually 
 in the East. Our foretaste of the East to-day has been the 
 rigging out of punkahs in the saloon — they are four in 
 number, all in a line along the whole length of the saloon, 
 and are pulled by four black boys stationed at regular 
 
( 17 ) 
 
 intervals at the side of the saloon, all four dressed alike, in 
 long: white shirts, red sashes and red turbans — the beau 
 ideal of the black boy I have always wished for as a little 
 slave of my own. We have also to-day put up the double 
 awning on deck, one above the other, leaving a space of 
 about a foot between the two. 
 
 Tuesday night. Another heavenly day, preceded by a dawn of 
 the most exquisite fantastic colours. Pen cannot describe 
 the colours. Sea smooth as glass, and a fresh balmy breeze 
 tempering all. The ship has to-day had the appearance of a 
 pleasure party out for the day on the Lake of Geneva. No 
 incident, however, to recount, and therefore I will give you 
 the day. Up at 6.30 and donned my dressing-gown and 
 slippers, and, sponge and towels in hand, hastened to one 
 of the marble baths in the ship. I say hastened, because the 
 baths are the prize of a competitive scramble, and it is first 
 come first served. Before I left the cabin, however, I stuck 
 my head out of the port-hole and there was enchanted for 
 a few moments by the dawn I have referred to. Hurrah, 
 found a bath vacant, got into it in a twinkling, and turned 
 on the great brass cock right on to my back, sponged and 
 rolled about, the strong briny water making my eyes smart 
 again. Towelled myself and had a fresh-water rinse in a 
 tub, always placed in the bath-room on purpose. Back into 
 my cabin, and dressed and up on deck and chatted with 
 Colonel Chamier for an hour before breakfast, to which I 
 descended at 8.30 — a hot breakfast, with menu of a series 
 of dishes, and always ending with curry. Then on deck 
 reclining in my own easy chair, with my sketching materials 
 about me jotting down any figure which might attract my 
 notice, the double awning sheltering me from a glorious sun, 
 the sea glassy and lovely in colour, and breeze fresh and soft. 
 Lunch at one. Then on deck again, and again in my easy 
 
 c 
 
( 18 ) 
 
 chair, chatting and reading till five ; when dinner, several 
 courses of well-cooked food, being served up, the punkahs 
 going all the time. By the time dinner was ended the moon 
 had risen, and I have been walking the deck with the moon 
 on the sea till now, 8 p.m., when I have again dived down 
 into the saloon, punkahs still going, poor little black boys, to 
 write this to you. We are fifty miles from Port Said, which 
 we hope to reach by midnight, and to enter the Canal at 
 break of day to-morrow. 1 shall be up by sunrise to-morrow 
 morning to witness our entrance into the Canal, and shall be 
 on deck all day to watch our progress through it ; therefore 
 my description of the Canal must be kept for my Aden 
 letter. 
 
 Wednesday, Actually in the East at last. We made Port 
 25th Oct Said a t 6.30 this morning, and entered the Canal 
 soon afterwards. What a new world it is! Men, costume, 
 houses, country, climate, all eastern as if by the touch of a 
 wand. We are now slowly passing through the Canal, the 
 banks enlivened by camels now and then, and groups of 
 Egyptians engaged in facing or otherwise repairing the 
 Canal. Dense masses of flamingoes and pelicans crowd the 
 lagoons on either side, and animal life shows itself also in the 
 house flies, which have begun to torment us as they did 
 Pharaoh of old. We arrive at Suez to-morrow about noon — 
 if we don't stick in the Canal. 
 
 Thursday, j ugt arr ived at Suez. But we are told that we 
 
 26th Oct., 
 
 i o'clock, must post our letters at once, without waiting to 
 acknowledge our home letters. I am sorry for this, but will 
 write, of course, from Aden. 
 

 00 
 
 r-i 
 P-, 
 
( m ) 
 
 SS. "Nepaul," Gulf of Suez, 
 
 Friday, 27 th October, 1876. 
 
 How refreshing were your letters received at 2 o'clock 
 this afternoon, just before we cast off our moorings at Suez 
 and started for Aden ! I ran over the bundles of letters 
 brought on board by the P. & 0. agent for our passengers, 
 seized Ro's first ; the agent said, " That's all for you, sir;" " I 
 swear there's another," I replied, " I know it, I'll swear it." 
 At last, in another bundle, I found yours, and took both up 
 with me on deck to devour at leisure. It did seem so strange, 
 looking down from the deck on the quay, which was alive 
 with Egyptians, Arabs, Nubians, negroes, in every variety of 
 turban and costume, with the burning range of arid moun- 
 tains bounding the plain of Suez immediately facing me, the 
 ship taking in the mails, bullion, cargo, and I in my cane 
 chair in the corner of the deck, and yet as if by magic trans- 
 ported to Dolly, the neighbours, old Mair, the mare and 
 foal, Craven Cottage, the new cob, &c. However, the result 
 on my mind* was that of inexpressible relief and comfort, and 
 I placed the letters in my pocket and walked the deck a new 
 man, why I cannot explain, but so much has occurred to me 
 since we parted that I could not help fancying you had 
 much and of a varied kind to communicate also. Now, I 
 am satisfied till we reach Bombay, when we shall get more 
 letters. We arrived at Suez (as I told you in a hurried post- 
 script to the letter which I posted to you yesterday) at 
 1 o'clock yesterday. The vessel was moored alongside the 
 quay, and after lunch I prevailed on Monier to give up the 
 transit to Suez, three miles off, by boat, and take donkeys 
 instead. These animals and their Arab or Nubian owners 
 are clustered a short distance from the ship, and, as soon as a 
 
 c2 
 
( 20 ) 
 
 likely customer is seen approaching, each owner with his par- 
 ticular donkey rushes at him, circles round him, shouts at 
 him, " Good donkey, sare;" " This Dr. Kenealy, sare;" " This 
 Dr. Gully, sare;" " Me show you everyting, sare;" and so on. 
 We three got separated in the scrimmage. I can generally 
 take care of myself, selected my animal with a practised eye, 
 shoved off the crowd, mounted my animal at once, and 
 nourished my white-covered umbrella in triumph. Monier 
 was not so fortunate, and when we met at Suez he told me 
 he had been tied to a wrong donkey with a strap, from which 
 the owners of five other donkeys, all of whom claimed him, 
 struggled in vain to release him. The strap fellow had got 
 Monier as tight as a whistle, and there he and the donkey, 
 both tied together, were revolving on a double axis, the five 
 other donkeys and their owners revolving round him again 
 like a kind of solar system, all shouting and struggling as if 
 just released from Bedlam. How Monier eventually dis- 
 engaged himself from the strap and the wrong donkey he 
 himself does not know, but I waited for him at Suez till he 
 came up all red hot and dishevelled, his helmet awry and his 
 ever-present plaid dragging behind him. He inquired why 
 Stanley did not come to the rescue, but Stanley had his 
 conflict also; and, not versed in equitation, he had as much as 
 he could do to get on, and afterwards to hold on by the large 
 round smooth pummel which is common to all Suez saddles, 
 and then his donkey being evidently some relation of mine 
 came after me at a hand canter, quite irrespective of the 
 wishes and dutiful notions of his rider. The scene presented 
 to me a very comic phase, as gravely narrated to me by the 
 learned professor. Well, but Suez is a sight when you enter 
 it: the narrow irregular streets called the bazaar, the open 
 dens called shops, in which, or on the goods themselves, are 
 seated the sellers, cross-legged or reclining, the mattings and 
 awnings overhead, the varied crowd of Bedouin Arabs, 
 
( 21 ) 
 
 Nubians, Moors, negroes, Egyptians, blind beggars, women 
 with covered faces, water carriers, donkeys, singing strollers; 
 and such costumes, without exaggeration I may say every 
 one different, and every one a study for a painter. Then in 
 the open spaces of the town, cafes with sultans, grand viziers 
 and Othellos (apparently) reclining on rattan benches 
 smoking their hookahs, camels, goats and sheep of a very 
 different breed from our sheep, with their extraordinary 
 owners, wearing perhaps the identical clothing which Abraham 
 wore when he was in these parts, and which had never been 
 washed since. It was a wonderful introduction for me to 
 eastern life in its most characteristic, and, I should add, 
 dirtiest form; the dirt of the wretched streets and the smell 
 were simply overpowering, and, excited as I was by the 
 wonderful scene, I stuck my handkerchief to my nose after a 
 couple of hours of gazing and lionizing, and was forced to 
 exclaim, " I have had enough of this, let us seek our donkeys 
 and return to the ship;" and we did so accordingly, the 
 return being comparatively harmonious, our dear little 
 donkeys ambling and cantering along, neck and neck, 
 charmingly, the Arab boys running behind. On looking 
 back, a dangerous experiment, as the stirrups are on a loose 
 strap merely thrown over the back of the animal, and if you 
 lean on one stirrup down it goes and up goes the other, — I say 
 on looking back it was amusing to see these three black imps 
 with long blue gowns and red fezzes tearing after us, each 
 holding our white-covered umbrellas over his head and 
 making the most of his opportunities — we had given them 
 our umbrellas to carry. The Brindisi mail did not arrive 
 till 12.30 to-day, and brought with it, unfortunately, an 
 accession of forty-nine passengers, so that we now have an 
 overcrowded ship. 
 
( »» ) 
 
 Saturday, We are out °f ^ e Gulf of Suez and are fairly in 
 28th Oct. tn e Red Sea, the rugged outline of the hot and 
 sterile range of mountains on the west coast being distinctly 
 visible. We passed the Sinaitic range on the other side 
 during the night. The sea is ultramarine blue again, but 
 the temperature decidedly warm, 85° last night when I went 
 to bed in our cabin, and 81° this morning at 6 when I went 
 to the bath, the water of the bath quite tepid in consequence. 
 I am quite well, however, and enjoying the voyage. Monier 
 is engaged writing a short account of the Suez Canal to send 
 to the " Times." There is much to say about it. It is 
 certainly a noble monument to the skill and indomitable 
 energy of one man, viz., Lesseps, and the world has become 
 awakened to it at last. In itself, it is merely a Canal 120 
 feet wide, except where it debouches at intervals into the two 
 Bitter Lakes, one of which is of great extent, and both have 
 been converted, by the letting in of the two seas, from 
 swampy marshes into large expanses of water, so large as from 
 the natural operations of evaporation and condensation to 
 cause clouds, and influence the atmosphere of the locality. 
 The Canal will need a deal of work to protect the banks and 
 keep it open. The wash of the steamers (we know what the 
 wash of a penny boat is on the Thames) is simply destruction 
 to the sandy banks, which must be pitched in with solid 
 masonry along its whole length. Groups of Egyptians and 
 Nubians are already employed at intervals on the banks 
 repairing after a fashion, and these form picturesque groups 
 as seen from the deck of the ship — the desert also beyond, 
 with herds of loose camels browsing on the scrub, or an 
 occasional heavily-laden camel with its owner passing along, 
 form objects of appropriate interest. All very well for the 
 tourist, but as a permanent means of transit, reconstruction 
 is inevitable, and the sooner we English take it into our own 
 hands and clap our own navvies on it the better. The length 
 
( 23 ) 
 
 of the Canal is 100 miles, and we were about 17 hours 
 going through it, not counting our stoppage for the night. 
 The quay at Suez, docks, and causeway, thence to the town, 
 are great works, and appear to have been well and solidly done. 
 At Suez yesterday, I received a kind letter from L. Fletcher, 
 inviting me to stay with him at Bombay, but I shall decline, 
 as it is necessary we three should keep together, our future 
 plans being quite in the clouds, and dependent on what we 
 can learn about Kattywar, and the means of transit thence, 
 through Rajpootana to Ajmeer, on our arrival at Bombay. 
 Amongst the Brindisi passengers, I have made friends acci- 
 dentally with Mr. Molesworth, the Consulting Engineer to 
 Government for the Indian Railways, and who succeeded 
 Major Skinner as Director of Public Works at Ceylon. 
 Skinner's name acted like a talisman, and we were friends in 
 a moment. There are a good many pleasant men on board, 
 but too great a crowd. What horrid photographs those per- 
 petrated at Dolly! Still it is something here, on the Red 
 Sea, to look on them, unflattering as they are. I prefer 
 home and domestic news to European politics. Russia and 
 Turkey are all very well in their way when I am seated by 
 the fireside in Green Street, but when I am 4,000 miles 
 from home, give me home news to think about. Never- 
 theless, it would be awkward if, on our return voyage, we 
 were captured by a Russian frigate and sent off to Siberia. 
 This has been a Red Sea day — the temperature 85° in the 
 port or cool cabins — much hotter on the starboard side — a 
 lovely after-glow at sunset with a brilliant moon, nearly at 
 the full, and a magnificent canopy of stars overhead. Sea 
 smooth. The tide of life on board the ship is at its busiest. 
 I pity the stewards. They are up at 5 in the morning 
 scrubbing the lower decks and avenues to the cabins, clean- 
 ing boots and shoes, and preparing tea for the sleepers. At 
 8.30 they are dressed in blue jackets and white trousers, to 
 
( 24 ) 
 
 wait on the first breakfast — thirty sit down to it. At 9, the 
 second breakfast, fifty more sit down to that; then busy 
 cleaning all the breakfast plate. At 1, a sitting-down lunch 
 for 140, with frequent removes of plates and knives and 
 forks. Cleaning again. At 5, the first dinner, at which 
 they all wait, and again at the second dinner, at 6.15; 
 everything being fresh laid, clean table-cloths, &c, for the 
 second dinner. From 8 to 10 tea, lemonade, drinks of all 
 kinds, are going on in the saloon. Besides all this, the beds 
 have to be made, rooms cleaned, and slops emptied, all 
 through the day, and they never finish till 11 at night. 
 Next I pity the poor black punkah boys — five of these are 
 now daily in the saloon, pulling all day long— they look so 
 tired, occasionally squatting down on the floor, and still 
 pulling. But if these are hardworked, think of the firemen 
 and Sidi boys amidst the pandemonium of the furnaces, 35 
 feet below decks, where no air can reach them. They are, I 
 suppose, to the manner born, otherwise they could not live 
 in a heat which sometimes touches 150°. 
 
 Sunday, We nave entere d on the regular Red Sea phase 
 29th Oct. f our voyage. The piauo is on deck, and there is 
 music and singing throughout the day and till 10 at night. 
 Many of the passengers have their beds brought up and 
 sleep on deck. The fore part of the deck is impassable at 
 night from the numbers of Lascars and negroes sleeping 
 about and across in all directions. We had Divine service on 
 deck this morning (after the usual muster), the awning and 
 shrouds being gaily dressed with flags, and an Union Jack 
 thrown over the capstan, from which the captain read the 
 service— hymns, with piano accompaniment, a pretty and 
 impressive service, and, I am glad to say, heartily joined in 
 by all. To-night the moon is still more brilliant. I have 
 been leaning over the gunwale looking across the sea towards 
 
( 25 ) 
 
 Mecca, nearly opposite which we now are, watching the 
 silver wake of the ship and the shimmer of the moon on the 
 sea, everything reminding me that we are in the tropics, and 
 thinking of you and dear Nelly's fireside, and how snug and 
 comfortable you all are, although probably you would like a 
 portion of our 90° of heat. I have been in an incessant bath 
 for 36 hours from the heat exuding at every pore day and 
 night, but I am perfectly well and sleep well also, though 
 you could wring my night-shirt. We shall soon be out of 
 it, I hope. 
 
 Monday The neat nas been g reate r to-day than on any 
 30th Oct. previous day — 90° in the companion and 88° in our 
 cabin; but as we approach the Straits of Babel Mandib, the 
 wind has got up, blowing through the Straits as through a 
 funnel, and we contrive to collect the wind by rigging out a 
 towel from our port, keeping it tight by a soda water bottle 
 tied on to the lower corner, which thus acts as a windsail for 
 our particular benefit. We have been out of sight of land 
 for two days; nevertheless, we were visited by an owl yester- 
 day and by a couple of swallows to-day. The sea was here 
 and there covered with flights of locusts to-day, driven out 
 from land, and of course perishing in the sea. Monier has 
 written a capital account of the Suez Canal for the "Times." 
 If it appears, mind and keep the cutting for me. 
 
 Tuesday ^ nea d wind against us, but still as hot as ever. 
 
 3ist Oct. w e have passed two separate groups of islands in 
 our run to-day — volcanic and sterile — so sterile and so remote 
 as to make them impracticable for a lighthouse. The naviga- 
 tion of the Red Sea at this point is consequently dangerous ; 
 the ports on the starboard side of the ship have been closed 
 owing to a tossing sea, and the unlucky passengers on that 
 side — ladies as well as gentlemen — have consequently been 
 
( 26 ) 
 
 obliged to sleep on deck. We expect to be in the Straits 
 of Babel Mandib by daybreak to-morrow. This letter must 
 then be posted in anticipation of the despatch at Aden. Our 
 final stage, six days' run from Aden, will then be Bombay. 
 
 Wednesday, We passed through the Straits of Babel Mandib 
 1st Not. at 5 o'clock this morning. Captain Methven (with 
 whom I have made friends) considerately sent down to our 
 cabin to tell us. I put on my overcoat and hastened on deck 
 at 4.30. The moon on one side and Venus on the other were 
 lighting up the heavens ; Orion brilliant over head ; the 
 Southern Cross over the starboard bow of the ship, on our 
 left was the high land of Arabia, which gives rise to the name 
 " The Gate;" close on our right was the Island of Perim, of 
 which we have taken possession, and on which was a brilliant 
 revolving light, the channel being only two miles across; 
 our ship, looming grand in this mysterious scene, was holding 
 her own confidently in mid-channel, her spars lit up by the 
 heavenly bodies above us. And so we passed through Babel 
 Mandib, or " The Gate of Sighs." I remained on deck till 
 sunrise, and we are now in the Indian Ocean steaming 
 towards Aden, where I post this letter. Tell Ro, Eugene, 
 Harry, and the girls, that they are ever in my thoughts, even 
 in the wonderful scenes which I never thought I should have 
 the good fortune to witness. 
 
( 27 ) 
 
 SS. "Nepaul," Indian Ocean, 
 
 Thursday, 2nd November, 1876. 
 
 True to my custom I begin this letter immediately after 
 despatching the last, posted at Aden yesterday, although no 
 mail leaves Bombay, I am told, for a week after our arrival, 
 and that cannot be till Tuesday, the 7th, at the earliest. 
 Never mind, I have something to say about Aden, and the 
 sooner I say it the better. We arrived at that place — place 
 is not the word for it — at that huge cinder yesterday after- 
 noon, and anchored in the bay. Captain Methven did not 
 intend to coal there, but the post office required six hours to 
 arrange about letters, and there was cargo to take in and 
 to discharge. You remember Vesuvius ? Well, Aden is a 
 conglomeration of the cones of Vesuvius, the tops all charred 
 and jagged, with deep rugged fissures scored all down the 
 face, from which the gradual crumbling of the burnt-up rock 
 has caused slopes of debris, leaving on the side next the sea 
 but very little flat ground available for man. On this flat, 
 but still raised from the level of the sea, are seen the bunga- 
 lows and houses of the residents, the jetties beyond, and again 
 more houses dotted round the bay, which sweeps round inland 
 and forms the isthmus connecting the rock with the main 
 land. Directly the ship was anchored it was surrounded by 
 a dozen or more Somali boys, each in his canoe, hollowed out 
 of a tree, wielding a single paddle, all nearly naked, their 
 beautiful skins and forms shining like polished ebony ; their 
 weak point in the way of personal ornament being their heads, 
 for whilst some were closely shaved and some were plastered 
 over with a thick kind of yellow pomatum, others had their 
 woolly hair frizzled and screwed up in long tight corkscrew- 
 curls standing upright all round the head, the hair of some 
 
( 28 ) 
 
 of them being dyed yellow. It was our first introduction to 
 savage life as distinguished from Eastern life. These urchins 
 are absolutely at home on and in the water. The moment a 
 bit of coin was thrown out into the sea from the ship, in they 
 all splashed in a moment, and all we saw was a cluster of feet 
 as they disappeared head-foremost beneath the surface in a 
 diving race for the money. The canoes were left to drift 
 about in one direction, half-full of water, the paddles in 
 another. By-and-by up they all came bobbing about like 
 corks, the successful imp with the money in his mouth, and 
 then they all made after their canoes and paddles, getting 
 into the canoes, though not more than a foot wide, with the 
 greatest dexterity, and then baling out the water with their 
 hands, and coming back to the ship for another plunge of the 
 same kind. We landed at 3 in a boat rowed by five of the 
 same race (Somalis) — a handsome kind of negro, but a savage 
 all over, and engaged a queer sort of conveyance — a cross 
 between an American four-wheeler and a phaeton of the time 
 of Queen Elizabeth, drawn by a chestnut Arab pony, to take 
 us to the tanks, about five miles off, for three rupees. The 
 road ran along the bay for half the distance, then zigzagged 
 through a gorge of the rock, descending on the other side 
 into a plain in which is the military cantonment, and beyond 
 again, at the foot of the precipitous wall of cinder, which 
 bounds the cantonment on the other side, are built the tanks, 
 one above the other, intended to collect the precious rain 
 which is said to descend on Aden once only in three years. 
 I can believe it, for the tanks were as dry as they could be — 
 not a drop did they contain. The drive gave us a capital 
 idea of the place, and of the population. Troops of camels 
 were coming and going, laden with all sorts of burthens, a few 
 evidently used as hacks, ambling along at the rate of about 
 six miles an hour with riders, and some were returning empty 
 ridden by naked boys seated on high pummels, their feet 
 
( 29 ) 
 
 resting on the neck of the animal. Then there were bullock- 
 carts drawn by the Indian humped bullock, horses and mules, 
 droves of African sheep, white with black heads and large 
 fat excrescences where their tails should be, mixed up with 
 the most extraordinary medley of human races— Parsees, 
 Fakirs, negroes of every tribe, Hindoos, Arabs, women of all 
 races, some veiled, some not, a few of both sexes dressed in 
 the most brilliant colours; but the savage type prevailed, and 
 the larger proportion of men were nearly naked, and distin- 
 guished only from each other by rude ornaments, or by the 
 fantastic arrangement of the hair. These passed us in swarms, 
 throngs, and, to account for the numbers, there were all along 
 the road and in the cantonments whole villages of native 
 houses and huts where I suppose these naked savages live 
 like rabbits. It was an extraordinary sight, both the place 
 and the people. There can surely be nothing else like it 
 under the sun. It did not appear to me that the place 
 was strongly fortified, nor that there were more troops 
 than sufficient to keep such a demoniacal population in order. 
 Indeed, I did not see a single European officer or soldier 
 during our drive. The Parsees have settled at Aden, and 
 form the mercantile portion of the very limited respectable 
 community of the place. We pulled back to the ship at 6, 
 much awe-struck by the sombre yet grand aspect of this 
 gigantic cinder as the setting sun fell upon it. Our crew was 
 again all negroes, steered by a little ebony woolly-headed 
 imp, quite blue from excessive blackness, not nearly so big as 
 little Ebby. As I looked at him seated cross-legged on the 
 edge of the plank which formed the stern of the boat, with 
 the tiller in his hand, as grave and impassive as a judge, I 
 said to myself, " How I should like to take you home with 
 me, you dear little demon," — and I gave him a threepenny 
 piece for little Ebby's sake. On our return to the ship we 
 found her discharging bales of Manchester piece-goods and 
 
( 30 ) 
 
 taking in bags of gum and elephants' tusks— a good illustration 
 of the change we have ourselves gone through of late. She had 
 taken on board also several native families— Mussulmans and 
 Hindoo, with their extraordinary goods and chattels: their 
 matting, rattan boxes, water-pots, and cooking utensils, 
 gourds, their messes of food — these people I saw grouped 
 on the sheep-pens on deck this morning, the two races being 
 of course separated as carefully as the chief officer could 
 separate them in such a confined space. We also had taken 
 on board three Brahminy cows and several of the African 
 sheep I saw in our drive, and a good supply of plantains, 
 larger and riper than those we get in London. All the ship's 
 dirty linen was left at Aden, and a complete and fresh supply 
 was shipped to serve us to Bombay. The ship is now a little 
 world of itself — English, Scotch, Irish, Portuguese, Maltese, 
 Germans (we have five or six Germans on board going to buy 
 indigo in Bengal), Africans, Indians, Chinese and Arabs. All 
 these living, cooking, eating, sleeping, praying according to 
 their several habits, creeds, and prejudices. Amongst the 
 saloon passengers, too, every class is represented, except the 
 church — we have no clergyman on board. With that excep- 
 tion we are fit to found a colony anywhere just as we are. 
 But I shall not be sorry to be on terra firma again, with more 
 elbow room. 
 
 Friday evening, The sea tne whole of this day has been like 
 3rd Not. glass. It is strange to look on a vast expanse of 
 sea meeting the horizon all round, with a surface like quick- 
 silver. The sun went down in rosy splendour, and after a 
 few minutes of twilight the moon showed herself on the 
 opposite side, rising majestically out of this glassy sea almost 
 as large and as bright as the sun. A broad, flashing bar of 
 silver across the sea connected her with the ship. The eye 
 could scarcely rest on her, she was so large and brilliant. 
 
•o 
 
 «5 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 : 
 
 ■ ^ 
 
 J 
 
 - i 
 
 - 5 
 
( 31 ) 
 
 The moon and Venus, of all the heavenly bodies in these 
 tropical skies, are exceptionally large and beautiful. The 
 other luminaries do not do themselves the same justice, and 
 I was certainly disappointed with the Southern Cross. It 
 continues hot— thermometer below, in saloon, 80°, but the 
 temperature is fresher than in the Red Sea. It is dolce far 
 niente with a vengeance on deck such a day as this. Too 
 many people about, and frequently the piano going, to settle 
 down to read. Plenty of whist parties on deck and in the 
 saloon. Eugene would be in his glory. I lounge, gossip 
 sketch, read, then stroll to the fore part of the ship, look at 
 the native families huddled together on the sheep-pens 
 scratch the nose of the poor old horse, bestow the same 
 sympathy on the unfortunate cow, whose calf, poor little 
 thing, has been converted into veal long ago, then caress the 
 mild, kindly African sheep, which we took in at Aden, and 
 these affectionate creatures poke their glossy black heads and 
 lop ears out of the bars of their pens, asking to be fondled 
 It is a shame to kill them. Look in on the well-arranged 
 mail cabin, where two intelligent deputies of the Post Office 
 aided by two natives, are busy from morning to night' 
 surrounded by large, open-mouthed bags, sorting the letters 
 lor all parts of India, Burmah, China, &c. These men have 
 as much as they can do to get their task done during the run 
 between Suez and Bombay. I have also been down into the 
 engine-room and furnaces, down to the very bottom, under 
 the wing of the chief engineer. Fancy, when the thermo- 
 meter under the breezy awning on deck is 80°, what the heat 
 must be in the iron avenue below, between eight boilers 
 each boiler heated by three furnaces I I can tell old Ro 
 that he is far better off as a lawyer than he would be as a 
 Mai boy. There are worse professions ashore and afloat than 
 that of a lawyer, he may be sure. He may even congratu- 
 late himself that he is not my friend on board, the indigo 
 
( 32 ) 
 
 planter of Tirhoot, who has lost, and may lose again, 
 £8,000 or £10,000 in one year by the failure of the crop 
 from drought; or my other friend, the jute merchant, who 
 has a hot time of it, running about the provinces, buying the 
 stuff of country growers and seeing it packed and carried in 
 bullock carts to the different railways, and who is longing for 
 war, that he may at last look for some profit from the sweat 
 of his brow ; or my third friend, the captain of cavalry, 
 whose regiment is stationed in Upper Scinde, at Jacobabad, 
 a sandy desert for 100 miles round, retaining a temperature 
 night and day for eight months of from 90° to 100°, the roads 
 being all laid with flags and rushes, the better to carry the 
 traffic, and whose wife told me that every night, when at the 
 station, she soaked her night-shirt as well as her bed in 
 water, in order to find relief from the burning heat at night ; 
 or other men on board, in the Service, who are carrying 
 nurses and squalling children back with them to India, to 
 save the expense of putting them out with friends or gover- 
 nesses in England. Knocking about in this way, one sees 
 how hard it is for men who are not born to riches to earn an 
 honest livelihood, even if the fact were less patent at home 
 than it is. There is one man on board, who sits next to me 
 at meals, and whose occupation a youngster might well envy. 
 He is Captain Greig, formerly in the 92nd Highlanders, 
 and now one of the Conservators of Forests for the North 
 Western Provinces. He spends the largest part of each year 
 in tents, moving about through and by the side of the forests 
 which extend at the base of and parallel with the Himalayas, 
 directing the cutting and planting of trees and the manage- 
 ment of the forests. This is another name, in fact, for per- 
 petual sport. His entire camp equipage is found for him, 
 including two elephants, on which animal alone he is able to 
 penetrate the dense jungle through which he has sometimes 
 to pass. He said to me yesterday, " Why can't you leave 
 
( 33 ) 
 
 your brother for a fortnight, and come and pay me a visit ? 
 You will see life with me, and sport such as very few men 
 who have been in India all their lives have seen. I'll send 
 the elephants down to meet you at" (naming the place), " if 
 you will only write to me a few days beforehand and fix the 
 day." But of course this is impossible. I have been very 
 fortunate in having him for my neighbour at table. 
 
