THE MILD HINDU 
 
 THE MAN OF HAN 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
TUBBANS AND TAILS; 
 
 OK, 
 
 Sftetcbes in tbe Tflnromantic East 
 
 ALFRED J. BAMFOKD, B.A. 
 
 4t I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, 'Tis 
 all barren.'" STERNE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SAMPSON JLOW, MAESTON, SEAELE, & EIVINGTON, 
 
 LIMITED, 
 
 St. JBtmstan's %ouse, 
 FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C. 
 
 1888. 
 lAll rigU* reserved.] 
 
LONDON: 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE times past may suffice for the publication of entire 
 diaries by globe-trotters and holiday makers in the 
 East. There be many who say that its faiths have 
 been enumerated and analysed, its races catalogued and 
 discussed, its mountains and plains, its seas and rivers 
 described and pictured with sufficient completeness. 
 Yet as long as different men in looking at the same 
 object see different things, a few chapters of selected 
 reminiscence may find a friendly welcome even though 
 the reminiscence be of residence in well-known cities 
 and travel along well-beaten tracks. In this hope the 
 writer offers these pages to the public. He has made 
 no endeavour after the conscientious exhaustiveness of 
 treatment which marks the work of those who write for 
 the instruction of their fellows. He writes avowedly 
 for their recreation. Though he deals with subjects 
 which he has studied with some care and in which his 
 
 a 2 
 
 M311513 
 
iv Preface. 
 
 inteiest is deep, he claims no authority as an exponent 
 of them and does not venture to ask the attention of 
 the serious student. 
 
 These pages have been penned during holidays 
 and at long intervals some in the early days of first 
 and deep impressions, others in later years when 
 scenes and customs once striking had become weary, 
 stale, flat and unprofitable but always con amove. 
 They have been to the writer as the labour we delight 
 in that physics pain and that is, therefore, a pleasure 
 when less voluntary tasks would be sadly irksome. 
 Nevertheless, the line " Easy writing's curs'd hard 
 reading," has been warningly and, it is hoped, profitably 
 kept in mind. They have been written leisurely but 
 not lazily. The writer has found pleasure in them but 
 has spared no pains. 
 
 TETTENHALL, 
 
 January 25th, 1888. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE MILD HINDU. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. BABUDOM. THE WESTERN VENEER ... 3 
 
 II. BABUDOM. VAPOUR AND GAS .... 19 
 
 III. BABUDOM. "WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE WILL NOT 
 
 OUT OF THE FLESH" ..... 31 
 
 IV. THE BABU'S WOMANKIND ..... 41 
 V. THE SUB-BABU 55 
 
 VI. THE CAR OP JAGANNATH 69 
 
 VII. "THE CURIOUS HUMANITY OF BEASTS AND BIRDS 
 
 AND LITTLE INSECTS" ..... 83 
 
 VIII. "THE WING'D PEOPLE OF THE SKIE" ... 93 
 
 IX. THE NAUTCH . 107 
 
 X. "THE MOUNTAINS SHALL BRING PEACE TO THE 
 
 PEOPLE" . 121 
 
 XI. PRAYER-FLAGS, OR THE TREES OF THE LAW . . 131 
 
 XII. THE MOHARREM . 137 
 
 THE MAN OF HAN. 
 
 I. THE MUNDANE CELESTIAL 149 
 
 II. CHINESE NEW YEAR ...... 183 
 
 III. A LAUNCH AT KAO-CHANG-MIAOU . . . 195 
 
 IV. THE FILIAL PJETY OF THE CHINESE 207 
 
vi Contents. 
 
 V. SHANGHAI FROM A CHINAMAN'S POINT OF VIEW . 225 
 
 VI. GO-HANG, THE 'EIKSHA COOLIE 237 
 
 VII. SUNRISE 247 
 
 VIII. CHINESE OFFICIALDOM ...... 253 
 
 IX. ACROSS THE HEAVENLY FORD .... 267 
 
 X. THE CITY OF THE GREAT DUST . . . .287 
 
 XI. THE CITY OF THE WHITE ELEPHANT 307 
 
THE MILD HINDU. 
 
"Dusk faces with white turbans wreathed." 
 
 MILTON. Paradise Regained. 
 
 "Mislike me not for my complexion 
 The shadow'd livery of the "burnish'd sun, 
 To whom I am a neighbour and near bred." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. Merchant of Venice. 
 
 " Occidental manhood springs from [self-respect] as its basis. 
 Oriental manhood finds the greatest satisfaction in self-abasement. 
 There is no use in trying to graft the tropical palm upon the 
 northern pine. The same Divine forces underlie the growth of 
 both, but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of 
 soil, of climate." 0. W. HOLMES. Poet at the Breakfast- Table. 
 
 "He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; 
 Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. Henry VIII. 
 
THE MILD HINDU. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 BABUDOM. 
 THE WESTERN VENEER. 
 
 THE Calcutta Babu is a character that ought to be well- 
 known, if not well-understood, by Englishmen. He has 
 been often described, nor does he shrink from self- 
 exhibition : he is sensible of no temptation to hide his 
 light under a bushel. 
 
 What the oriental gentleman was like before con- 
 tamination by Western influences it is difficult for a 
 resident in the Calcutta of to-day to imagine. The 
 babu now is what the combination of hereditary 
 instincts and European customs has made him, and. 
 when we think how strangely incongruous a combina- 
 tion this is, we should be prepared to find some start- 
 ling results. Oriental courtesy is associated with 
 oriental shiftiness, insincerity and craft with the 
 oriental character in fact, than which nothing could 
 be more unlike the sturdy manliness and the reckless 
 justice which are part of the best side of the British 
 
 B 2 
 
Turbans and Tails. 
 
 character. The Eastern thinks the "Western a barbarian 
 savage and unmannerly ; the Western thinks the 
 Eastern a sycophant servile, cringing and treacherous. 
 But the babu as he flourishes in Calcutta is a strange 
 endeavour to combine the two, and the effect is not 
 without a ludicrous side. If he attempts, as he not 
 infrequently does, the frank demeanour of the Western 
 in addressing you, he is pretty certain to be rude 
 instead of frank, but unconsciously, this being a dis- 
 tinction he has not apprehended. To dispense with 
 ceremony is, with him, to be discourteous ; for ceremony, 
 hollow and meaningless, covering the most unblushing 
 selfishness, is the only form of courtesy he knows any- 
 thing about. What will it profit ine ? is the question 
 lie asks about everything, nor is he ready to believe 
 that any man can act from disinterested motives. It 
 is hard to persuade him that there is such a thing as a 
 gratitude that is as lively a sense of favours received 
 as of favours to come, or that mutual regard may 
 command service irrespective of considerations of 
 advantage. 
 
 When a babu calls on you and begins to pour out all 
 sorts of fulsome compliments, it will save much time 
 if you interpose the question, "Babu, what is the 
 request with which you intend to conclude these general 
 remarks ? " He will think that you have failed in the 
 etiquette of the occasion, which required a more cir- 
 cumlocutory method, but he will be in no wise dis- 
 concerted, and will at once proceed, since such is your 
 pleasure, to ask the favour which is the object of his 
 
Babudom. 
 
 visit. I speak from experience, having thus saved a 
 good deal of time. 
 
 There is an absence of disguise about the babu's 
 selfishness which is almost charming. He sees no 
 reason to hide it ; why should he, since, as he assumes, 
 it is universal? He is simply careful to observe a 
 certain sequence in the expression of it. His cere- 
 moniousness does not serve so much to cloak as to 
 introduce it. 
 
 Then there is connected with this selfishness a 
 wonderful sense of self-importance. Fulsome is his 
 flattery, loud are his expressions of admiration of you 
 and of depreciation of himself, but these formulae are 
 understood to represent nothing. The particular babu 
 speaking to you at any time is always the centre of 
 the universe, and you have been born into the world 
 for the high honour of serving his ends. I remember 
 how, before residence in the East had destroyed the 
 capacity for astonishment, my servant brought up a 
 card, and on my sending my salaam, a spruce young 
 babu was ushered in. He told me that he had heard 
 of me, and, from his description of my worth, it was 
 evident that he had heard a great deal more than I 
 should have felt at liberty to tell him. My erudition, 
 my generosity, my philanthropy, and all kindred virtues 
 were, I found, world-known as was also my influence 
 with the Director of Public Instruction. Here was a 
 hint of the practical point, and, after some more com- 
 pliments, I found that the young m^n was a candidate 
 for some vacancy in the educational department, " and 
 
6 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 I think," he proceeded, " that your honour will be good 
 
 enough to write to Mr. , saying that you hope I 
 
 may receive the appointment." " But, babu," I replied, 
 
 " if I write to Mr. I must tell the truth, and, 
 
 since I never saw you till just now, how can I con- 
 scientiously say that I hope anything of the kind ? " 
 " Surely you do wish that I may get the appointment ? " 
 This with an air of astonishment great enough to 
 astonish me. " I wish," I said, when I recovered 
 myself a little, " I wish that the best qualified man 
 among the various candidates may receive it, and, if 
 you should be the best qualified, I wish that you may 
 receive it, but not otherwise." His astonishment 
 seemed to increase, and that I should look him in the 
 face and venture to say that there might be circum- 
 stances in which I could wish another rather than him 
 to obtain the appointment he sought, was doubtless 
 recorded in his memory as another instance perhaps a 
 flagrant one of the want of manners of the " savage 
 Englishman." 
 
 Such interviews as these were frequent, and the calm 
 expectation that, apart from their qualifications or your 
 knowledge of them, you would interest yourself to get 
 your visitors coveted appointments, remained inter- 
 esting for a time even after the marvel wore off, till at 
 last the interest was also lost and it became tire- 
 some. 
 
 Similar applications were often made by letter. The 
 following is the copy of a letter received by a friend of 
 mine on his obtaining an appointment as registrar of a 
 
Baludoin. 
 
 government department that had been for a time 
 merged in the Home Department, but was now " resur- 
 rected/' as my friend's correspondents put it. I give 
 the letter as a sample rather than an exception. 
 
 " Calcutta, , 18. 
 
 "To - Esq., 
 " Registrar of the Department and , Simla. 
 
 " HIGHLY HONOURED SIR, 
 
 " We your most obedient and humble slaves hasten 
 with hurried feet to congratulate Your Honour on his 
 exaltation to the Head of the New Department of 
 Government. This auspicious event your petitioners 
 always expected and daily prayed for, and Providence 
 has at length fulfilled our earnest desires. For why did 
 we so desire ? Because we were fully persuaded of 
 your Honour's kind heart, and consideration for such 
 lowly but not undeserving creatures as your poor 
 petitioners. 
 
 " We solicit that out of your bountiful nature you 
 will be kind enough to grant each of your abject slaves 
 a situation as Chuprassie in the Department under your 
 Honour's feet. 
 
 " Your Highness is intimately acquainted with our 
 good character and our expertness and zeal in the Home 
 Department, as well as in the late lamented but now 
 resurrected E. A. and C. Department (' 0, Abolishment ! 
 where is thy victory ! ' ) 
 
 " We beg your Honour will grant the boon we solicit 
 as if we begged for it personally and not through this 
 
8 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 petition-writer, who cannot give Quite expression to 
 our feelings. 
 
 " Your most humble servants, 
 
 " BISESSUR PAPREE-Durwan, H.D., 
 " HUE PAUL Chaprassie, 
 
 " Home Department." 
 
 " P.S. The petition-writer begs for a post of 25 Es. 
 a month. 
 
 " SHIREH MITTER. 
 "(Bisessur knows.)" 
 
 It would be easy to multiply specimens of this kind 
 of thing. I content myself, however, with these two 
 instances. 
 