 Monday, We nave ' iac ^ a charming run across the Indian 
 6th Nov. Ocean. For two days the sea has been as smooth 
 as glass, with lovely nights. The thermometer keeps at 80° 
 in our cabin, but the heat is not oppressive now. To-day 
 we have a fresh breeze, which just crisps the surface of the 
 sea. The ship is going twelve knots an hour, and the expec- 
 tation is that we shall arrive in Bombay to-morrow evening, 
 being twenty-four hours before the contract time. We shall 
 have been afloat four weeks all but two days— quite long 
 enough. I am getting tired of the four notes of the engine, 
 one, two, three, four — one, two, three, four, all day and all 
 night ; also of the ship smells ; also of the cooking, although 
 that art is carried on under the most remarkable difficulties, 
 and due allowances should be made ; also of our confined 
 accommodation at night, and the discomfort of making your 
 box your wardrobe, and dragging and digging and diving 
 into it for all changes of clothing, with the heat at 80° at the 
 least ; also of the monotony of the last six days, for we have 
 not seen land or a ship of any kind since we left Aden ; also 
 (though this involves a sort of contradiction) of the crowd of 
 passengers on deck and at meals. So, all things considered, 
 and not desiring to undervalue the ship, and much enjoy- 
 ment connected with it, I shall not be sorry to find myself 
 in Bombay. I shall close this letter on board ship, intending 
 in my next to give you all the particulars of our landing. 
 We shall not, I fear, hear from home for a week after our 
 
 D 
 
( 34 ) 
 
 landing. What an age it seems ! and how absolutely impos- 
 sible it is for me to suppose that you may be at this moment 
 freezing or groping your way about London in a November 
 fog ! Distance makes one think more of home. 
 
 Tuesday, \y e are now w jthin 30 miles of Bombay, and 
 
 7th Noy. J 
 
 7 p.m. expect to get in by 10 o'clock to-night. We have 
 had a quick and favourable passage all through. Thank God 
 for His care of us. All the passengers are busy packing up 
 and are in high spirits at the prospect of the journey's end. 
 I close this letter, which cannot, however, go for a week, as 
 we have just passed the homeward-bound P. & 0. steamer. 
 
( 35 ) 
 
 Bombay, Friday Afternoon, 
 
 10th November, 1876. 
 
 You will receive, or ought to receive, two letters from 
 me by this post — one posted from on board ship and this one 
 written three days later. We leave Bombay to-night for 
 Fred. Sheppard's camp at Mehmadabad, and I am anxious 
 to send this off to-day in the possible event of my not being 
 able to post a letter from the camp in time for Monday's 
 mail. We anchored off the Apollo Bunder on Tuesday 
 night about 10, and so brought our voyage to a happy end. 
 It was too late to land that night, but we had the usual 
 amount of amusement looking over the side of the ship at the 
 shore — boats coming and going, and the excitement of an un- 
 known land twinkling with lights at no great distance from 
 the ship. To bed we went that night on board but not to 
 sleep. The steam winch just over our heads was at work all 
 night ; and the noises to which I had been accustomed, now 
 in an exaggerated form, coupled with the excitement of 
 having arrived at our destination, kept me awake all night. 
 At 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning I was upon deck just as 
 the " Nepaul " weighed anchor to steam up the harbour to 
 Mazagong, 3 miles higher up. The sun was rising over the 
 Ghauts, and the often-described features of the harbour were 
 presented to my view in their full beauty. Captain Methven 
 saw me in my hasty wraps in the bows of the ship gazing on 
 the lovely scene, and came down from the bridge of the ship 
 and dragged me back with him on to the bridge, where he 
 expatiated and steered and steered and expatiated alternately, 
 until we brought up at Mazagong and dropped our anchor 
 finally. I then dove down (as a Yankee would say) to our 
 cramped and stuffy cabin to give a final touch to my packing 
 
 d2 
 
( 36 ) 
 
 before landing. Whilst I was so engaged perspiring at every 
 pore, for there is no sudorific like packing when the heat is 
 at 85°, in walked Lancie Fletcher. This was about 7 a.m. 
 It was very good of Lancie to come and very useful he was. 
 He had brought a boat from shore and his own puttywallah 
 with him. The individual is his office messenger, dressed in 
 turban with a sash and brass plate. With the aid of this 
 man we got all our luggage on deck, and had it passed by 
 the custom-house officers and transferred into the boat, land- 
 ing at once and avoiding the general scrimmage of passengers 
 and baggage at the landing-stage. Lancie had his dog-cart 
 close at hand, into which he and I got; Monier and Stanley 
 took a carriage, and the puttywallah came on with the 
 luggage in a bullock ghari, and thus we arrived safely at 
 Pallonjee's Hotel, passing through streets affording the most 
 wonderful novelty. In fact, although I thought Aden 
 incapable of being surpassed, we have been going on in a 
 crescendo scale in the way of novelty and interest, and cer- 
 tainly Bombay is the climax of all. What would Mivart say 
 to Pallonjee ? Our bed-rooms opened on to the compound, 
 mine was a kind of loose box such as we have at Craven 
 Cottage for the horses, iron rails at the top of the partition 
 open to other iron rails at the tops of other bed-rooms ; and 
 although I had a few sporting engravings hung on the walls, 
 some birds had built in the rails in my room and were flying 
 in and out without any fear, whilst a couple of lizards were 
 sticking on to the walls as comfortably as if they were part 
 of the furniture. Outside was the bath-room ; Monier and 
 Stanley, who had a double-bedded room close to mine, 
 having their outside bath-room also, and visible to any one 
 passing in the compound were our ablutions in these annexes. 
 A fresh-water bath with soap was such a comfort after four 
 weeks of sticky sea water ! The scene after breakfast looking 
 out from the spacious verandah on the first floor of the hotel 
 
( 37 ) 
 
 over the paddy fields, the men and women going to and from 
 a piece of water under us, the primitive water-wheels, and all 
 other moving objects, baffles all description. And what can I 
 say about the native town through which we drove in the 
 afternoon? the variety of form and colour in the native 
 houses, every recess and verandah and roof being full of 
 effect, every shop containing figures and materials for the 
 artist, the extraordinary vehicles drawn by Brahminy oxen, 
 the buffaloes, the water carriers, oxen with water-skins, the 
 strange scenes at all the public fountains, the variety of 
 costumes, the turbans of every shape and colour, no words 
 can describe it. But what struck me most of all was the 
 nude form ; thousands of nearly naked men meet you at every 
 turn ; they are not athletes, but the native figure, with his 
 brilliant black or copper skin, the natural grace of his attitude, 
 as he is engaged in his trade or is waiting at the fountain 
 with his brass pot on his head or carried on his hip, or 
 carrying his basket of fruit or vegetables either on his head or 
 on a bamboo suspended across his shoulder, or walking easily 
 and briskly along, is a study enough to drive a sculptor wild. 
 The female is draped, but the habit of carrying a burthen on 
 her head has given the whole race an elegance of carriage of 
 which we in England can have no idea. Certainly the nude 
 male form has impressed me as much as anything I have 
 seen here in the way of perfect beauty. Yesterday Monier 
 had engagements with Sir Jamsetjee and others, consequently 
 Lancie called for me in his dog-cart at 6 a.m. and drove me 
 all round the island of Bombay, passing through the woods 
 of Mahim, composed entirely of the date palm, the palmyra 
 or brab, and cocoa-nut. Picture to yourself four or five miles 
 of the hothouse vegetation of Kew Gardens and you have the 
 Mahim Woods. Here and there a native garden with ferns, 
 fan palms, bigonias, poinsettias in profusion. The last- 
 named grow 8 or 10 feet high as a common garden plant and 
 
( 38 ) 
 
 are now in full flower. By 1 1 we were at his bungalow on 
 Malabar Hill, a very choice little place on an eminence, with 
 a nice peep of the sea and everything very complete. Here 
 I was introduced to Gertrude, who was waiting for us in the 
 verandah, and I passed the rest of the day with them. The 
 dinner was quite first rate, a Portuguese male cook cooking in 
 an outhouse over a charcoal fire, with a few copper pots and 
 pans just placed over the open fire. Nothing could be 
 better. In the evening I returned to Bombay, and this 
 morning I have been driving about the town, and amongst 
 other things buying my resai, a basket, some cartridges, 
 powder and shot, and preparing for our visit to Frederick 
 Sheppard. We have also engaged two servants, one, Canjee 
 Rama, at thirty rupees a month, the other, Naryen Lalla, at 
 twenty-five rupees. Both experienced goodlooking men, 
 dressed wholly in white with red and gold turbans, and naked 
 feet and earrings, rather different from Smith and William in 
 Green Street. The Thakore of Bhownuggur has been very 
 civil, and his agent has been here to tell us that relays of 
 horses will be provided for our visit to Kattywar, which will 
 include Pallitana. Yesterday Lancie took me to the Pinjera 
 Poll, or hospital for diseased and aged animals, established by 
 Bunniahs, who insist on the sanctity of all animal life, a virtue 
 carried to the most absurd extreme; and we also looked in, at 
 my request, at the stables of two of the chief native Arab 
 horse dealers. What would Anderson or Rice say to his 
 Parsee rivals, — for though the owners and importers are Arabs, 
 the dealers are Parsees ? We entered as bold as brass. The 
 Parsee Anderson came forward with his salaam, " What kind 
 of horse do you want, sir?" "Oh!" said Lancie, "my 
 friend (pointing to me) wants a charger." He accordingly 
 took us round the sheds. The horses are not in separate 
 boxes, but are tethered by head and heel ropes in long rows 
 under open sheds, so that you see the beauties at one glance 
 
( 39 ) 
 
 all in perspective. We chose one. " Have him out," said I. 
 He was unloosed, a native put a bridle on and then jumped 
 on barebacked and trotted and cantered the animal up and 
 down the avenue, the Arab owners with their hoods and 
 camel-hair cloaks looking on to see what the customer would 
 say. " What price ? " " 3,000 rupees ;" and then we had 
 others out. " What do you ask for this ? " " 2,000," and so 
 on. There was nothing less than 1,200 rupees, and very few 
 were above 14.2 in height, out of, I suppose, 100 horses 
 which we saw. It was a pretty and a novel sight, but for 
 mere horse flesh I would rather have a good English hack, 
 and the price would not be half what they ask here for an 
 Arab. This afternoon we are going with an order from 
 Sir Jamsetjee to the Towers of Silence, and the carriage is 
 now waiting to take us there. 
 
( 40 ) 
 
 Camp-Mehmadabad, Guzeuat, 
 
 Wednesday, loth November, 1876. 
 
 The English post is not expected to arrive till Friday, 
 and we have been therefore without any home news except 
 your letters at Suez. Nevertheless I must begin my letter 
 for the next mail, because unless I seize a vacant afternoon, 
 such as that I now have, I may miss my opportunity 
 altogether. We left Bombay by the mail train on Friday 
 night. That same evening we met Sir Jamsetjee's secretary, 
 at the Parsee Cemetery, on Malabar Hill, generally known 
 as " The Towers of Silence." Irrespective of the interest 
 attached to the locality as a sacred spot, the view from the 
 terrace gained by a long flight of steps looking over Back Bay, 
 the town and harbour of Bombay, with the islands in the 
 harbour and the range of Ghauts in the distance, is the most 
 commanding of any in the neighbourhood. But the chief 
 interest rests in the peculiar rites of the Parsees in the con- 
 duct of- their obsequies. At the time of our visit a large 
 funeral procession was approaching the towers. It consisted 
 of the bier on which was laid the body of the dead man, 
 covered only with a sheet and carried by four bearers be- 
 longing to a sect especially devoted to that service, who live 
 and intermarry entirely amongst themselves. Then at an 
 interval of 100 yards followed a priest leading a large white 
 dog. The secretary, who was with us explaining the philo- 
 sophy of the rites, evaded all questions about the dog. We 
 understood that at the moment of the corpse entering the 
 tower the dog was made to lick the face of the corpse. Behind 
 
* 
 
( 41 ) 
 
 the dog followed about 100 Parsees, all dressed in white, some 
 priests and some relatives and friends, walking two and two, 
 some of the couples holding a white handkerchief between 
 them in token of communion and sympathy. These all 
 advanced to the portal of the large round tower (one of five 
 or six of similar construction) on the top of the hill over- 
 looking the sea, and then wheeled round and suddenly 
 returned to the Fire Temple which they had passed on their 
 way to the tower, and distant some half-mile or so from it, 
 leaving the bearers of the bier alone to enter the tower and 
 deposit the corpse on the stone platform within its circum- 
 ference. This the bearers did, removing the sheet which had 
 hitherto covered the corpse, though the aet was not of course 
 visible to us, and then, emerging from the portal, they pro- 
 ceeded to a well within the precincts at no great distance, 
 where they stripped and washed themselves, throwing their 
 clothes into the well and putting on fresh clothing. No 
 sooner had they left the portal when troops of vultures which 
 had been gathering and seating themselves on the parapet of 
 the tower, with an unerring instinct of what was coming, 
 pounced down on the body and tore off the flesh, reducing 
 it to a perfect skeleton, as we were told, in half-an-hour. We 
 learnt from the secretary that the dry bones are eventually 
 thrown into a hole in the centre of the circumference of the 
 tower, there to mix with the bones of all those, rich and 
 poor, who have gone before ; the bottom of the hole, as well 
 as the drains communicating with it, being laid with char- 
 coal ; the theory of the whole process, founded on the tenets 
 of Zoroaster, being that no impurity of any kind should be 
 permitted to defile the mother earth. In the meantime the 
 priests and relatives of the deceased had been worshipping 
 in the Fire Temple ; and all having afterwards washed their 
 hands at the entrance to the temple, they went away down the 
 
( 42 ) 
 
 steps as they came. Here is a ground plan of the tower : — The 
 
 outer circumference is for the 
 bodies of males, and is known 
 by a Gnzerati name, signifying 
 " good deeds;" the intermediate 
 circumference is for females, 
 and is known by another name, 
 signifying "good words;" and 
 the inner is for children, and is 
 known by another name, sig- 
 nifying "good thoughts." The 
 hole in the centre is that into which the dry bones are 
 eventually thrown. So particular are the Parsees that no 
 filtration of impurity should by chance descend from the 
 platform into the earth, that several slabs of stone were 
 rejected in the construction of the tower because they had 
 veins of quartz running through them, and it was supposed 
 that these veins might. decompose in the course of centuries 
 and so make a channel from the platform to the earth. The 
 setting sun lit up the tower, as the procession left it, throwing 
 the dark brab and cocoa-nut trees surrounding the tower 
 into grand relief against the glorious sky. It was an im- 
 pressive scene. 
 
 On our return to the hotel we separated our luggage, 
 leaving our heavy thing's there and taking with us only our 
 bags for light marching order. The railway carnage was less 
 comfortable than I expected. It was only half a saloon, 
 adapted for four only, so that we had only one berth to 
 spare, not more than enough for our traps, and the cushions 
 and corners were dusty in the extreme. Night, of course, 
 prevented our seeing anything until long after we had passed 
 your native town, Surat. The sun was rising on Broach as 
 we slowly and cautiously crossed the l.ng temporary bridge 
 
( 43 ) 
 
 over the Nerbudda, the former bridge having been swept 
 away during the last rains. You may fancy how I gazed 
 on the bright town as it glittered in the morning sun on the 
 opposite bank of the river as the train moved on, stopped and 
 felt its way across the creaking bridge. I said to myself, " Is 
 it possible that I was born here, that I have been here before, 
 have seen this beautiful river, the same groups of cattle and 
 villagers on the now contracted sandy banks, the same scenes 
 in fact that I am now looking on. It surely must be a 
 dream." But the present is always too strong for me, 
 although it may be less poetical than the distant or the 
 future, and so we got out of the carriage in the flesh to 
 breakfast at Baroda; and eventually, at 11.30 on Saturday 
 morning, arrived at this station, very grimy from the hot 
 and dusty journey. The three large and turbulent rivers, 
 namely, the Tapti, the Nerbudda, and the Mahi, which, rising 
 in Central India, run into the Gulf of Cambay, are formidable 
 difficulties in the way of this line of railway; the iron bridges, 
 in each case, are more like viaducts, spanning in dry weather 
 a vast dry bed of sand in which there is no holding for the 
 piling, but which bed in the rains becomes a rushing torrent, 
 against which the iron piles offer a feeble resistance, and, 
 consequently, frequent damage occurs at these points. Arrived 
 at Mehmadabad, we found Fred. Sheppard waiting for us, and 
 he conducted us to his tents, pitched in a field adjoining the 
 station, and here I was introduced to camp life for the first 
 time. I was at once shown into my own sleeping-tent, one 
 of the group, divided from which by a canvas screen is the 
 bath-room. Imagine the comfort as well as the novelty of a 
 bath under such circumstances, after fifteen hours of heat and 
 dust. Now of what does the group of tents consist ? First, 
 there is the drawing-room tent, about twenty-five feet 
 square, double walls and roof, and fitted inside with tables, 
 chairs, sofas, carpet, and every other convenience. Leading 
 
( 44 ) 
 
 immediately from this is a kind of club-room tent, pro 
 bono publico. Then Fred and his wife have three smaller 
 tents for themselves. I have my tent apart, with iron bed, 
 carpet, wash-hand stand, table, &c, from which there is a 
 wing for the bath. Monier and Stanley have their tent, the 
 clerks and officials have their tent, and Fred has his office 
 tent. The cooking is all done in the open under a tree, but 
 there is a dwarf wall of matting round the fires. The 
 sideboards, with the necessary paraphernalia on them, are 
 outside the door of the drawing-room tent, and also in 
 the open. The horses are tethered with head and heel 
 ropes under trees in the open, and bedded on rice straw; 
 there are six or seven horses, each horse having his own 
 groom, who sleeps at his side, also of course in the open. 
 The goats for milk, poultry, and farmyard generally 
 congregate round the tree which represents the kitchen. 
 All the tents are pitched under mango trees, and the effect 
 of the encampment, the horses tethered in the open, the 
 camp fires of the kitchen, and also of the retinue, and the 
 goats and animals and carts and men moving about, now 
 under the shade of the trees and now in sunlight, is original 
 and striking. The retinue is large; house servants, mounted 
 guard, sepoys, policemen, grooms, add to the life of the scene. 
 The table and cooking is excellent — a complete menu every 
 day, — and the dishes as well served as if in London. Three 
 times I have been out with Fred shooting — I ought to say 
 with Fred and his wife, for she always goes with him and 
 walks and rides and goes through an amount of fatigue 
 which few women would be up to. On these occasions the 
 native keepers and beaters are sent off before daylight to the 
 ground intended to be shot over. There are about a dozen 
 of them, most of them three parts naked — some with red 
 turbans, some blue. We three, that is, Fred, his wife and I, 
 are up by 6, just at daybreak. We have tea and toast and 
 
( 45 ) 
 
 fruit. Then we mount, Fred's wife having most kindly- 
 placed her own Arab at my disposal. The sowar (or one of 
 the mounted guard) precedes us, and we gallop along the soft 
 sandy country roads to the place of rendezvous, from 5 to 8 
 miles distant. There we find the beaters and three grooms 
 ready to receive our horses, and off we are on foot through 
 the crops and fields after quail. All is new to me, as you 
 may imagine, the operations of agriculture as we walk along, 
 the Guzerati bullocks ploughing or drawing the primitive 
 wicker cart, the natives gathering the crops, or preparing for 
 threshing on the mud floors in the fields, the crops themselves, 
 the wonderful variety of animal and bird life, — birds of prey 
 of all sizes and colours, foxes, jackals, monkeys, parrots, 
 doves, birds of varied plumage, black and grey, scarlet and 
 grey, blue and yellow, the saras or magnificent grey crane with 
 scarlet head, peacocks, — all these we put up in our walk. It 
 is wild shooting, indeed; but quail is the object of our walk. 
 Fred is a dead shot, and generally gets his twenty or thirty 
 brace of quail to his own gun in the course of our two hours' 
 walk. By that time the sun has become too powerful, and 
 we beat back to our horses, which have been moving about 
 with clothing on them during our absence, sit down for ten 
 minutes for soda water and whiskey, mount and gallop back to 
 the camp — all being over by 10 o'clock. Then I adjourn to my 
 tent, strip off my soaking garments, lie down on my bed with 
 my bath towel round me, and so soon as I am cool plunge 
 into my delicious bath. The middle of the day, after 
 breakfast at 12, is reserved for writing or reading, or in 
 Monier's case for seeing visitors, and at 4 we either drive 
 or walk out till sunset: dinner at 7.30, after which we emerge 
 from the tent and sit before a wood fire, which crackles in the 
 field outside. It is a free and independent life — not, however, 
 without drawbacks. The heat continues oppressive, the ther- 
 mometer 88° in my tent in the middle of the day ; the dust 
 
( 46 ) 
 
 of the village roads both when riding and driving is an- 
 noying; animal life around and in the tent is almost as 
 prolific and varied as that we meet with for sport. All 
 night long sleep is more or less murdered by discordant 
 noises; the howling and laughing of jackals and hyenas; 
 the shriek of owls and strange night birds; the hoarse 
 whoop of monkeys, — all aggravated by the fear that some 
 of these may walk into ycur tent at night, for all is open. 
 Inside the tent smaller tribes of insects are patent to the 
 eye if by chance you look for any lost article on the 
 carpet with the help of the candle. I amused Adelaide 
 (Fred's excellent wife) by insisting on taking my umbrella 
 to bed with me as a weapon of defence. She herself is as 
 plucky as possible and cares for none of these things. She 
 is passionately fond of horses. This afternoon she drove me 
 in her tonga and pair of ponies to Kaira — preceded by a 
 mounted sowar — distant 6 miles. The tonga is a rough kind 
 of curricle, two wheels, pole, and wooden bar across, well 
 adapted for a pair of ponies and for country work, and 
 stylish withal. The stable consists of these two ponies, two 
 Arabs, and Fred's big Australian horse, all rather spicy and 
 good of their kind. We propose leaving this on Saturday 
 for Ahmedabad. Evan James is here with his tents. He 
 is now Postmaster-General of Bombay. We remain at 
 Ahmedabad till Monday and then via Baroda to Broach, 
 where we shall stay a day to enable me to see our old house 
 there, crossing afterwards to Gogo for Kattywar. 
 
 Dakor, Thursday, ^ e nave had tw0 expeditions to sacred 
 leth Nov. places. The first to Wurtal, distant 20 miles 
 from our camp, and the second to Dakor, to-day, from which 
 latter place I now write. Wurtal is situated 5 miles from 
 the railway station. It is the head-quarters of the Puritan 
 sect of Hindoos, followers of a certain holy (and, perhaps, 
 
( 47 ) 
 
 dirty) man yclept Swami Narayan, who died fifty years ago 
 only, but who (so like the Romish system of canonization) 
 was supposed after his death to have been an incarnation of 
 Vishnu, and is worshipped accordingly. The Maharajah of 
 Wurtal had notice of our coming, and on our arrival at the 
 station we found waiting for us an elephant caparisoned with 
 a silver howdah and crimson trappings, a palanquin, several 
 bullock gharis, and a mounted guard of half-a-dozen ruffians 
 on rats of horses, with a host of beggarly retainers on foot. 
 Eager for novelty I got on to the elephant, which was made 
 to kneel down for the purpose. Monier preferred the palan- 
 quin; our servants were stowed away in the gharis, and the 
 procession moved forward amidst a cloud of dust and the 
 delight of the bystanders. But oh, the elephant! the howdah 
 was divided into two parts by a partition, and it was im- 
 possible either to sit or lie down in either compartment ; 
 the jolting backwards and forwards brought the partition in 
 sharp contact with my spine, and the holding on, with the 
 powerful sun overhead, threw me into such a violent perspi- 
 ration that I said, " Hang the dignity, I have had enough 
 of it, I'll get down!" So I stopped the beast, slid down, after 
 he had again knelt, and transferred myself into a ghari. 
 Wurtal is a temple surrounded by a large quad, in which 
 live about 300 Sardoos or religious men, devoted to celibacy, 
 and to preaching and meditation. Here, again, there is a 
 strong affinity to monasticism. We were received most 
 courteously by the Maharajah in grand durbar, and Monier 
 obtained explanations from such of the Sardoos as understood 
 Sanskrit, more especially on the precepts of Swami Narayan, 
 who, so far as I could learn, appears to have been a reformer 
 and good sort of man. It was interesting from the striking 
 analogies which presented themselves between their ideas and 
 those of the Romish church. We returned to the camp in 
 the evening. This place (Dakor) is another sacred shrine 
 
( 48 ) 
 
 belonging to a more sensual sect and which attracts vast 
 numbers of pilgrims periodically. To visit it requires two 
 days. Adelaide Sheppard has been so good and thoughtful 
 about it — all our beds and bedding, tables and chairs, our 
 food, linen, soap, knives and forks, servants, sepoys, &c. have 
 been sent forward by rail; and what was before an empty 
 kind of hut with mud walls and chunam floor has been 
 carpeted and furnished, bedding put down, and everything 
 made ready for our occupation of it for two days, including 
 to-night. It has been a regular migration. I could not 
 have believed it possible. We have had an excellent break- 
 fast. F. Sheppard is with us on this occasion. Hot meals, 
 clean table-cloth, napkins, &c. as if we were at home, and I am 
 now occupying the hot hours of noon by writing this to you. 
 At 4 o'clock we are to sally out to see the splendid temple, 
 tank, &c. about a mile off. But I will not weary you with 
 descriptions of sacred buildings, which, some grander than 
 others, are pretty much alike everywhere. We were here 
 also to have had an elephant and procession, but we have 
 countermanded it. I fear, however, we are in for a 
 durbar. This kind of life — I mean moving from home in 
 force to empty houses with only a floor and bare walls — is 
 common in India. No one except those accustomed to it, 
 like F. Sheppard and his active wife, could organize it and 
 think of everything as they have done now. We have such 
 numbers of servants and sepoys about us, and that relieves 
 us personally of much trouble and they are so subservient. 
 "Do this and he doeth it" is illustrated every moment of the 
 day. The heat and fine dust are very oppressive, and we 
 could not exist without plenty of willing help. We return 
 to camp to-morrow, sleeping in this funny hut to-night. 
 P.S. — We have walked into this stronghold of fanaticism 
 and superstition and fraudulent priestcraft, accompanied by 
 our guard of sepoys. Fred would not enter the temple; 
 

( 49 ) 
 
 and afterwards, when he joined us at the durbar and learnt 
 that the priests had made us take off our shoes before 
 ascending the steps and had refused us admission to the 
 idol, he broke up the durbar (very properly) and refused the 
 presents, much to the dismay of the priests who surrounded 
 us. The whole way to the tank and temple we were followed 
 by a vast multitude of people as well as by the elephant. 
 It was an extraordinary spectacle, — these vast crowds being 
 more or less under the influence of the temple, and the idol 
 well worked by the artful priests for their own profit. It is 
 Lourdes over again, only in a grosser form. We could not 
 have seen a more striking instance of Hindoo fanaticism. 
 
( 50 ) 
 
 Baroda, Wednesday, 
 
 22nd November, 1876. 
 
 I begin this letter at 6.30 a.m., seated at the dressing- 
 table of my bed- room at the Residency, with the thermometer 
 at 65° only, having had my chota hazzaree, or cup of tea and 
 toast, and my cold bath, and therefore all as comfortable as 
 if I were at Dolly in July. My last letter was posted at 
 F. Sheppard's camp on the day we left it. I did not like to 
 delay it till we got to Ahmedabad for fear of missing the 
 post. We were only an hour by train to Ahmedabad, the 
 minarets of which I saw in the distance long before we 
 entered it. There at the station we were met both by 
 Mr. Tagore, the native judge at Ahmedabad, who had entered 
 the Civil Service by competition, with whom Monier was to 
 stay, and by Evan James, whose guest I was to be; so we 
 each went off on our respective hooks — Evan and I in an 
 humble ghari to his tent — Monier in a flashy barouche with 
 gaudy-coloured servants and a pair of rats of horses hugging 
 the pole in the most un-English fashion. 1 was glad to be 
 independent and with Evan, who did all he could to make 
 me at home, having put up a tent expressly for me. We 
 hired the ghari by the day, — not a bullock carriage, but a 
 queer little covered two-wheeled trap, into which you entered 
 from behind, lifting up the cross seat at the entrance, then 
 flopping down on a cross seat opposite, ducking your head or 
 sticking it out of the window to avoid the top of the roof 
 until the first cross seat is shut down, and then both pas- 
 sengers settle down on that and face the horse— for horse 
 it is. Evan is perfect in Hindustani and knows Ahmedabad 
 well; consequently in this little conveyance we scoured about 
 the town and environs seeing everything. Evan always 
 
( 51 ) 
 
 calling out to our willing driver " Geldie, geldie," i. e. quick, 
 quick; and he, in his turn, shouting out to the crowds in the 
 streets to get out of the way. It is the custom to address 
 anyone happening to be in the way by his trade or calling, 
 " Heh ghari wallah," " Heh chokra," " Heh ghora wallah," 
 and so on; and if the occupation of the obstructive be not 
 conspicuous, then it becomes " Heh jan wallah," or traveller 
 or wayfarer generally, but always in a sharp loud voice. It 
 is needed. The teeming crowds in the provincial towns of 
 Guzerat completely choke up the thoroughfares, but the men 
 in their white dresses and well-arranged red or green turbans, 
 the women in their graceful sarees and bangles and orna- 
 ments, and holding themselves like queens, and the poorest 
 classes in (what I like best) their natural buff or rather 
 black, will bear a favourable comparison with the dirty 
 fustian-clothed mechanics and labourers in our own pro- 
 vinces, most decidedly. There are some beautiful remains of 
 Mahommedan art in and around Ahmedabad — the Jumma 
 Musjid, the mosque and tomb of Ranee Seepree, the mosque 
 and tomb of Shah Alum and others; and all have the same 
 distinctive beauties, — that is, rejecting the deformed gods and 
 goddesses with which the Hindoos are so fond of covering 
 their temples, they stick to geometrical designs of the most 
 graceful and elegant kind. It is in the perforated stone 
 panels, the sharp undercutting of the ornaments, the beautiful 
 tracery, the variety of design in the ornaments, that these 
 buildings are so conspicuous. The vibrating minarets of the 
 Jumma Musjid were destroyed by the earthquake of J 818 
 (I fancy I can remember that earthquake), but several pairs 
 of minarets belonging to the other monuments remain and 
 give character to the town. Another feature of the town 
 is the cantonments about three miles off. These consist of 
 large open spaces, approached from the town by good roads 
 and handsome avenues of either tamarind or banyan trees, 
 
 e2 
 
( 52 ) 
 
 and flanked by the soldiers' lines, cavalry stables and barracks, 
 mess-rooms, hospitals, tennis courts and other buildings, all 
 built with verandahs, and other adjuncts suitable to the 
 climate. We drove out there two mornings at 6 o'clock to 
 see the troops at exercise, and very pretty it was. Evan's 
 tents were pitched in an open space within the walls of the 
 town, at one end of which square was Mr. and Mrs. Tagore's 
 house. Every morning at 4 I heard the creak, creak of the 
 wheels of the well close by drawing up the water in leathern 
 buckets by two pair of bullocks, the water finding its way 
 along channels parallel with the roads and then scooped by 
 women and boys stationed at intervals with metal dishes and 
 dashed on to the roads, altogether a very primitive mode 
 of watering the roads. But everything here is primitive. 
 I bought some gold lace or trimming of a merchant who 
 came with his pack to the door of the tent. I asked the 
 price; he said he could not tell, he sold it by weight. We 
 had to send himself and the lace and our own puttywallah 
 to some authority in the town who possessed scales, and all 
 returned with the lace and a long sum in arithmetic and a 
 certificate. 1 asked him if the lace was made in Ahmedabad. 
 He said " Yes, come and see." Evan and I accordingly 
 drove through the back ways of the town, and in a little 
 dirty courtyard of a little dirty street we were shown a 
 ladder. We ascended the ladder and came into a hovel with 
 a mud floor about 8 feet square, in which were seated on 
 their haunches a couple of naked men working on gold lace 
 and embroidery with the rudest frames. You couldn't have 
 conceived it possible that such beautiful work could have 
 proceeded from such tools; and the men appeared so con- 
 tented and so glad to see us, and produced their rude self- 
 originated designs, our chief light being through broken tiles 
 in the low roof. 
 
 Driving home to our tents one night, after visiting some 
 
Vu ti I 
 
 cv; 
 in 
 
( 53 ) 
 
 of the mosques and tombs, we were attracted by a large 
 assembly of respectably-dressed turbaned men singing in a 
 new and well-lighted and well-ventilated church-like build- 
 ing. We stopped the carriage and entered. It was a 
 meeting of the Prarthama Somaj, or advanced sect of 
 Hindoos, Deists in fact, for prayer and singing, Mr. Tagore 
 presiding. There were three professional musicians seated 
 on the floor, one with an enormous kind of banjo, who led 
 the singing, another drummed on two tom-toms, and the 
 third played a rude kind of fiddle. There were about 250 
 or 300 persons present, who all joined heartily in the singing, 
 and there were two galleries in the upper part of the building, 
 screened off' carefully in front, but which twinkled with lights 
 inside, and evidently contained ladies. Evan James kindly 
 obtained for me a native translation of the hymns which were 
 being sung by the assembly. Forgive me if I send you a few 
 verses by way of sample. You will judge from the sample 
 of the religious opinions which are rapidly gaining ground 
 amongst the educated Hindoos of the present day — 
 
 " Let us sing His name who has formed this worldly house, 
 Where His mercy never ceases, and pours uninterruptedly down; 
 Thy consecrated food maketh thy worshippers glad. 
 Oh, Lord ! thy glory is endless and pure; 
 Thy glory holy sages sing with heart cure, 
 And they sing it until fatigue makes them free. 
 Oh, Lord ! thou art the root of mercy: who can match thee? 
 Is there any other friend equally beneficent in chivalry? 
 Not in chivalry alone, but in adversity and prosperity, 
 Except Thee, O Lord ! there is none. 
 
 Oh, God ! bestow thy mercy upon us, and let thy mercy secure to us 
 Eternity, in place of the mortal grave. 
 Prevent all our sins ; 
 Shine in our hearts: what else may we ask of Thee?" 
 
 I am not responsible for the translation, which may neverthe- 
 less be considered first-rate as compared with the run of 
 translations from the vernacular by natives. Immediately 
 prior to the singing, Mr. Tagore delivered an address in 
 
( 54 ) 
 
 condemnation of caste, all being in keeping with the reform- 
 ing spirit of the meeting. 
 
 We left Ahmedabad by the 12 o'clock train yesterday, 
 arriving at Baroda at 3. Mr. Melvill, the Chief Commissioner 
 or Resident, had invited us all to the Residency, and a carriage 
 was waiting for us at the station, and he himself greeted us 
 under the portico of the palatial house, which goes by the 
 name of the Residency. He is a Bengal civilian, but was 
 one of the three English Commissioners who sat in judgment 
 on the late Guickwar. On the deposition of that villain, 
 a boy of twelve, related to the reigning family, was selected as 
 the successor to the throne. Sir Madhava Rao was appointed 
 his dewan or prime minister, and Mr. Melvill, the Commis- 
 sioner, rather to the disappointment of the Bombay civilians, 
 who look on Baroda as part of their patronage. These two 
 men have therefore the charge of the boy, and practically 
 govern the state. They have got an English tutor for the 
 boy, who is trained to ride, to wrestle, play cricket, &c, 
 besides book learning. He is always one day in the week at 
 the Residency, and frequently with the young English officers 
 in their camp, so as to give him manly notions instead of 
 leaving him to be the puppet of the wives and mistresses 
 of the old villain Guickwar, who still swarm in the palace. 
 Soon after our arrival at Baroda, Mr. Melvill's carriage 
 drew round, and, escorted by some of the Bombay lancers, he 
 and our three selves drove into the town, distant a mile, the 
 guards turning out and drums beating at every guard house 
 and gate as we passed it. Baroda is far more native than 
 any town we have yet seen. Not being under our dominion 
 it has nothing European about it. Here in the main street 
 we met lots of irregular soldiers on horse and on foot ; men 
 with cheetahs or the hunting leopard, — men with trained 
 hawks, — men in all sorts of oriental costumes, — elephants, 
 camels, then a clatter of horses and the young Guickwar 
 
( 55 ) 
 
 passed us on horseback at a swinging trot, escorted by a 
 large party of irregular horsemen. Flash again, and the 
 Rajah of Oudeypore came by in his carriage and four with a 
 similar but differently-dressed escort ; greetings and salaams 
 were exchanged between Mr. Melvill and his escort of 
 lancers and the other magnates. Every man in the streets 
 salaamed to us as we passed. The streets were more crowded 
 even than usual for Guzerat ; the gaily-coloured alcoved and 
 balconied houses swarming with people in the alcoves and 
 balconies, besides the crowds in the streets. In this way we 
 drove along and back to the Residency before night. After 
 dinner a cloth was spread over the matting of the spacious 
 hall, and in came a troupe of native musicians with their 
 extraordinary native instruments, and treated us to a most 
 original performance, quite perfect of its kind, all squatting 
 on the floor on their haunches, and themselves absorbed in 
 the music. The Prince of Wales was Mr. Melvill's guest 
 for five days last year, and these men performed before him. 
 I will undertake to say he never saw or heard anything of 
 the kind before. I have occupied the bed-room on the 
 ground-floor in which the poison was administered to Colonel . 
 Phayre ; they call it the poison-room ; but the Colonel is 
 alive and kicking, and consequently there was no ghost in 
 the case ; rats, bats, frogs and jackals of course all through 
 the night, but I am accustomed to such noises by this time. 
 
 Thursday, Mr. Melvill sent me into the city yesterday 
 23rd Nov. morning to sketch, under an escort of police, whilst 
 he and Monier had an audience with Sir Madhava. Sketching; 
 in a native town needs a strong escort of police ; without it 
 you must expect to be surrounded by a crowd of at least 
 1,000 people. In Baroda we were protected, except from the 
 stinks— open sewers run all through the town, parallel with 
 the streets. I took my seat with my back against a door 
 
( 56 ) 
 
 leading into a small paved courtyard ; horrible whiffs came 
 across me occasionally. I opened the door, and there, within 
 a couple of yards of me, was a cow on her side dying by 
 inches, her eyes picked out and body covered with flies. 
 When an epidemic visits the town the people are carried off 
 like rotten sheep, and no wonder. We returned to the Resi- 
 dency to tiffin, took leave of these kind hosts, and left for 
 Broach by the 2 o'clock train, arriving at Broach at 5 o'clock. 
 Mr. White, the collector, a Haileybury friend of Monier's, 
 was in the districts, but most kindly placed his bungalow at 
 our disposal, and here we are ensconced in clover, with the 
 building all to ourselves— our meals served, and every hos- 
 pitality shown to us as if he were here in person. It is a 
 roomy, cool, pleasant bungalow, and I am enjoying the quiet 
 after the Baroda Residency. I have been to the Umjad 
 Baugh this morning and into the room where I suppose I 
 was born. What a dream it all is ! The house will not, 
 however, exist much longer, for a cotton factory company 
 have got possession, and will, perhaps, pull down all the 
 present buildings and adapt the ground to a second Man- 
 chester. 
 
 Friday ^ ast "'g^ I embarked on board an open native 
 24th Nov. Doa t to visit the Kubir Bur, the great banyan tree, 
 15 miles up the Nerbudda. Monier would not risk the 
 night air. We slept on board and were well bitten for our 
 pains — the boat anchoring for the night in the river after we 
 had punted 10 miles. At 5.30 this morning, still quite dark, 
 except from Venus, who was shining like a moon, we got 
 into a small kind of canoe, and, frequently grounding, reached 
 the Kubir Bur at 9 o'clock. It was a failure, and not 
 worth the bother of the night journey. Is it not strange 
 that I am equal to all this bodily fatigue as if I had only left 
 Umjad Baugh twenty years ago instead of . We returned 
 
( S7 ) 
 
 this afternoon under sail, with a fair wind, and on arriving 
 t.t our bungalow here found all your letters. The situation 
 of Broach is picturesque, standing as it does on high ground, 
 immediately overlooking the Nerbudda. All rivers are 
 interesting in India from the crowds who frequent, their 
 banks, especially the women in bright clothes of all colours 
 going and returning with two or more lotas or shining copper 
 or brass vessels, one above the other, on their heads. I can 
 scarcely believe that my dear old mother passed the greater 
 part of her married life amongst these scenes. We leave 
 to-morrow for Surat, and it will depend on what we can 
 learn there about the means of crossing the Gulf of Cambay 
 whether we go into Kattywar or not. The sun is very hot 
 still in the middle of the day — too hot to be comfortable — 
 and every day is the same. It is not possible to sketch in 
 such heat, and I fear you will be disappointed at the few 
 rough things I have done. 
 
( 58 ) 
 
 Bom bat, 
 28th November. 1876. 
 
 Here we are back again at Pallonjee's Hotel, and it seems 
 very much like coming home again. We have given up 
 Kattywar, as you may infer from our being again so soon in 
 Bombay. The fact was that Monier had been suffering, and 
 did not feel equal to roughing it. To cross the Gulf of Cam- 
 bay from Surat, about twelve or fourteen hours of sea, was 
 a doubtful experiment, and the means of transit lay between 
 a native open boat, called a bunder boat, and a tug steamer, 
 which began to run yesterday only, having come from Bom- 
 bay for the purpose the day before. Of the bunder boat we 
 saw samples in the Nerbudda. It is a kind of Chinese junk, 
 with the stern cocked up in the air, the planks apparently 
 sewn together, a blob of mud in the stern, to serve as a 
 receptacle for the fire for cooking, the single mast carrying 
 a tattered lateen sail, with a crew to match. All very well 
 for a cargo of cotton, which may equally well be delivered 
 this week or the next, but not very comfortable for the pro- 
 fessor, afflicted, or supposing himself to be afflicted, with any 
 internal derangement, however slight. The steamer required 
 more respectful consideration. But she was new to the 
 station — had only arrived in the Tapti on Sunday; she was 
 only 1 20 tons ; the crew were all Mahommedans ; we knew 
 nothing about her or about the men ; all our previsions must 
 be laid in by ourselves and our cooking done by ourselves; and 
 she was to start with the tide at 4 a.m. on Monday morning 
 — confessedly requiring fourteen hours to cross from Surat 
 to Bhownuggur, on the other side of the bay. Monier is 
 now quite well, but on Sunday he was not sure of himself. 
 So, all things considered, we determined to give up Kattywar 
 
( 59 ) 
 
 and return direct from Surat to Bombay. But you have, not 
 yet heard of our being in Surat. My last to you was from 
 Broach. At Surat we were most kindly received by Mr. 
 Birdwood. He is a married man, but his wife and children 
 are in England. He had staying with him the second 
 assistant, Mr. Frost, and young Frederick Goldsmid, with 
 whom, of course, I immediately claimed friendship. Mr. 
 Birdwood is the Judge at Surat, and occupies the Adawlut 
 bungalow — the very house which, I presume, your father 
 and mother lived in for so many years, and where you were 
 born. Is it not so? It is the perfection of a house for this 
 climate. It is a quadrangle of about 100 feet square, 
 open, of course, on all sides, within which is an inner 
 quadrangle, supported on and divided from the outer by 
 three wide arches on each of the four sides ; and this inner 
 quadrangle is again divided by arches into a dining and 
 drawing-room, so that the effect is excellent as well as 
 the space and ventilation. From off this main building- 
 branch the bed-rooms, accessible by broad passages — 
 the whole being on the first floor. Below is the Adawlut 
 or Court in which the Judge presides, and in which 
 there is ample accommodation for him, his registrars and 
 officers, the vakeels or pleaders, suitors, witnesses, &c. One 
 is impressed both above and below with the spaciousness and 
 suitableness of the building. Then from the verandahs in 
 the first floor there are extensive views of the Tapti, looking 
 down the river and up it. I was of course exceedingly inte- 
 rested in the whole building, connecting it, as I did every 
 hour of the day, with your father and mother and yourself. 
 Indeed, the whole atmosphere of Broach and Surat is redolent 
 with memories of days gone by, and if the sins of the fathers 
 are visited on the children, so their good deeds, as in our case, 
 reflect honour and credit on their posterity. The names of 
 my father and yours are remembered and honoured to this 
 
( 60 ) 
 
 day in Broach and Surat; my father's book on Broach being, 
 as Mr. Birdwood told me, a text-book in his Court at this 
 present time. On Sunday we went to the English church, 
 both for the early service at 7.30 a.m., and for the evening 
 service at f>.30, the service on both occasions being performed 
 by Mr. Birdwood. After morning service I went to the 
 cemetery, but could not recognize any names I knew. The 
 punkah was going during both services; the thermometer 
 rising every day to above 80° in the shade even now. We 
 remained with Mr. Birdwood till Monday (yesterday ; evening. 
 I employed Monday in sitting with him in his Court, then 
 driving out to the Artillery camp about a mile off, and an 
 amusing scene it was. Besides the guns and the artillery 
 horses, all tethered by head and heel ropes in the open, there 
 were twenty elephants belonging to the commissariat, and 
 about fifty camels, on the same camping ground; these, with 
 their wild attendants, the men's bedding (for each man slept 
 by the side of his elephant or camel), the equipages and 
 trappings, cooking utensils, fires, tents, commissariat bullocks, 
 European and native soldiers going to and fro with forage, 
 native women with water-pots, all bustling and moving about, 
 formed a very striking scene. Young Beaufort of the Artillery 
 showed us all round. By-and-by we saw an elephant 
 " packed," as they term it — that is, a huge thing like a 
 mattrass strapped on to his back, and then something else on 
 to the top of that. Frost, who was with us, asked, " Hullo, 
 what's that elephant packed for?" " Oh !" replied Beaufort, 
 " he's only going to the railway station to fetch my port- 
 manteau." Imagine the expense to the country of all this 
 paraphernalia and all these camp followers to accompany half 
 a battery of artillery in time of peace ! And accordingly we 
 saw the huge beast, with a couple of mahoots, on our way 
 home, scuffling along the road to the station just before our 
 vehicle, swaying from side to side in order that he might 
 
( 61 ) 
 
 bring one eye to bear on bis right rear at one step and the 
 other on his left at the next, packed, and accoutred, and 
 bedizened, taking up the whole of the road — and all for young 
 Beaufort's portmanteau, which any native woman would have 
 brought out on her head for three annas ! In the afternoon 
 of Monday I amused myself by buying some Surat toys; 
 they are rather grotesque but very original, and are made 
 only in Surat. I am getting together several packages at 
 King's, a few things I purchased at Ahmedabad and at 
 Surat jails, nothing first-rate, but genuine, as I saw them 
 made by the prisoners ; three or four white marble animals 
 I met with to-day here in Bombay, carved at Jeypore; 
 some native shields made of the skin of the nielghau, 
 painted in Indian patterns at Ahmedabad; and I shall 
 collect in like manner as I go along — nothing costly, but 
 as Indian as I can. On Monday night at 8 o'clock we 
 left Surat by train, and arrived here at 4 a.m. this morning. 
 I am writing this at 9 o'clock at night, and am tired and 
 must now go to bed. 
 
 Thursday, ^ e h ave been to-day to Elephanta. The 
 
 30th Nor. governor placed a steam launch at our disposal. 
 Montague Fawkes and Robert Anderson, the two aides-de- 
 camp, called yesterday to acquaint us of this civility, but 
 we were out; Robert Anderson, however, turned up this 
 morning and accompanied us in the launch. We embarked 
 at 8 a.m. Nothing could be more lovely than the sail up 
 the harbour in the morning sun, or than the Island of 
 Elephanta itself. Springing out of a vivid undergrowth of 
 vegetation rose the elegant brab tree, now singly, now in 
 clusters, a straight stem to the height of 80 or 100 feet, 
 and then a graceful head of palm leaves crowning the top. 
 Other islands dotted about the harbour, the picturesque 
 native craft with their thatched cabin aft, thatched with 
 
( 62 ) 
 
 palm leaves falling almost into the water, and with their 
 white cotton lateen sails gliding about between the islands, 
 and the distant Ghauts beyond, coloured with tints which no 
 paint-box could reproduce, combined to make it a scene 
 of enchantment. The excavated temples have been often 
 described, and the figures are no doubt majestically treated, 
 but I don't know or care enough for Hindoo mythology to 
 feel interested in these monsters. I was absorbed in the 
 natural scene, and saw much more to fascinate me looking 
 out of the dark entrance of the temple on to the panorama of 
 palm trees, blue sea, islands, and exquisite distance, than into 
 the niches and recesses where dwelt Brahma and Siva, and 
 all the other miserable brutes of the Hindoo pantheon. The 
 return voyage was equally beautiful, such hosts of shipping 
 and such life of all kinds on the surface of the sea. We 
 landed at 2 p.m., and hearing in the meantime that the mail 
 boat had come in, I rushed home to the hotel, ignored a posse 
 of snake charmers and conjurers three parts naked, who were 
 performing in front of the hotel, ran upstairs to my bed-room, 
 where I found and devoured your budget of letters. Is there 
 such a thing as fog or snow ? I cannot believe it. Here we 
 have every day the same climate, a shade too hot for me — for 
 the heat rises to above 80° every day in the house and in the 
 shade — but in other respects perfect. I dined with L. Fletcher 
 and his wife yesterday, and drove home .by the light of a full 
 moon all through the cocoa-nut wood which spreads between 
 Malabar Hill and this hotel — such a fairy scene. Beneath 
 this cocoa-nut wood the natives live in their low mud huts 
 It was such a striking scene by moonlight that I have sent 
 Monier out to-night to the same spot in the carriage to look 
 at it. 
 
( 83 ) 
 
 MaHABALESIIWUR, 
 
 6th December, 1876. 
 
 No one can say I am a bad correspondent, for I do fire 
 off lots of letters, not only to my own relations, but to friends, 
 and that whilst my thoughts are occupied by the distracting 
 scenes around me. But I want to thank you for your letter, 
 and so I sit down to write one expressly to yourself. I often 
 long for you two girls to be with me, and with a few draw- 
 backs you would both enjoy the life. What are the draw- 
 backs? First, the heat: even now the heat in the middle 
 of the day, — not here, for this place, as you know, is one of 
 the mountain sanitariums of India, but in the plains, — is 
 excessive and stops all exercise from 10 to 4, except- under 
 the penalty of a wet shirt. Then the dust, and especially in 
 the railways — not to be wondered at, seeing that no rain 
 falls for months. It is an impalpable white dust, and all 
 the more penetrating. Then, first cousin to dust, the glare. 
 I am sure that my eyes have aged more from these two 
 causes the last two months than during the previous ten 
 years. Well, then comes the animal life, especially at night. 
 Musquito curtains are some protection, but not against noises 
 inside the bed-room and outside. The scuffling of rats can 
 be distinguished by the Britisher ; but there are whizzes and 
 groans and chirps and squeaks peculiar to an Indian night, 
 and which cannot be identified as coming from any English 
 animal. I have not done yet. The accommodation at the 
 hotels makes one creep a little now and then. In the first 
 place, there is not a fastening on any door or window to any 
 bed-room. Every door and window is expected to be left 
 wide open all through the night. It was only the other 
 night, at Poona, a huge dog walked into my bed-room after 
 
( 64 ) 
 
 I was in bed and had put the candle out, and I had to 
 bellow at him to get him out. Then the carpets are uneven 
 and spread on straw or some substance, which suggests a 
 refuge for destitute fleas beneath ; and the ceilings, instead 
 of being plastered, as with us, are covered with a kind of 
 sacking, which bags down and occasionally breaks away. 
 This forms an upper storey for insects, &c. Stanley was 
 asking Rama (our man-servant) only to-day at dinner — 
 " Rama, what are those things like cocks and hens which 
 run about all night in the ceiling of my bed-room ?" " Oh, 
 master," Rama replied, " they not cocks and hens — we call 
 them wambas : they have mouth like a rat, and always live 
 up there ;" not very comforting if one of these things were to 
 lose his foothold and flop down on your bed in the middle of 
 the ni«ht. More than once I have chased lizards out of the 
 bed-room. But you never wash in your bed-room; leading 
 out of it is an annex, generally with a mud floor, in which 
 is a large wooden tub, which annex is accessible from the 
 outside as well as the inside. Whether you are in the tub, 
 or preparing to get in, or just getting out, the bheestie, or 
 attendant for that special department, walks in from the 
 outside at his will. If you are out of the tub he draws a 
 cork at the bottom of it, and out runs the dirty water over 
 the mud floor and through a hole in the wall into the street 
 or garden, as the case may be. The bheestie is naked and so 
 may you be. It does not signify a straw, you don't look at 
 each other. My annex in this hotel is approached from my 
 bed-room by three mud steps leading down into it, and I 
 must stoop my head to clear the door. The floor is uneven 
 mud, and there is a mud rim round the place where the tub 
 stands to prevent the dirty water from going away except 
 through the proper channel. I have given you a catalogue 
 of some of the drawbacks. The novelties and excitements, 
 per contra, I have detailed in many of my home letters. 
 
( 65 ) 
 
 You, as a housekeeper, would be delighted with the ser- 
 vants — the men-servants who wait at table, so beautifully 
 dressed, generally snow white, with scarlet or crimson and 
 gold turbans, such gentlemen in manners, so attentive and 
 courteous — the men cooks (generally native Portuguese), 
 clever and managing and proud to please. There is no 
 trouble about their food. You pay these men some 12 or 
 15 rupees a month, and they sleep where they can and find 
 their own food and everything else ; up always before 6 to 
 bring early breakfast, and ready all day outside the door 
 whenever you call. At any moment the master inside his 
 room may call out " Boy," or " Qui hi!" Immediately the 
 response comes, " Sahib !" and the man is at the door. No 
 drinking, no swearing, no Sundays out, no followers, no 
 overdressing. The cooks go out daily marketing and arrange 
 the dinners themselves. The mistress only has to say six to 
 dinner to-day, or, even an hour before dinner, to say two 
 more coming, and everything is arranged without a single 
 word. Harry would have been amused at the sight I saw 
 on the Green, in Bombay, the afternoon before we left it— a 
 Parsee eleven at cricket. The Parsees are a go-ahead people 
 in Bombay, are wealthy, and imitate the English ; but their 
 physique and dress would, one would have supposed, have 
 been unsuited to cricket. No, there they were hard at it, with 
 a large marquee for their friends, who appreciated the play, and 
 applauded a good bat or a good ball. It was very funny to see 
 them with their Parsee hats, muslin petticoats, and coloured 
 trousers, batting, and running, and fagging out. When I 
 say coloured trousers, remember the colour is of the brightest, 
 and the material satin — either crimson satin, or yellow satin, 
 or violet satin — not business-like, Harry would say, but the 
 wonder is that Asiatics should play at any game which 
 requires exertion. And yet to see the native women at work 
 one would not blame the nation for slothfulness. The poor 
 
 F 
 
( 66 ) 
 
 women are always at work, sometimes navvy work, earth- 
 work on railways; but when they are washing, or drawing, 
 or carrying water they never look more graceful ; always 
 delicately covered in a brilliant saree, which shows enough, 
 not too much, of the form, their style and carriage is most 
 attractive, sometimes balancing two or three bright brass 
 lotas on their heads, with both arms uplifted, sometimes 
 a large brass lota empty on the hip, or a child carried on 
 the hip, a leg on each side, sometimes a basket or bundle 
 of canes or vegetables on the head, then the arms and legs 
 often covered with bangles, ears jewelled — altogether the 
 female Indian figure is quite a picture. At Broach, the 
 other dav, I saw a naked father at the door of his mud 
 hut with a naked little brat across his knees, boring holes 
 in the little brat's ears, the mother sitting opposite and 
 helping ; the poor little creature was screaming and yelling, 
 and the father was boring away till the operation being, 
 as I suppose, over, he put her on her legs again. I called 
 her to me, and by her father's desire she came toddling 
 to me, as naked as when she was born, with only a 
 single bangle on one of her little ankles, and I tried to 
 comfort her with a few copper pice, much to the father 
 and mother's amusement and delight. It is no ordinary 
 boring, remember, but holes all along the top of the ear, 
 as well as in the lobe ; the earrings extend all round, and 
 frequently weigh down the top of the ear to an unpleasant 
 extent. 
 
 Poona, Tell Ro that all news concerning Craven 
 8th Dec. Cottage, and the horses there, is intensely in- 
 teresting to me. How men can gallop across country here 
 after hog or any other game I cannot understand. The 
 ground is baked as hard as a brickbat, and full of deep 
 fissures, with ragged ends, hard and sharp as a saw. No 
 
( 67 ) 
 
 horse, I fancy, but the Arab could do it ; their legs are as 
 hard as nails, and they are extremely intelligent. It must 
 be dangerous work even with Arabs. I have just been 
 down to breakfast alone (Monier having gone off early to 
 the Kali Caves) in the public room of the hotel ; there were 
 eight persons present, each with his own servant behind 
 his chair — each servant dressed in white, with red sash, and 
 red and gold turban, and naked feet. I had mine, Devram, 
 who was dressed in the same way. His sole object is to 
 study every want, and to anticipate it, and, in the mean- 
 time, with a dexterous flourish of his napkin, to drive away 
 the flies which may settle on your head. There were ten 
 double French windows in the room, opening down to the 
 ground ; every window was wide open. The punkah was 
 not going this morning, but it generally is; the windows 
 and doors of my bed-room here, last night, were wide open 
 all night, not so at Mahabaleshwur, at least, not to the 
 same extent. 
 
 I should tell you that one morning we drove to the 
 Hindoo temple of Parvati (the wife of Siva), situated on 
 an eminence about three miles from Poona, and approached 
 by a long flight of steps. Two of the Brahmins of the 
 temple spoke English fluently. They at once admitted 
 that the idols which they showed us were merely repre- 
 sentations or symbols of the one Supreme God, and not 
 objects in themselves for worship ; the idols were intended 
 only for the ignorant. Over the sacred bull, which almost 
 always faces the entrance to Hindoo temples as the symbol 
 of creative power, was a large bell. I asked " What for ?" 
 " We wake the bull when we ring it." I said, " Wake 
 him now." The Brahmins grinned. I continued, " Wake 
 him, and let him drag our carriage back to Poona, and I 
 will give you a hundred rupees." They grinned again. 
 Monier asked them if they went through such and such 
 
 f2 
 
( 68 ) 
 
 ceremonies, the duty of all devout Brahmins. " No," they 
 replied, "we don't." "Why not?" "Because we are 
 sinners." They hoth pestered us for " favours." I said, 
 " Do you, the priests of the temple, condescend to heg ?" 
 They replied, " We ask for the temple, not for ourselves." 
 " Humhug," I replied, "it is the rupee you worship; take 
 down that image of Siva, and put up a rupee instead." 
 They seemed to admit I had hit the nail on the head, heing 
 well aware that the whole thing was a cheat. 
 
( 09 ) 
 
 Mahabalesiiwur, 
 
 6th December, 1876. 
 