 A great desire after things English possesses these 
 babus. This is not out of any sense of their superiority, 
 but in the hope of one day being able to turn them to 
 good account. In their hearts they think far more 
 highly of themselves than of us, but, for the profit of 
 those said selves, they will make considerable efforts to 
 acquire the English language, to become acquainted 
 with English customs, and to obtain familiar intercourse 
 with English people. The eagerness with which they 
 take the University of Calcutta by force is remarkable, 
 and the rage for degrees is such that I have heard it 
 jokingly said that every shopkeeper in Old China Bazar 
 is a graduate of the university. The perseverance'ex- 
 hibited by candidates in presenting themselves year 
 after year at an examination, which successive attempts 
 have already proved to be too severe for them, is most 
 
Babudom. 
 
 praiseworthy. Less praiseworthy are the methods 
 sometimes adopted. The Bengali is allowed by all to 
 have a certain smartness, and this is too often seen in 
 the skill with which he will reap that whereon he has 
 bestowed no labour. Some years ago the questions for 
 the various examinations were lithographed in the city 
 and innumerable were the tricks of fertile brains by 
 which the candidates obtained illicit knowledge of them. 
 One of the examiners in the Arts course told me of an 
 ingenious youth who, by some means having gained 
 access to the room where the lithographing was going 
 on, seized a favourable opportunity of sitting down upon 
 the stone, and walked home in the happy consciousness 
 that on his own person he bore a private printing- 
 press with which he might print off the secrets of the 
 dread examiners. The university now attempts to 
 secure itself against such tricks by obtaining the 
 questions from the examiners in time to permit of their 
 being sent to England to be printed, the printed copies 
 returning by post direct to the hands of the authorities. 
 As an additional security the examiners are requested 
 not to keep duplicate copies of their questions in India, 
 and it is felt now, with a degree of confidence, that 
 there is little chance of any candidate seeing them till 
 he meets them fairly in the examination-room. 
 
 This thirst for academic distinction shows itself in 
 yet another way. Familiar as I was with the abbre- 
 viations adopted at home to represent university 
 standing, I found myself puzzled when I read in the 
 papers advertisements in which babus sought for 
 
10 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 educational appointments, or tutorial engagements, and 
 signed themselves E. C. Gliose, F.A., or Chandra Nath 
 Mukerji, F.A. " What is this degree of F.A. ? Is it 
 Father of Arts ? " So I questioned, and it was explained 
 to me that the Calcutta students are required to pass, 
 first, an entrance examination, then an intermediate 
 examination, which, in the Arts Faculty, is commonly 
 known as the First Arts, after which comes the gradu- 
 ating examination, success in which gives the degree of 
 Bachelor. Having passed the intermediate, or First 
 Arts examination, a man has not yet graduated, and is 
 not entitled to : append letters to his name implying 
 that he has a degree, and undergraduates of corres- 
 ponding standing in our home universities would not 
 dream of such a thing. But here nous avons change 
 tout cela; if a man has passed this intermediate 
 examination it is considered far too great an accom- 
 plishment for the world to be left in ignorance of it, 
 and he proudly wears the letters, F.A., behind his 
 name. 
 
 But I soon met with a stranger phenomenon still. 
 For some Siva Nath Chatterjea, failed-F.A., or Kali 
 Charan Mittra, failed-B.A., would be asking for a 
 post as master of a school or for any other equally 
 lucrative employment. To have been "up for an 
 exam.," even if the result has not justified the attempt, 
 is counted something, and many a babu did I find 
 rejoicing thus in the honours of failure. He had at 
 least got a handle to his name, and if he could write 
 himself " Failed-F.A.," it was at least a proof that he 
 
Babudom. 11 
 
 had passed the entrance examination, while, if he 
 could write " Failed-B.A.," it was a proof that he had 
 succeeded at the F.A. 
 
 There was indeed even more in it than this. The 
 eagerness with which students rush to the university 
 makes some sort of sifting process necessary, and no 
 student is allowed to present himself who does not come 
 accredited from one or other of the affiliated colleges. 
 The professors of the colleges hold preliminary exami- 
 nations of their own students, and are only supposed to 
 give the certificates, on which they are admitted to the 
 examinations at the university, to those who may be 
 supposed to stand a chance of passing. So that to have 
 failed at the B. A. or F. A. examination at the university, 
 implies having passed at the preliminary and correspond- 
 ing examinations at the college. But it need hardly be 
 said that the professors are apt to exercise a lenient 
 judgment in this matter, and, appealed to by their 
 students, as I have myself seen, in the most beseech- 
 ing manner, they often do not find it in their heart 
 to debar a man from going into the examination- 
 room though morally certain that his highest success 
 will be a " Failed-B.A.," or " Failed-F.A.," as the case 
 may be. 
 
 In illustration of the practices which these men will 
 adopt for the sake of perfecting themselves in the 
 English language, I may instance the following : A 
 middle-aged babu called one day and said that he was a 
 tutor in one of the government colleges, but he would 
 much like to come and study the Bible with me. He 
 
12 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 was not a Christian, he said, but was deeply interested 
 in the Christian Scriptures and would like to know 
 more about them. Having a prejudice against being- 
 imposed upon and being a little suspicious of my 
 visitor's motive, I kept him in talk for a little while 
 and found that he expected me to give him an hour a 
 day regularly, himself fixing the hour one not very 
 convenient to me. Suspecting his real motive to be to 
 get out of me six hours a week gratuitous instruction in 
 English language, literature, and conversation, I proposed 
 to him that, as I could not devote so large a proportion 
 of my time as he proposed to mission work which was 
 outside my sphere, he should go to a friend of mine. 
 I then mentioned the name of a missionary of ripe 
 experience, who had, of course, command of the living 
 Bengali tongue, and who had also given special 
 attention to the study of the Vedas, and was indeed in 
 every way qualified to help a sincere Hindu inquirer. 
 But there was one small matter that made my proposal 
 serve as a test of my visitor's sincerity. This missionary 
 came from the northern part of the island of Great 
 Britain, and, notwithstanding long residence in India, 
 talked broad Scotch. The babu knew enough of my 
 friend to lead him to detect my motive. He admitted 
 that, after all, he did not care very much about the 
 contents of the Bible, that he wanted to improve his 
 
 English pronunciation, and that he was afraid Mr. 
 
 would not be of much service to him. 
 
 Of course it may be said that I ought, as a Christian 
 man, even on detecting the babu's insincerity, to have 
 
Babudom. 13 
 
 given him the time he wanted, and so have given 
 myself the opportunity of influencing him towards 
 Christianity. Now this is precisely what most of the 
 missionary societies which are represented in Bengal 
 are doing in their colleges, which some ardent supporters 
 of missions feel to be outside the legitimate province of 
 the missionary. The babus wish an English education ; 
 the offer is made to them, " Come and study the Bible 
 among other books, and we will give it you." There 
 is I imagine a considerable diversity cf opinion among 
 the missionaries themselves as to the relative worth of 
 education and bazar preaching as a means of evangel- 
 ising, and the advocates of neither can bring crushing 
 evidence against the other in the form of apparent 
 results. On the one hand, men have been spending a 
 lifetime in preaching in the bazars and have nothing 
 to show for it. On the other, students pass through a 
 full college course and leave the institution with as 
 little apparent evidence of change of heart as when 
 they entered. But it is a noteworthy fact that most of 
 the converts to Christianity of late years have been 
 men who have previously passed through one or other 
 of the various missionary colleges. They may not 
 seek baptism till years afterwards, and then at a 
 different place, and at the hands of missionaries of 
 another society ; but I believe I am right in saying that 
 nearly all recent additions to the native church 
 from without have been by the accession of those 
 who have passed under the influence of missionary 
 professors. 
 
14 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 Objection is urged against these colleges sometimes 
 on the ground that so many of the tutors in them are 
 heathen, or, at least, non-Christian. I once met a good 
 lady who was a strong advocate of mission-work, but 
 who had been greatly scandalised on paying a visit to a 
 missionary college in Northern India, where she had 
 seen men at the teachers' desks with the sectarian 
 marks on their foreheads, proclaiming the sect of the 
 Saivas or of the Yaishnavas to which they belonged. 
 But this would seem to be inevitable. The bargain 
 with the student is, If you will put yourself under our 
 Christian influence and give up so much time a day or 
 a week to Biblical study, we will provide you with 
 teachers, lectures and classes, by which you may be 
 prepared for the university examination you wish to 
 pass. It will hardly be denied that the college 
 authorities may teach their students geography and 
 mathematics, through Hindu teachers of these subjects, 
 and, to many of us, insisting on a man's receiving his 
 Euclid through a Christian teacher would seem to be 
 parallel to insisting on his buying his rice of a Christian 
 dealer. Be this as it may, enough qualified Christian 
 tutors have not hitherto been forthcoming. In fact, so 
 great is the demand for Christian natives of sufficient 
 teaching qualification, that some fear may well be felt 
 lest a premium be set on hypocrisy. Since the head- 
 ships of branch schools in the mofussil, where there are 
 no Europeans, are never given to heathen teachers, 
 there is always a demand for Christian scholars, and on 
 this account, a Christian graduate can command a higher 
 
Babudom. 15 
 
 salary than a Hindu graduate of the same standing. 
 This fact contains a reason which many a native would 
 consider sufficient for becoming a " Christian." 
 
 The missionary colleges, where religious instruction is 
 part of the curriculum, are able to compete with the 
 government colleges, from which it is strictly excluded, 
 by the simple method of charging lower fees. It is not 
 unlikely that some of the non-success of the former, as 
 Christianising agents, is due to the influence of the 
 latter. The British government, with a justice more 
 severe than the Hindu can appreciate, forbids Christian 
 teaching in its colleges, and to insure the carrying out 
 of this principle of religious impartiality and abstinence 
 it may even happen that in filling those college-chairs 
 preference is sometimes given to men of agnostic or 
 positivist views. Now this neutrality of the state in 
 religious matters cannot but meet with the approval of 
 British free-churchmen. But there are two facts in the 
 light of which this attitude has been very puzzling to 
 the Hindu. The first fact is that the sovereign of 
 Great Britain is the head of the established church. 
 The attitude of professed neutrality assumed in India 
 by that sovereign's government in relation to a faith 
 of which she is the acknowledged head and defender is 
 difficult to the Hindu understanding and suggests a 
 suspicion that the government must be in reality 
 adverse to be professedly neutral. The second fact 
 is that those trained in the traditions of state-establish- 
 ments of religion are inclined to regard a country 
 which supports a form of Christian faith as a Christian 
 
16 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 country, and to teach accordingly that Christianity is 
 the religion of England. The Hindu who has been 
 thus instructed, and then sees men approved by the 
 British government, and honoured with professorial 
 responsibility in spite of, and it may even seem to him 
 in some measure because of, non-Christian convictions, 
 knows not what to think, and complains, " I have been 
 deceived. I was told that Christianity is the religion 
 of the English, and I find it is the religion of a section 
 only. It is not the religion of the scholars of England, 
 but of the uncultured only." This charge of deception 
 may be just as against those who claim that their country 
 is Christian because it supports with the wealth and 
 prestige of the whole the church of a part, but it is 
 unjust against the free-churchmen who have not taught 
 that Christianity is the religion of England, but that it 
 is the religion of all who believe in Christ indepen- 
 dently of nationality, and that they only are Christians 
 who are disciples of Christ.* 
 
 Just or unjust, however, the effect is to make 
 agnostics and positivists of the native students. As 
 with much readiness they once accepted the opinion 
 that all the English were Christians, they now seem 
 
 * The same criticism applies to the statement occasionally heard 
 that the work of the missionary is oftentimes sorely hindered by 
 the immoral lives of his fellow-countrymen, which are so many 
 proofs that Christian morality is not universally accepted in the 
 land from which he has come. This would be found to be a less 
 hindrance if the missionary could make it clear that he is not 
 preaching the religion of England or of America, but the Gospel of 
 the Son of Man. 
 
Babudom. 17 
 
 equally ready to suppose that, at least, most English 
 scholars are agnostics. This surely is a state of things 
 making educational work an essential department of 
 a Missionary Society's labours. In the missionary 
 colleges the students have the advantage no mean 
 one in some cases of familiar intercourse with 
 Englishmen who are as scholarly as Christian. Doubt- 
 less they too often judge their professors by themselves, 
 and assume that their Christianity is the result of their 
 salaries, that they teach what they are paid to teach, and 
 that they would as fervently teach the direct contrary 
 if they saw an opportunity of doubling their income by 
 so doing. That this is not always the case we would 
 fain believe. In not a few instances the students are 
 capable of recognising and honouring the sterling 
 qualities of our Christian missionaries, and every such 
 capacity is at once an evidence and a means of grace. 
 If we might judge by their words, indeed, it would be 
 understating the case to speak of this as occurring in 
 not a few instances, for one will hear language of the 
 most unqualified and extravagant eulogy spoken of 
 missionaries in general and missionaries in particular 
 on all occasions that afford the slightest excuse for it. 
 Whenever young Bengal has an opportunity of 
 speaking of missionaries in their presence there lacks 
 nothing of laudatory rhetoric. The words of his mouth 
 are smoother than butter. 
 
" Truly your freest utterances are not by any means always the 
 "best. . . . Nay, of all animals, the freest of utterance I should 
 judge is the genus Simia" CAELTLE. Past and Present. 
 