 I commence this letter seated in the spacious verandah 
 of the hotel here, 4,200 feet above the level of the sea, tem- 
 perature (>0°, looking right and left on projecting spurs of the 
 hills covered with trees in full leaf, and beyond, on successive 
 ranges of mountains, some of the most fantastic outline, the 
 view ending with J;he Indian Ocean, 50 miles off, near 
 Rutnagherry. It is a marvellous scene, and no wonder that 
 this place is one of the sanitariums of India. Does it not 
 seem strange that at this season, the winter here as well as 
 in Europe, all the trees should be in full leaf — as full as in 
 July in England ? The plateau, approached from Poona by 
 a steep ascent of three hours, and, extending, when the top 
 is gained, for 10 miles westward, appears to end here, and 
 it does not end in a straight line but in a series of bays or 
 deep indentations, and to each spur or point there are 
 excellent roads. Standing on these spurs or points you look 
 down nearly perpendicularly on the valleys below from a 
 height of 2,000 feet, intersected by sharp ridges of hills at 
 every conceivable angle, some of them covered with brush- 
 wood, — others, where the basalt has cropped up, broken into 
 strange forms of every variety. There is no mountain scene 
 in England or Wales with which I can compare it. The 
 peculiar geological formation of the Konkan makes it a 
 scene of itself. There are first-rate roads, not only to these 
 points which are 12 or 14 miles apart, but in every direction — 
 the colour of the roads a red sandstone, skirted by tall ferns 
 and wild flowers, especially a colossal kind of wild mint of 
 great fragrance, and the trees often meeting overhead. It is 
 a lovely as well as a healthy spot, and would be so in any 
 
( 70 ) 
 
 part of the globe, but, coming from the parched plains of 
 Poona, the contrast is the more striking. We were advised 
 to travel by night to avoid the heat. Accordingly we en- 
 gaged a barouche and pair to take us three and one of our 
 men-servants, and to start from Poona at 9 o'clock on 
 Sunday night, the owner sending on relays of horses accord- 
 ing to the custom, for the total distance is 75 miles, the 
 charge to be 35 rupees, tous compris. We packed ourselves 
 very well in a good, roomy carriage, and I remarked at the 
 time that we had a good, well-bred pair of horses — chestnuts 
 — to start with. Our turbaned driver and our man Rama 
 were on the box, our three selves inside and a turbaned 
 ghora-wallah behind — all very promising, under a brilliant 
 moon. We soon cleared the twinkling lights of the Poona 
 shops, and, after a few miles of quick going, began a long, 
 winding ascent through arid, treeless hills, ending, at the 
 summit, in a tunnel. We emerged from the tunnel on to a 
 valley on the other side, more effective under the bright 
 moon by contrast with the tunnel, and were commencing 
 the descent when one of the chestnuts (who had before 
 showed a slight symptom of restiveness) began to jib. It 
 was the horse on the nearside. If we had been in a Hansom, 
 the London cabby would have humoured the animal, spoken 
 to him, waited, or perhaps backed him a bit, or turned him 
 round. But our turbaned driver had only one remedy; and 
 whilst he lashed the poor brute furiously, the turbaned ghora- 
 wallah jumped off from his perch behind and seized the off 
 horse by the head, dragging him forward. That horse 
 jumped on, whilst the near chestnut, resenting the whip, 
 jibbed viciously. The consequence was that the carriage 
 was forced suddenly and violently on to the dwarf parapet, a 
 stone wall 2 feet high, which protected the road on the left 
 from a drop of about 60 or 80 feet into the valley below. 
 In a moment the near horse, the jibber, toppled over the 
 
( 71 ) 
 
 parapet, hung for a second or two by his harness, and, the 
 traces breaking, down he went, rolling over and over into 
 the valley beneath. We could distinguish him by the 
 moonlight lying on his back, but, to our surprise, we saw 
 him after a short time get up slowly and walk away 
 limping down the valley. I turned to the carriage and 
 saw that the pole had snapped in two. The off horse had 
 become dreadfully frightened, and would have done more 
 mischief in a moment. I really was the only one of the 
 whole party who knew anything about horses. We had 
 all jumped out of the carriage, which, but for the dwarf 
 parapet, must inevitably have been toppled over with the 
 horse. The two native men were stupefied, and, like all 
 Asiatics, gave themselves to their fate. Stanley knows no 
 more about a horse than he does about a megatherium, and 
 Monier got away to a safe distance, and, seated on the dwarf 
 parapet about 20 yards off, lifted up his voice and contented 
 himself by calling out in a melancholy tune, " Krab, krab, 
 krab!" which, I was told afterwards, is the Sanskrit for bad, 
 bad, bad. He meant that the driver was bad, ghora-wallah 
 bad, and horses bad. I told Rama instantly to seize the re- 
 maining horse by the bit, and showed him how to hold him 
 by a firm hand, one on each side of the bit. I then unloosed 
 the traces, and, having freed that horse from the carriage, I 
 made the ghora-wallah get over the parapet and descend into 
 the valley in search of the fallen brute. In the meantime I 
 examined the pole, cut a couple of green twigs from the only 
 bush near us, and contrived a splice with some rope for- 
 tunately in the carriage. But what was now to be done ? 
 We were 10 miles from Poona, 11 o'clock at night, and 4 
 miles from the village where the next relay had been sent. 
 Neither of the natives would ride the sound horse back to 
 Poona. Rama, interpreting, said, " Men say that horse 
 won't let no man sit on him." " Very well," I replied, 
 
( 72 ) 
 
 " clap him into the carriage ; the pole will do for the present, 
 and let him drag the carriage singly to the village." No 
 sooner, however, did the animal touch the pole than he began 
 to kick furiously. He was demoralized, and trembled from 
 head to foot, and unless he had been taken out would have 
 kicked the carriage into splinters. By this time the ghora- 
 wallah was seen through the dark coming up the road with 
 the limping horse, which he had found some way down in 
 the hollow. There was no help for it. I took hold of the 
 sound horse, and told Stanley to lead the other. Monier 
 rose from his seat on the parapet and got into the carriage ; 
 the two natives and Rama dragged it and Monier. 1 led the 
 sound horse and Stanley the other; and in that way we accom- 
 plished the 4 miles to the next village.- On the road we met 
 droves of bullock gharis, the drivers of which stared at our 
 ghastly procession, and no doubt prayed to Vishnu to be de- 
 livered from all evil spirits, for we must have looked like a 
 cross between Winkle and his stolen horse and some of the 
 Hindoo deformities, by the misty moonbeams' struggling light, 
 partially obscured by the fine dust caused by the traffic. We 
 got to the village in due time, and a hot dusty walk it was. 
 There the two natives sat down on their haunches, and 
 would have done nothing if Rama and I had not dug the 
 spurs into them. Between us we respliced the pole, and 
 with the aid of a lantern mended the harness with rope and 
 twine, and made a pretty tolerable refit of the whole concern, 
 encouraged by some hot tea we found in a mud hut with a 
 board nailed on to it labelled " The Star of India," indicating 
 that it was a public. The fresh pair of horses were regular 
 old jades, and I never looked on old worn-out screws with 
 more complacency in my life, for I still had my misgivings 
 about the splice in the pole and the rope-pole strap. How- 
 ever, the fresh pair were at last stuck in, and at 2.30 a.m. 
 we were off again, arriving safely at the Travellers' bungalow 
 
( 73 ) 
 
 at Wai to breakfast at 10 a.m. instead of 6. Very pleasant 
 it was to rest here and have a wash, after the night's toil 
 and dust and anxiety, and then wander out to see the whole 
 population on the banks of the pretty little river Krishna, 
 the women in their brilliant sarees bathing and washing, 
 and themselves enjoying the water as much as we did. 
 From Wai commences the three hours' ascent I have before 
 referred to. It is a very steep ascent, though the road is 
 well engineered along the face of the mountain range, on 
 which stands the plateau. Here horses and their attendant 
 evils and dangers were discarded, and the carriage was 
 dragged up by twenty-five coolies with ropes, and precious 
 hot work it must have been for them, their naked black 
 bodies shining again with sweat. But they did it well and 
 without beer; the only encouragement being their own 
 yells, shouting out to each other at intervals for a spurt. 
 All these fellows were included in the tous compris of the 
 thirty-five rupees, but at the top I held out a couple of 
 rupees, and got them all together, and said, " Now for a 
 scramble;" they grinned, but would not scramble. Rama 
 said the two who got the coin would divide it equally 
 amongst all. Their three hours' hard tug over, they came 
 forward to us, and, lifting their hands, said " Salaam, Sahib," 
 and down they all went to the plains below, having earned 
 perhaps four annas each, or not quite sixpence each. Now 
 contrast this with the English navvy ! At the top we had 
 horses again, and drove along the level for ten or twelve 
 miles through a well-wooded country of the same character 
 as this, arriving here at 6 o'clock on Monday evening. On 
 these subsequent two days we have been driving about in 
 a tonga to the different " points," enjoying the foliage and 
 vegetation, and the exquisite temperature of these uplands. 
 We return to Poona to-morrow, and this time will do the 
 journey by day. 
 
( 74 ) 
 Poona, \y e returned to this place from Mahabaleshwur 
 
 Friday, # r 
 
 8th Dec. last night, a day earlier than we intended, to enable 
 Monier to devote to-day to the Kali Caves, two hours by rail 
 back on the Bombay line, but secretly, I believe, as much to 
 get our English letters, which we knew would be waiting for 
 us here on our return last night. We left Mahabaleshwur at 
 (5.30 a.m. by the same barouche, and after a pleasant drive, 
 though warmish towards the middle of the day, we arrived 
 here at 6.30 p.m., exactly twelve hours en route. " Letters 
 come?" was the first question we asked of our second man, 
 Whom we had left behind, and who came to meet us at 
 the door of the carriage, " Bhot, bhot, plenty, plenty," was 
 the answer. Upstairs we went to our rooms, and certainly 
 on the table there were heaps of newspapers, also letters 
 from natives to Monier, and some from King & Co., Gold- 
 smid, &c. to me. But, to our dismay, no English letters. 
 We knew the mail must have arrived from the newspapers — 
 where could the English letters be? We interrogated our 
 Parsee landlord, and sent specially to the post-office, but no 
 letters nor any tidings of any. I was restless all night in 
 consequence, and resolved to telegraph to King & Co. to-day. 
 Monier went off early to the Kali Caves ; I remained behind 
 by my own wish, and also to look after our lost sheep, and 
 further to arrange telegrams to Hyderabad, in the event of 
 there being no reply from Sir Salar Jung, for no reply had 
 been sent by him. Judge of my relief when at 8 o'clock 
 this morning, whilst I was downstairs preparing to go off 
 myself to the post-office, in walked the peon with King 
 & Co.'s thick envelope containing the English letters. Why 
 they were delayed I cannot ascertain ; but I am only too 
 glad to have got them to give myself any further trouble. 
 Is it possible that England has been suffering from gales and 
 fogs and cold ? These perfect days and cloudless skies, 
 day after day the same, preclude the very idea. We were 
 
( 75 ) 
 
 charmed with Mahabaleshwur. It is not the season for it ; 
 the hot weather is the season, but it could not be improved 
 upon as we saw it. On our way back to Poona we examined 
 the place of the accident by daylight. I find I have under- 
 stated the drop over the parapet. It is a fall of 100 feet. 
 How the poor horse survived I cannot imagine. It was 
 a narrow escape. By daylight back we enjoyed the con- 
 tinued stream of people and vehicles of every kind and 
 description which passed us on the road, gorgeously-dressed 
 men in brilliant clothing, naked men with only a string 
 round their loins, women with their bright-coloured sarees 
 and shining brass lotas on their heads, gipsies with their 
 buffaloes and paraphernalia, fakirs, sardoos, sellers of Ganges 
 water, pilgrims with flags, camels, horses, bullocks, bullock 
 gharis with their shining naked drivers straining and tussling 
 to get their carts out of the way. Indeed, what surprises 
 me more than anything is the dense population of India. 
 It is simply a gigantic ant-hill. 
 
( 76 ) 
 
 Madras, 
 
 11M December, 1876. 
 
 Since 1 wrote to you from Poona we have traversed 
 700 miles of railway at a stretch. Madras is 800 miles from 
 Bom hay, Poona is about 100 miles from Bombay, conse- 
 quently from Poona to Madras, which have been our limits 
 of late, it is 700 miles, and a good long run it is in this hot 
 and dusty country without stopping. For half the distance 
 we had a good saloon carriage, that is to say, we left Poona 
 at 9 o'clock on Saturday night and arrived at Raichore at 
 1 p.m. yesterday, Sunday. For that distance we travelled 
 by the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, and our carriage 
 had a washing-closet, &c. and good sofa beds. Thence com- 
 mences the Madras line, and we had to change into a single 
 compartment of a carriage like our English carriages, and 
 performed the rest of the journey uncomfortably, arriving at 
 Madras at 7 o'clock this morning, having been two nights 
 and a day en route. Both Monier and I however stood it 
 very well. It is an uninteresting journey and well performed 
 at night. The only incident worth recording was the passing 
 at the entrance of the Nizam's territory of the whole of his 
 camp on their way to Delhi. His highness himself and his 
 minister Sir Salar Jung had already crossed us in the railway 
 in advance. Most reluctantly we were compelled to give up 
 Hyderabad, owing to Sir Salar's absence at Delhi. It would 
 not have been safe to go there without protection. We saw 
 the kind of sight we had missed in the retainers who were 
 hanging about the station where the Nizam's camp was — 
 Mahommedans, dressed in bright soldier-like costume with 
 swords and daggers, and they say these swaggering fellows 
 ■walk about the streets of Hyderabad with their matchlocks 
 
( 77 ) 
 
 and fuse ready lighted. Baroda, which we saw, was a native 
 city of the same character, but Hyderabad beats it hollow. 
 However, it could not be helped, and we had no alternative 
 but to proceed direct to Madras. There was a famine, we 
 were told, in and about Sholapore, extending to the whole of 
 the Nizam's dominions. We saw no instances en route of 
 human suffering, only a general appearance of sterility in the 
 land, railway trucks laden with grain on the sidings, and 
 herds of cattle in the fields evidently in the last stage of 
 starvation, — poor creatures, mere skeletons. Well, on arriving 
 at Madras station we found Sir William Robinson's carriage 
 waiting for us, and were driven through the spacious ap- 
 proaches of the town to his beautiful house, where I occupy 
 a small bungalow in the garden all to myself, very quiet and 
 independent. Thoroughly to appreciate a cold bath you 
 must first go through the ordeal of a railway journey in 
 India. I told Sir William on meeting him at breakfast that 
 he did not yet see us as we were. Was not Naaman told to 
 wash three times in Jordan? If so, how appropriate the 
 prescription ! The white impalpable dust of the East will not 
 yield to one scrubbing. Judge of our surprise on being told 
 by Sir William at breakfast that the famine in Madras was 
 tenfold worse than in the central districts. He said that a 
 worse famine had never occurred within his experience of 
 thirty-five years. That in Bengal last year, I think in 
 Orissa, was, to use his own words, " a mere amusement " for 
 the officials compared to the work which had to be done here 
 now. With this information fresh in our ears we started in 
 a hired carriage for a drive to the town and by the sea shore 
 to witness the celebrated surf which breaks on the shore, not 
 so much at this season as during the monsoon. Here along 
 the shore and close to the pier we were brought at once into 
 immediate contact with startling evidence of the famine. 
 Thirty large steamers Avere anchored in the roadstead dis- 
 
( 78 ) 
 
 charging rice brought from Calcutta. Without straining the 
 figure I may say that literally there were mountains of rice 
 in bags on the beach already landed and heaped up. Barges 
 and surf boats were plying backwards and forwards between 
 the ships and the shore still unlading; the railway on the 
 pier was in active work passing trucks on to the shore laden 
 with bags to be added to the accumulated mountains. 
 Hundreds of native carts were arranged side by side on the 
 shore, being promptly laden and sent off into the interior 
 with these bags. And then the moving mass of populace on 
 the shore, the able-bodied actively employed in the transport — 
 and it was a study to see these naked men in every possible 
 attitude which can exhibit the human form to perfection — the 
 weakly, including the women and children, hanging about 
 with baskets or small tin pots to collect the scattered grains 
 of rice which had escaped from the bags, sometimes in the 
 interstices of the sleepers of the railway or the planks of the 
 pier, sometimes on the sand of the sea shore after the bags 
 had been heaped up. Frequently we saw women scrape up 
 handfuls of sand and winnow them in a basket to separate 
 the few grains of rice from the bulk of sand. Frequently we 
 saw them and the children take advantage of a small acci- 
 dental hole in the bags, squeeze the hole, furtively extract a 
 few grains, hide the half handful in their waistbands and 
 then run away. There were head men on all the heaps of 
 bags and all around armed with canes to prevent depredation, 
 but it went on all the same. The beach swarmed with 
 people and mostly of the destitute class. We were told that 
 they had come from the villages in the neighbourhood, where 
 their natural food had entirely failed them, to endeavour to 
 pick up what they could in the capital. At all events, there 
 could be no mistake as to their condition. Every grain of 
 rice was of the greatest moment to the hundreds of old 
 persons, women and children we saw congregated on that 
 
( 79 ) 
 
 shore to-day. Accustomed in London to appeals from pro- 
 fessional beggars on flimsy pretexts, which one discards in a 
 moment, I was shocked to witness the undisguised evidence 
 of gnawing hunger all around me. On returning home I 
 questioned Sir William Robinson more carefully on this 
 serious matter. He said they were feeding 10,000 persons 
 daily already, that the area of famine extended to 15,000,000 
 persons, and that they were only on the threshold of the 
 calamity, which nothing would avert except a cyclone with a 
 rainfall of 15 or 20 inches at once. Soon would come the 
 water famine, which cannot be alleviated by any means or 
 by any precaution. Then the cattle would die by thousands. 
 He took the most gloomy view of the situation, and said they 
 had four months of growing destitution to look forward to. 
 This is indeed a dreadful thing, realized and brought home 
 directly to one's feelings as I have seen it to-day. But 
 enough of misery. The city of Madras cannot bear com- 
 parison with Bombay. The flat and uniformly straight line 
 of coast and the dead level on which the city stands is a 
 lamentable falling off from Bombay, with its magnificent 
 harbour, its promontories of Colaba and Malabar Point, the 
 noble sweep of Back Bay, the distant Ghauts. There is not 
 a single geographical feature of interest in Madras, although 
 there are wide roads and open spaces in every direction. The 
 native is different here from the native in Bombay; they are 
 more aboriginal here, more black, at least, more universally 
 black with woolly hair. The women, too, dress differently here, 
 they wear no bodice, —the pretty little ornamented bodice 
 is wanting and with it the support to the figure, and the 
 saree is not worn over the head as in Bombay but thrown 
 over the shoulder. The native female figure, the perfection 
 of grace when carrying the lota on the head, as in Bombay, 
 deteriorates here, except, perhaps, in a very youthful instance, 
 and then it is " when unadorned adorned the most." 
 
( 80 ) 
 
 I should not myself care to live in this capital, which 
 to me presents no attractions. Even the sea fails to give it 
 interest. The surf is grand, and the passage of the surf 
 boats, even at this quiet season, is something novel and 
 exciting, and the catamarans are peculiar to the coast; these 
 latter are merely three logs of wood lashed together with 
 rope ; on these logs stand two naked men with planks for 
 paddles, and they face the surf and preserve their balance on 
 the logs in the most marvellous manner, rising and falling 
 with the waves and guiding their extraordinary craft with 
 great skill and daring. The men wear a little conical cap of 
 platted straw and nothing else. The shore, however, just 
 now is a scene of remarkable excitement on account of the 
 famine as I have already detailed. 
 
( 81 ) 
 
 OOTACAMUNI), NlELGHERRIES, 
 
 Sunday, \1th December. 
 
 Mahabaleshwur is rather more than 4,000 feet above 
 the sea. Here we are 8,000. I am glad to have seen and 
 to have been able to compare the two sanitariums of Southern 
 India. We left Madras by the 6 o'clock train on Thursday 
 evening, having been most kindly received and treated by 
 the Robinsons. We found the Madras Station en fete for 
 the Nawab of Arcot, who was going to Delhi by the same 
 train and would travel with us to the junction. His followers, 
 dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, swarmed on the 
 platform and gave our start from Madras a very Indian com- 
 plexion. Madras is, in fact, very Indian — the people are less 
 mixed, and the vegetation is more tropical, as is natural, 
 seeing that it, and the whole line of country we passed 
 through thence towards Beypore, is not more than 11 or 12 
 degrees north of the equator. But I should be sorry to live 
 in Madras, and I left it without regret. It is on a flat dead 
 level, and the air felt to me heavy and tainted and sadly 
 deficient in oxygen. We arrived at the little terminus of the 
 branch line which leads to the base of the Nielgherry Hills 
 at 10 o'clock on Friday morning. Since daylight we were 
 able to appreciate the tropical nature of the foliage and 
 vegetation through which the line passed: as an instance of 
 which I may tell you that the fence on both sides of the 
 railway was composed of one unbroken line of aloes in full 
 vigour, 'some of them in flower, the whole 300 miles — a 
 formidable fence, too, when the plant puts out its solid spiky 
 leaves as it does in this climate ; nothing can approach it. 
 We were gladdened also for some hours before we alighted 
 by the sight of the lovely Nielgherries. The name signifies 
 
 G 
 
( 8-2 ) 
 
 blue mountains, and they are aptly so called. White fleecy 
 clouds, a novelty in this country, rested on the tops, and 
 reminded me of Wales. Orders had been sent on from 
 Madras to have two tonjons, or sedan chairs carried by 
 coolies, ready at the base of the hills, and two ponies. Monier 
 and Stanley were to have the two tonjons, Rama (the servant) 
 and I were to ride each a pony. I have a horror of being 
 either dragged or carried by men when God has blessed me 
 with health and strength, for which reason I walked up the 
 Ghaut at Mahabaleshwur whilst the carriage was dragged by 
 coolies. For the same reason I objected to the tonjon here, 
 and insisted on a pony, whatever might be the heat of the 
 sun. Arrived at the base of the Ghaut we had a good break- 
 fast, and then separated our luggage, leaving our heavy things 
 below at the station. Every package has to be carried up on 
 the head of a coolie, and weight, therefore, becomes a question 
 of moment. At the base we found the two tonjons as ordered 
 and the two ponies, together with the contractor himself, who 
 does all the carrying. Monier ensconced himself in one 
 tonjon, and I waited to see if Stanley would resist the temp- 
 tation of getting into the other. My example conquered. 
 Luckily there was a third pony ready, and he discarded the 
 tonjon and got on the pony, seizing the pommel, and ex- 
 claiming: " Oh, oh ! if it kicks, mind, I shall be off" — so much 
 the more merit for him. But as all three ponies had been up 
 and down the Ghaut daily during the season very little kick 
 had been left in any of them. So the contractor, Stanley and 
 I, all mounted, ascended the Ghaut, and Monier followed in his 
 sedan and escorted by Rama. What a magnificent ascent it 
 was ! ten miles of steep riding, the high scarped mountains 
 towering above us on both sides of the pass, whilst the path 
 wound through the most lovely varied tropical foliage — palm 
 trees of all kinds, including the slender areca or beetle nut 
 palm, the bella donna creeper, with scarlet fruit as big as an 
 
( 83 ) 
 
 apple, orange, bamboo (an elegant tree when in full growth), 
 cactus, aloes in flower, tree ferns, poinsettias 8 and 10 feet 
 high, wild roses, coffee plant, &c. In every direction flitted 
 birds of bright plumage, amongst them a variety of the bird 
 of paradise. It really was a ride one might dream about ; 
 but I could hardly believe the evidence of my senses, the 
 scene was so grand and glorious. We were three hours on 
 horseback making the ascent, which by my aneroid reached 
 the altitude of 7,000 feet. If we miss Delhi and the northern 
 cities of India we come in here by way of compensation for 
 tropical foliage and vegetation such as the north cannot boast 
 of. The ascent of the Ghaut was an unrivalled specimen of 
 the kind. Arrived at Coonoor, the midway sanitarium at 
 the top, the road thence to Ootacamund runs sufficiently 
 level to admit of wheels, and after uniting our forces and 
 our baggage, which had been dispersed amongst the tonjon, 
 ponies and coolies, we packed ourselves all together in a 
 four-wheeled carriage and drove on the same evening to 
 Ootacamund, 12 miles from Coonoor — the road ascending 
 all the way. It was strange how completely the tropical 
 vegetation was left behind at Coonoor, and for the rest 
 of the drive we had chiefly the eucalyptus or Australian 
 gum tree, which has been largely planted in the upland 
 district ; and here, in and around Ootacamund, we have 
 whole hedges of wild geraniums, wild roses and tree 
 rhododendrons. There is a hedge leading to this hotel of 
 at least 100 yards in length continuously of geraniums in 
 full leaf and full flower and at least 6 feet in height ; and 
 in the two pony rides we have had on the hills, the last two 
 mornings, we saw beautiful tree rhododendrons 25 or 30 feet 
 high, covered with lovely crimson flowers. I have gathered 
 the seeds of some of these, intending to sow them at Dolly. 
 And yet I cannot understand how geraniums and roses can 
 flourish so luxuriantly at this altitude and in this tempera- 
 
 g2 
 
( 84 ) 
 
 ture. We have fires in our sitting-room and in our bed- 
 rooms, double blankets on our beds; and this morning, as we 
 sallied forth on our ponies, the hill sides were covered with 
 hoar frost. Here is a contrast in the course of twelve hours 
 from the heat and dust of the plains below, where open 
 windows, punkahs day and night, musquito curtains, dust 
 and heat, were the order of the day ! I do not wonder at the 
 governor and his council and staff, and every one else who 
 can, shifting their quarters from hot and unwholesome 
 Madras for six months of the year to this exhilarating climate 
 and picturesque locality. Monier says he prefers it to 
 Missouri, for the latter place was subject to icy cold winds 
 from the snowy range, whereas the climate here is equable. 
 The big game, which an old Indian friend of mine used to 
 enlarge upon in his day as abounding in these hills, has been 
 a good deal shot down ; but a herd of elephants was seen 
 about two months ago not far off, and some gentlemen just 
 returned from an expedition about 10 miles off, told me 
 they had killed sambur, a large kind of deer, and had come 
 across the " pug " of a very large tiger and the disturbed 
 sand where he had been rolling himself. One of them said 
 to me, " Come out next year and we promise to show you 
 some really good sport with large game." This would be 
 more exciting than our brace of grouse at dear old Dolly, 
 and not so troublesome or expensive, Eugene, as a river in 
 Norway. If I had guns and rifles with me at this moment 
 I could have grand sport here amongst bears, cheetahs, 
 sambur and other large game, by making friends with the old 
 Shikarees of the place. Ootacamund is situated in a basin, 
 but not in a hollow — that is to say, the basin is large enough 
 to admit of hills and undulations within it; and the residences 
 are detached and scattered about on all these undulations, 
 which are well planted with the eucalyptus and evergreens 
 of fine growth. There are drives and rides in all directions; 
 
( 85 ) 
 
 pains having been taken by the government to make the 
 place enjoyable as much for the governor himself and the 
 members of the government, who practically live here, as for 
 the general residents. The habitations range from 7,500 to 
 8,000 feet above the sea, and the rides on horse or pony back 
 conduct you easily to an elevation of 9,000 feet. We rode 
 up to that height ourselves yesterday morning before break- 
 fast, with a fine fresh Champagny breeze greeting us all the 
 way up, and yet in the middle of the day there is a July 
 sun, making an umbrella desirable by way of shade. It is 
 out of the way of the post, and that is one objection. The 
 bags are carried all the way from the base of the hills to this 
 place, about 25 miles, by dawk runners, three or four men at 
 a time, in relays, and with the bags they carry sticks with 
 metal rings on them, jingling these as they run — rather a 
 barbarous mail in these days of steam. We have enjoyed 
 our sanitary visit here. Each day we have had long rides 
 on ponies. To-day we were out from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., 
 taking our breakfast with us to the bungalow of a coffee 
 planter about 6 or 7 miles off, situated in a nook on one of 
 these high hills, from whence we looked down on the vast 
 plains and jungles of the Mysore country, with Seringapatam 
 in the distance, from a height of 3,000 or 4,000 feet. It was 
 in these very plains that Lord Hastings caught his fever 
 when out shooting last year, and where he died. But what 
 lovely weather we have had here— such a blue sky, such 
 atmosphere for the mountains and distances, and such an 
 exhilarating breeze — every day the same ! I send you an 
 orange blossom plucked from a tree in the open air to-day, 
 and the petal of a geranium flower from the hedge I have 
 before mentioned. We drive to Coonoor and descend the 
 Ghaut to the plains to-morrow. 
 
( 86 ) 
 
 OOTACAMUND, 
 
 18th December, 1876. 
 
 You would have been amused and delighted by the 
 troupe of native jugglers which presented themselves before 
 the portico of Sir William Robinson's house by order the 
 other day — a pack of rascally-looking naked fellows, most 
 of them with only a tattered cloth round their loins, but 
 otherwise stark naked — there were about a dozen men, two 
 or three women, and some children. The men took different 
 parts, sleight-of-hand men beginning the performance — and 
 these were the most wonderful of all. They squatted them- 
 selves down on the hard gravel, close to the steps of the 
 portico on which we, the gentry, sat, and all around them 
 were the servants of the establishment. Their appliances 
 were of the rudest — a tattered bag to hold the cups and 
 balls, an old clothes basket, a few bamboo poles, and some 
 rolls of dirty cotton cloth, and odds and ends of that kind. 
 After one of the men had gone through the cups and balls, 
 and had brought out of his mouth several large stones, 
 spitting them out one after another, without putting his 
 hands to his mouth, every stone filling his mouth, the naked 
 fellow behind him came forward to my feet with a round 
 stone as big as a marble, and placed it on the step, opening 
 both his hands wide to show that they were empty ; he then 
 put one hand over the small stone for a second, and instead 
 of the stone, there on the step were a couple of live 
 scorpions; he took up the scorpions, opened his hand, they 
 were gone, and the small stone only remained : without 
 moving for a moment from the spot, he placed his hand, 
 covering, as I thought, the stone only, on the step close 
 to my foot, the stone was gone, and, instead, there were 
 
( 87 ) 
 
 three live scorpions and a live snake. Here was a naked 
 fellow, with no bag or basket, with only a string round 
 his loins, away from his companions, and within my touch, 
 and surrounded with eyes on all sides. He retired, and 
 another man came forward, and sitting down, balanced a 
 short sword on his forehead ; whilst so balancing, he put a 
 thread and separately four small glass beads into his mouth, 
 the beads being rather smaller than a pea : he put his hands 
 behind his back, and then with his tongue, balancing the 
 sword all the time, threaded the beads on the string, and 
 spat them out all threaded. Another took a reed, spun a 
 top, and transferred it to the end of the reed, which he then 
 balanced on his chin, and at command the top gyrated 
 vertically, became apparently motionless, or wabbled, and 
 in a moment, without any effort on the man's part. Another 
 passed a rough rusty sword, full two feet long, right down 
 his windpipe to the hilt, and an iron hook through his nose 
 and out of his mouth — not pleasant to look at. Another, 
 and he was a Hercules, took up a granite stone with his 
 teeth by a rag passed round the stone, which was about 
 15 inches square, and jerked it backwards over his head. 
 I do not think I could have lifted the stone with both hands. 
 Another handed me a precious hard cocoa nut to show me 
 it was hard and sound, and I rapped it hard against the 
 stone step to see if I could break it. He then threw 
 it high up in the air, and down it came on his head, 
 smashing the cocoa nut into fragments, and covering his 
 head with the liquid. A little girl stuck two straws into 
 the sand, and bending her body backwards till her head 
 was just over the points of the straws, she seized the ends 
 with her eyelids, and thus drew the straws out of the sand. 
 Then they went through the celebrated mango trick. On 
 the gravel, just before our eyes, they heaped up a little 
 mound of earth, into which they put a mango stone, and 
 
( 88 ) 
 
 then covered the mound with a ragged basket as big as a 
 washhand basin, having first watered the earth with a tin 
 cup of water. This was left for a few minutes, and they 
 then covered the basket with a dirty cotton cloth. The 
 naked manipulator then appeared to fuss about a little with 
 the cloth, but it was only a narrow slip of cloth, and he 
 himself was naked, and was close to us on the gravel. All 
 the time he was talking a jargon of Hindostani and bad 
 English, and his companions were joining in ; the dialogue 
 over, he drew off the slip of cloth, uncovered the lid of 
 the basket, and there was a small mango tree shining with 
 freshness, with fruit as big as an apple growing on it. He 
 pulled up the tree out of the earth, and with it the stone, 
 with a good long fibrous root attached to it, and handed 
 all to me. I broke off the fruit myself. It was growing, 
 and the fruit adhered to the stalk and was full of perfume, 
 and the plant itself full of life and freshness. The basket 
 trick was equally wonderful. The woman was tied in a 
 net and put into the basket just before us on the hard 
 gravel, the basket, like the other appliances, being of the 
 rudest kind, and just big enough to hold the woman. 
 Then came the usual tests of stamping in the basket, and 
 poking a sword through it. I fancy the clever woman 
 must have doubled herself up so as to admit of this being 
 done without hurting her, but the illusion intended was that 
 the basket was empty. It was then surrounded by a few 
 bamboos, and round the bamboos was wound a slip of dirty 
 cotton cloth, jargon going on vigorously all the time : one 
 man responding to the other's jargon. In a few minutes 
 the bamboos and basket were kicked over, all empty, and 
 the woman forced herself, from the outside, through the 
 circle of servants and others who were looking on, and pre- 
 sented herself before us at the steps of the portico. I am 
 aware that all this is done by Lynn, and Maskelyne and 
 
( 89 ) 
 
 Cooke and others, but they perform on a stage, with their 
 audience in front of them, nobody at the back. Here the 
 trick was done under a bright sun, in the middle of the day, 
 on the gravel just under our eyes, with servants and stran- 
 gers surrounding it, by men who had no mechanical appli- 
 ances, and, being nearly naked, could not possibly conceal 
 any apparatus about their persons. The same set of men 
 performed before the Prince of Wales, and an account 
 appeared in the newspapers of these very tricks, but I thought 
 you would like to hear from me what I saw myself with my 
 own eyes. Then there was a man with two little birds on 
 his finger. He stationed a boy about thirty feet off, and 
 stuck a little ring in the boy's nose ; at the word of com- 
 mand one of the birds flew from the man's finger right at 
 the bo)''s nose, seized the ring, and brought it back to the 
 man. He then tossed up a little red fluffy tassel into the 
 air ; the bird flew at it, seized it in the air, and brought it 
 back to him. 
 
 Here, at Ootacamund, we have got back suddenly 
 into old England again. I mean, so far as hoar frost, 
 blankets and fires are concerned. My bath of a morning 
 and the landscape from the window remind me of Craven 
 Cottage before we go out hunting. They even have hunting 
 here, but not till the season, which begins in March — a 
 regular pack of foxhounds, meets, and all correct, but instead 
 of the fox they hunt the jackal. It must be break-neck work 
 up and down these hills, which now are as hard as brickbats ; 
 perhaps in March, when the rain has fallen, the surface may 
 be softer. I really have not seen a horse or even a pony in 
 India which I would care to possess ; the horses are either 
 second-rate, shuffling Arabs, about 14 hands high, or coarse 
 Cape or Australian importations without action, which 
 would discredit an omnibus in London. The ponies come 
 chiefly from Burmah, and are called Pegu ponies, not quite 
 
( 90 ) 
 
 • 
 
 13 hands, rough and without action, but wiry, and able to 
 do a day's work. We have been riding them on these hills, 
 and find them safe over rough roads, and lasting. There 
 is still good sport to be had in these wild Nielgherry Hills, 
 if a man knows how to set about it. About eight or ten miles 
 off, in various directions, are travellers' bungalows, empty 
 houses, with one attendant living in each, where a sportsman, 
 bringing all his own food and things, can put up for a week 
 or more, and make that place the base of his operations. 
 Here, with native beaters got together on the spot, he can 
 beat the jungles round about, and can generally fall in 
 with a sambur, antelope, bear, or sometimes with a 
 tiger or leopard or cheetah. It is an enormous extent of 
 wild country, but that in the plains towards Mysore is 
 still more vast; only in the plains fever is rife, and sport 
 cannot be carried on there without risk to health. Perhaps 
 our brace of grouse at Dolly, with health and old England 
 about us, is the best, after all. For a traveller there is great 
 excitement and novelty in this country, but as a resident 
 I should not care for it ; the climate would not suit me all 
 the year round — it is not bracing enough. In these hills 
 there is an exhilarating breeze morning and evening, like our 
 autumns in England. But below, in the plains, the atmo- 
 sphere, if not actually sultry, is vapid, and devoid of fresh- 
 ness at the best. There is no inducement to take exercise, 
 but, on the contrary, every temptation to remain idle in your 
 cane armchair and literally to do nothing. 
 
 There are three distinct aboriginal tribes in the Niel- 
 gherries— the Todas, about 600 in number, who claim to be 
 lords of the soil, and to whom a certain class of the poorer 
 cultivators pay a small tribute in kind — our Government to 
 a certain extent also acknowledge the claim, and allow them 
 rights of pasturage over the waste lands ; secondly, the Cor- 
 rumbas, about the same in number, but a very inferior race 
 
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( 91 ) 
 
 to the Todas — they live on roots and in holes of the rocks, 
 are short in stature, a kind of Earthmen, and are very rarely 
 seen in any civilized neighbourhood ; and thirdly, the Kotas, 
 who number about 300 only. All these tribes are gradually 
 diminishing in number owing to intermarriage amongst 
 themselves. I came across a family of Todas. Very black 
 they were, with a large quantity of thick, black hair, grow- 
 ing low down on the forehead, but not ungainly either in 
 face or figure, somewhat an exaggerated type of our gipsies. 
 They had their small herd of buffaloes and tract of grazing 
 ground round their huts, but nevertheless pursued us, 
 begging. 
 
( 9'- ; ) 
 
 Tkiciiinopoly, 
 
 Sunday, 24tk December, 1876. 
 
 I am housed (if I may use an Irishism) here in a tent 
 in the collector's garden. Mr. Webster, the judge, who was 
 to have taken us in, has gone to Madras, and therefore 
 transferred us to Mr. Sewell, the collector, and he very 
 kindly put up a tent for me, as his house could not accom- 
 modate all. At 1.30 a.m. this morning I was awake and 
 fidgeting about the tent, for the musquitoes had got seisin of 
 me, when I heard the patter of the first large drops of rain 
 on the roof of the tent. " Oh, what a blessing !" thought I, 
 " to this famine-stricken country." We had not had a drop 
 of rain ourselves since leaving the Mediterranean, two months 
 and more ago ; and here, in South India, everything was 
 perishing for want of it. No such famine had occurred 
 within the memory of man, and all idea of rain at this 
 season had been abandoned. " A few heat drops," I said to 
 myself; but no, the patter continued and increased till at 
 last it settled down to heavy tropical rain. I turned into 
 bed again, experiencing a new sensation as if I was sleeping 
 under a large umbrella. I awoke again at five, and found 
 that the tent ropes had slackened, the tent pegs had become 
 loose, and my roof had bulged in, and it was drip, drip, in all 
 directions. However, I was only too glad that the heavy 
 rain had continued all night. Whilst I was moving my bed 
 away from the drip, in the dark, and shifting some of my 
 clothes from this quality of mercy, smack went some of the 
 tent pegs, and a good portion of the tent collapsed, carrying 
 away some of the crockery with it, with a bang. I summoned 
 the servants, who fortunately were within earshot, and they 
 got more help, and we had things righted ; but Rama said to 
 
( 93 ) 
 
 me, "Master, go inside; if it come wet sometimes tent fall 
 down altogether." It was clear I had not yet seen the shady 
 side of tent life. A large quantity of rain has fallen already, 
 and if it goes on in this way some of the crops will be saved ; 
 the tanks will be filled, herbage spring up, and the wretched 
 cattle (now going about like skeletons) will find food. It is 
 indeed an opportune visitation. The descent of the Ghaut, 
 on returning from the Nielgherries, impressed me as much as 
 the ascent did. I never saw so striking a scene. Imagine an 
 Alpine pass of the first magnitude with the addition of tropical 
 vegetation of the most varied character at the base. That 
 night we slept at Erode, at the station, for there are very few 
 inns in this country. I occupied a double-bedded room jointly 
 with a stranger. I asked the woman of the station who he 
 was, as I had misgivings about the rupees I carried with me 
 in my pockets. "A very nice man," she said; "there he is!" 
 pointing to a rough hairy man, smoking on the platform. 
 He turned out to be inspector of points and crossings on the 
 railway — a good sort of rough Scotchman ; but he snored 
 terrifically. At Tanjore, our next halt, we were most 
 hospitably received by Mr. Thomas, the collector. It shows 
 how easily false impressions may be formed of a man one 
 does not know personally. He had lost his wife recently by 
 cholera, and had taken up, we were told, Lord Radstock's 
 views of religion. On that account we changed our pro- 
 gramme so that we might go to Trichinopoly first, and spend 
 Sunday and Christmas Day here, and not at Tanjore. He 
 turned out, on acquaintance, to be a most cheery fellow, like 
 poor John Reynolds in face, liveliness and manner, full of 
 jokes, and a great sportsman. It was quite a relief to me to 
 talk to him about horses, shooting and fishing. He has 
 published an excellent book on Indian fish. He again 
 wished me to stay behind with him, promising me black 
 buck, snipe and sport of all kinds, but time would not admit 
 
( 94 ) 
 
 of it. Tanjore is famous for its grand pagoda. It certainly 
 is a noble specimen of Hindoo art. I do not myself care for 
 Hindoo art. It is full of grotesque deformities, -which 
 recommend themselves only to men, like Monier, skilled in 
 Hindoo mythology ; but to me, Siva with his six or eight 
 arms, riding on a deformed bull, or Vishnu on some other 
 beast or bird, equally out of drawing, are alike monstrous, 
 inartistic and absurd. The whole paraphernalia, however, 
 of Brahmins, attendants, ceremonies, groups, colours, taken 
 in conjunction with the Eastern architecture, interests me 
 from its character and novelty, and so I enjoy it as much as 
 Monier does. We are always met on these occasions with 
 great respect and courtesy by the priests and attendants, and 
 garlanded with masses of oleanders as we go away. What 
 interested me still more was a visit of ceremony we paid to 
 the Ranees of Tanjore at the Palace. The Rajah of Tanjore 
 has left no son — only a daughter, the present Princess of 
 Tanjore, who has gone up to Delhi for the great assemblage 
 there, and twelve widows, who are the Ranees, and live in 
 the Palace. The Princess is married, but has no child — 
 consequently the Ranees, more to spite the Princess (for they 
 fight like mothers-in-law and children in our own country) 
 than for any other reason, wish to adopt a son. They cannot do 
 so without the consent of our Government, and they desired 
 to have a conference with Mr. Thomas, who, as collector, is 
 supreme at Tanjore, to talk over the matter. Mr. Thomas 
 took us with him to the Palace. We were received at the 
 entrance, in Eastern fashion, by a bevy of turbaned and be- 
 dizened fellows, who constitute the idle hangers on at all 
 palaces, and conducted to the hall or large room where the 
 Ranees had enshrined themselves, for they were not visible — 
 a striped curtain shut off a portion of the room. In the 
 curtain, parallel with the ground and about two feet from it, 
 was a band of net-work about four inches wide, so that the 
 
( 95 ) 
 
 Ranees, squatted on the ground on the other side, could 
 peep through the net-work at us and we could not see 
 them. We were seated round the table close to the curtain, 
 and at one end of the table sat the adopted son, dressed in 
 white, with a cap of gold, a wretched looking Jewish kind of 
 creature, as yellow as his cap, with nails an inch long and as 
 nervous and uncomfortable as possible. Behind us — some 
 seated, some standing — were all the tag-rag and bob-tail of 
 the Palace, something like the chorus of warriors and nobles 
 at Is. a night when Otello is performed at the Royal Italian 
 Opera. The conversation was carried on briskly in Tamil 
 between Mr. Thomas and the Ranees, who seemed to hold 
 their own all the better for being behind the curtain. It 
 turned on the terms on which the British Government would 
 sanction the adoption. That over, I said to Mr. Thomas, 
 in joke, " Tell the ladies that we have come all the way 
 from England on purpose to see them, and ask them to come 
 out from behind the curtain and show themselves." The 
 chief voice amongst them at once replied, " In the face of 
 our adopted son before you, you see our faces ; you must be 
 content." An excellent answer, and we were accordingly 
 obliged to be satisfied with the yellow, narrow-chested 
 creature seated at the table before us. Nothing shows our 
 moral power in the East more than an audience of this kind. 
 Here we were, five of us, English — that is, Thomas, the sub- 
 collector, and our three selves — in shooting coats, in the 
 precincts of the Palace of one of the oldest dynasties in 
 Southern India, surrounded by all the pomp and circum- 
 stance of the Palace, and yet recognized as the paramount 
 lords of all. Nothing can be done, from the adoption of a 
 son down to the purchase of a carriage horse, without our 
 consent. How is this ? There are no troops within 100 
 miles. Thomas, his two assistants, the doctor and a mis- 
 sionary parson are the only Englishmen in the place, and 
 
( 96 ) 
 
 yet we hold all the power. The firmness and integrity of 
 our character and the natural distrust and weakness of the 
 native character, supply the answer. We were all again 
 garlanded with oleanders on our exit from the Palace. Before 
 leaving, the court fool, or jester, came forward and complained 
 to Mr. Thomas that his pay of six rupees a month had been 
 stopped. Monier says it is only in the very old courts that 
 this personage is kept going, and I suppose he is now doomed 
 at Tanjore — poor fool ! Another interesting and thoroughly 
 Indian scene was enacted before us at Tanjore — namely, a 
 Nautch. It was held at 8 o'clock at night, in the porte 
 cochere of Mr. Thomas's house, which formed a natural kind 
 of theatre, as steps led up from it to the house. We all sat 
 on chairs placed on the top step, and below, on the carpeted 
 ground, the performance took place. No scene-painter was 
 necessary. The magnificent aruns, bigonias and calladiums 
 at the back and sides of the portico formed appropriate 
 scenery, all lighted up with as many duplex and other lamps 
 and candles as Thomas's butler could stick on the steps 
 of the portico. There were five girls and a number of 
 native musicians and attendants. The girls were dressed in 
 sparkling bodices, with gold-tissue skirts gathered up between 
 the legs and falling full in front, brilliant satin trousers, and 
 covered with real jewellery ; head, neck, ears, nose and 
 fingers were a mass of gold and precious stones. They 
 danced set figures in Oriental fashion with great precision 
 and effect, and good time was kept by bells fastened round 
 their ankles. The dances over, we descended the steps of 
 the portico and examined the girls and their jewellery. The 
 jewels bore the examination better than the girls. Apart 
 from their ornaments they would not pass muster ; but the 
 jewels were lovely and so Eastern. I longed to pocket them. 
 The value of each girl's jewels was stated to be 700/. or SOOZ. 
 Before they left, two or three of the girls came forward, and, 
 
( 97 ) 
 
 in serious language, complained to Mr. Thomas of the article 
 in the Penal Code, which prevents women of this character 
 from bringing up their daughters as courtesans. They look 
 on it as a profession, a legitimate and hereditary profession, 
 in which they are entitled to educate their daughters. To 
 judge from their jewels, it must be a paying one. It was 
 another proof, added to the scene at the Palace and the 
 appeal from the jester, of the power which the English 
 collector is supposed to possess. The people think he can 
 do anything. 
 
 Christmas How different to the same in England ! ther- 
 Da y- mometer 82°, but a drizzling rain off and on all 
 day. My quarters were shifted last night from the tent to 
 the house owing to the rain — half eaten up by musquitoes. 
 Drove before breakfast to the Great Temple at Seringham, 
 three miles off, an aggregation of gopuras, or entrance gates, 
 colonnaded halls and pagodas, all enclosed by walled-in 
 enclosures, one within the other, the outer quadrangle being 
 a quarter of a mile square. Within are native huts, where 
 dwell those who have retired in their old age to these sacred 
 precincts. We were received with great courtesy by the 
 custodians, and the magnificent jewels of the idol were 
 exhibited to us, displayed on a table, and said to be worth 
 £70,000 or £80,000. Thence to Jemba Keshwara, another 
 large block of gopuras, colonnaded halls and pagodas, similar 
 to Seringham and almost equally striking. Were garlanded 
 with oleanders at each place. The wonderful Rock of 
 Trichinopoly rises abruptly to a height of 400 feet from the 
 town below, and looks like a pile of great water-worn 
 boulders of stone, one above the other, crowned with a 
 temple ; the access to the top being by long flights of steps, 
 
 H 
 
( 98 ) 
 
 partly artificial and partly hewn out of the rock. From the 
 top there is an extensive panoramic view over the plains, 
 the two rivers, Cauvery and Coloroon, bounded by the 
 distant mountains towards the north. The whole of the 
 rock was illuminated on the occasion of the Prince of 
 Wales' visit. 
 
( 99 ) 
 
 Trichinopoly, 
 
 December 26th, 1876. 
 
 English newspapers reach us in India a day after the 
 fair, and the appetite for home news is consequently dulled 
 by the interval which has necessarily elapsed after the event. 
 I have, however, been much struck with an observation in 
 the Premier's speech at the Mansion House dinner (with 
 reference to European politics), that ours was a rule of 
 sympathy and not of force, as applicable to India. Old 
 residents in the country may tell us that there is a growing- 
 want of sympathy between the native population in India and 
 their English rulers. Perhaps remarks to that effect may just 
 now be made with more bitterness than sincerity, owing to 
 the irritation caused amongst civilians in India by three 
 well-known cases: — first, where a civilian was directly re- 
 buked for his supposed harsh treatment of a native at a 
 public assemblage during the Prince of Wales' visit last year; 
 — secondly, by the instance known as " Fuller's Case," which 
 called forth Lord Lytton's celebrated minute, and more re- 
 cently by the " Weld Case," where a civilian has been sus- 
 pended for a supposed indignity offered to the natives, by 
 exhuming the body of a holy man which had been buried 
 too near a well, the water of which was in use in the neigh- 
 bourhood. A good deal of excitement prevails in India from 
 the discussion of these cases, and a certain amount of anta- 
 gonism between the two races at the present moment, but 
 only temporary it may be hoped, is the natural result of the 
 discussion. 
 
 h2 
 
( ico ) 
 
 Apart from feeling and prejudice I offer my impressions, 
 as a tourist, that our rule in India, if not a rule of sympathy, 
 is at least a rule of justice. There are, of course, many 
 separate branches of administration in the public service in 
 India, but I will adduce the duties of a collector by way of 
 illustration. All three Presidencies are divided into col- 
 lectorates, each collectorate being presided over by a collector, 
 with a sub-collector, magistrates, and staff of officers under 
 him, totally distinct from the judge and judicial staff in the 
 same division. The primary duty of a collector was formerly 
 to get in the land revenue of the territory within his juris- 
 diction, and hence the name. He has, however, much more 
 than that to do now ; in fact, the collection of the revenue 
 forms the least important part of his duties. A more appro- 
 priate name for him would be administrator of the district, 
 every department of which, except the judicial, is under his 
 control. He is responsible for the peace of the district ; he 
 has to look after the roads and public buildings, the proper 
 supply of water, the repair of tanks, bridges, and embank- 
 ments, the sanitary condition of the people; he establishes 
 dispensaries, and visits prisons; he plants and improves, and 
 advises with the municipality, where there is one, and, where 
 there is none, himself decides on the appropriation of local 
 funds for all or any of those special objects. He sits as a 
 magistrate, takes original charges, and hears appeals from 
 the magistrates and officers under him. 
 
 The better to enable him to become acquainted with the 
 wants of every part of his district and to afford the people 
 greater facility for representing their grievances, as well as to 
 collect the tribute, he moves about his district in tents for 
 eight or nine months of each year, pitching his tents in the 
 neighbourhood of different villages, so that he may himself 
 judge of local requirements and that the outlying inhabitants 
 may have personal access to him. In short, the general 
 
( ioi ) 
 
 welfare of the district is committed to his care and he has to 
 provide for it. 
 
 Driving out the other day with a collector in the Madras 
 Presidency, whose guest I was at his head-quarters, T 
 observed a concourse of persons assembled in his garden. ' 
 I asked who those people were. He replied, " They are 
 petitioners, all of whom have or fancy they have some 
 grievance to be redressed." I said, " I suppose you have 
 stated days for hearing these cases?" — " Oh, no," he replied, 
 " Every day of the week ; fifty or sixty people come to me 
 every day with specific complaints." I was with him one 
 afternoon whilst he disposed of these cases. They comprised 
 every sort of grievance connected with land tenure, magis- 
 terial work, and charitable relief. He sat in an armchair 
 under the verandah of his house, with his civil clerk, his 
 magisterial clerk, and a couple of policemen on his right, and 
 two or three peons, or office messengers, on his left. A list 
 had been previously made of all the complainants present 
 and a precis of such complaints as had been submitted in 
 writing. The number of persons present on the occasion to 
 which I allude was sixty. As the name was called out in 
 oider, the man or woman advanced to the foot of the 
 collector's chair and stated his or her grievance. It was 
 listened to with patience and determined on the spot, with 
 explanations or advice given in the vernacular, my friend 
 being as conversant with Tamil as with English. It was a 
 domestic tribunal, intelligible and apparently satisfactory to 
 all concerned, and very interesting it was to witness these 
 half-clothed natives come forward, one by one, with their 
 obeisance, state their case directly and personally and submit 
 willingly to the decision. 
 
 Take another illustration, namely, the assessment of the 
 land tax. In Bombay, if not in the other Presidencies, the 
 settlement of the tax lasts for thirty years, when there is a 
 
( 102 ) 
 
 careful revision of the assessment. For that purpose the 
 officers of the Government communicate directly with the 
 ryots, the lands are classified according to their physical or 
 mechanical composition, and the outcome of the produce, per 
 acre, is converted into a money equivalent on a fair basis. 
 The returns made by the local officers are sent up to the 
 chief revenue officer of the Presidency, who submits them to 
 the collector of the district for his remarks, and the tax is 
 not imposed until it has obtained the ultimate sanction of 
 the Government. When it is considered that British India 
 contains nearly a million square miles, paying revenue to the 
 Viceroy, the amount of labour involved in the assessment 
 will be appreciated. 
 
 I have reason to believe that the judicial, educational, 
 postal, and other departments of the service, are administered 
 by our upright, independent and efficient British public ser- 
 vants in India with the same care and the same scrupulous 
 regard to the interests of the native population. I should 
 add, also, that the posts of all the sub-revenue officials and 
 magistrates, as well as of the district judges, and the staff in 
 both cases, are occupied by natives. 
 
 I have yet another special illustration to adduce, and 
 will not then further trespass on your patience. The inhabit- 
 ants of the British Isles, and especially of the Principality, 
 do not know what it is to suffer from want of rain. Here, in 
 Southern India, the rainfall this season has not been one- 
 fourth of the average, and the consequence is that the crops 
 have failed and famine is sore in the land. About 15,000,000 
 people are affected by the famine, and this is only the com- 
 mencement of the evil. Soon will follow a famine of water, 
 against which there is no relief. Infant children will be the 
 first to die, and will be swept off wholesale ; the cattle also 
 must perish. The Government are acting with energy, and 
 are establishing relief works in numerous localities through- 
 
( 103 ) 
 
 out the Presidency ; but if no rain should fall in the mean- 
 time, they have four months of growing destitution and 
 misery before them, and plenty of anxious work to be done. 
 
 The foregoing instances afford, I think reasonable, 
 grounds for the conclusion at which I have arrived, that 
 our rule in India is a rule, if not of sympathy, at least of 
 justice. 
 
( 104 ) 
 
 R A MX AD, 
 
 Saturday, 2,0th December, 1876. 
 We have got into an out-of-the-way corner of India 
 here, have had a good deal of trouble and fatigue to get 
 here, and shall have more before we can get out of it ; but 
 we had time on our hands, and the question was how best 
 to use it. The coasting steamers from Bombay touch at 
 Tuticorin once a week only for Colombo, namely, on Sun- 
 days. To-morrow would have been too soon for us, and we 
 had therefore a week in hand till the following Sunday. 
 The great temple at Ramiseram, at the extreme southern 
 point of the island of Paumben, is the object of pilgrimage 
 with thousands of Hindoos ; and as Temple lore was 
 Monier's chief object in his visit to the south, we resolved to 
 make a pilgrimage there too. But if it adds to the merit of 
 the pilgrimage to go through much trouble and fatigue about 
 it, we and all other pilgrims to Ramiseram ought to be well 
 thought of for our pains. Six hours of railway through an 
 interesting country, bounded by blue hills in all directions, 
 with a cloudy atmosphere and unusual freedom from dust, 
 took us from Trichinopoly to Madura last Tuesday, the 26th. 
 At Madura we were received by Mr. Hutchins, the judge 
 there, and his wife, and comfortably accommodated in his 
 spacious bungalow. You may imagine the area of ground on 
 which it stands when I tell you that the verandahs on each side 
 of it, supported by heavy chunam columns, round which were 
 twined brilliant Bougainvillia and blue convolvulus creepers, 
 were 90 yards in length. The couple have no children, and 
 interest themselves in the house and garden. Mr. Hutchins 
 is especially nursing a banyan tree in the garden, which 
 already measures 1 80 yards in circumference. This tree (as 
 
( 105 ) 
 
 you know) throws down pendant shoots, which take root 
 and form in time a forest of trunks. By encouraging some 
 of these shoots and pruning others the colonnade of trunks 
 can be made very effective, and some years hence I have 
 no doubt this tree will be a wonder. The great Pagoda 
 at Madura is the sight of the place, more ornate, with richer 
 carving than even that at Seringham, and there we saw 
 Hindooism rampant. A festival was going on — three ele- 
 phants in procession, preceded by Nautch girls, musicians 
 and priests, and followed by a large crowd. Monier has 
 always much attention paid to him by the Brahmins on 
 these occasions, and we are garlanded with oleanders and 
 brought to the front in order that we may see everything. 
 It is a nice, clean, open town in itself, — boulevards of palmyras 
 and cocoa-nut trees, the natives, their huts and habits, being 
 more in accordance with African scenes than Indian. To leave 
 the rail and plunge into village wheel tracks, with a view to 
 the Ramiseram expedition, a good deal of organization was 
 necessary. A regular transit had to be arranged in bullock 
 bandies for the 70 miles from Madura to Ramnad; a bullock 
 bandy is a common tilted two-wheeled cart of the country, 
 drawn by a couple of Brahminy bullocks yoked curricle- 
 fashion. For night journeys the bandy is planked over, and 
 a mattrass laid on the planks, so that the traveller can sleep 
 at full length on the mattrass, if the road is pretty even. 
 Two of these were engaged for us, one a wide one for Monier 
 and Stanley, the other for myself. Mrs. Hutchins kindly 
 put up for us a basket of provisions — very necessary — and 
 leaving our heavy luggage and one of our servants at 
 Madura, we started on our journey at 6 o'clock in the 
 evening of the 28th. It was moonlight; but the cover of 
 the bandy is not favourable to view. However, I could see 
 that we twice crossed the dry sandy bed of the River Vaigay, 
 and felt, as well as saw, that we were launched on country 
 
( ioo ) 
 
 tracks, not roads. After nine or ten hours of bumping and 
 thumping I could see the leading bandy brought up, and the 
 men busy about it with a lantern — the axle had broken — 
 Stanley's weight had proved too much for native iron. 
 Luckily we were only a mile from the village where we were 
 to halt and breakfast, and the broken trap was dragged to 
 that point and there left. Whilst we were at breakfast on 
 Mrs. Hutchins' basket at the Travellers' bungalow at 6 in the 
 morning, a village cart was requisitioned, into which our 
 servant and the luggage were transferred. Monier and 
 Stanley got into my bandy, the mattrass being removed and 
 replaced with seats, and we started afresh for Ramnad, 23 
 miles; but such roads, the like of it was never seen in 
 Europe, — only tracks, constantly shifting, over sand and open 
 land. I walked a good bit of the way as a choice of two 
 evils, and after eight hours consumed in doing the 23 miles, 
 we reached Ramnad at 3.30 yesterday afternoon. I was s<> 
 sorry for the poor little Brahminy bullocks, which are the 
 universal beasts of draught in this country. It is a small 
 animal, not much bigger than a good-sized calf in England; 
 the heavy yoke rests on its neck just in front of the hump; 
 there is no other harness, and it drags by the pressure of the 
 yoke against the hump, the driver sitting on the pole by 
 way of adding to the weight of the yoke on the neck. Of 
 course we had several changes on the road; but it was sur- 
 prising how well these patient little creatures did their work, 
 now and then on even ground breaking out into a jog-trot, 
 and never leaving the clumsy heavy vehicle in a hole or 
 refusing to pull, though the neck was often badly galled. 
 We are the guests of Mr. Lee Warner here, but he only 
 arrived here from England two days ago, and consequently 
 we have to rough it, as he has nothing in order. I had 
 fortunately brought towel and soap, and we all had our 
 resais and pillows, otherwise we should have been badly off. 
 