 " Jocelin is weak and garrulous, but he is human." Ibid. 
 
 " He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple 
 of his argument." SHAKSPERE. Love's Labour Lost. 
 
 " Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man 
 in all Venice." SHAKSPEEE. Merchant of Venice. 
 
 "To carry out an enterprise in words 
 Is easy; to accomplish it by acts 
 Is the sole test of man's capacity." 
 
 TJie Ramayan. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 BABUDOM continued. 
 VAPOUR AND GAS. 
 
 I STATED at the close of the last chapter that, judging 
 the babus by their words, their appreciation of honesty 
 is not rare. But we must not always judge them by 
 their words. At any rate, we must not suppose that 
 they mean what Englishmen would mean by the same 
 words. They are too gifted in exaggeration. It is 
 said that when Bishop Heber first came into contact 
 with the natives of India, he was overwhelmed by the 
 cordiality with which he was everywhere received. 
 Wherever he went, he was welcomed by the graceful 
 salaam and the " Mabap," " My father and mother." 
 One is not long in the country however without 
 discovering that he is always everybody's father 
 and mother ; and especially is this the case when he 
 has occasion to find fault. The Indian Punch once 
 pictured an amusing scene founded on this fact. A 
 young Sahib was giving his servant a somewhat severe 
 rating, closing with the outburst " You son of a jackal 
 you ! " The servant mildly, deprecatingly bows : 
 " My father and mother." 
 
 c 2 
 
20 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 There is nothing that delights a Bengali more than 
 the opportunity of speaking. Provided he can sit 
 down with the consciousness of having been fluent and 
 of having got his superlatives well placed, he requires 
 nothing further. To mean anything is no part of his 
 purpose ; to put his professions into practice no part of 
 his dream. Consistency between word and act does 
 not strike him as necessary. I remember well, for 
 instance, how, at an address delivered by a favourite 
 orator at an annual meeting of the Bengal branch of 
 the National Indian Association, some eight hundred 
 students who had crowded into the theatre of the 
 Hindu College applauded rapturously his glowing 
 periods. He was speaking of some of the blots of the 
 Hindu social system, and in the most unmeasured 
 terms condemned child-marriage, zenana seclusion, and 
 widow persecution. But I felt sure then, as I remain sure 
 to this day, that of those applauding students nearly 
 one thousand in number there would scarcely be half- 
 a-dozen who would seriously face the questions : Is 
 there anything' I can do to bring about a reform in 
 these matters ? Shall I personally refuse to yield to 
 these customs ? 
 
 This same gentleman is a very typical Bengali, not 
 a type of all, but a type of a very large class. For- 
 merly in government service, he retired from it after 
 some act of which the government did not approve, 
 and has ever since figured more or less as a martyr. 
 At the time of the excitement aroused in India by Mr. 
 Ilbert's Bill, I believe his name was figuring in the 
 
Bcibudom. 21 
 
 home papers as that of a man imprisoned for writing 
 against the High Court Judge in connection with it, 
 and the honours of martyrdom were falling even 
 thicker upon him. My own impression of the man, 
 confirmed by the opinion of those who knew him much 
 better, though I myself saw not a little of him, was 
 that he was a mere talking machine, of whose high- 
 flown words it was scarcely worth while to take much 
 notice. 
 
 There was a monthly lecture founded at the City 
 College, an institution originated by the Sadharan 
 Brahmos, and soon after the appearance of Sir Edwin 
 Arnold's Light of Asia, the late Dr. Krishna Mohun 
 Banerjea was announced to give a lecture upon it, 
 while this gentleman was advertised as his chairman. 
 The Eev. Doctor's lecture was not a very great success. 
 It was dull, confused, and unappreciative. At its con- 
 clusion the chairman rose and spoke of it in the con- 
 ventional words of exaggerated eulogy, passing on 
 gradually, however, with altered tone, to a lengthened 
 criticism of it which was not only severe but contemp- 
 tuous and ill-mannered, after which he sat down with 
 the satisfied smile of a man whose dearest wish had 
 been realised. He neither saw the absurdity of the 
 contradictions in what he had been saying, nor the bad 
 taste and ungraciousness of treating thus one of the 
 most venerable members of This race on the occasion 
 when he was acting as his chairman. He simply knew 
 that he had had an opportunity of being eloquent, that 
 he had spoken for three quarters of an hour, and that 
 
22 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the audience had been borne along on the torrent of 
 Iiis oratory. What could it matter what it had all been 
 about? It was thus apparently that the lecturer 
 judged. To see him criticised thus with a lofty air of 
 superiority was irritating to me, but the good doctor 
 knew his young compatriot better than I ; he listened 
 placidly to his remarks, and when the opportunity was 
 afforded him of speaking again, he did not pay them 
 the compliment of a single reference. They were taken 
 for what they were worth, and received, as far as he 
 was concerned, with imperturbable silence. The man 
 had spoken vehemently enough, but it was understood 
 that he had meant nothing. 
 
 This appetite for rhetoric and strong language is 
 perhaps but insufficiently taken into account by persons 
 who, from what they hear in speeches or find in the 
 vernacular press, would argue that there is a general 
 discontent seething in native society, and constantly 
 threatening danger to the British government. This 
 discontent is largely simulated, and where it is not, is 
 little more than the fractiousness of ill- trained children. 
 From what has been said, it may be gathered that the 
 English-speaking babu is a conceited believer in him- 
 self and his claims on the world's consideration. He 
 expects some one to provide him with a post to which 
 is attached an income suitable to so great a gentleman. 
 He scorns manual labour of any sort, and has too much 
 regard for his skin to enter the army. I understand 
 that it is true still, as when Macaulay wrote his essay 
 on Warren Hastings, that there is not a single Bengali 
 
Bdbudom. 23 
 
 in the so-called Bengal regiments. He cannot dig 
 though he is not ashamed to beg. Therefore, after over- 
 crowding the legal profession and the desks of the 
 mercantile offices, he must either take to speechifying, 
 newspaper writing, or idling. If the last, he will from 
 the nature of the case be dissatisfied, and if either the 
 first or the second, he will find it so much easier to be 
 fluent with than without a grievance, that it will be 
 strange indeed if he cannot always enlist one in his 
 service. While I was living in Shanghai, our morning 
 daily culled for our delectation a cutting which the 
 Pioneer had taken from one of the vernaculars affording 
 a striking instance of the avidity with which the Bengali 
 will seize on a grievance, and illustrating incidentally 
 how instinctively he feels that the legal profession 
 whether on account of the opportunities it affords of 
 revelling in intricacies and quibbles I dare not say 
 is the native atmosphere of the Oriental. At Woosung, 
 where the Huangpu, the little river on which Shanghai 
 stands, falls into the Yangtsze, there is a deposit of 
 mud, usually spoken of as the Woosung bar. During 
 the Franco-Chinese war, the Chinese announced their 
 intention, on the ground of real or professed appre- 
 hensions that the French fleet would come up the 
 Huangpu, of sinking a number of junks on this bar of 
 mud. The Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, seeing 
 the harm that would be done to the trade of Shanghai, 
 and believing that such an expedient either was or 
 could be rendered unnecessary, called a meeting to 
 devise steps by which it might be prevented. A 
 
24 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 Bengali editor got hold of the fact that Europeans 
 were attempting to "prevent the blocking of the 
 Woosung bar by the Chinese," and became righteously 
 indignant at this new example of oppression and high- 
 handed dealing. "Woosung, we suppose/' said the 
 Bengali editor, " is a Chinese town ; and to prevent the 
 overcrowding of the local bar by Chinese lawyers is a 
 monstrous proposal." 
 
 There is one other matter which must not be over- 
 looked in estimating the value' of native utterances in 
 India, though of course specially relevant to the task of 
 estimating native evidence in the Courts of Law. It 
 must be remembered that what we stigmatise as bribery 
 is a virtue in the East, one of the civilities of life, one 
 of the safeguards of respect, and, therefore, as universal 
 as good manners. We are careful not to omit the 
 conventional courtesies of our race, and the Bengali will 
 not omit those of his. And notwithstanding that it is 
 laid down in the Laws of Manu that 
 
 " Headlong in utter darkness shall the wretch 
 Fall into hell who, in a court of justice, 
 Answers a single question falsely; he 
 Shall be tormented through a hundred births," 
 
 I have been assured by friends belonging to the 
 learned profession which has its habitation in the Halls 
 of Justice, that at Calcutta, in the streets outside the 
 various courts, there wait for hire any number of persons 
 who get their living as professional witnesses and are 
 not without skill in their profession. You can among 
 
Babudom. 25 
 
 them obtain the services of men prepared to swear 
 to anything you wish. Would it be just to allow such 
 merit to pass unrewarded ? 
 
 A man had a cow and an enemy. The cow died 
 under most suspicious circumstances. Speaking among 
 his friends, the owner of the defunct beast found him- 
 self in possession of clear evidence that his enemy had 
 poisoned his cow. Collecting witnesses, he started off 
 with them for the nearest town at which he could lodge 
 his complaint. It happened that, living in an out- 
 of-the-way place, they had some distance to travel, in- 
 volving a night's encampment. Unfortunately for the 
 complainant, he had some little differences during this 
 night with his witnesses on the subject of compensation, 
 and when they arrived before the magistrate, they all 
 swore the cow had died a natural death, and that the 
 accused man had no hand in it whatever. The result 
 was that the accuser lost his cow and got hardly dealt 
 with by the magistrate for bringing an unnecessary, 
 vexatious, and unjust case into court. I had this from 
 a European friend who knew the persons concerned. 
 For the following I have no such external authority, 
 but the internal evidence is good. 
 
 A man was charged by another with having received 
 from him a loan which had not been repaid. Know- 
 ing that his charge was a false one, the plaintiff took 
 the precaution of bringing forward as many as five 
 witnesses to prove the transaction : they had seen the 
 money change hands. The defendant, though he knew 
 he had never received a pice, knew also how little he 
 
26 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 must depend on that fact; so finding out that the 
 other was going to bring five witnesses into court to 
 prove that he had borrowed the money, he admitted 
 that he had received it, but brought ten witnesses to 
 swear to his having repaid it. This unexpected defence 
 saved him. 
 
 Such example will indicate what " evidence " is worth 
 in India, and may well suggest the question how far 
 the machinery of British courts is best for such a 
 people. Probably there was as much real justice done 
 by men having irresponsible power, who were at liberty 
 to seek the truth of the cases that came before them 
 according to the suggestions of their mother wit, edu- 
 cated by a life -long knowledge of the people, as is done 
 now. Solomon might not have astonished his subjects 
 by the justice of his famous decision if he had been 
 hampered by a system of trial by jury. 
 
 The consideration of these characteristics has its 
 bearing on the questions that are sometimes raised, 
 under the cry of " Justice to India." This cry is often 
 heard at home ; but, were all the things clamoured for 
 granted, it might be a hard day for many a poor Indian. 
 
 The aim of the British government should doubtless 
 be to educate the people for self-rule, and to keep that 
 in view as an ultimate goal. But for the present the 
 masses of that country would be far better off under a 
 just-hearted British despotism than they would be 
 under the most constitutionally-conceived government 
 administered by their own people. It sounds like 
 justice to say, " Put no difference between native and 
 
Baludom. 27 
 
 European ; admit to privilege and responsibility inde- 
 pendently of colour." But this may mean the putting 
 of one native in power to the doing of injustice to a 
 hundred. If the facts given in the foregoing pages 
 prove anything, they prove that, though of the same 
 Aryan stock, the Hindu and the Englishman are divided 
 by a pretty deep gulf. It is not an impassable one, but 
 the passage is at present effected by but few, and I do 
 not think it an extravagant thing to say, that, speaking 
 generally, the native of India is not yet qualified to be 
 put in charge of machinery which the British people 
 have only learned to use in the course of centuries and 
 at the cost of untold bloodshed. 
 
 There was doubtless fearful oppression in the old day& 
 before the British conquest, but a rough justice was 
 possible then, owing to the comparative weakness of the 
 petty states into which the country was divided. When 
 the oppression became intolerable, the oppressor was 
 overthrown in the uprising of the oppressed. He 
 always knew that there was a limit to his oppressions 
 fixed by the limit of the endurance of the people. But 
 a native official, with the power of the empire at his- 
 back, or a native usurer able to appeal to British law 
 to enforce his iniquitous claims, may be an oppression 
 such as the former times knew nothing of. 
 
 And if it be felt that the putting of increased power 
 in the hands of natives might be to the injury of their 
 own countrymen, it is not surprising that there should 
 be a strong feeling against placing Europeans under the 
 power of natives. An educated babu and a European 
 
28 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 were speaking of the Ilbert Bill, the babu cordially 
 approving of its provisions and condemning the outcry 
 that had been raised in opposition to it. The European 
 replied, "Babu, the other day was the Jagannath 
 Festival. You pretended that Jagannath had been 
 bathed and had caught a cold, and must needs go on a 
 visit to a friend for change of air. So you dragged his 
 car a short distance and professed to believe that he 
 had gone to his friend. Then, a few days after, you 
 put the whole population on the car ropes again, and 
 pretended that he had returned home cured. How can 
 you expect us to wish ourselves in the hands of men 
 who profess to believe in such superstitions ? " " But, 
 sir," said the babu, " you know perfectly well that we 
 educated Bengalis do not believe in any such nonsense." 
 "I know it, babu; but you were present with your 
 educated friends on those occasions, and not as spectators 
 but as sharing in the ceremony. You tell me that you 
 have not made up your mind about Christianity, and so 
 excuse yourself for not avowing yourself a Christian. 
 But you tell me you have made up your mind about 
 the folly of Hinduism. You can call it nonsense to 
 me, and yet you and your friends dare not acknowledge 
 publicly your real position in regard to it. Does not 
 this show that you natives lack moral courage ? " 
 '"Yes," answered the babu, "I admit that we have 
 neither the moral courage of Europeans nor their in- 
 dependence." " This is true of those who mean well 
 .among you," pursued the European ; " what about those 
 of whom even so much could not be said ? " 
 
Babudom. 
 
 It will need time for those changes to take place in 
 the native character which will be necessary before 
 Europeans who know India can be expected to regard 
 with favour a bill such as that which Mr. Ilbert brought 
 forward. 
 
" Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination ; their 
 discourse and speeches according to their learning and infused 
 opinions ; but their deeds are after as they have been accustomed." 
 BACON. Essay on Custom and Education. 
 
 " No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity 
 of our circumstances the deduction that it is then a virtue goes 
 without saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without 
 careful and diligent cultivation ; therefore it goes without saying, 
 that this one ought to be taught in the public schools at the fire- 
 side even in the newspapers. What chance has an ignorant, 
 uncultivated liar against an educated expert ? What chance have 
 
 I against Mr. Per against a lawyer? Judicious lying is 
 
 what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even better and 
 safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An awkward, 
 unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth." 
 
 MARK TWAIN. 
 
 " An honest man's the noblest work of God." POPE. 
 
 * You yourself are much condemned to have an itching palm." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. Julius Csesar. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 B ABUDOM con tinned. 
 
 <( WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE WILL NOT OUT OF THE 
 
 FLESH." 
 
 IN the conclusions arrived at from the facts already 
 given, I would not be thought to speak disparagingly 
 of our brothers in Bengal. The fact is that both friend 
 and foe are often unreasonable in their expectations. 
 The one would give too much to them, and the other 
 exact too much from them. People here at home cry 
 out for what they call justice and equal treatment on 
 abstract grounds of human brotherhood, making no 
 allowance for the necessary differences that grow out of 
 different national histories. And people who live 
 among them, and who recognise these differences when 
 met by native claims, are not always more reasonable 
 when the case is reversed. This is especially seen in 
 the views held by many Anglo-Indians in regard to 
 native Christians. Of course there are many hypocrites 
 among those who call themselves Christians in Bengal, 
 as there are among those who call themselves Christians 
 in England. In addition to those who imagine that 
 they are Christians without being such, there are those 
 
32 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 who are professing to be earnest inquirers after truth, 
 while they know themselves to be the most thorough- 
 going liars. One such " anxious inquirer," a Kulin 
 Brahman, once came to me, and professed to be dis- 
 satisfied with Hinduism, and wanted me to instruct him 
 in the Christian faith. I appointed a time for him to 
 call again. Before that time had come he returned, 
 saying his father had heard of his coming to see me, and 
 had turned him out of his home. This of course ought 
 to have touched my heart and prompted me to offer 
 him free quarters in my house. Instead of that, how- 
 ever, it being about midday, I suggested that he should 
 have tiffin with me ; and then I would drive him down 
 to the London Mission compound, where he would 
 doubtless be received in the catechumens' quarters. 
 He did not seem to jump at the proposal, but agreed. 
 
 " So down they sat, 
 
 And to their viands fell ; nor seemingly 
 The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss 
 Of theologians, but with keen dispatch 
 Of real hunger and concoctive heat 
 To transubstantiate." 
 
 I was surprised at the freedom of my "angel 
 unaware " in dealing with a European tiffin. There 
 was a more thorough absence of awkwardness than 
 would have been anticipated in a man up to that hour 
 in caste who had never before partaken of any meal 
 save of Hindu food, prepared and eaten in Hindu 
 fashion. After tiffin, while the gari was being got ready, 
 he seized an opportunity of decamping, taking with 
 
Bdbudom. 33 
 
 him the serviette he had been using, which was 
 probably the only thing he could conveniently secrete, 
 as the khitmatgar had been constantly going in and 
 out of the dining-room where I had left him. That 
 was the last I saw of my guest ; but some time after 
 his name caught my eye in the newspaper, and I was 
 curious to see to what he owed .the publicity. On 
 reading I found that he had been attending regularly 
 at the house of Mr. - , the minister of a Wesleyan 
 Church, who had eventually .baptized him, but had 
 now been compelled to prosecute him for thefts 
 committed. In the examination before the magistrate, 
 it further transpired that he had similarly victimised 
 another minister who was preparing him for con- 
 firmation. But such men are not native Christians, 
 they are native hypocrites; and the existence of 
 hypocrites does not prove the non-existence of honest 
 and truthful men, though I fear that some are inclined 
 to assume this non-existence in cases where they have 
 not seen the real thing and have seen the counterfeit. 
 In the saloon of a mail steamer between England 
 and India some one mentioned the words, Native 
 Christians. " Native Christians ! There are none. 
 I've been in India for many years and I never saw a 
 native Christian the whole time." So spoke a military 
 officer among the company. Some days afterwards the 
 same officer was telling of his sporting experience, and 
 said that at one time and another thirty tigers had 
 fallen to his rifle. " Did I understand you to say, 
 thirty, colonel ? " asked a missionary of the Church 
 
34 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 Missionary Society, who was at the table. " Yes, sir, 
 thirty," replied the officer. " Because," pursued the 
 missionary explanatorily, " I thought that perhaps you 
 meant three." "No, sir, thirty" this time with 
 emphasis. " Well, now, that is very strange," said the 
 missionary, " for I have been in India some five-and- 
 twenty years, and I have never seen a wild tiger in all 
 that time." " Very likely not, sir," responded the 
 colonel; "but it is not at all strange, it is simply 
 because you never went where they are ; you did not 
 go to look for them." " Perhaps it is so," said the 
 missionary after a moment or two of apparent reflection, 
 " and may not that be also the reason why you never 
 saw a native convert, as you affirmed at this table the 
 other evening ? " 
 
 It is true both that there are native Christians and 
 that some of them are of a type of Christianity which will 
 compare not unfavourably with that of their European 
 co-religionists. The Dr. Banerjea to whose lecture on 
 Arnold's Light of Asia I have referred above might have 
 been taken as an example of a scholar and a Christian 
 justly commanding respect anywhere. His manner was 
 invariably courteous, and his bearing owing, it may 
 be, partly to his years by its combined dignity and 
 urbanity, always compelled admiration. But justice 
 will not be done to the native Christians till it be more 
 clearly understood that they are not Europeans. It 
 takes a good deal of honest thinking to dissociate in 
 our minds what we owe directly to our Christian 
 conviction and what we owe to Christianity indirectly 
 
Bdbudom. 35 
 
 as it lias influenced the European atmosphere in which 
 we have been nurtured. 
 
 A man brought up in England, where he has seen no 
 Christians except as associated with his own nationality, 
 goes to India, and sees native Christians in whom he 
 finds that something is lacking which he had always 
 hitherto seen in a Christian. It is as likely as not that 
 what is lacking is simply the Western temper. He 
 would cordially agree with the principle, Let us make 
 these men Christians without denationalising them, 
 without attempting to make them Europeans ; at the 
 same time, when they are made Christians and left 
 Bengalis, he is not satisfied. The fact seems to be, 
 as I have just pointed out, that Christianity has a double 
 influence on us. We are influenced directly by it in 
 our personal conviction, and we are influenced indirectly 
 by it in the hereditary instincts which it has during 
 many generations been creating in our race. The 
 Bengali necessarily lacks this latter, and is not to be put 
 down as a hypocrite because his Christian convictions 
 have a constant struggle against hereditary instincts 
 which are in his case as antagonistic to his Christianity 
 as in ours they are helpful to it. I do not say that the 
 result in the native Christian is so satisfactory as in 
 the best specimens of English Christianity. I say 
 rather that it is unreasonable on our part to expect so 
 satisfactory a result. You may get a Hindu to accept 
 the doctrines of Christianity, you may get him to 
 associate himself with a Christian church, and, in so 
 doing, to cut himself off from all association with 
 
 D 2 
 
36 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 idolatry, and this even at considerable cost to himself; 
 he may be perfectly sincere in his determination to 
 make Christ his example, and to serve Him as his 
 Master, but he does not thereby receive the moral tone 
 which is one of the slowly-wrought effects of an 
 Englishman's upbringing. He still retains his own 
 national characteristics, in some of which he may have 
 an advantage we do not realise, though in others a dis- 
 advantage which we can clearly see. From which we 
 may judge that the same outward moral conduct 
 indicates a greater Christian triumph in a Bengali than 
 in an Englishman. We ought to be prepared to find 
 in a Bengali Christian, indications of the self-centred 
 thought, the love of vapouring and the inability to see 
 contradictions, incongruities, and absurdities that appear 
 to be part of the heritage of the race. A member of 
 one of the native churches, a graduate in both the Arts 
 and Law faculties in the Calcutta University, and a 
 pleader by profession, was advertised to deliver one of 
 a course of lectures being given in English at the 
 London Mission College to educated natives. He 
 announced his subject: "The Monistic Theory of 
 Darwinian Evolution," and asked a lady to "select 
 a hymn appropriate to the subject " out of Sankey'& 
 Songs and Solos ! 
 
 Nor indeed ought we to feel very much surprised 
 to find evidence of some of the worst faults of the 
 native character remaining in them even after the 
 acceptance of so purifying a faith as the Christian. 
 When we remember, for instance, that from their 
 
Babudom. 37 
 
 earliest infancy they have been taught to lie, that their 
 characters have been formed, and their lives moulded 
 by heathen influences, by worship of gods of whom 
 their legends relate the most shameless untruthfulness 
 and impurity, we may accept their own testimony that 
 we can have no conception how hard it is for even 
 converted members of their race to tell the truth. It 
 is something they have to acquire ; they have to think 
 carefully and constantly if they would do it. 
 
 "With two or three others, I was once asked to 
 investigate some rather unpleasant matters that were 
 causing disturbance in one of the native churches, 
 and was therefore brought a good deal into contact with 
 the members of it. The result was that, while my 
 faith in their Christianity suffered no abatement, my 
 respect for their national instincts did not increase. 
 One babu, a man of years and large experience, and of 
 some prominence in the native Christian community, 
 assured me, in connection with this inquiry, that I was 
 not to suppose I could understand the natives of 
 Bengal. A European without being a Christian could 
 nevertheless be a gentleman and know how to behave 
 himself, could exercise self-control and even be an honest 
 man. But, he continued, of many natives you could 
 not say as much even though they were Christians. A 
 meeting of native Christians in council without a 
 European president was to be imagined with difficulty. 
 Moreover, my informant further assured me that on any 
 point a vote could be obtained as wanted, since " undue 
 and improper influence" he carefully avoided the 
 
38 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 word " bribery " was a marked characteristic of native 
 proceedings. 
 
 If it be true that the old leaven of the native charac- 
 ter still works in those who have so far broken with 
 the past as to avow themselves Christians, it may well 
 be expected to remain in the members of the several 
 samajes. The natural modesty of the race revealed 
 itself strikingly in the annual addresses of Babu Keshub 
 Chandra Sen, the most prominent and well-known, if 
 not the most worthy of the samaj leaders. One utter- 
 ance which I heard fall from his lips would have 
 sounded blasphemous to me had I not already learnt 
 to believe that a Bengali's eloquence did not mean 
 anything, even though the Bengali were a Brahmo. 
 Speaking on the development of the Divine purpose, 
 he said that Moses had made Jesus a necessity, and 
 Jesus had made Paul a necessity, and Paul had made 
 him the speaker a necessity ! 
 