( 107 ) 
 
 We start to-night in country bandies for Paumben, 23 or 24 
 miles of sandy road, and I will go on with my letter when 
 the journey has been accomplished. 
 
 island of Paumben, We have had another long night journey 
 
 Sunday, 3ist Dec. oyer v jllage tracks in bullock bandies, and 
 arrived here safely at 6 this morning. At all events, we 
 have now seen how our forefathers travelled in India before 
 the days of railways. It has been a singular experience. 
 When our plans had been settled at Ramnad, the native 
 assistant was commissioned to engage four bandies ; one for 
 each of ourselves, and the fourth for Rama and the Madura 
 peon, who had accompanied us all the way, and our luggage, 
 to start from Ramnad at 6 p.m. At least three hours before 
 that time the bandies had been dropping in, in the com- 
 pound of Lee Warner's house. It was so primitive, these 
 clumsy two-wheeled carts covered with a tilt of rough 
 matting, with the pair of Brahminy bullocks belonging to 
 each lying down by the side of the cart, chewing the cud, 
 their gentle expression and soft eyes as much as saying, "We 
 are ready to start now, or will wait six or twelve hours, or 
 any time, when you will." At 6 p.m., however, a mattrass 
 had been put into each cart, over a layer of hay (none of the 
 carts had springs), and our preparations were completed, and 
 off we went in solemn procession. When night closed and 
 the moon got up, it did look so weird, — the line of carts with 
 the white bullocks, and black drivers enveloped in white to 
 keep out the night air, passing in silence over the wide 
 expanse of sand interspersed with palmyra trees, and along 
 the margin now and then of a gloomy lagoon, no sound 
 
 being heard but the croak of a frog and the tinkle of the 
 bullock bells. I could not sleep, nor could Monier, for 
 
 though the track was across loose sand, the thumps and 
 jolts of the clumsy vehicle shook us to pieces. Whilst I 
 
( 103 ) 
 
 was peering out of my tilt a ghostly figure passed by at 
 full trot ; it was the dawk or Tapaul runner with the 
 mail bag balanced on the top of his head, and a stick in 
 his hand with rings on it, jingling as he ran. He did 
 not look to the right or left, but passed between us and 
 the edge of the desolate lagoon with no noise but the jingle 
 of the rings. Poor fellow, I thought to myself, he must 
 have a desolate run of it every night. Jog, jog, thump, 
 jolt all night, our carts crawled over the sandy waste at 
 two miles an hour, and turned us out at Mundepam, the 
 margin of the channel which separates the Islapd of Paumben 
 from the mainland, at 5 a.m. Here, by moonlight, we had 
 to transfer ourselves and baggage into an open country boat 
 to cross the channel. A few naked men, their black skins 
 glancing under the moon, helped us ; the bandies were paid 
 off, the great cotton sail was hoisted, and we ran across 
 the channel in good style. The boat was beached on the 
 sandy shore of the island, away from any habitation, and 
 we landed on the sand as if we had been the first discoverers 
 of Paumben. Rama, the servant, lit a fire under some 
 scrub, and we had some hot tea out of his kettle ; and 
 whilst the peon was sent inland to see if he could find 
 help, I walked and had a delicious bath in the sea. By- 
 and-by the natives came down with a pony for Monier, who 
 was done up with the two night journeys, and we were 
 conducted to a rough kind of bungalow occupied temporarily 
 by Mr. Turner, an assistant-collector of Ramnad. He and 
 his young wife had been expecting us, and had put up two 
 tents for us on the sand close to the house, one for Monier 
 and Stanley, the other for me. Monier was unequal to any 
 further exertion, and retired to his tent for the rest of the 
 day. I cannot account for the difference between him and 
 me in that respect, but I do not feel fatigue ; and therefore 
 after 10 o'clock breakfast I hired a pony, and rode to the 
 
( 109 ) 
 
 Great Temple of Ramiseram, eight miles on the opposite 
 shore of the island. It is, no doubt, a grand pile of 
 building, the more wonderful from its position at this very- 
 remote end of the world. Two of the corridors, which 
 enclosed the Pagoda, are 240 yards in length. I paced 
 them, and the perspective views of the carved and painted 
 pillars the whole of this length is striking, but I had already 
 seen the Pagodas of Seringham and Madura and Tanjore, 
 and found nothing exceptionally fine in Ramiseram. It is, 
 however, more sacred than any of them, and the poor 
 zealous Hindoo devotees flock there in thousands from all 
 parts of India, the temple Brahmins, of course, reaping a 
 rich harvest in some form or other from all this enthusiasm, 
 which they take care to foment. Mr. Turner told us 
 that not long since a father and son had walked the 
 whole way from Cashmere to Ramiseram — 2,000 miles 
 or more — on a pilgrimage to the Temple, carrying with 
 them a pot of Ganges water to pour over the god on 
 arriving at the temple. On the very day of their arrival 
 at Ramiseram the father died of cholera, without having 
 been able to pour the Ganges water over the god. The son, 
 a child of ten years of age, was left a complete stranger 
 in the place, and unable to speak a word of the language. 
 He was anxious to fulfil the object of the long and weary 
 pilgrimage, and to pour the Ganges water over the god, 
 but the Brahmins required him first to pay the customary 
 fee, a few annas only. He had no money whatever, and 
 the Brahmins consequently refused permission. This came 
 to the ears of the deputy-collector, who at once went to 
 the temple, and under his protection the boy poured the 
 Ganges water over the god. Mr. Turner himself then took 
 charge of the boy, and placed him at the High School at 
 Ramnad, where he now is. I myself saw more than one 
 pilgrim carrying pots of Ganges water for the same purpose. 
 
( no ) 
 
 A couple of pots are generally carried, suspended from the 
 two ends of a bamboo slung across the shoulders. On my 
 way back from the temple I fortunately met Mr. and Mrs. 
 Turner and some ladies, who are at Paumben on a visit, 
 going to evening church. I am ashamed to say I had 
 forgotten it was Sunday. 1 handed my pony over to a 
 servant, and was glad to be able to accompany them, — such 
 a primitive service in a small missionary church. The bell 
 was tolled by a naked black boy, the bell itself being hung 
 on a tree just outside the door. The service was performed 
 by a native ordained clergyman from Tinnevelly, and the 
 congregation consisted of Mr. Turner's party, two or three 
 other English, and half a dozen blacks. The text, " There 
 was no room for them in the inn." It was the only service 
 during the day, and it was good for me to be there. 
 
( 111 ) 
 
 TlNNEVELLT, 
 
 4th January, 1877. 
 I posted a letter to you yesterday morning only, on our 
 arrival by sea at Tuticorin ; but it strikes me if I do not write 
 again before crossing to Ceylon, that you may not hear from 
 me for an indefinite time. I therefore intend to post this on 
 our return to Tuticorin on Sunday, before we embark for 
 Colombo, so that it will travel by rail via Bombay. I was in 
 such a hurry to save tbe mail yesterday morning that I did 
 not tell you about our voyage from Paumben to Tuticorin in 
 the wretched country craft we chartered in Paumben channel. 
 It was a great deep tub of a thing, the planks of all shapes 
 and sizes, and worm-eaten ; the spars unshaped, too, and 
 broken and spliced with thin rope made of cocoa-nut fibre; 
 cotton sails all falling to pieces; a few planks aft covering 
 over a hole which might be called a cabin; all the rest of the 
 tub a deep, open well. We had laid in a stock of provisions; 
 a couple of live fowls — one of them turned out a precious 
 old one, — a dozen eggs, some curry condiments, bread, a tin 
 of soup, &c. ; but how to cook ? that was the question. Well, 
 the old rusty anchor was weighed by the eight naked black 
 men and two naked boys, all Mahommedans, calling out to 
 each other in wild responses as they tugged at the rough 
 cocoa-nut fibre cable ; the old ragged jib was set, and we 
 rounded to the strong north-east wind, and then hoisted our 
 other tattered sails, and the old tub began to swish, swish 
 through the water with half a gale of wind fortunately 
 directly behind her. It is astonishing how soon one adapts 
 oneself to circumstances. I had conjured up all manner of 
 horrors. These savages, I thought to myself, have no compass. 
 Suppose we are driven out to sea. We have only three chatty 
 
( 112 ) 
 
 pots of water on board, and here we are twelve men on board. 
 Suppose one of those chatty pots is broken —why the supply 
 of fresh water would not last us a day. Suppose these fellows 
 combine and cut our throats ; or a mast breaks and we lie 
 like a log on the sea. Suppose a hundred things quite 
 within the range of possibility. But when the old rickety 
 concern once felt the influence of the wind and began to 
 " speak," I forgot these imaginary horrors ; more especially 
 when Rama (our servant) inquired when we would like 
 tiffin. "Tiffin?" I said, "all very well ; but how are you 
 to cook it?" There was a thick layer of sand at the bottom 
 of the vessel, and three stones. Rama said, " I cook here;" 
 so he took off his coat, put the stones together on the sand, 
 and by collecting some pieces of wood, and rigging out a 
 shelter, he got up a decent fire on the sand between the 
 stones. I soon became interested in the operations, and sat 
 with my legs dangling on a plank looking down into the 
 well. One of the two chickens was soon slaughtered, poor 
 thing ! and plucked ; a small clay pot was found for boiling 
 the rice ; one of the two black boys was set to work to pound 
 the curry stuff; and in due course Rama turned us out a 
 capital chicken-curry ; that is to say, the whole was put and 
 mixed in another small clay pot, and we three ate it out of 
 the pot, turn and turn about. Then, as we passed some 
 sacred spot in the distant shore one of the crew stood up, 
 and placing his hands in position recited some kind of litany, 
 the rest of the crew joining melodiously in the refrain. At 
 7 p.m. we ran under the lee of a promontory and anchored. 
 Rama again turned to, to cook on the three stones, and 
 produced chicken No. 2 boiled, preceded by the soup for 
 dinner with potatoes. In the meantime, the crew had boiled 
 a large chatty pot of rice with fish curry, for their own 
 dinner, all of which proved very amusing to me, seated on 
 my plank looking down on them. It was a magnificent 
 
( H3 ) 
 
 starlight night ; the uncouth hoat, the naked crew, the 
 unknown shore with the glare here and there of a fire 
 hurning on the beach, gave the scene the charm of novelty, 
 and it needed that to compensate us for the hole abaft in 
 which, we laid down for the night. At midnight the crew 
 were again astir weighing anchor ; but the wind having 
 dropped, we rolled about on the swell, until the dawn 
 enabled me to emerge and view the glories of an Eastern 
 sunrise on the ocean. By 8 a.m. we were off the sparkling 
 little town of Tuticorin, landed (not sorry to be out of our 
 old tub), and remained there all yesterday at the Travellers' 
 bungalow. There was a great deal of life on the shore, 
 which boasts of a small pier and a good broad esplanade. 
 The roadstead was full of ships bringing rice for the famine 
 and exporting coolies to Ceylon. The exodus of coolies 
 answers both purposes — it relieves the famine districts in 
 Southern India from a surplus population, and furnishes 
 labour to the coffee cultivators in Ceylon. 300,000 coolies 
 pass to and from Ceylon annually on an average — more, of 
 course, this famine year ; the trading schooners carry them 
 across at two rupees ahead ; the Ceylon planters are glad 
 to get them as coffee-pickers. We left Tuticorin to-day at 
 1 1 a.m. for this place, arriving here at 3 p.m., and are housed 
 at Mr. Carr's, the Judge. 
 
 Friday, Mr. and Mrs. Carr arrived from the Assimboo 
 
 nth Jan. Hills this morning. Tinnevelly, being systema- 
 tically irrigated from the River Tamra Purnee, is sur- 
 rounded by luxuriant crops and rich foliage ; the bright 
 grateful green of the rice fields stands out in refreshing 
 contrast from the miles and miles of dry, hot, barren sand 
 which are traversed after .leaving Tuticorin. The Carrs have 
 carried the system of irrigation into their own garden and 
 they rejoice in a regular English lawn (the only one I have 
 
 i 
 
( 114 ) 
 
 yet seen), and in lovely flowers of all kinds. In and out of 
 the house everything seems fresh and in apple-pie order ; 
 English comforts comhined with tropical beauties ; a large 
 swimming-bath, for instance, in which Mr. Carr and I have 
 been disporting ourselves this morning, — indeed, it is the 
 only house I have been to in India which looks like a home. 
 On every other house is written in unmistakeable characters — 
 " This is not our resting-place." The occupants all have old 
 England in view, — India is no abiding city for them. Even 
 Mr. Carr said to me to-day, " Don't talk to me of England ; 
 I make myself happy here. I try to do so at least ; I do the 
 best I can, but I can't bear to think of England." Such is 
 the feeling with every Englishman I have yet come across. 
 I don't wonder at it. I declare for the old country. 
 Grumblers and valetudinarians be satisfied with it, — there 
 is no country in the world, be assured, like England. 
 Tuticorin and Tinnevelly are the only places which I have 
 seen where there are marked evidences of the progress of 
 Christianity. Here there is a large compound enclosing 
 Dr. Serjeant's house, schools, and domiciles for fifty native 
 boys and as many girls, and a spacious church. Dr. Cald- 
 well and Dr. Serjeant are the two missionary bishops in 
 embryo. Both unluckily are absent; but we saw Mrs. Serjeant 
 yesterday (unexpected by her) in the large back verandah at 
 her house, surrounded by her girls. They were fifty-two in 
 number, all dressed alike in short scarlet bodices and a neat 
 pink-check cloth wound round the body and thrown over 
 the shoulder. Their hair parted in the middle and tied 
 neatly in a knot at the back, — all with earrings and some 
 with nose rings. They stood in rows and sang " Safe in the 
 arms of Jesus," and two other hymns in English, and also 
 some hymns in Tamil, taking parts«and with great harmony. 
 Two of the girls read to us afterwards in English, — it was 
 an impressive scene. Afterwards we drove to the girls' 
 
( H5 ) 
 
 school, under the presidency of the Reverend Mr. Lash and 
 Mrs. Lash. About seventy girls, all native converts of the 
 higher castes, are boarded and lodged in the compound and 
 trained for school teachers. Schools have been established 
 by Mr. Lash in various neighbouring villages, and the girls, 
 after they are certificated, are sent out as superintendents 
 of these village schools. Mr. Lash said he had about 1,200 
 children altogether in these village schools. It is not a con- 
 dition that the children should be Christians, but a Christian 
 catechism is taught and Scripture stories read in all the 
 schools, the parents never objecting. Constant application 
 is made to him for the establishment of these schools. 
 The church, a plain spacious airy building, can hold 1,000 
 persons. Every Sunday between 600 and 700 native con- 
 verts are present, the services being conducted in Tamil by 
 native ordained ministers. The number of communicants 
 on Sundays exceeds 100 on the average. Mr. Carr told us 
 that there is an instance of a whole village having gone over 
 bodily to Christianity, and handed over their village pagoda 
 to the missionaries. Christianity is an undoubted fact here. So 
 is the Roman form of it at Tuticorin, where there are two large 
 Roman Catholic churches, one of them nearly 100 years old. 
 That church has been purposely so contrived as to be only 
 one step in advance of the Hindoo pagoda. The images at 
 the altar are periodically painted and dressed very much as 
 the Hindoo god in his holy of holies is painted and dressed ; 
 Christian symbols are placed and enshrined exactly after the 
 fashion of Hindoo symbols; processions are arranged like the 
 Hindoo processions ; between the massive buttresses outside 
 the church stands the car on which the Virgin is seated and 
 drawn, the facsimile of the car of Vishnu or Siva outside 
 the Hindoo temple; lights, bells, flowers, tinfoil, perfume, 
 are the accompaniments of both. The Hindoo passes on to 
 Christianity in that way by very easy stages, and finds himself 
 
 i 2 
 
( no ) 
 
 transferred from one atmosphere of symbols into another 
 much of the same character. The result is, that at Tuticorin, 
 out of a total population of 12,000, 6,000 are said to be 
 Roman Catholics. These are remarkable facts, and I think 
 the leaven is leavening the whole lump, or will do so here in 
 Southern India in time. I was out this morning before break- 
 fast sketching by myself. Of course a large, orderly, curious 
 crowd formed round me. After I had finished I asked, 
 "Which of you can speak English?" One man replied, 
 " I can." I asked, " What are you ?" he said, " Employed 
 on the railway." I inquired, " Hindoo or Christian?" he 
 said " Christian." Another man, squatted close by my side, 
 pointing to my sketch-book, said, " Please, let me see your 
 other performances." I turned over the leaves of the book 
 and explained the sketches. He said, " I am fond of art." 
 When I got up to go home he followed me and asked 
 questions about art, light and shade, colour, &c. He had 
 nothing on but a loin cloth. I inquired, " Are you a 
 Christian ?" " No," he said, " I am a Brahmin. But," he 
 added, " there is very little difference. I believe in one 
 Supreme God, and I agree with the moral precepts of Jesus 
 Christ, but I deny his Deity." Whether they will eventually 
 become Christians or not, en masse, it is impossible to pre- 
 dict, but the educated Hindoos certainly hold very advanced 
 opinions on religion, and look on idols as symbols only. 
 With regard to actual conversions to Christianity at the 
 present time, I ought to have mentioned that the number of 
 converts in the Tinnevelly district exceeds 60,000 Protestants, 
 and about the same number of Roman Catholics. The 
 steamer for Colombo will be in Tuticorin Roads at mid- 
 night to-night. We embark at 7 o'clock to-morrow morning, 
 and sail for Colombo at noon to-morrow. 
 
( 117 ) 
 Colombo, We left Tuticorin yesterday morning in a 
 
 Ceylon, _ J , J & 
 
 8th January, sailing-boat, having to sail out 6 or 7 miles to the 
 "Arabia," the British India Steam Company's steamer, which 
 was anchored in the roadstead. She had arrived punctually 
 during the night, but, owing to shoal water, could not come 
 nearer in. We and two others were the only passengers ; 
 each, therefore, had a cabin to himself. We found her a clean 
 vessel, with an excellent cuisine. She discharged 2,500 bags 
 of rice in boats for the famine districts, and took in 3 lacs 
 of rupees in bullion, conveyed out to her in the same boat 
 that took. us. Each box of bullion (there must have been 
 fifty boxes at least) had a piece of bamboo tied to it at the 
 end of 15 or 20 yards of rope, so that in case our boat had 
 capsized or a box had tumbled overboard the piece of bamboo 
 would have acted as a buoy. The "Arabia" weighed anchor 
 at noon, and after a pleasant voyage arrived at Colombo at 
 7 o'clock this morning; distance 150 miles from Tuticorin. 
 I need not say that here, in Colombo, everything is associated 
 in my thoughts with Willy and the Andersons — Government 
 House, the racecourse, grand stand, Galle Face Drive, all 
 recall to me the life which they lived here long ago. I can 
 now realize it all. I have been to-day to Government House, 
 and have been introduced to Sir William Gregory, the 
 Governor. What a fine spacious house it is ! What royal 
 entertaining rooms ! We are lodged at the Galle Face 
 Hotel — bad is the best — its only recommendation is that the 
 roar of the sea is close under my ground-floor bed-room 
 window. Equatorial heat even at this season ! 
 
( US ) 
 
 Kandy, Ceylon, 
 
 Sunday, Wth January, 1877. 
 
 I was on the deck of the " Arabia" at 5.30 a.m., as she 
 approached Ceylon on the morning of the 8th. The whole 
 range of mountains, running inland at a distance of 40 or 
 50 miles from the coast, including Adam's Peak, was 
 distinctly visible before the sun showed itself above the 
 horizon. On the next day we left Colombo by an afternoon 
 train for Kandy. The rail runs along the flat for nearly 
 three hours, and then commences the ascent of the mountain. 
 With a bogie-engine in front and another behind, the train 
 winds in rapid curves, in a most serpentine fashion, up the 
 incline, occasionally overhanging a perpendicular cliff, and 
 overlooking a vast expanse of country towards the west, till 
 it reaches an altitude of about 1,800 feet, and then it runs 
 level to Kandy. The incline is about 12 miles in length, 
 and the gradient throughout 1 in 45. The ascent, following 
 closely on the admirably-engineered wheel-road, and the 
 scenery and foliage, with the luxuriant parasites and creepers 
 at every turn, is quite one of the remarkable sights of our 
 tour. Apropos of tropical plants, the Botanical Gardens of 
 Peradinia, three miles from Kandy, are a sight worth coming 
 from England to see. They comprise a varied palmery (it 
 is supposed that there are 150 different kinds of palm), 
 fernery and tropical trees and shrubs, the like of which I had 
 never seen before ; for instance, splendid groups of the giant 
 bamboo, the mahogany tree, upas tree, Talipot palm with 
 its ragged stem, various kinds of gamboge, cinnamon tree of 
 large growth, magnificent Indian rubber tree, 100 feet high 
 and 20 feet in girth — so different from our slender drawing- 
 room plant — cocoa tree, cardimum, clove,— in short, acres on 
 
( W ) 
 
 acres of our choicest hot-house vegetation in the open air. 
 Two of the Talipot palms were in flower ; they arrive at 
 maturity in about forty years, flower for the first and only 
 time when at maturity, and then die. I stroll out every night 
 after dinner at Kandy by the margin of the lake and round 
 the green, gazing on the brilliant starlit sky, Orion's belt 
 immediately over head, Sirius and Canopus shining like 
 moons, with a galaxy of bright stars studded thickly in the 
 heavens ; below the fire-flies flitting about in the soft warm 
 air, the lights of the bungalows on the hills reflected in the 
 lake, the scene altogether one of surpassing beauty. 
 
 This is just now the country for young scapegraces who 
 have made bad starts, or no start at all, in England. Coffee 
 is up, and the whole island is alive with coffee planters, and 
 new ground is being cleared and planted. Everyone in that 
 line is thriving; coffee, which some years ago was 50s. the 
 cwt., is now 120.s., and coffee estates of 300 or 400 acres are 
 producing a net £10,000 a-year to their proprietors. Kandy 
 is full of young men, who are managers of estates in various 
 parts of the island, the picking season being over they have 
 come down to the town for a spree ; these young fellows get 
 their £300 and £400 a-year as managers; they live in small 
 bungalows on the estates, and superintend the labour, which 
 is all done by coolies or natives from Southern India. Often 
 they live in wild upland districts, 20 or 30 miles from a 
 town, and many miles from any European neighbour, and 
 that is the drawback, no society whatever. Consequently, 
 like many of our Welsh hill farmers, when they get down to 
 the town, they go in for a drink and have a regular bout of it. 
 I hear it is so sometimes when they get together at each others' 
 bungalows on special occasions. This . island would be an 
 opening for young fellows who could keep straight and abstain 
 from liquoring up. It is a capital opening for a steady indus- 
 trious young man at the present time. The cinchona is being 
 
( 120 ) 
 
 introduced into the island, quinine is made from its bark, 
 and that and coffee and tea will afford abundant employment 
 for capital and labour for many years to come. There is 
 sport to be had in the island by way of set-off against the 
 solitary life in the districts. Everyone said to me before we 
 set foot in Ceylon, " If you go to Ceylon don't be taken 
 in with precious stones there ; don't buy of the hawkers and 
 fellows who come round and offer you coloured glass for 
 rubies and emeralds of the finest water." I was sitting in 
 my bed-room on the ground floor of the Colombo Hotel the 
 second day after our arrival, doors and window wide open, 
 when a Cingalese presented himself in the costume of the 
 country, introduced by the waiter, as villanous an intro- 
 duction as a man could well have. He said he was a jeweller, 
 and at once proceeded to pull out of his waist-band divers 
 small rolls of cotton cloth, which he untied and unwound, 
 and arranged on the bed heaps of stones, pearls, &c. In the 
 matter of such things I confess to feeling something like a 
 moth round a candle — an absolute and certain conviction 
 that I shall be singed, nay, scorched, burnt up, fried alive, 
 frizzled to death, done for, but yet I cannot resist the attrac- 
 tion. I kept on repeating to the fellow, " No, I don't want 
 them ; I don't understand the value ; I have spent all my 
 money." He cleverly replied, " Look, sir, you need not 
 buy ; I don't want the money ; master is a gentleman I 
 see by his face and talk ; master take any he likes, take all, 
 and send me the money from London." " Well," at last I 
 said, opening my mouth, like the crow in the fable to the 
 flattery, "what's the price of that pearl ring?" " The lowest 
 price," he replied, " £16." " And that ruby ring? " " £30," 
 he replied. He then produced to me letters from London 
 and Ryder, and from some English gentlemen with whom he 
 had had dealings, which rather re-assured me. " No," I said, 
 " I don't want 'em; but rather than you should go away and 
 
( 121 ) 
 
 have your trouble for nothing, I'll give you £10 for the pearl 
 ring." He refused, and we went on chaffering for half an 
 hour. At last I said, " I will give you £30 for the pearl ring 
 and the ruby ring, and if that won't do pack up your things 
 and be off." He took it, and I gave him a cheque for £30, 
 with which he was quite content. The same afternoon I went 
 to Government House to see Sir William Gregory, the 
 Governor, who is collecting precious stones, and knows a good 
 deal about them, and he invited us to see his collection. Who 
 should be closeted with him in his sitting-room but my 
 friend, the Cingalese jeweller ! "Halloa!" I said, "that 
 man has been with me to-day, and I have had a deal with 
 him." " You must be careful with all these fellows," Sir 
 William said, — " they'll do you if they can — he's trying now 
 to sell me this cat's-eye (producing a small one not bigger 
 than a pea) for £25 — its a fine one, but I must take time to 
 consider. What have you bought?" It so happened that I 
 had the rings on my finger. "Very pretty," he said; "they 
 will be very acceptable at home ;" and on being told the 
 price, he added, "you have got well out of his clutches — he 
 hasn't done you so much as I expected." 
 
 I miss in Ceylon the demonstrative religion of Southern 
 India. There is very little of the outward and visible sign 
 of religion here — no showy temples, no processions, no beat- 
 ing of tom-toms, no idolatrous or votive images in the villages, 
 no marking of the forehead or of the body with distinctive 
 marks, as with the Hindoos. The Buddhist form of religion 
 struck me as analogous to our Protestant, and the Brah- 
 minical to the Romish in our country. The people here are 
 more independent, less servile, and less the victims of priest- 
 craft than in India. 
 
 What a lesson to us Christians is the courage of the 
 
 "&- 
 
 so-called heathen in their outward observance of religion ! 
 
 B 
 
 It never enters into the head of the Mahommedan or Hindoo 
 
( 122 ) 
 
 to be ashamed of his faith. At all times, and in all places, 
 amidst their daily occupation, in open thoroughfares as well 
 as in mosques and temples, these men may be seen in acts of 
 earnest devotion, abstracting themselves for the time from 
 their immediate business, offering up their sacrifice of prayer 
 or thanksgiving, and then returning to their work as if no 
 human eye had seen them. Not only was this conspicuous 
 with the naked Mahommedan crew in our Paumben boat, 
 who discontinued their work at intervals and united with one 
 accord in prayer as we passed some sacred shrine on the 
 shore, but I have seen it in countless instances throughout 
 the East — natives of both persuasions (not necessarily pilgrims 
 or devotees) prostrating themselves in prayer in the dust along 
 the roads and thoroughfares, sailors kneeling on the decks in 
 ships, Parsees at their orisons under the evening sky, and all 
 whilst the full tide of life and business was surging around 
 them. Among the Hindoos, the larger proportion of men, 
 in Southern India at all events, carry on their foreheads in 
 bright colours the distinctive mark of their religious profes- 
 sion, which mark is carefully put on the forehead every 
 morning after ablution. Surely, setting aside all doctrine, 
 these men must have God's spirit, or some spiritual feeling 
 akin to it, within them! 
 
( 123 ) 
 
 Kanuy, Ceylon, 
 
 Sunday, Wth January, 1877. 
 