 In concluding this sketch of the Calcutta babu, in 
 which, without, as I trust, being altogether unapprecia- 
 tive, I fear that I have dwelt more 011 his weaknesses 
 than on his virtues, from the unfortunate fact of having 
 been more impressed by them, I feel I ought to refer 
 to one matter in which we must humble ourselves 
 before our brown-skinned brother of Bengal. He is a 
 sober man as compared with us. Nor is he blind to 
 the failing of Englishmen, or to his danger from our 
 influence and example. As long ago as 1848, among 
 the native community in Calcutta a society was formed 
 to stay if possible the spread of the drunken habits 
 
Baludom. 39 
 
 introduced by the Christians for so they put it. We 
 are little justified in finding fault with their type of 
 Christianity, when they find so serious a flaw in ours. 
 " Of what caste are you ? " asked an Englishman of a 
 native. "Oh, I'm a Christian. I take brandy-shrab 
 and get drunk like you," was the reply. That the 
 natives of India are learning at least one bad habit 
 from the Europeans is an undoubted fact. It is a fact 
 to give us pause where we should otherwise without 
 hesitancy endeavour to increase the social intercourse 
 of the races. There is a readiness on the part of a 
 large proportion of the educated natives of the larger 
 cities to throw off the thraldom of the social customs 
 of their fathers, and to seek acquaintance with the 
 home life and social customs of the English. I have, 
 by private invitation, attended amateur theatricals in 
 the Calcutta house of a zemindar, in which, even his 
 wife and the ladies of his household took their part 
 upon the stage, though when they are on their zemin- 
 dary in the mofussil under the rule of the dread 
 mother-in-law, the said wife has to be content with 
 the imprisonment and 'occupations of the zenana. I 
 have frequently met men at dinner who, a few years 
 before, would not have looked upon a European dinner- 
 table. But the question has, time after time, forced 
 itself upon me, Will it be for the benefit of the 
 Hindus to be initiated into our social customs ? 
 Would that the social life of our fellow-countrymen in 
 India were healthy enough to justify an unqualified 
 and unhesitating affirmative answer. 
 
"Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand 
 The downward slope to death." 
 
 LORD TENNYSON. " A Dream of Fair Women" 
 
 " As unto the bow the cord is, 
 So unto the man is woman; 
 Though she bends him, she obeys him; 
 Though she draws him, yet she follows. 
 Useless each without the other." 
 
 LONGFELLOW. The Song of Iltaivatha. 
 
 "A perfect woman, nobly planned 
 To warn, to comfort, and command." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. Poems of the Imagination. 
 
 "Even follow your own inventions; you men will be masters, 
 and we poor women are born to bear the clog of obedience, though 
 our husbands have no more sense than a cuckoo." 
 
 CERVANTES. Don Quixote. 
 
 " Infidelity, violence, deceit, envy, extreme avariciousness, a total 
 want of good qualities, with impurity, are the innate faults of 
 womankind." The Eitopadesa. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 THE BABU'S WOMANKIND. 
 
 " OUE, lawgivers being men have painted themselves 
 pure and noble, and have laid every conceivable sin 
 and impurity at our door. If these worthies are to be 
 trusted we are a set of unclean animals, created by God 
 for the special service and gratification of man, who, by 
 right divine, can treat or maltreat us at his sweet will." 
 This, and more, wrote a Hindu lady some little time 
 since to the Times of India, and there is only too 
 abundant evidence that she in no way overstated the 
 case. The Gentoo Law, which was compiled for 
 Warren Hastings by qualified natives from the ancient 
 law books of the land, out- Popes Pope in his line that 
 " every woman is at heart a rake," and lays down in 
 the calmest and most unblushing manner the abysmal 
 and inherent depravity of the female nature. Ac- 
 cording to it, the imagination of a woman's heart is 
 only evil continually and the decencies of a woman's 
 life determined solely by the restrictions placed upon 
 her. For this reason she is never to be entrusted with 
 the control of herself, never to be mistress of her own 
 actions ; in her early life she must be ruled by her 
 father, in her youth by her husband, and in her 
 
42 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 widowed age by her son. Mr. Shib Chunder Bose, 
 in his account of his own people, describes women, 
 speaking generally of course, as having no other idea 
 of themselves and their destiny than that which raised 
 the indignation of the lady as quoted above, which is- 
 not surprising, since they have been taught this and 
 this only from their infancy; and his pen, when it 
 touches on the subject of their vitiated thought and 
 conduct, hesitates and fails. The source of much of 
 the severity of the Gentoo Code is found in the Law 
 Book of Manu, which Sir William Jones held to have 
 been drawn up before, and Mr. Elphinstone soon after 
 1000 B.C., though Sir Monier Williams can find no 
 place for it earlier than the fifth century. This 
 ancient code says that day and night women must 
 be made to feel their dependence on their liege lords, 
 though it seems also to draw a distinction between 
 women and women, for, while of some it speaks 
 hopelessly, saying that all watchfulness over them 
 will be unavailing " even if confined at home by 
 faithful guardians, they are not really guarded," 
 it adds concerning others " but those women who 
 guard themselves by their own will are well guarded." 
 A virtuous and faithful wife is thus recognised as a 
 possibility; yet even she, with all her virtue, must 
 regard herself as inferior to her husband, be he ever so 
 empty-headed a noodle, besotted a debauchee or un- 
 controllable a savage. 
 
 " A faithful wife who wishes to attain 
 The heaven of her lord must serve him here 
 
The Baku's Womankind. 43 
 
 As if he were a god, and ne'er do aught 
 To pain him, whatsoever be his state, 
 And even though devoid of every virtue." 
 
 These are cheerful and hopeful lines of instruction 
 for a woman who is not " devoid of every virtue." But 
 what shall we say of these, taken from a later page ? 
 
 "Whatever be the character and mind 
 Of him to whom a woman weds herself," 
 
 which, by-the-bye she now-a-days does not have 
 the opportunity of doing ; it is done for her 
 
 " Such qualities her nature must imbibe, 
 E'en as a river blending with the sea." 
 
 Whereto serves virtue, if the virtuous woman 
 not only has to regard an unvirtuous husband 
 as a god but must herself imbibe his unvirtuous 
 character ? 
 
 It has not indeed been always thus. In the far-off 
 Vedic days woman is seen to participate in her 
 husband's freedom, to share the festivities and occupa- 
 tions of his life, even to study and teach the Vedas. 
 And in the great epics, to whose earliest and pre- 
 brahmanical composition Sir Monier Williams gives 
 about the same date as to Manu's Law Book, we have 
 brighter pictures of woman's life. 
 
 The Eamayana tells us of Sita, the furrow-born 
 princess, wife of Eama and worthy of him, though he 
 stands out in all the mythology of the Hindus as a 
 hero sans pcur ct sans reprocke, a Sir Galahad of the 
 ancient world. Strong in heart, pure in soul, Sita is a 
 
44 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 type of a faithful wife. Not unworthy of the throne, 
 she nnrepiningly shares her husband's exile ; carried off 
 by Eavana, the ten-faced demon king of Lanka, she is 
 proof against his blandishments and his threats, un- 
 tempted by the wealth and grandeur of his kingdom, 
 and unaffrighted by the horrible rakshasas with canni- 
 balistic propensities to whose tender mercies he, in 
 despairing rage, had savagely committed her ; and 
 when at last Eama discovers where she is concealed, 
 invades Lanka, and overcomes Eavana, she proves her 
 purity in the flame, is vindicated by fire, Agni himself 
 placing her in the arms of Eama, unhurt. 
 
 In what strange contrast also to the modern opinion 
 of women in India is this passage, from the Malia- 
 Wiarata 
 
 " A wife is half the man, his truest friend 
 A loving wife is a perpetual spring 
 Of virtue, pleasure, wealth ; a faithful wife 
 Is his best aid in seeking heavenly bliss; 
 A sweetly-speaking wife is a companion 
 In solitude, a father in advice, 
 A mother in all seasons of distress, 
 A rest in passing through life's wilderness." 
 
 In the MdlidbJiarata again, figures " Draupadi, with 
 her dark skin and lotus-eyes the faithful Draupadi, 
 loveliest of women, best of noble wives ; " and here 
 too, occurs the pathetic story of Savitri and Satyavan. 
 The Princess Savitri not only makes her own choice of 
 a husband, but abides by it against the wish of her 
 father, king Asvapati, and the advice of the old sage 
 Narada. After her marriage she lives a free, open-air 
 
Tlte Bcibus Womankind. 45 
 
 life, and, by accompanying her husband into the forest 
 on the fateful night of his doom, is able to win him 
 back from Yama, the terrible god of the dead. 
 
 The Hindus are accustomed to date their present 
 system from the Mohammedan conquest, but the seeds 
 from which it has grown were germinating long before 
 that date. In the Blmgavad-Gita, a poem incorporated 
 in the Malmlliarata, Krishna, " the Holy One," * pours 
 shame upon women by associating them with the 
 lowest castes. " For even those," he says, " that are 
 born in sin even women, Vaishyas and Sudras 
 take the highest path, if they have recourse to me;" 
 and we have already seen that in the Laws of Manu, 
 
 * Owing to the similarity in the sound of the names, this god is 
 often spoken of by the babus as corresponding to Christ " You 
 have Christ and we have Krishna " but never to any one who is 
 supposed to know anything about the legends relating to this 
 " holy one." Calling once on a native gentleman, not a Christian, I 
 saw in the corner of the room a small image of this deity under a 
 glass case. Wondering what sort of an account he would give me of 
 him, I asked if that were not Krishna. Yes, that was Krishna. 
 " And he is one of the Hindu gods, is he not ? " I pursued further. 
 My native friend looked at me a little uncertainly, and then 
 " Yes. ..." (a meditative pause) " Yes. . . . Yes, I suppose he was 
 a god ; he had genius ; yes, he had genius ; he must have been a 
 god. . . . but " (another "pause, and then, with a sad shake of the 
 head) " but he was a most debauched character." Mrs. Weitbrecht, 
 in her Women of India, tells how "when a missionary on a 
 preaching tour once noticed a Brahmin with a circle of village 
 women round him, to whom he was relating stories of this god's 
 profligate life, the Brahmin was so distressed by the missionary's 
 presence, that, after coughing and hesitating, he actually could not 
 proceed in his polluting discourse, and twice begged the missionary 
 to leave the place." 
 
46 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 while women were allowed more freedom than would 
 have been allowed them after the Mohammedan in- 
 vasion, they were unhesitatingly declared unfit for 
 independence. Without any aid from the Koran such 
 teaching would easily develop into the severer doctrine 
 and practice of later days, though doubtless the faithful 
 Moslems accelerated the development. 
 
 The modern degradation and misery of woman in 
 India is probably incapable of being exaggerated. The 
 members of the lower castes indeed have freedom. They, 
 where a large body of earth has to be removed, may enjoy 
 the privilege of carrying it away in huge basket-loads 
 upon their heads, their husbands and brothers amusing 
 themselves with filling the baskets, or, where a house has 
 to be built, they may carry aloft all the bricks and 
 mortar, their husbands and brothers, as before, loading 
 and unloading them. But these are the coolie's not the 
 babu's womenfolk. The latter have not even the privi- 
 lege of being beasts of burden ; they are the wild and 
 beautiful, sometimes perhaps fierce inmates of the 
 menagerie. They are not trusted to look upon any 
 men save their husbands, fathers and brothers. Even 
 in times of sickness no skilled physician is allowed to 
 attend them. My medical adviser and friend was once 
 asked by a babu to come and prescribe for his wife. 
 The doctor was astonished by the request but gladly 
 consented and went at once, marvelling if the night 
 of seclusion was coming to an end and the day of 
 emancipation dawning. Arrived at the house he asked 
 to see his patient, thereby exciting horror and conster- 
 
The Baku's Womankind. 47 
 
 nation among the male members of the family to whom 
 alone the demand was made. " See his patient " ! Of 
 course not ! Why the doctor-sahib knew that such a 
 thing had never been heard of and could not possibly 
 be. But they would explain everything, they could take 
 his questions and bring back her answers, they could 
 describe her symptoms and tell him anything he needed 
 to know. The doctor, judging that the applying to 
 him at all in such a case indicated something like a 
 breach in the walls of the citadel of zenana seclusion, 
 determined to see how far he would be able to push the 
 advantage that science and humanity had thus gained 
 in their conflict with custom. He was therefore ob- 
 durate, absolutely refusing to prescribe for an invisible 
 woman or to take the risk of dealing with her at second- 
 hand. At last the anxious husband devised a com- 
 promise. A large sheet was fixed up as for a magic- 
 ian tern exhibition, and the doctor was stationed on one 
 side while the woman was brought to the other. Her 
 hand was then cautiously brought round its edge and 
 he was allowed to feel her pulse. So far so good. But 
 now the doctor declared that he must see her tongue. 
 She could put her hand and wrist round to the other 
 side of the intervening screen, but scarcely her tongue. 
 However, where there's a will there's a way, and the 
 problem was happily solved by the simple expedient of 
 slitting a small hole in the sheet, through which the 
 tongue was protruded for investigation without danger 
 of exposing more. 
 