 Your long letter, finished on the 1 4th December, reached 
 me yesterday evening at 9 o'clock. With it came one from 
 clear R., and many other home letters. I read all these with 
 the greatest comfort, and then with a heart open to enjoy- 
 ment strolled out in the pretty, well-planted green here close 
 by the ornamental water, and watched the fire-flies flitting 
 across my path and lighting up the trees in all directions 
 with innumerable little fires, the balmy night being in keep- 
 ing with the scene and with my thoughts. By the same 
 post Monier received his Oxford letters, which informed him 
 that he was not expected to return till the middle of March, 
 and that his Institute objects would be better promoted by 
 his absence than if he were to return sooner, distance in fact 
 had had its proverbial effect. We therefore return to 
 Colombo next Tuesday in order to embark in the " Assam " 
 for Bombay direct. We have made out our visit to the 
 Mountain Sanitarium of Newera Elba. We left this on 
 Thursday morning by rail to Gampola, and then took the 
 wretched rattle-trap called the mail, — 35 miles of continual 
 ascent, to Newera Ellia. The road is a series of dangerous 
 zigzags admirably engineered by Skinner, but the journey 
 both up and down in such a conveyance is performed at the 
 risk of one's life, as the edge of the road all through is wholly 
 unprotected against steep declivities. The scenery is very 
 grand, but I was disappointed with Newera Ellia itself. In 
 m} r letter to Ro I have given him an account of the flourish- 
 ing state of the coffee districts through which the road passes. 
 The colony is most prosperous, and fortunes are being made 
 by the coffee growers. We returned to Kandy yesterday, 
 having enjoyed one night of sharp cold and a morning of 
 hoar frost at an altitude of 6,400 feet above the sea. As I 
 
( 1~>4 ) 
 
 write now in my bed-room here at 3 p.m., my little thermo- 
 meter stands at 82°. Such is the difference caused bv the 
 locality. But I am delighted with Kandy. It is a perfect 
 little bijou of a town, and so carefully laid out and attended 
 to. The Governor's house (the Pavilion) is simply perfec- 
 tion, with its tropical garden radiant with flowers and 
 brilliant-leaved plants, and the walks about and around on 
 the hills afford abundant pleasure and recreation. I think I 
 could enjoy life at Kandy if I had my belongings with me 
 and my two cobs. I bave not seen any place which has 
 " fetched " me more. 
 
 The natives here in Ceylon are more Japanese in feature 
 and dress than Indian. They wear an inverted thimble of 
 red and yellow stuff on the head, a short jacket, belt, and 
 cloth round the waist wrapped tight, a semicircular comb on 
 the top of the head to keep the hair back, and always carry 
 a Chinese umbrella. But the coolie immigration almost 
 swamps the native Cingalese. The thoroughfares swarm 
 with coolies going to and from the coffee estates, and 
 with miserable mud-built shops for the supply of their 
 wants. The vegetation here is very beautiful indeed. The 
 island has about 100 inches of rain annually, and more 
 evenly spread over the year than in India. 
 
 One meets with strange people occasionally in travelling. 
 On our return journey the other day from Tinnevelly to 
 Tuticorin we changed carriages at the junction, and got into 
 a saloon carriage on the main line whose only occupant was 
 a stout goodlooking man of about fifty. He had light curly 
 hair carefully parted in the middle, and handsome beard and 
 moustache. He was in his shirt-sleeves, reclining on one of 
 the long seats of the carriage, and on the opposite seat was 
 laid out a complete series of dishes containing cold fowl, 
 salad, potatoes, bread, pudding, plantains, with all suitable 
 accompaniments of butter, salt, &c. Directly we appeared 
 
( 125 ) 
 
 he pulled himself together and apologized for monopolizing 
 the carriage. " Come in, pray come in ; I've just finished 
 my tiffin. I'll put all these things by into my tiffin-basket 
 in a moment. Try one of these plantains, you'll find them 
 excellent ;" and, so saying, he collected his dishes, emptied 
 the bones and debris out of the carriage-window, and packed 
 the utensils in a large wicker tiffin-basket covered with 
 leather, which was evidently his carefully-contrived and con- 
 stant-travelling companion. Having done that, he put on 
 his clean white jacket with a gilt uniform button, combed 
 his beard, and began to talk to us freely. He had come 
 from Lahore, he said ; thence rather rapidly to Madras, 
 stopping here and there. He slept last night at Madura, 
 and was going for the night to the Travellers' bungalow at 
 Tuticorin, intending to cross the next day in the "Arabia" 
 to Ceylon. " No," I said, " you can't go to the Travellers' 
 bungalow at Tuticorin ; we have engaged the rooms for our- 
 selves." "That's unlucky," he replied. "Then I must 
 sleep in the verandah." He was so good-humoured about it, 
 that I rejoined, " No, you must not do that; you shall have 
 my room, and I will have a bed put up in the other room 
 with my nephew ;" and that was eventually done. " Now, 
 who can you be ?" I asked of myself: " but for a slight excess 
 of freedom in manner and talkativeness, I should take you 
 for a general officer on a tour of inspection." This idea was 
 negatived by his telling us that he lived in London, and had 
 been out to India every year for the last five years, landing 
 at Bombay and making the round of all the Presidencies. 
 " Ah, I see," guessed I again to myself, " you must be a 
 traveller for some mercantile house in England ; perhaps an 
 agent for the sale of brandy, beer, or light wines or pro- 
 visions." The elaborate tiffin-basket rather encouraged that 
 conjecture. On arriving at Tuticorin I went off alone to 
 Underwood, the agent for the steamer, to engage our passage 
 
( 120 ) 
 
 to Colombo. Whilst I was so engaged, in walked my stout 
 handsome friend for the same purpose. " Oh," he exclaimed, 
 " Mr. Underwood, is that you ? Don't you remember me, 
 
 Captain Q , formerly a skipper in the P. & 0. service ; 
 
 don't you remember coming home with me in the ' Moultan' 
 from China?" Here was one point solved. Our friend was 
 
 Captain Q , formerly a captain in the P. & O. service. 
 
 We returned together to the wretched Travellers' bungalow, 
 and I made him comfortable in my room there. From 
 thence we adjourned to the little club, where, notwithstanding 
 his substantial repast in the railway carriage, he joined us for 
 tiffin, going through a second meal under that name as if he 
 had tasted nothing all day. We all dined together at the 
 club in the evening, and he had the talk nearly all to 
 himself. Ships, trade, politics, people of all ranks whom 
 he had sailed with, every conceivable subject, interspersed 
 with remarks on the food, quick calls for this or that dish, 
 and a joke now and then with his man-servant Pedro in 
 bad Hindustani. 
 
 The next morning early we all walked down together to 
 the beach and embarked in the bullion boat which took us 
 off to the " Arabia." He was one of the only two other 
 passengers we had with us on board that vessel. Neverthe- 
 less he was sharp enough to take the best cabin, had the 
 first bath, and secured the best of everything for himself 
 like a practised traveller. In conversation with him on 
 board the " Arabia," I frequently led up to the difficulty 
 which still puzzled me, " You were formerly in the P. & 0. 
 service, what are you now ?" I said to him ; " I suppose you 
 were not sorry to leave the service?" " Delighted," he replied, 
 " I had had enough of it. The company cut down our pay. 
 In my time a captain had £ 1 ,300 a-year pay, and the best 
 of living on board free. What do you think now ? Why, 
 actually every officer has to pay for his liquor — die can't have 
 
( 127 ) 
 
 a bottle of beer without he pays for it. I couldn't stand 
 that. Now I'm my own master and have my own inde- 
 pendent occupation." Then he branched off into some other 
 topic, talking all the time with great shrewdness and good 
 humour. We anchored off Colombo early the following 
 
 morning. I asked Captain Q if he was going on shore. 
 
 " No," he replied, " not yet. I shall have my breakfast 
 comfortably on board ; the purser here on this ship gives 
 capital breakfasts ; then I shall land and take the afternoon 
 train to Kandy. I've got some business at Kandy." So 
 we left him and remained ourselves in Colombo a couple of 
 days, going on afterwards to Kandy. The very first person 
 
 we met in the hotel at Kandy was Captain Q , dressed 
 
 as usual in a complete suit of pure white with the gilt 
 uniform button all down the jacket, with his diamond ring 
 on his third linger, his radiant face and curly hair and beard 
 looking more captivating than ever. "Oh," he exclaimed, " I 
 am so glad to see you; you'll find this hotel a very good one; 
 the butler is a friend of mine, he will look after you." We 
 had some further conversation ; he was going off to some 
 friends 20 miles off, but would return to Kandy ; thence he 
 was going to Galle and would in time take the steamer to 
 Madras, and work his way eventually through the north of 
 India back to Bombay. " Well, 1 thought to myself, you are 
 an indefatigable commission agent, and with your energy 
 and good address I doubt not you sell thousands of pounds 
 of brandy or tinned soups, or whatever else you travel in, 
 and make a good thing of it." He went off in the carriage 
 for his 20 mile journey, and meanwhile we made out our 
 two days' excursion to Newera Elba. On our return to 
 Kandy yesterday we sat down to 7 o'clock dinner. Captain 
 
 Q had returned also and took the only vacant chair 
 
 next to me, talking as usual about everything and every- 
 body, with observations thrown in about the dinner. " Why 
 
( m ) 
 
 what's this? tinned salmon; here's a hottle of anchovy, but 
 where's the melted butter ? Here, Pedro, send the butler to 
 me. My good man (to the butler) always serve melted 
 butter with fish; not now — I can do without it — give me some 
 of that cold butter, but in future remember always melted 
 butter, anchovy cannot be taken alone." Then he went off 
 about his movements, and how he could not come with us 
 because he had business at this place and that. At last my 
 curiosity got the better of me, and I said to him plump, right 
 
 out, " Pray may I ask, Captain Q , what business you are 
 
 now engaged in ?" " Oh," he replied smiling, " I'm an or- 
 dained minister." " Ordained minister !" I echoed. " Yes, he 
 rejoined, "I really am, but I don't look like one, and (seeing 
 that my surprise had not subsided) I hope you don't think 
 that cheerfulness is inconsistent with such calling." I was 
 quite taken aback, I must say. " But," I inquired, "are you 
 an ordained minister of the Church of England ?" " Oh, no," 
 he replied, " I am an ordained minister of the Catholic 
 Apostolic Church in Gordon Square. My mission to India 
 every year is to visit and pray with the scattered members of 
 that congregation ; but we are not bigots, we believe in one 
 communion and recognize no denominations. My business, 
 however, is with persons in India in direct connection with 
 the Catholic Apostolic Church, and I am sent from Gordon 
 Square to keep alive in its scattered members the true 
 catholic spirit of Christianity. I have some members here 
 in Kandy — two or three privates of the 57th regiment. I 
 have been praying with them this morning. I have a few at 
 every place I visit, and I seek them out and pray with them 
 individually." And then he expounded his creed (for the 
 first time neglecting his dinner in his zeal) and launched out 
 into the Book of Revelation, — the four Beasts; the Spirit 
 and the Bride; the Second Advent, and a volume of rhap- 
 sody. I never was more surprised in my life, as he had 
 
( 129 ) 
 
 not before given the faintest clue to his vocation; and that 
 Gordon Square should have its travelling priest never entered 
 into my head. The character struck me as so novel and 
 interesting that I thought it worth while to give it to you 
 in this detail. He is off now to Colombo, and thence back to 
 Tuticorin, en route for Madras and Calcutta. I have since 
 heard that he is an archangel in the Gordon Square Church. 
 
( 130 ) 
 
 SS. " GOA," OFF GoA, 
 
 25th January, 1877. 
 
 Our plans have undergone a change since I wrote to 
 you from Colombo. We found that the passage money by 
 the "Assam," from Colombo to Bombay, was 120 rupees 
 each ; and although I did not myself objeet to that sum, 
 Monier thought it too much to pay for himself and Stanley, 
 seeing that he had a free pass for both by rail. It then 
 became a question what we should do. I had no free pass, 
 and I had already travelled the 1,200 miles of rail from 
 Bombay to Madras and thence to Tuticorin, and a very hot 
 and dusty and uninteresting journey it was. I had no desire 
 to undertake it a second time, so we compromised the matter 
 by giving up the "Assam," and agreeing to take the coasting 
 steamer together to Beypoor, the terminus on the western 
 coast of the Madras Railway, whence we all, or Monier and 
 Stanley at all events, could take the rail to Madras and on to 
 Bombay. The " Goa," belonging to the British India Steam 
 Navigation Company, was anchored off Colombo at the time, 
 and accordingly on Wednesday, the 17th, we put off from 
 Colombo, bag and baggage, and embarked in her. She 
 weighed anchor at 5 o'clock the same evening, arrived at 
 Tuticorin mid-day the next day, rounded the grand headland 
 of Cape Comorin on Friday, anchored off Cochin on Saturday, 
 and off Beypoor on Sunday morning. At this last place 
 Monier and Stanley, with the servant Rama, disembarked 
 early enough in the morning to catch the 10 o'clock train to 
 Salem, on the road to Madras, on the same day. As I have 
 said, I had seen all that line of railway, whereas the Malabar 
 coast and the most interesting places on it I had not seen. 
 The " Goa" was a new and clean ship; I had a good cabin to 
 
^(-i( ' £ &&£ Y7 ' </ ft K T- **■ * - ' 
 
 2. 3 g-a i •. y 
 
 Wh)trtn«nJfcB*M lithe wihtQu 
 
( 131 ) 
 
 myself, the table on board was excellent, and the captain a 
 pleasant man ; so I resolved to keep by the ship, and here I 
 am still, having been on board eight days, and no part of my 
 tour has been more enjoyable or more varied. I shall miss 
 seeing Hyderabad. Monier said he should endeavour to 
 stop there on his way from Madras to Bombay, but I have 
 been fully compensated by the voyage so far, which has really 
 been a yachting voyage of a delightful kind ; the only bit of 
 rough sea was the run across from Colombo to Tuticorin. 
 After passing Tuticorin and rounding Cape Comorin, the 
 western sea is sheltered by the land from the north-eastern 
 monsoon, and it has been a millpond ever since. Besides the 
 sea we had another drawback in the run from Colombo to 
 Tuticorin, in the shape of a cargo of 700 coolies returning to 
 India after the close of the coffee picking season in Ceylon. 
 They were stowed away as thick as herrings between decks, 
 and were all more or less ill during the night; the horrors 
 of the " middle passage," in the old days of negro slavery, 
 over again. It took a deal of cleansing to make the 
 ship sweet again. But it was all over after that night, 
 and since then the ship has been perfect. We have 
 anchored at Colachel, Allipey, Cochin, Beypoor, Calicut, 
 Budagherry, Tillicherry, Cannanore, Mangalore and Carwar, 
 and we are now on our way to the Portuguese Settlement 
 of Goa. Colachel is a collection of mud huts, a large Roman 
 Catholic church, and a smaller Protestant one, with a back- 
 ground of cocoa-nut trees. It is an interesting coast thence 
 to Cochin, with villages and churches and chapels dotted 
 along its whole length, the Syrian Christians having a settle- 
 ment here, besides the Roman Catholics. At Cochin I 
 landed in the canoe called the mail boat — a pull of about 
 three miles to the. entrance to the harbour. It is a narrow and 
 shallow entrance, bounded on all sides by cocoa-nut trees, 
 leading into a considerable extent of backwater, which runs 
 
 k2 
 
( 132 ) 
 
 as far as Beypoor to the north, and for 20 or 30 miles to the 
 south. In this backwater numerous bunder boats and native 
 trading craft of very primitive construction were moored, and 
 round it, on the shore, I counted seven or eight large Roman 
 Catholic chapels. But my main object in landing was to 
 visit the colony of white Jews which has been settled here for 
 centuries. A second boat from Cochin jetty took us up the 
 backwater for about two miles to the colony. It is entirely 
 apart from the rest of the town. There are two synagogues, 
 into one of which (being their Sabbath to-day) we were 
 fortunate enough to enter just as service was commencing. 
 Numerous white and unmistakeable Jews were assembled, 
 clothed in silk of the most brilliant colours— crimson, emerald 
 green, purple, striped, &c. In the centre of the square room 
 which formed the synagogue, and which was hung with chan- 
 deliers and oil lamps, there was a roomy, open pulpit, into 
 which after a time one rabbi, and then three together, entered, 
 veiled themselves, and stood. Then was brought out to them 
 with ceremony, from a closet over what we should call the 
 altar, a circular case containing a double roll of parchment, the 
 Book of the Law, from which one of the rabbis read, intoning, 
 the congregation, also veiled, responding. This was followed 
 by silent prayer, the congregation standing in rows and all 
 facing the altar. The parchment rolls were afterwards 
 restored to the case ; the congregation gathering round the 
 case to kiss or touch it before it was put back into the closet. 
 The chief rabbi told me that there were 200 white Jews in 
 Cochin, and about 1,000 black Jews, but he could give me no 
 reliable information as to the origin of the colony. A large 
 proportion of the native population of Cochin is Roman 
 Catholic. The Protestant proportion includes chiefly the 
 British residents, who assemble in a large, rude and imposing- 
 looking old building, with massive buttresses, interesting as 
 containing; the tomb of Vasco di Gama. The fort of Cochin 
 
( 133 ) 
 
 belongs to the British, but the district is under an in- 
 dependent rajah. It is the seat of a brisk trade, chiefly 
 in cocoa-nuts, the fibre and oil, and coffee, grown in 
 the Travancore mountains. I landed also at Tillicherry, 
 Cannanore, Mangalore and Carwar, and walked about 
 each of these places for three or four hours. Each place 
 has a character of its own ; the natives vary, at each place, 
 their costume, boats, &c, so that the interest of the 
 voyage is kept up the whole time ; and the magnificent 
 outline of the western Ghauts, which stretch the whole way 
 from Cape Comorin to Bombay, is in view from first to last, 
 the shadows and colours on the mountains affording a con- 
 stant treat to the eye in the way of landscape. After landing 
 and roaming about, I return to the clean ship, roomy cabin 
 and good food (the meals all being served on deck) with 
 great satisfaction. From Bey poor to Mangalore we had 
 Mr. Powell, a local barrister, and Mrs. Palmer, the wife of 
 the bank manager there, on board. They invited me to land 
 with them at Mangalore, and to breakfast at Mrs, Palmer's 
 bungalow. This I did, and Mr. Powell afterwards drove me 
 in his trap round the town. I had before landed with him 
 at Tillicherry, a very original native place, which, so far as 
 the streets and people are concerned, looked as if no European 
 had ever landed there, were it not for the remains of certain 
 old Portuguese forts, which conjure up the ghosts of Vasco di 
 Gama or some of his enterprising contemporaries. Before 
 touching at Cannanore, we passed the small French Settle- 
 ment of Mahe, which appears to consist of nothing but the 
 governor's house and a flag-staff. I have always some excite- 
 ment in landing. Except at Carwar, there is no natural 
 harbour on the western coast between Galle and Bombay ; 
 consequently, the ship anchors always in the open roadstead, 
 about three miles from the shore ; the native boats which 
 come out for passengers are of the rudest kind, often only a 
 
( 134 ) 
 
 canoe scooped out of the trunk of a tree ; sometimes a cata- 
 maran, with a log of wood rigged out by a couple of bamboo 
 poles to keep the thing from capsizing ; sometimes a flat- 
 bottomed canoe, with the planks only sewn together, the 
 crew, oars and tackle being all in keeping and most original. 
 At first, I was somewhat uneasy at trusting myself in such 
 rotten concerns, but I am now used to it, and admire the 
 skill of the naked savages who navigate them, and who 
 chatter and sing the whole time with great vehemence. In 
 returning from Mangalore to the ship yesterday, when I was 
 quite alone, I really thought we should never get back to the 
 ship, as a strong head-wind had sprung up, and our canoe 
 tumbled about over the bar which we had to cross, the sea 
 breaking over us; but the black fellows pulled away with 
 their bamboo oars, singing and encouraging each other, and 
 I got on board at last. We have to touch at Goa, Vingorla 
 and Rutnagherry, before arriving at Bombay. 
 
 Friday, We did not anchor in the Goa river last night. 
 26th Jan. rp ne t own f Q oa } s s j x m ii es U p the river ; too far 
 
 off, even if we had anchored. I was sorry not to see it, as 
 I am told it is a quaint old place. The Portuguese officer in 
 charge of the old fort at the entrance to the river came off to 
 us in full uniform, and when he had taken off his cap on 
 deck and backed down the ladder to his boat again, we 
 steamed off to Vingorla, and anchored there at 8 p.m. Here 
 we took on board the young Rajah of Sawunt Warree, with his 
 suite, and a tag-rag and bob-tail of natives besides. It was a 
 pretty sight to see these boats coming off to the ship in the 
 night, with torches, which lit up the bright turbans and 
 dresses of the young rajah and his followers. The embarka- 
 tion of passengers and cargo, and cluster of native boats round 
 the ship, and chatter of the naked crew, with the sparkling 
 lights and reflections on the sea, is always an amusing sight, 
 
( 135 ) 
 
 especially at night. The rajah, a boy of about fourteen, 
 occupies himself by reclining at full length on the top of the 
 skylight on deck, propped up with cushions, and playing at 
 chess with his retainers. He is on his way to the college at 
 Rajcote, the principal of which is Mr. Macnaghten, who 
 came out with us in the " Nepaul ;" and a very happy thing 
 it is for these effeminate young native princes that there is 
 such a training place for them. We were off again in the 
 night, and are now anchored off Rutnagherry, a pretty little 
 bay, protected by a bold headland, to the north. I sat for a 
 couple of hours on the bridge of the ship last night, after we 
 left Vingorla, enjoying the tropical night; my only companion 
 was the officer of the watch. The moonlight gave a myste- 
 rious prominence to the dangerous reef called the Vingorla 
 Rocks, which runs out at right angles from the shore for 
 about ten miles. Not long since, the " Candia," a fine vessel 
 belonging to this company, was wrecked on the reef. They 
 have just lost another vessel, the " Dacca," on a sunken reef 
 off the Coromandel coast. Rutnagherry is our last anchor- 
 age, the next is Bombay Harbour. 
 
 Bombay, Entered Bombay Harbour and anchored at 
 
 Saturday, 27th. g ' c i oc k t jjj s morn i n g ? an d sorry I was to bring 
 
 my yachting voyage to a close — it has been a very pleasant 
 interlude in my tour. Just as we anchored, I descried 
 L. Fletcher in a shore-boat coming off for me. I collected 
 my effects, and put them and myself into his boat, and we 
 landed very comfortably. He kindly insisted on my taking 
 up my quarters at his house on Malabar Hill. 
 
 After all the experience I have had of India I have seen 
 no place so attractive, geographically, as Bombay, unless it 
 be Kandy. I stood on the bridge of the " Goa " from 5.30 
 this morning, long before sunrise, until she anchored at 8, 
 and was enchanted with the lovely harbour and all the 
 
( 136 ) 
 
 adjuncts of English shipping and native craft, islands, cocoa- 
 nut trees, ghauts, &c. But with all this, again I say, old 
 England for me. I cannot live without exercise, and no 
 exercise is really enjoyahle in this climate, which is made 
 only for rajahs and such like, who recline on ottomans and are 
 waited upon by slaves. 
 
 
( 137 ) 
 
 Malabar Hill, Bombay, 
 
 Friday, 2nd February, 1877. 
 
 This, I suppose, will be my last letter to you, at all 
 events, from India. It will go by the mail of the 5th. 
 We, I hope, follow ourselves by the next mail, that of 
 the 12th. After I had posted my last letter to you, 
 in which I left the actual day of our departure some- 
 what uncertain, I received Monier's expected letter, written 
 from Madras, in which he said that if I would wait for the 
 P. & 0. Co.'s steamer " Surat," leaving Bombay on the 
 12th, he and Stanley would accompany me. I always told 
 him that I would go by the " Surat " if he resolved on that 
 steamer also, and therefore, on the receipt of his letter, I went 
 to the P. & O. office and secured berths for the " Surat ;'' 
 but there was no occasion for booking beforehand, as she will 
 not probably carry more than fifty passengers this voyage, 
 and she makes up 200 berths. I hope we may each of us 
 have a cabin to himself, as a separate cabin makes all the 
 difference in the comfort of the voyage. The " Surat " goes 
 through the Canal to Southampton, but we shall leave her at 
 Suez, and take the route home by Brindisi. I do not think 
 we shall stay at Cairo, but this I cannot determine until I see 
 Monier. I heard from him a second time yesterdajr from 
 Hyderabad. He and Stanley were quartered at the Residency, 
 and were overwhelmed with state and grandeur ; but the rail- 
 way journey there must have been troublesome, as they had to 
 sleep at station-houses more than once owing to delay in the 
 trains. They expect to be in Bombay on Sunday night; 
 and we all start together for Ellora and Ajunta on Tuesday 
 night, returning to Bombay on the following Saturday in 
 time to pack up and settle for our embarkation in the 
 "Surat" on the Pith. In the meantime, I am enjoying 
 
( 138 ) 
 
 myself here, with all the comforts of home, as the guest 
 of Lancie and his wife. The bungalow, though small, is ex- 
 tremely pretty, commanding a beautiful peep of the sea, from 
 which there is generally a fresh breeze. The ordinary life of 
 persons here is to get up at daylight, 6.30; the first toilet is 
 a rough one, because what exercise is taken, such as a ride 
 on horseback, lawn tennis, &c, comes off then. But before 
 going out there is tea and toast ready as soon as you leave 
 your bedroom at 7. Then there is an interval of two hours 
 or two hours and a half for exercise, or letter-writing, or any 
 other occupation, at the expiration of which comes the bath 
 and grand toilet, followed by a substantial breakfast in 
 regular courses. In my case I have, after breakfast, always 
 accompanied Lancie into the town in his dog-cart, either to 
 transact business or see sights, and have either driven the 
 dog-cart back myself or come back in a hack buggy to tiffin 
 with Gertrude at 2. It is four miles from this house to the 
 heart of the town. Then the custom is for the wives of the 
 business men, who are in fact all the men of the community, 
 to leave their homes at 5 o'clock in the evening in their 
 smart carriages, fetch their husbands at their respective offices 
 or places of business, and adjourn to the Apollo Bunder or to 
 the rink for the general rendezvous and gossip, driving home 
 in the dark in time for an 8 o'clock dinner. The carriages of 
 an evening and the dresses of the ladies are of the smartest, 
 and I should fancy there was a good deal of money spent in 
 that way when it cannot be conveniently afforded. Every- 
 body here amongst the English is very much on a level; the 
 community is composed of persons coming from the same 
 class and mixing in the same social circle in England, that is 
 to say, merchants, brokers, barristers, solicitors, government 
 officials, civilians, working military men, all bees of the same 
 hive, having a common object to make money. There is no 
 aristocracy, and consequently no class distinctions as in our 
 
( 139 ) 
 
 provincial life in England. But I think the spirit of rivalry 
 is rather fostered by the equality, because what Mrs. A. has 
 in the way of equipage or dress, Mrs. B., who is, or believes 
 herself to be, the equal of A., must have also. Certainly all 
 the gentry in Bombay have charming bungalows in the best 
 suburbs, the smartest of barouches and liveries, and lead the 
 gayest of lives. I except Lancie and Gertrude, who keep 
 only a brougham and dog-cart, and do not entertain. I have 
 no doubt the climate suits Lancie and Gertrude equally well. 
 To some constitutions it must be far better adapted than the 
 changes and damp of England. But, again, I say it is not 
 sufficiently brisk and invigorating for me, and, with all her 
 faults, I prefer the old country. Lancie's establishment here 
 consists of a Portuguese male cook; a butler, whose wages are 
 20 rupees a month, he finding himself in food, clothing, &c. ; 
 a boy in the house (under the butler), who goes by the name 
 of chokra, or youngster; an ayah, who is Gertrude's lady's 
 maid, 17 rupees a month, she finding herself in food, 
 clothing, &c. ; the hammal, or odd man, who dusts the rooms, 
 sweeps out the verandah, polishes up about a dozen brass 
 idols which Lancie has in various parts of the drawing-room 
 — on certain feast days these idols are found placed in a row 
 with flowers stuck into them and rice placed before them, the 
 old hammal doing all the honour to them he can ; two men 
 in the stable, one for each horse ; and, lastly, the molli or 
 gardener. It must be such a comfort to have nothing to do 
 with the food or lodging of servants. When Lancie leaves 
 India, as he proposes to do in March for nine or ten months, 
 all the servants are discharged ; but he says the very day he 
 returns they will all be found on the wharf where he lands 
 asking to be taken back into service again. 
 