 Children are married in infancy to save their morals, 
 
48 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 on the assumption that they have none, and that 
 maturity and maidenhood are incompatible. It would 
 be strange indeed if such a custom, founded avowedly 
 on such a reason, did not do much to induce the condi- 
 tion from which its necessity is supposed to have arisen. 
 That the women of India are capable of something 
 better than has yet been expected from them is amply 
 shown in the brightness of the girls in the schools 
 which they are allowed to attend for the few years 
 before their removal to a father-in-law's establishment, 
 and in the ability of those women in whose case excep- 
 tional opportunity has been afforded of proving the gift 
 that is in them. Indeed it is shown whenever they are 
 visited and taught in their seclusion by the zenana 
 missionary. But notwithstanding natural capacity, the 
 custom of caging them for life in apartments from which 
 not even a view of the outside world may be obtained, 
 and of taking them from one cage to another through 
 the still unseen outside world in a closely shrouded 
 palanquin, is calculated to make the passion fierce and 
 the mind dull. So much is this the case that the 
 younger men are beginning to wish that they had wives- 
 otherwise trained. For woman may be debased but 
 cannot be dethroned. That she held the sovereign 
 power in the earlier days of freedom may be shrewdly 
 guessed from the lines in the Mahalharata which 
 describe a model king, of whom is required, among 
 other virtues hard of attainment, that 
 
 "His spouse he well will guard and school,. 
 And ne'er succumb to female rule." 
 
The Babu's Womankind. 49 
 
 And she wields the power still, even though in the pre- 
 sent day she dare not come before the purdah. The 
 young babus may count women vastly inferior to them- 
 selves, but the women rule them nevertheless ; and just 
 in proportion as the man has a larger culture, the rod 
 of the uncultured mother and wife will be heavy on his 
 back. Here is the testimony of a native newspaper, a 
 little less pronounced in its babu-English than is some- 
 times the case, though its " thorough-going Cockney " 
 as the ideal of the British character is very delightful : 
 " The educated native is nowhere so miserable and 
 crest-fallen as in his home, and by none is he so much 
 embarrassed as by his female relations. His private life 
 may be said to be at antipodes with his public career. 
 A Demosthenes at Debating Societies, whose words tell 
 as peals of thunder, a Luther in his public protesta- 
 tions against prevailing corruptions, a thorough-going 
 Cockney in ideas and tastes, he is but a timid, crouch- 
 ing Hindu in his home, yielding unquestioning sub- 
 mission to the requisitions of a superstitious family." 
 The writer explains that there can be no sympathy 
 and no real companionship between the husband 
 and wife. "The only way of patching up a tem- 
 porary and nominal reconciliation is for the husband 
 to forget his scholarship, and lay down his crotchets of 
 reform, and assume the attitude of complete orthodoxy 
 and foolish ignorance. Surely an educated husband and 
 an illiterate wife cannot possibly agree, and so long as the 
 latter governs the household according to her orthodox 
 prejudices, the nation cannot make any real advancement." 
 
50 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 The babus have considerable hope from the work of 
 the zenana missionaries hope in regard to evils all of 
 which perhaps are not special to Bengal. " I want you/' 
 said a young man to a lady who was arranging to visit 
 and teach his wife, " I want you to teach my wife how 
 to behave her husband (sic), and also the advantages we- 
 all derive from the practice of cleanliness." And to 
 the same lady said another : "I do not wish you to 
 teach my wife reading and writing, .but to change her 
 nature." Happy, hopeful youth ! 
 
 On the condition of Hindu widows I dare not write. 
 The story has been often told, and yet it may be doubted 
 if its woe has ever been fathomed. The British govern- 
 ment abolished sati in 1829, but so fearful is the fate 
 of the widow that she may well regard the action of 
 the government much as the lad Andres regarded the 
 well-meant meddling of Don Quixote between him and 
 his master. In the Journal of the National Indian 
 Association for November, 1881, appeared a paper 
 written by a young widow than which I think I never 
 read anything more pitiful. She wrote unhesitatingly, 
 " I would rather choose the sati ! " The customs in the 
 different provinces vary somewhat, and all the details 
 of her description might not hold good everywhere,, 
 some would not hold good in Bengal, but even where 
 the hardships are least heavy, they are far from light. 
 
 The ground on which widows are treated with such 
 cruelty must appear absurd to the younger generation 
 trained largely after a Western fashion. But, as our 
 newspaper editor has told us, the babu who is an en- 
 
The Baku's Womankind. 51 
 
 lightened reformer in the debating society is power- 
 less to effect or even to advocate reform in the home 
 where it is most needed. He lacks courage there, 
 and the real public opinion of the land is under the 
 power of the women whose long years of seclusion 
 and degradation unfit them to direct it wisely. The 
 conservatism naturally growing out of ignorance, fears 
 the untried freedom and clings to the chains. Woman 
 is woman's worst enemy and will be until her husband 
 and brother find the courage to deliver her against her 
 will. England has passed a law making the re-marriage 
 of the widow legal, and many a young orator is ready 
 to air his rhetoric on the propriety of the widow's 
 availing herself of so beneficial an enactment, but 
 that is all. The widows, many of them, are still 
 children who scarcely ever saw the boys by whose 
 death they are accounted widows. Their youth, their 
 beauty, their griefs are tender and touching subjects for 
 impassioned eloquence in the public meeting, and the 
 eloquence is not wanting. Some years ago a widow 
 sent a letter to the Madras Mail which she had got a 
 friend to put into English for her, and in that letter 
 she very forcibly challenged the sincerity of all this 
 talk. Knowing how such a marriage in real life would 
 be regarded, she wrote, " Now I beg to ask the gentle- 
 men who take such great interest in young widows, who 
 argue in favour of widow marriage with such great enthu- 
 siasism, whether they will help me in my re-marriage. 
 I do not want any pecuniary aid. I only want those 
 gentlemen to come to my house with their wives and 
 
 E 2 
 
52 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 daughters to witness the marriage and dine with me 
 and my future husband ; and then invite both of us to 
 their houses and dine with us in their company at my 
 cost." With a caution that is not perhaps without 
 reason, she requested that those who undertook to do 
 so much would give " this assurance through a duly 
 registered document; because my neighbour Seetaboy, 
 the widow of the famous Ajodhyanath Eow, tells me 
 that all these meetings and resolutions are nothing but 
 sham," and that the speakers " forget all that they say 
 in meetings soon after they leave the hall," being 
 " careful not to mention a word of their acts to their 
 wives, or to their young widowed daughters and 
 sisters." 
 
 What response this challenge met with in Madras I 
 do not know. A native gentleman wrote to one of the 
 Calcutta papers in regard to it, and said that he would 
 be happy to dine with the widow and her husband, " if 
 distance permitted." He then moralised on caste and 
 infanticide, suggesting the establishment of a secret de- 
 partment of government for the detection of the latter, 
 such as formerly existed for the suppression of thuggee, 
 throwing cold water however on his suggestion by 
 adding : " But as long as the zenana system reigns, it 
 would be almost impossible for any government to find 
 out the facts of all the horrible crimes traceable to the 
 two customs of child-marriage and widow compulsory 
 celibacy." 
 
"Lo, the poor Indian!" POPE. 
 
 " I have not patience with the groans of half the world, and 
 declare there is more happiness among these miserable blacks, who 
 have not a meal from day to day, than among our own middle 
 classes. The blacks are glad of a little handful of maize, and live 
 in the greatest discomfort. They have not a strip to cover them ; 
 but you do not see them grunting and groaning all day long, as 
 you see scores and scores in England, with their wretched dinner- 
 parties and attempts at gaiety, where all is hollow and miserable." 
 
 C. GK GORDON. 
 
 " Thou shalt not . steal ; an empty feat, 
 When it's so lucrative to cheat." 
 
 A. H. CLOUGH. 
 
 " If you have a worthless servant, keep him lest you get a 
 worse." Egyptian Proverb. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SUB-BABU. 
 
 AN Indian house, or, more strictly, an Englishman's 
 house in India, swarms, not only with ants and 
 mosquitoes, but also with servants, and the friends of 
 servants natives of a class beneath those to whom is 
 given the title of Babu. The good folks at home, when 
 they hear how many servants are kept by their friends 
 in India, are apt to think that they live in an unneces- 
 sarily luxurious style. But the good folks at home do 
 not realise the necessities of the country. It is all very 
 well for them to imagine themselves twice as hot as 
 they are as a means of getting an idea of what living in 
 India is like. The intention is more praiseworthy than 
 the result is reliable. Thinking one is hot for ten 
 minutes is a different thing from enduring heat for ten 
 months. But the heat is not all. If men could live in 
 India with no other consequence than getting hot it 
 would be well. The heat is a prince of a legion of 
 vils that follow in his train, and under the Indian sun 
 one feels not only hot but helpless. The lack of a 
 bracing climate makes itself felt in everything, and a 
 very little doing of what servants can do for him will 
 
50 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 unfit a man for the doing of those things which the 
 servants cannot do. Moreover, having a large staff of 
 servants is not necessarily 'equivalent to being well 
 served and living at ease. It is quite as likely to 
 involve worry as luxury. But, apart from this, the 
 number of servants a man engages is not altogether a 
 matter of his own choice. The great god Caste has its 
 word to say on this subject. The servants are so 
 thoroughly under its tyranny that this man can only do- 
 things of this kind, and that man of that kind, and the 
 sahib must, therefore, have about him men of almost as- 
 many castes as the duties he expects done. The whole 
 of the modern development of the caste system is 
 probably being elaborated and complicated by those- 
 whose interests it is to do so. The ancient castes were 
 fewer in number than those of to-day and their rules 
 apparently far less strict. The bewildering catalogue 
 of the castes and sub-castes which now exist has been 
 growing up by inter-marriages and trade-associations,, 
 and it may be suspected that no inclination to check it 
 has been aroused because it was seen to be producing a 
 state of things which made the not too-well-loved 
 foreigner dependent on an increased number of natives. 
 It was an Asiatic re-conquest of the conquerors. 
 
 But now, especially in regard to the servants, there 
 is the inevitable Nemesis. The sahib of to-day is not 
 the Croesus of the earlier years of the British occupancy 
 and the more servants he has to keep the less he can 
 afford to pay to each. That, however, is not all. It is 
 chiefly in the increased power that the complication of 
 
Tlie Sub-Bali*. 57 
 
 the system gives the priests over the common people 
 that the servants are now paying the full price for 
 all the advantage they originally obtained over their 
 employers. The preservation of caste is among the 
 Hindus the one test of orthodoxy. A man may think 
 what he likes and believe what he likes, but he must 
 obey the rules of caste.* Now the ordinary Hindu 
 knows practically nothing about these rules beyond 
 the fact that if he break them he will be turned out of 
 caste and the priest will " squeeze " him, as a China- 
 man would say, of every pice he can, as the price of 
 re-admission. He does not know what things are, and 
 what things are not infractions of these rules, and he is- 
 therefore most anxious to err, if he err at all, on the 
 safe side. He would be little moved by fear of doing 
 anything not belonging to the legitimate occupation of 
 his caste, if it were not for fear of the priest getting to- 
 know of it and fleecing him. Bather than fall into the 
 hands of that avaricious tyrant, he will refuse lucrative 
 employment, he will be guilty of the greatest inhu- 
 manity in withholding his hand from help, excelling 
 priest and Levite in passing by on the other side, even 
 where the voice of necessity is loud and urgent. Take- 
 as an example the following : 
 
 * " It is a remarkable fact that the jails in India often contain 
 hardened criminals who have fallen, in our estimation, to the lowest 
 depths of infamy, but who, priding themselves on the punctilious 
 observance of caste, have not lost one iota of their own self-respect,, 
 and would resent with indignation any attempt to force them to eat 
 food prepared by the most virtuous person if inferior to themselves- 
 in the social scale." SIB MONIER WILLIAMS. Indian Wisdom. 
 