 Quite an Indian institution is the borah, or pedlar; shops 
 are not common in India— indeed they don't exist at all 
 except at the capitals; the borah is the peripatetic shop. He 
 
( 140 ) 
 
 comes round to the various houses, on foot generally, on a 
 Sunday, when he knows the sahib to be at home, accom- 
 panied or rather followed by three or four coolies, each carry- 
 ing an enormous pack on his head. He speaks English and 
 approaches the open verandah, where the family may be 
 seated, with " Master want any Cashmere goods, Rampoor 
 Chudder shawls, silks ? I got all new goods; master look, 
 master need not buy/' The coolies deposit their loads and 
 seat themselves on their haunches at the further end of the 
 portico. Then pack No. 1 is untied by the clever borah, and 
 the contents by degrees strew the floor of the verandah in 
 rich profusion. If a bargain is attempted to be made, a price 
 offered less than the price asked, the borah, with the air and 
 gravity of a lord chancellor, replies, " I make one price; 
 master not like me to have two prices — one price ; I make 
 5 per cent, on my goods, not more; I have one price;" and 
 so on. Then, in most admired confusion, pack No. 2 is untied, 
 and the most gorgeous table and chair covers are exhibited; 
 some worked in gold and silver from Hyderabad in Scinde, 
 dressing gowns, slippers. All these are piled up on the shawls 
 and silks and brocades of pack No. 1, until the verandah is 
 literally heaped up with beautiful things. Who can resist such 
 temptation or the calm face and dignified assurance of the 
 accomplished borah ? I know of no pleasure so perfect and 
 enjoyed with such absolute ease and tranquillity as reclining 
 in an armchair, with ladies about you in other armchairs, in 
 a large spacious verandah with a temperature of about 80°, 
 looking languidly at the beautiful Eastern things which the 
 borah brings out one by one from his pack and holds up for 
 your approval, the ladies passing their comments on such 
 articles as are peculiarly within their province. The pur- 
 chases over, but not till several hours have been thus whiled 
 away, the borah folds up his goods, commenting on them all 
 the time; they are replaced in the packs, and the packs are tied 
 
( 141 ) 
 
 up, and he and his coolies walk away from the precincts as 
 they came. But the borah I speak of belongs to a superior 
 class. He is dressed in pure flowing white, with a compact 
 white turban on his head, his forehead neatly marked in red 
 or yellow with the distinctive mark of his creed, and hand- 
 some turquoise or other rings on his fingers. His manner is 
 perfect; squatted on the floor of the verandah he loses none of 
 his dignity, and succeeds in impressing you with a belief (not 
 always well founded) that he is honest and trustworthy. Of 
 course, there are others that are unmitigated rogues. 
 
 Driving home to Malabar Hill one night, we were lucky 
 enough to meet in the native town the marriage procession of 
 a couple of young Bunniahs, got up on no ordinary scale. 
 It consisted of a long line of open carriages filled with the 
 friends and family of the two young bridegrooms, the young 
 children in the carriages being dressed out in brilliant gold 
 and silver-spangled dresses and caps, carts with musicians, 
 brass bands, drums and tomtoms on foot, making noise 
 enough to awaken the dead, led horses, caparisoned a la 
 circus, carrying very young children got up in keeping; 
 indeed, it seemed a matter of necessity that every member of 
 both families, both old and young, should follow, for behind 
 these led horses came a crimson velvet and gilt palanquin 
 containing an infant apparently only just born; then paced a 
 couple of extra caparisoned horses carrying the two bride- 
 grooms, effulgent with gold and silver lace and spangles, red 
 umbrellas being held over their heads. These were followed 
 by about fifty adult friends on foot, headed by Sir Mungoldass 
 Nathobhoy, and all dressed in white ; then the private car- 
 riages of the friends and more music and tomtoms, the whole 
 line being flanked by torch-bearers, or, more correctly, by 
 men and boys carrying iron rods with cradles at the top in 
 which were heaps of pitch or other inflammable materials, 
 sending forth volumes of smoke and flame on all sides. The 
 
( 142 ) 
 
 streets were densely crowded with spectators, and the 
 balconies and windows of the houses also. The bridegrooms 
 were going forth to meet their respective brides. It is said 
 that fortunes are spent in these marriage displays, and here 
 we had proof of the fact, not in the procession alone, but*in 
 the brilliantly decorated and illuminated pavilions, erected 
 expressly for the occasion, where the bridegrooms and friends 
 assemble in the first instance preparatory to the start, and to 
 which they afterwards return — a costly ceremony from be- 
 ginning to end, and certainly, so far as the discordant music 
 is concerned, one more honoured in the breach than in the 
 observance. 
 
( 143 ) 
 
 SS. " Surat," Gulf op Aden, 
 
 19th February, 1877. 
 
 A good bit on my way home now, and I am delighted 
 to find myself hourly progressing homewards. I wrote to 
 you by the mail leaving Bombay on the 5th. The next 
 vessel, the " Surat," conveys this letter as well as ourselves 
 to Suez. She left Bombay on the evening of Monday, the 
 12th. We have had a prosperous run across the Indian 
 Ocean of six days and four hours, and cast anchor in Aden 
 Bay last night at 11.30. Immediately afterwards the P. k 0. 
 agent came on board and brought me your two letters. At 
 Suez a grand divergence ensues. We leave the "Surat" 
 there, and take the rail to Cairo; the mail and many of the 
 passengers proceed direct to Alexandria and thence to 
 Brindisi, and the ship itself goes through the Canal to 
 Southampton. Our tour in India was well wound up with 
 Ellora — it is an out-of-the-way place— a night on the rail 
 from Bombay to Nandgaum, and thence forty-five or fifty 
 miles of road to Roza, the Mahommedan town situated on 
 the summit of the high range of hills in the face of which 
 are the celebrated caves. Sir Salar Jung had directed that 
 Monier should be assisted in his visit to the caves, which lie 
 in the dominions of the Nizam, and that a tonga with relays 
 of ponies should be ready to convey us from the station at 
 Nandgaum to Roza. But, unluckily, the tongas had been 
 previously engaged by some officers of the Contingent at 
 Aurungabad, and we were doomed to perform the road 
 journey from Nandgaum to Roza in my old enemies, the 
 bullock bandies. For fifteen hours we were incarcerated in 
 these wretched vehicles, and, to add to the misery as well as 
 the mockery, we had for the whole distance an escort of a 
 
( 144 ) 
 
 couple of mounted Sowars, who walked their horses at a 
 foot's pace by the side of the bullocks. I swore by all the 
 Hindoo gods that no temples or caves, that no sight on the 
 face of the earth or inside of it, would ever induce me to 
 enter a bullock bandy again ; but really when I saw Ellora 
 and the marvels of art which were there exhibited to my 
 view I recanted, and was glad that I had committed myself 
 only to Vishnu or Siva, for neither of whom do I care a 
 brass farthing. At Roza we were met by Mr. Burgess, the 
 antiquary, who is engaged in writing an account of the Ellora 
 Caves, and by the agents of Sir Salar Jung, who had pre- 
 pared the bungalow for our reception. The town of Roza is 
 situated on the plateau of the range of hills in the face of 
 which are the Caves of Ellora. The town is essentially 
 Mabommedan, and has been built of solid rectangular stones 
 brought from the ancient city of Tagara, but is itself now 
 falling into ruins. Within the cupola'd walls is the tomb of 
 Aurungzebe, plain and open to the sky, but entered through 
 doors of perforated marble. The other tombs, within and 
 without the walls, are of different holy men and of kings 
 of Hyderabad, all constructed with a central dome, flanked by 
 minarets, and very beautiful in form and execution. Many 
 of the stone slabs at the entrance to these tombs were inlaid 
 with lumps of agate, glass and coloured stones, as votive 
 offerings from various individuals ; and against the doors 
 were nailed horse-shoes, with a like object. We, in England, 
 have the same custom with regard to horse-shoes ; and 
 Mr. Burgess thinks it was introduced from the East 
 into England by the Crusaders. In the East it is an 
 offering by a soldier who has been promoted to a rank 
 which entitles him to keep a horse. Descending from the 
 town of Roza to the face of the hill, we came upon the 
 Ellora Caves. There is one temple at Ellora, which is not 
 a cave or a cavern, but a vast independent structure standing 
 


( 145 ) 
 
 out in the open as if built, stone on stone, according to 
 the most approved principles of architecture; and yet this 
 temple, with its obelisks, colossal elephants and subsidiary 
 temples outside, and its halls, vestibules, galleries, storeys, 
 staircases, inside, is hewn entirely out of the solid rock, 
 from which it is wholly separate and apart, as much so as 
 St. Paul's is from the houses which surround it ; and the 
 detail of carving which covers every part of the outside 
 and inside is as much part of the marvel as the edifice itself. 
 This temple is called Kailasa, and is only one of sixty-five 
 wonderful works which comprise the caves or temples of 
 Ellora. They are cut in the face of the range of trap hills 
 which rise abruptly out of the plain in a semicircular form, 
 the earliest in date, about a.d. 300, being Buddhist, and cut 
 in the southern horn of the semicircular range ; the next 
 or intermediate, both in place and date, being Brahminical 
 or Hindoo, and the most modern, Jain, about a.d. 900; the 
 last being cut in the northern horn of the range. The trap 
 formation of the hills, consisting of large, horizontal slabs of 
 rocks, is favourable to excavation, the slabs forming naturally 
 the floor and roof of the temple. Many of the temples run 
 for nearly 200 feet into the solid rock, and consist of two 
 and three floors, supported by pillars of the most exquisite 
 design and execution, and all round the walls are bas-reliefs, 
 illustrating the gods of the Hindoo mythology in almost 
 every phase of their history. The date of Kailasa is about 
 a.d. 700. More of this when we meet. I could fill volumes 
 if I once commenced on a description. Ajunta, we were told, 
 was equally remarkable, but it was 90 miles off by road; and 
 oh ! those bullock bandies ! — it would have been a-jolt-a as 
 well as Ajunta; besides, we had not the time; so instead, as 
 tongas had now been provided for us by the Nizam's agents 
 for the particular journey, we proceeded to the extraordinary 
 fortress of Dowlutabad, thence on to Aurungabad, formerly 
 
 L 
 
( 146 ) 
 
 the Nizam's capital, and so back to Nandgaum. Of all 
 impregnable places, at all events before the invention of the 
 100-ton gun, Dowlutabad must surely rank the first. Picture 
 to yourself a tall wedding cake placed on a flat dining-room 
 table, and an army of pigmies an inch high marching to 
 capture the sugar ornament at the top of the cake. That 
 ornament is the fortress at the top of a rock rising perpen- 
 dicularly on all sides out of the plain, an inland Gibraltar in 
 fact, and entered only by zigzag galleries capable of admitting 
 only two or three abreast, cut out of the solid rock, with pre- 
 cautions for roasting and boiling the head of the assaulting 
 column, at certain intervals in those galleries, such as would 
 only enter into the head of a native. I could never have 
 imagined such natural and artificial defences. At Aurungabad, 
 as I have been unable to visit the Taj at Agra, I was glad to 
 see the marble tomb to the wife of Aurungzebe, said to be an 
 imitation of the Taj. These interesting sights being done, 
 we made a night journey in a tonga with relays of ponies, 
 and escorted by relays of sowars, to join the rail at Nandgaum, 
 and thence back to Bombay. I returned to my quarters on 
 Malabar Hill with Lancie. Then, on the afternoon of the 
 12th, I met Monier at the Apollo Bunder; and, accompanied 
 by Lancie and his wife and by Evan James, we all crossed 
 the harbour to the " Surat," our friends kindly coming to see 
 us off. I have left Bombay with the impression that, take it 
 for all in all, it is the pleasantest place to live in that I have 
 visited in India, excepting of course the Sanitariums ; but I 
 was not sorry, charmed and excited as I have been with my 
 whole tour, to see the beautiful flashing light of "the Prongs" 
 oft" Colaba Point gradually fade in the distance as the " Surat" 
 steamed away into the darkness of the Indian Sea. This 
 vessel is, though old, roomy and comfortable ; and, as there 
 are only fifty or sixty passengers on board, each passenger has 
 a cabin to himself, and that is an enormous privilege. I have, 
 
( J47 ) 
 
 however, been compelled to change my cabin, an ancient rat 
 having appropriated my first quarters, and having taken into 
 his head to visit my feet and toes every night by way of 
 remonstrance against my intrusion. I could not get rid of 
 him, and very unpleasant it was to feel him running over me 
 in the dark, for I had no covering but a sheet, and so I 
 beat a retreat, and hope to be free for the future. A good 
 table is kept on board. The captain (Burne), a pleasant, 
 gentlemanlike man, an Irvingite,like our friend the Archangel; 
 but this did not prevent him from giving us two services 
 according to our Prayer Book, on deck yesterday, morning 
 and evening, he himself officiating, and reading and singing 
 uncommonly well. We have become friends, and I was 
 with him on the bridge of the ship all last night (always a 
 great delight to me), as she felt her way under the shadow 
 of the huge jagged cinder rock of Aden, and took up her 
 anchorage at 11.30 in the bay. There is something grand 
 and mysterious in the approach to a frowning rock like this 
 from the sea in the middle of a dark night, no sound audible 
 but the wash of the sea against the bows of the ship 
 and the sharp word of command to the men at the wheel. 
 Now we are steaming for the Straits of Bab-el-Mandib, 
 and I will reserve the rest of my letter till we are nearer 
 Suez. 
 
 Red Sea, We are fairly on our way to Suez, being now 
 
 20th Feb. about 30f) mileg from Aden and 9 Q frQm g uez . 
 
 very warm it is — 85° in the companion and 90° in my cabin, 
 which is on the port or wrong side of the ship; but I cannot 
 complain — the voyage has been delightful thus far, and with 
 pleasant companions. My friends in England cannot say 
 that I have neglected them in the way of correspondence, 
 and often under difficulties, as at present, seated as I now am in 
 my cabin with the blotting-book on my knee, the whole ship 
 
 l2 
 
( 148 ) 
 
 trembling from stem to stern with the vibrations of the 
 screw, my hand exuding at every finger, and clinging to the 
 paper under a temperature of 90°; and all this in addition 
 to my Journal, which I have kept strictly from day to day. 
 Tell Pickett that I have eaten Indian curries every day since 
 I left England — some made b}- the best native cooks in Bombay 
 and Madras, and not one can come up to her dry curry-^. 
 hers is better to my taste than any of them. The fact is, that 
 in India it is not possible to get either good or tender meat ; 
 the meat, never good or fat, is cooked on the day it is killed, 
 never has time to get cold, and comes to table like the sole of an 
 old boot. At the same time, it is quite surprising what native 
 cooks can do with their rude utensils and appliances. Give 
 them three stones and a couple of earthenware pots, and they 
 want nothing else ; and here, in this ship, we have the most 
 elaborate meals, with pastry, confectionery, cakes, buns, ices, 
 all thrown in, out of a galley on deck measuring about 8 feet 
 by 6 feet. I forget whether I told you in a former letter that 
 I have tasted the mango both on board the " Goa" when off 
 the Malabar coast and in Bombay. It has a flavour so 
 peculiarly its own, and so agreeable to me, that I for one 
 should give it the palm over all fruits if I had a really fine 
 one and in season. All other Indian fruits are, to my mind, 
 infinitely inferior to ours in England. We have had a 
 prosperous voyage, with no sea except for a few hours off the 
 Gulf of Cambay on starting and to-day as we are entering 
 the Gulf of Suez with a northerly wind against us. I feel 
 now very much like coming home, and the temperature 
 freshens and becomes more English every mile we approach 
 the North. 
 
( 149 ) 
 
 Cairo, Friday Night, 
 
 2nd March, 1877. 
 
 How clever you have been in hitting off our movements, 
 and that in the face of much uncertainty, attributable to our 
 frequent change of plans. On our arrival here last Sunday 
 evening I was gladdened, and, I must say, surprised, at 
 finding letters awaiting me at Shepheard's Hotel. I did not 
 expect them, and was therefore the more pleased. I think 
 now that I have received every letter which has been written 
 to me from England, and that is some consolation to the 
 writer, and much more to the receiver. No one in England 
 can realize the pleasure of receiving home letters by the 
 absentee in foreign lands, or the grief at having missed his 
 home letters. You will to-day or to-morrow receive the two 
 letters which I wrote and posted to you, the one on board 
 the " Surat " just before we anchored off Suez, and the other 
 at Suez the day following, acknowledging the receipt of your 
 Suez budget. The next day (Sunday) we took the train 
 from Suez to Cairo, a slow but not tedious journey of ten 
 hours. We were in the same carriage with Mr. Le Mesurier, 
 who was also our fellow passenger on board the " Surat," 
 and who is one of the three commissioners appointed by the 
 Khedive to reorganize his railways and ports. Not before it 
 is wanted ; for, even after our experience of a day, it was 
 apparent that his highness's railway system was at its lowest 
 ebb. No punctuality ; the carriages of the worst construction, 
 dirty inside, and the outside cracking and splintering for 
 want of paint; the whole world admitted to the platforms of 
 all the stations, and every one exacting his utmost from the 
 harassed traveller; whilst blind, ophthalmic, and deformed 
 beggars blocked up the doors and windows of the carriage; 
 
( 150 ) 
 
 the only remedy being for the traveller to bolt out and lay 
 about him on all sides with a stick. " By heaven ! " I said 
 to Le Mesurier, " you have got your work cut out for you 
 for some time to come." For us casuals, however, it was 
 all novelty and amusement. Water carriers, veiled orange 
 women, vendors of sugar cane, Bedouin Arabs, whole fami- 
 lies squatted on the floor with their goods and chattels, the 
 women closely veiled, waiting for a train ; camels, instead of 
 hack cabs, as at Euston, delivering their burthens or waiting 
 for those expected by the train. These were the incidents of 
 every station we stopped at from Suez to Cairo. And then, 
 about an hour before we reached our destination, the great 
 Pyramids of Ghizeh appeared in sight, followed by the 
 mosques and minarets of Cairo. But the chief characteristics 
 of the journey were the desert, and the rapid and sharply 
 defined transition from the burning sand to the rich, luxu- 
 riant fertility of the delta of the Nile. Half way was desert, 
 with nothing but sand ; the other half, green corn, thick 
 crops of luzern and clover, beans in full bloom, and the most 
 luxuriant crops of all kinds, with the operations of agricul- 
 ture in full swing. Just to the line where the Nile over- 
 flows was abundant fertility, all beyond that a howling 
 wilderness. We have now had nearly a week in Cairo. 
 I must say it is the most amusing city I have seen in my 
 wanderings. It is a thing by itself, and cannot be compared 
 with the cities of India. The streets and bazaars are entirely 
 different, and every figure one meets differs from the other 
 as much as the Egyptian population differs from the Indian. 
 An attempt has been made by the Khedive to spoil the town 
 by new boulevards in the style of those in Paris. These are 
 not worthy of a visit. The old town, however, is most 
 curious ; some of the streets and bazaars so narrow that three 
 persons abreast block up the thoroughfare; but here, never- 
 theless, you meet camels with their burthens, donkeys with 
 
( 151 ) 
 
 every class of rider, from the turbaned swell with his radiant 
 costume to the lowest peasant in brown sackcloth ; women, 
 sometimes on foot, sometimes riding astride on donkeys, in 
 black balloon-like silk coverings, always veiled ; itinerant 
 traders, changers of money, fortune-tellers — I cannot say what 
 besides. Many of these streets are covered over with planks, 
 from the top of one house to the top of the other opposite, for 
 shade. These loose planks admit of a fitful light, which 
 catches the brilliant colours of the dresses below or the wares 
 or fruits in the shops, and presents a subject for the artist, 
 unequalled, I should say, anywhere else. Donkeys are the 
 great institution in Cairo. They stand for hire at the corner 
 of every street in hundreds, most of them gaily caparisoned. 
 Everyone rides. It is the only mode in which you can thread 
 your way along the narrow crowded thoroughfares. The 
 intelligent little animal ambles along, the easiest and safest of 
 paces, about five miles an hour, whilst the donkey-boy behind 
 cries out to all in front to make room, or now and then takes 
 the donkey by the head to steer you through a difficulty. 
 The donkey-boy is himself an animal by himself. He speaks 
 a little English, and is proud to show you the lions and the 
 special capabilities of his donkey. He does not spare himself, 
 and will run the whole day behind the donkey, and the faster 
 you all go the better he is pleased. Our two boys have found 
 out the relationship we three stand to each other. Yesterday, 
 my fellow was chattering in Arabic to some friend, and I, in 
 my curiosity, asked him, " Hassan, what are you saying?" 
 He replied, " Notin (nothing), oh, my uncle." They were re- 
 solved that the animals should exhibit their paces. Yesterday, 
 during a sharp canter along a dusty road, I heard a bump 
 and a thump, and looked round and saw Stanley rolling on 
 the ground in a cloud of dust — the pace had been too good 
 for him, and he rolled off in the canter, but fortunately fell 
 on his ample pays bas, and sustained no damage except a 
 
( lal ) 
 
 shock to his dignity. We have been to the Pyramids of 
 Ghizeh. The road crosses the Nile over a new iron bridge 
 at Boulac, and then runs through avenues of acacia, and past 
 two of the many large new palaces recently built for the 
 Khedive's sons (thus have the new Egyptian loans been 
 squandered !), for about 8 miles, to the Pyramids. These 
 consist of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the Pyramid Belzoni 
 close to it, and two or three smaller ones. They are all 
 placed on a plateau of sand above the level of the valley. 
 The smooth casing stones have been removed from all, and 
 the outline is consequently broken into the rugged squares 
 composing the next course of masonry. The size of these 
 squares can only be appreciated when one is close to them, 
 and the size of one square of stone then conveys a just idea 
 of the gigantic proportion of the whole Pyramid. We were, 
 of course, pestered by the Arabs of the adjacent village, who 
 claim the Pyramids as their perquisite, first to induce us to 
 ascend the large Pyramid, and then to penetrate into the 
 interior. With difficulty, and sometimes on all fours, I con- 
 trived to crawl inside as far as the first chamber, and here 
 with the aid of a candle I verified the fact of the squares of 
 stone inside being so exactly fitted that the join was scarcely 
 discernible. You know the theory advanced by Mr. John 
 Taylor and by Professor Piazzi Smyth, that the Great Pyramid 
 was built by the Shepherd Kings 4,000 years and more ago, 
 not as a place of sepulture, but as the repository for certain 
 standard measures and distances; its height, base, cubic 
 contents, passages, chambers, &c. symbolizing and per- 
 petuating important figures in mensuration, as, for instance, 
 the orbit of the earth round the sun, the precession of the 
 equinoxes, the distance of the sun from the earth. How do 
 they account, then, for the fact of there being several pyramids 
 and all of different sizes ? But I am not armed for learned 
 controversy, and decline to enter into the lists on either side. 
 
( 153 ) 
 
 On my exit from the Great Pyramid I gave my two attendants 
 a rupee each in addition to the two rupees exacted from each 
 traveller by the sheik of the village according to tariff. One 
 of my attendants happened to be an outsider, and the rupee 
 I gave him was the cause of intense jealousy to the orthodox 
 village Arabs, who set upon him, his own father, the most 
 violent of the aggressors, falling on and biting him in the 
 face. A general skrimmage ensued, in which I joined, and 
 belaboured the old father with my cane to rescue his son 
 from his clutches. The vast mounds of rubbish, broken 
 pottery, stone and bricks which surround the Pyramids and 
 cover the sphinx and subterranean temples are evidence of 
 the existence of a large town and population at this spot in 
 former days. A longer excursion still we afterwards took to the 
 Pyramids of Sakarah, and we have examined the interesting 
 museum here and visited the mosques, Coptic churches, &c, 
 but I do not intend to afflict you with a page out of Murray. 
 To-day we spent two hours with the Howling Dervishes, 
 certainly a most extraordinary spectacle. In a large mosque 
 with a domed roof were collected about forty of these men, 
 seated in the form of a horseshoe, the centre figure at the 
 base being the chief priest. First they recited or intoned 
 certain sentences all together, and all swaying their bodies 
 to and fro in unison, being all seated on their hams. By 
 degrees they changed the words and took up another chant 
 in a more excited strain, with now and then a sharp whoop 
 or yell — then they all took off their turbans and outer robes, 
 and all stood up arrayed in various coloured gowns, their 
 long hair flowing down behind their backs. Now commenced 
 an extraordinary scene of excitement. One of the number 
 placed himself in the centre of the horseshoe, and gave vent 
 to a deep gasp from the very pit of the stomach, repeating 
 the gasp as often as he could regain his breath. All the rest 
 gasped or groaned in chorus after him, at the same time 
 
( 154 ) 
 
 bending their bodies forward to the ground and then 
 suddenly backwards, their long hair falling first forward 
 over their faces, and then, by the sudden movement of the 
 body backwards, being tossed violently behind their backs. 
 No words were used, but these deep gasps or groans of the 
 most unearthly tone, the leader first and then all the rest 
 following in chorus, with the violent movement backwards 
 and forwards of the body. So excited did they at last become 
 that two of the number dropped senseless on the floor. I 
 should say that towards the end, to heighten the frantic noise, 
 there was a drum accompaniment, and the leader in the centre 
 was changed to make room for other and fresher men, who 
 gave the gasp in another key, followed by the chorus with 
 renewed vigour. During a part of the time one of the number, 
 dressed in white, whirled round and round for a full quarter 
 of an hour, after the manner of the dancing dervishes, he 
 being one of that persuasion. No money was taken at the 
 door, and none was asked for or expected. The men seemed 
 earnest and devout in their worship, and I can only suppose 
 that an ecstatic communion with the Deity was the object 
 they had in view in such worship. This extraordinary scene 
 lasted for two hours. I wished I had talent enough to paint 
 the scene — it was so unique and so striking and dramatic. 
 In the evening I walked to the Citadel to have a last pano- 
 ramic view, under a setting sun, of the city, the Nile and the 
 Pyramids from the terrace. On my way through the crowd, 
 at the foot of the mosque of Sultan Hassan, I saw a gawky 
 Egyptian soldier, with his mouth wide open, drinking in 
 words which were being whispered into his ear by a sharp, 
 clever-looking man, with books and writing materials next 
 to him, the two being seated side by side. We had a Coptic 
 boy with us who spoke English, and I asked the boy what 
 those two men were doing. " That soldier," the boy replied, 
 " is having his fortune told." We walked up to the men, 
 
( 155 ) 
 
 and then I learnt, through my little Coptic interpreter, that 
 the fortune-teller, a regular profession by the way, had been 
 promising the soldier thirteen houris in Paradise. The poor 
 wretch had some claim to a happy future, as his pay on earth 
 was at the most a piastre, or twopence, a day. However, I 
 was seized with the desire to know something of my own 
 destiny under such encouragement, and begged the fortune- 
 teller to turn his attention to me. He deliberately opened 
 an Arabic book, the pages of which were divided into small 
 squares, and desired me to place my finger on one of the 
 squares. I did so. He then looked at the palm of my hand, 
 and with great apparent study consulted some of his other 
 books, took a slip of paper, and having jotted down my fortune 
 on it in Arabic characters, handed it to me gravely as his 
 decision past all appeal or revocation. The interpretation 
 was as follows : " He seeks for a difficult thing, and he shall 
 have it. The sorcerer will pray to the evil spirits that they 
 may obtain it for him, and that is one houri for a wife." 
 Here was a great falling off, and I showed my disappointment, 
 much to the amusement of a large crowd who had gathered 
 round us, and who were evidently keenly interested in my 
 fate. But I think I made some advance in public favour, 
 and certainly added to the merriment, by asking the soldier 
 if he could not adjust the balance, and spare me two of his 
 houris hereafter. He, taking it all in earnest, replied that I 
 might have two of his with pleasure, and he would keep the 
 remaining eleven ; and so the assemblage dispersed, mutually 
 contented, edified and amused. The scene would have fur- 
 nished a chapter in the " Arabian Nights' Entertainments." 
 
 Alexandria, \y e arrived here last night, and are now waiting 
 
 Sunday, 
 
 4th March, for the Brindisi passengers from Suez to embark on 
 board the "Avoca," which is waiting for us in the harbour. 
 But the weather has changed for the worse. A westerly gale 
 
( 156 ) 
 
 set in at Cairo yesterday morning, blowing the sand in from 
 the desert to an extent which made it impossible to walk out, 
 and the whole horizon towards the west was of a deep yellow 
 colour from the sand taken up by the wind. All along the 
 line of railway yesterday the sand was most annoying, the 
 gale blowing with a force which rocked the carriages. Partly 
 from the wind, partly from an influx of Australian passengers 
 at Benha Junction, and partly from the national indifference 
 to time, our train was more than three hours late, and instead 
 of arriving here at 7.45, we did not arrive till 1 1 o'clock. 
 Very cold and very dirty we were. We have had a walk in 
 the town this morning, which is more French than Egyptian, 
 with squares and wide streets, and glass-fronted shops, bearing 
 no resemblance to Cairo; and we have been to church, and 
 have seen also Cleopatra's Needle, and the sister obelisk lying 
 in a horizontal position close by the Cleopatra, and which is 
 about to be transported to the Thames Embankment — not 
 worth the expense I should say, as the sharpness of the 
 sculpture has been defaced, and the whole affair looks worn 
 and damaged. But we are unsettled, not knowing whether 
 we are to embark to-morrow morning or not. At present 
 the Suez mail has not been telegraphed. 
 
 Monday, We were m despair, there being no telegram from 
 5th March. g uez this morning, and the P. & 0. agent here could 
 giveusnoconsolation. He certainly feared that the Suez steamer 
 had broken down, in which case our stay here would have been 
 indefinite. However, to our great relief, the much-expected 
 telegram arrived at noon to-day, and we have orders to embark 
 on board the " Avoca" this evening, and she sails for Brindisi 
 early to-morrow (Tuesday) morning. The delay has been 
 really very beneficial, as the gale has, in the meantime, 
 subsided, and we may expect a reasonably fair passage. 
 
( 157 ) 
 
 ss. " Avoca,* We have had a tempestuous voyage — three days 
 9th March, and three nights of ahject misery. We steamed 
 out of Alexandria Harbour at 8 a.m., Tuesday morning, 
 hoping that the gale was over, and so it was for a few hours. 
 That night it commenced to blow again from the north- 
 west, and we have had a gale in our teeth ever since, with 
 heavy squalls of hail, a tempestuous sea, as bad as we had 
 it in the Bay of Biscay, and for a longer time. Three- 
 fourths of the passengers in bed. All the ports closed, and 
 " fiddles" or guards at table at every meal. This is just 
 one of those experiences which makes the traveller vow 
 never to leave England again. However, the worst is over. 
 We have just run through the Straits of Otranto, and are 
 now under the lee of the Italian shore, expecting to arrive 
 at Brindisi by 3 p.m., where I post this letter. 
 
74 
 
YD075276