58 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 My mali, or gardener, climbed up one day into a 
 champa-tree overhanging the road to cut off a dead 
 branch for the double purpose of removing an unsightly 
 object and of adding to his store of fire-wood. He 
 foolishly allowed himself to get upon the dead branch, 
 which, not being equal to sustaining his weight, broke, 
 and the mali fell heavily upon the footpath of the road. 
 I was absent at the time, but my neighbour saw the 
 accident from his house and ran out to the man's 
 assistance, sending for a palki in which to have him 
 taken to the hospital. When the palki-wallas, who 
 were Ooriyas, came, they refused to take him. He also 
 was an Ooriya, and, as my bearer afterwards told me, of 
 a caste a trifle above theirs, but he was reported to 
 have done something contrary to caste rules, and until 
 he had been back to Orissa, and drunk a solution of 
 sacred cow-dung and observed certain other ceremonies, 
 and, above all, paid his fees to the priest, they could 
 not take him into their palki without defilement to 
 themselves, so they left him there in his agony, 
 refusing to touch him. My neighbour then had a 
 charpai, or native bedstead, brought, and got some men 
 of caste too low for defilement to carry him to the 
 nearest hospital, where all that could be done for the 
 poor fellow was done, but his injuries were serious, and 
 he died the next day. Two other of my servants, also 
 from Orissa, poured scorn on the idea of treating the 
 -case surgically ; they judged it to be a case for exorcism. 
 -"You see," they said, "the devil was on that rotten 
 bough, and was offended at the mali's getting upon it, 
 
The Sub-Bob*. 59 
 
 so he threw him down, and threw the bough after him. 
 and now the devil is in the mail " the poor fellow was 
 delirious enough to give some colour to this statement 
 " and if the doctors would only let us drive the devil 
 out, the mali would get all right again." Presumably 
 his sin against caste had made him especially suscep- 
 tible to diabolic possession. I rather sympathised with 
 the feeling that associated the devil with rottenness 
 .and death. 
 
 But the Hindu is not naturally unsympathetic, he 
 lias a fair share of human feeling, and, during the 
 period of his service, a servant generally identifies him- 
 self with his master to the extent of considering him- 
 self a member of his master's household and its credit 
 as his own. Against an outsider, he will champion his 
 master's cause and advocate his rights. One of my 
 friends when out on a holiday was told by some natives 
 of a panther they had entrapped, and was invited to 
 'Come to shoot it. He went with them and found the 
 reature in a strong bamboo trap ; getting on to the 
 top of which, he bade them open the door and let him 
 out. The poor beast having probably been in confine- 
 ment the greater part of the night, and having been 
 disturbed and not a little worried by visitors since 
 early morning, was so nervous and scared that it 
 required a good deal of prodding and a little exag- 
 geration of the noise that natives are accustomed to 
 make about everything they do before it could be 
 induced to make a run. When it did bolt my friend 
 unfortunately missed it. Presently he overheard a 
 
60 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 villager saying something in a disparaging tone about 
 his missing it. "Missing it," rejoined one of his 
 servants indignantly, " why, how could the sahib shoot 
 a brute that sneaked off in this cowardly fashion ? " and 
 the man dropped on to all-fours and mimicked the 
 skulk of the panther so absurdly as to call forth a 
 general laugh which in a measure restored the sports- 
 man's credit. 
 
 All native servants are rascals. Cela va sans dire. 
 They are Asiatics. That is enough. So runs the 
 common verdict, and he would certainly have a hard 
 task who undertook to whitewash them. The most I 
 would venture to say is that this rule is not without 
 exceptions. There are servants even in Calcutta who 
 are conscientious, servants whose fidelity and anxiety to 
 serve their master's interest is such that they will 
 compare favourably with servants elsewhere. Of 
 course they take their commission on all transactions 
 to which they are in the most remote degree parties. 
 If for instance you pay your bearer to pay the gari-walla 
 you have hired, he takes his anna or annas in the 
 rupee, and if you pay the gari-walla yourself with the 
 hope that he will thus obtain full payment, he will 
 have to pay your bearer what he would have deducted 
 had the payment been made through him, or the said 
 bearer will see to it that the said gari-walla has no 
 further opportunity of driving his horses in at your 
 gate. This is so thoroughly and ineradicably a custom 
 that one cannot be sure it is not regarded as among the 
 rules of caste the infraction of which is at all costs to 
 
The Sub-Bdbu. 61 
 
 "be guarded against. Anyway it is business, not dis- 
 honesty. And where there is a servant and I had at 
 least one such who would not dream of doing what is 
 dishonest according to his standard of honesty, though 
 I may wish to teach him a new standard, for the time 
 being, I count him honest. Notwithstanding all that 
 is heard of the untrustworthiness of the servants, it is 
 surprising to see the confidence that is reposed in them. 
 Furnished houses are left in the charge of men whose 
 names and native village are unknown, while the 
 owners go away for days and weeks. Sums of money 
 are sent by them which would be a fortune, on which 
 they could live all their lives in their distant villages in 
 what to them would be luxury. Even men who are 
 known'to pilfer in small things, men who have something 
 approaching genius in petty larceny, may be trusted 
 with large amounts, though whether this is because of 
 a certain littleness of spirit which cannot rise to the 
 occasion of a greater crime, or whether it results from a 
 moral training which determines the bounds of honesty 
 by material measurements, so that to appropriate one 
 rupee is within, and to appropriate a hundred is without 
 the line, I cannot tell. 
 
 It must be admitted that the servants as a class are 
 not noted for probity, and some find it rather a trial to 
 have a number of people on the premises engaged 
 in different capacities but united in their purpose of 
 getting as much as possible out of their employer. 
 ISTor are they accustomed to betray each other. After 
 a servant has been detected and dismissed, his former 
 
62 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 associates will be emphatic in their condemnation 
 of his iniquities, and communicative as to his sad 
 peculations, but as long as he is on the staff, they 
 have usually no word to say. Occasionally, however, 
 a quarrel in the servants' quarters will lead to loud 
 and vehement mutual recriminations, and, since both 
 parties will be very much stronger in attack than in 
 defence, to dismiss all concerned will probably be as 
 just a judgment as any, and the simplest solution of 
 the difficulty. 
 
 The native penchant for lying is a fundamental 
 vice. It shows itself in everything. It is far more 
 natural to a native than the truth; there is more 
 freedom in it. It is a natural effect of years of 
 oppression, the outcome of a history of conquests and 
 tyrannies. You ask a native a question. Before 
 answering that question, he wants to see why you 
 asked it. He wants to know for what purpose you 
 seek the information. A hereditary suspicion sees in 
 every inquiry -a purpose to do harm, and so the habit 
 of misleading with false information wherever possible 
 has become a second nature. A rabbit has no par- 
 ticular fox or weasel in his mind when he makes his 
 burrow, but he judges as a general thing that it is well 
 to have a dark hole, and to put a twist or two into it 
 so that the outside world of foes may not know just 
 where the other entrance comes out. The native has 
 learnt to put a few turns into the dark workings of his 
 mind. He has no special reason perhaps for any par- 
 ticular lie, but he has a general instinct which leads 
 
The Sub-Baku. 63- 
 
 him to hide his intentions. Your servant who wants 
 a holiday to attend some festive occasion among his 
 friends will come to you with the sad intelligence that 
 his mother, or grandmother, or some near relative 
 is dead and that the responsibility of ordering the 
 funeral rites devolves on him, for which reason he- 
 prays for leave of absence. It is quite astonishing 
 how many mothers a man can lose in a year. I was 
 one day sitting with a missionary in his verandah 
 when a servant came in and asked to be allowed to 
 go and attend the funeral obsequies of his mother. 
 It was before I understood the matter and I was 
 not a little shocked at the, as it seemed to me under 
 the circumstances, unsympathetic way in which the 
 missionary calmly said, " Yes, you can go this time, but 
 you must see to it that this does not happen again." 
 
 Servants leaving employment are accustomed to ask 
 for a short note or chit to serve as a recommendation 
 to a fresh place. There has arisen quite a trade in 
 chits so that it is never worth while to place much 
 reliance on them. In addition to the fact that persons 
 getting rid of servants too often think that it is only 
 fair to give the rascals a chance somewhere else, as 
 they put it, and so give them a good word which they 
 are never likely to deserve, there are many chances 
 against the presented chit belonging to the man who 
 presents it. Some, however, offer their services without 
 chits. They assure you that their chits with all their 
 other belongings were consumed in the great fire. Some 
 years ago it must now be quite a long while, before 
 
54 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the folks were born who profess to have lost their 
 chits in its ravages there was an extensive fire in 
 Calcutta among the native huts. It was this which led 
 to the regulation that all huts within the municipal 
 boundaries should be roofed with tiles. Before that 
 time thatch had been allowed, and seeing the Calcutta 
 babu is extremely fond of letting off sky-rockets, the 
 sticks of which are to be seen dropping down upon the 
 house roofs all night long, fires were of constant 
 -occurrence. The substitution of tiles for thatch has 
 wrought a marked diminution of their number. Out- 
 side the municipal rule, thatch still prevails as the 
 cheaper material. In a native hut no extravagance is 
 allowed nor any unnecessary expense incurred. It is 
 picturesque to the passer-by, but lamentally lacking in 
 comfort for the inmates. A roof overhead, a few posts 
 on which the roof is supported and to which the mats 
 are attached that constitute the walls when they are 
 put up, and the earth for a floor, do not promise very 
 largely in the way of accommodation. During a large 
 part of the year one may see the footpaths covered at 
 night with men rolled up in their chudders asleep, 
 with neither pillow nor mattress. This may be taken 
 as an index of the comforts of inside which they have 
 forsaken for those of this long footpath-bed across 
 which they lie side by side. 
 
 Fortunately for the poor Hindu, he has not been 
 spoilt by the previous enjoyment of luxury. His life 
 is destitute of comforts but he does not miss what he 
 has never known. From the days of his toyless child- 
 
The Sub-Babu. 65 
 
 hood, when he stands about listlessly, " clothed in the 
 horizon," as it is euphemistically expressed, to the day 
 when he attains the honour of headship in his family, 
 owning a wife, a charpai, a lota and a hubble-bubble, 
 and 1 laving to keep perhaps, a score of relatives aunts 
 and uncles, brothers and cousins besides his own 
 family, as we use the term, he has, I fear, never con- 
 ceived the idea which the word " enjoyment " conveys 
 to our mind. His life is hard, but uncomplaining. He 
 does not often touch the question of the rights and 
 wrongs of it. If he should be tempted to ask why he 
 lias not what he sees others possessing, the explana- 
 tion is ready and unanswerable : He is reaping now 
 the inevitable harvest of the deeds of a previous life. 
 So he has been taught and it is certainly out of his 
 power to disprove it. 
 
 It may be that in this is part of the explanation of 
 the callousness with which an average native will 
 inflict suffering on animals. He takes his fate without 
 murmuring, why should not they ? There is scarcely a 
 draught ox in the city that has not got its tail broken 
 in two or three places, since the hakri-wallas have 
 discovered that twisting the tail is more effective than 
 using the goad. But have not the gods twisted the 
 tail of the hakri- walla's destiny as pitilessly ? The 
 cruelty of the Hindu does not seem akin to the savage 
 delight in suffering of which one occasionally hears 
 among the barbarians of civilised lands. It is rather 
 indifference, callousness, growing out of a community 
 of wretchedness. But the torture endured by its 
 
 F 
 
66 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 victims is none the less horrible. For the sake of the 
 most trifling profits, poor brutes will be subjected to 
 suffering that cannot be calculated. There was much 
 need for the institution in Calcutta of a branch of the 
 Pioyal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 
 and all honour is due to Colesworthy Grant, the man 
 who was the means of starting one, and who was, up to 
 his death, the mainspring of its beneficent activity. 
 If they only knew their benefactor, what a chorus of 
 gratitude would the " dumb creatures " of Calcutta 
 raise ! In the excitement of such knowledge, at the 
 vision of such an angel in the way of less forbidding 
 aspect than his, the sight of whom opened the mouth 
 of Balaam's ass, might we not expect " a man's voice " 
 or some even more competent organ of thanksgiving 
 to be given to the cow in the milk-shed, to the ox in 
 the hakri, to the poor tat in the overloaded ticca-gari, 
 to the dhobi's donkey, staggering under the load of his 
 master's entire trade, and even to the fowl which the 
 bawarchi is carrying from the market, doomed to 
 curry ? 
 
F 2 
 
"Lo! Juggernaut's stupendous car; 
 So high and menacing its size, 
 
 The tower of Babel seems to rise ; 
 ***** 
 
 Satan himself would scorn to ape 
 
 Divinity in such a shape. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The unwieldy wain compels its course, 
 
 Crushing resistance down by force ; 
 
 It creaks, and groans, and grinds along 
 
 'Midst shrieks and prayers, 'midst dance and song." 
 
 JAS. MONTGOMERY. 
 
 " Pure religion and undefiled softens the manners by enlighten- 
 ing the mind, while superstition, by making it blind, inspires every 
 kind of madness." VOLTAIEE, 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CAR OF JAGANNATH. 
 
 A SIQHT of Jagannath, the Lord of the World, is a 
 lesson in the sin, or at least the folly, of curiosity. 
 The legend tells that a pious king, being inspired to 
 form an image in which to deposit the bones of Krishna, 
 called to his aid Visvakarma the Vulcan among the 
 Hindu gods. The divine " author of a thousand arts, 
 mechanist of the gods, fabricator of all ornaments, chief 
 of artists," as Visvakarma is called in the Vishnu- 
 Purana, was gracious and undertook to make an image 
 worthy of his skill and reputation, on the condition that 
 no one was to look upon him or in any way disturb 
 him while engaged upon his task. Should such an 
 interruption occur, the divine handicraftsman assured 
 his royal highness it would put an end to his labours, 
 and the image would remain in whatsoever state it 
 might be at the moment of the interruption. The king 
 consented to so simple a condition, and Visvakarma set 
 to work. In one night he reared a temple for his 
 image's abode, which was meanwhile to serve as his 
 workshop. Fifteen days he wrought within it and had 
 almost completed his task when the king, who had with 
 
70 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 difficulty restrained his curiosity so long, could restrain 
 it no longer. He peeped. And Jagannath is to this 
 day handless, footless, and with a face sadly lacking the 
 finishing touches of the artist's hand. 
 
 A similarly disastrous result of the evil of curiosity 
 meets us among the legends of China. A certain 
 district was suffering from want of rain, owing to the 
 anger of the gods. The people in their distress went 
 to the chief guardian of one of the local temples and 
 besought help. He, it would seem, was in a position 
 to grant the needed help, but, not wishing to incur the 
 displeasure of the gods by opposition to them, he 
 referred the suppliants to the Eain Dragon, who, being 
 more pitiful or less cautious, heard the people's prayer, 
 and nightly caused a heavy dew which led to a more 
 than usually fruitful season. The gods, evidently not 
 in a humour to be trifled with, sought for an explanation 
 of these luxuriant crops in the fields of men on whom 
 they had laid their curse, and discovered what the Eain 
 Dragon had been doing. In fury the divine sword fell 
 upon the hapless Dragon, and his works of mercy were 
 at an end. The temple guardian's heart was grieved as 
 he thought that he had been the cause of the gracious 
 creature's death. Eeverently he took a jar and, like 
 the fish in the story of Cock Eobin's decease, caught 
 the blood of the Dragon as it fell to the earth. This 
 blood, duly sealed in the jar, was stowed away in the 
 temple in the confident faith that at the end of forty- 
 nine days an infant would be found in its place. But 
 so wondrous a transformation going on in their very 
 
The Car of Jagannatli. 71 
 
 midst exercised mightily the minds of the temple 
 attendants, and one of them on the forty-eighth day 
 could no longer resist the temptation to satisfy his 
 curiosity and looked within. Truly enough there was 
 the infant, but the change was not quite complete, 
 his face was still of a deep blood red colour. And 
 Kwan-ti, the god of war, has had occasion ever since to 
 regret that unlucky curiosity. He has grown from an 
 infant in a jar to monstrous proportions, but through 
 all his stages he has borne a red and truculent 
 countenance. 
 
 Yet neither Kwan-ti nor Jagannatli has suffered in 
 the esteem of the people. Kwan-ti is the god specially 
 worshipped by soldiers, barbers, thieves, and the like, 
 while all sorts and conditions of men have reason to 
 take more or less notice of him, since good harvests and 
 years of immunity from severe sickness depend on his 
 not forgetting to grind his sword on his birthday, the 
 thirteenth day of the fifth moon. The evidence which 
 satisfies the people that he has not been forgetful is the 
 falling in rain of the water with which he wets his 
 grindstone. Should no rain fall on that anniversary 
 the people are filled with forebodings, whereas the 
 slightest shower comforts their hearts. Kwan-ti, there- 
 fore, gets on pretty well, notwithstanding his rubicund 
 face, and is, indeed, far more likely to make red faces 
 the fashion with others than to be despised for his 
 own. 
 
 As for Jagannath, he too has overcome all personal 
 disadvantages and is an exceedingly popular deity. So 
 
72 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 far from shrinking from the public gaze on the ground 
 of deformity, ho comes before his worshippers more 
 openly than any other god in India. While more 
 presentable deities are content with the dim sanctities 
 of their shrines, the disfigured, or rather unfigured, 
 Jagannath three times in every year leaves his temple 
 and visits common ground. The first of these is the 
 Bathing Festival. His godship is publicly " tubbed " 
 by the priests on a brick-built stage, raised about seven 
 feet from the ground, in sight of crowds who gather to 
 see, shouting madly and long as the water of the sacred 
 Ganges descends on the head of the god. Notwith- 
 standing the annual recurrence of this performance, the 
 priests never seem to become expert. They are so 
 clumsy that every year, as regularly as the bathing 
 takes place, they manage to give their deity a severe 
 cold. This calls for sympathy, and, after bearing witli 
 his infirmity for almost a week, Jagannath finds it 
 necessary to go for a change of air and to visit a friend. 
 So much is sure ; but it is not easy to find out with 
 any certainty who this friend is. Though Jagannath is 
 said to have been made to hold within himself the 
 bones of the deceased Krishna, there are those who tell 
 that Krishna is the friend he goes to see. Others 
 suggest that it is his grandmother a far more probable 
 suggestion, both in view of the above difficulty and of 
 the fact that a grandmother may be expected to be a 
 far better nurse than so wild a character as Krishna. 
 Yet others again suggest Eadha and various other 
 acquaintances and relatives. But about the going there 
 
TJie Car of Jagannatli. 73 
 
 is no uncertainty. He goes out for a change some- 
 where to get cured of a cold. This is his second annual 
 appearance and the most notable. The third is his 
 return home cured. 
 
 It was at the second, the great Bath Jattra, or Car 
 Festival, that I first looked on Jagannatli as an old 
 friend of many years' standing. For he had ever 
 been to me a representative of the Hindu gods. Of 
 the older Indra, Agni, and Surya, and of the later 
 favourites Krishna, Siva, Durga I had heard, but 
 they all stood in the dim background of the picture in 
 which the Lord of the World was the prominent figure. 
 When a child in happy England, never dreaming of the 
 possibility of ever treading the soil of India, I had seen 
 portrayals of his face and read accounts which had 
 vividly impressed me of his car and of the long line of 
 mangled corpses stretching far away behind. Of one 
 portrait I retain a distinct remembrance. It made ine 
 feel that, if by any chance I should meet this god, it 
 would be more agreeable to me for the interview to be 
 by daylight. But portraits are not always either exact 
 or flattering, and, notwithstanding the misfortune that 
 befel him through the undue curiosity of king Indra- 
 dhumna, this was a portrait of which even Jagannatli 
 had a right to complain. 
 
 Considering this so long indirect acquaintance, I was 
 not likely to let slip an opportunity of personal intro- 
 duction. When, therefore, soon after my arrival in 
 India, I received an invitation to spend the day of 
 the Bath Jattra with some friends at Serampore, I 
 
74 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 accepted gladly, since Serampore possesses a temple 
 of Jagannath, only less sacred and renowned than the 
 parent shrine at Puri. 
 
 To escape the heat as far as possible, for it was 
 midsummer, I went up by an early train. But the 
 summer sun in India does not need to reach the zenith 
 to make things unpleasant, and we I had met with 
 fellow visitors in the train were right glad to reach 
 our journey's end and to get a refreshing bath, after 
 which breakfast became a possibility. That meal des- 
 patched, we retired into darkened rooms to chat and 
 doze while the sun was spending his fierce anger in 
 intolerable light and heat. Later on, but before the 
 time for the car-drawing, we ventured out, for Serampore 
 is of note also in the annals of Christian missions, and 
 we were anxious to look over the noble college founded 
 by the pioneer missionaries Carey, Marshman, and 
 Ward. In the cool seclusion of this fine building we 
 lingered looking reverently at the very chairs on which 
 " the immortal three " had sat, and at a pair of crutches, 
 more useful than ornamental, from which one of them 
 had derived assistance. 
 
 It is not surprising, considering the attractions of 
 the place, that we presently looked at our watches and 
 found the time for Jagannath to set out had already 
 passed. 
 
 " Well," said we, " let us go and see the car, at any 
 rate." So we went. Many were the beggars with 
 outstretched arms along the way, most of them lying 
 down as though they had fallen over from sheer 
 
The Car of Jagannatli. 75 
 
 exhaustion, but still clamorous. They, poor creatures, 
 had been loudly appealing for alms all through the 
 day under the burning sun from which we had taken 
 refuge, and had hardly earned all they had got. Great 
 was the crowd of people, and busy were the dealers in 
 the booths erected on either side of the road, and, if 
 their wares were individually of ridiculously trifling 
 value, there was hope of profit in the multitude of their 
 transactions. Though the crowd was dense there was 
 none of the horse-play and violence that may be 
 expected in a crowd of English roughs, and we were 
 able to work our way through it with ease. Happily for 
 us in this particular instance on other occasions a 
 source of more irritation than happiness the Bengalis 
 are not good time-keepers, and though, when we 
 arrived at the scene of the ceremony, it was past the 
 time when Jagannath should have reached his friend's 
 house, he had not yet left his own. We had therefore 
 ample opportunity of inspecting his car. He is ap- 
 parently on amicable terms with all the other powers, 
 for he admits on to his car representations of scenes 
 and persons which must include nearly the whole of 
 the Hindu pantheon. The car is indeed a kind of 
 picture gallery in its way. Its predecessor, which was 
 destroyed by a colony of white ants, more enterprising 
 than reverent, is said to have been covered with figures 
 of the most grossly indecent character. The illustrations 
 that adorn the present car are not the work of a prude, 
 but, in deference I believe to European sentiment, are 
 in this respect a great improvement on those which the 
 
76 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 white ants were partly instrumental in abolishing. It 
 is something to the credit of these much-abused insects 
 if they have helped to improve the morals of one of 
 the native deities. 
 
 Of course greater than the car and greater than its 
 ornamentation is Jagannath himself, who sits with his 
 brother and sister at the top, the most airy but not 
 probably the place of wisest selection for one suffering 
 from a severe cold. In the hoisting him up from story 
 to story on the many-storied vehicle the assembled 
 multitude takes an interest that finds loud expression, 
 in which however there is not the least suspicion of the 
 element of solemnity. It recalled to my mind an 
 incident on the voyage out. We had had bad weather 
 which had carried the hurdles of the sheep-pen over- 
 board, and the sheep were running about the deck. 
 Our lascar sailors were set to work to fix up a pen on 
 the top of some deck-houses and to hoist the sheep 
 on to this safer elevation. I remember how heartily 
 they seemed to enjoy it I judged that the sheep did 
 no t and the way in which they hoisted up those 
 animals came back irresistibly to my mind as I saw 
 the brahmans hoisting up Jagannath. 
 
 In regard to his appearance, it could only be by 
 the most gross self-deception that he could lay claim 
 to being unusually handsome. For reasons already 
 given, he is somewhat deficient in the personal 
 advantages of feature and expression, yet there is a 
 frankness and openness in his dusky face that are re- 
 assuring. The pictures I had seen at home were 
 
The Car of Jagannath. 77 
 
 slightly libellous. No one could look at him and for a 
 moment think him capable of the sly tricks and rascally 
 pranks of Krishna. If you felt you could not place 
 much reliance on his intelligence, you would feel that 
 there were many you could trust less willingly. For 
 my own part, I should have been glad to have been 
 invited to a vacant seat beside him had there been 
 one. 
 
 By the courtesy of the magistrate, who from his 
 responsibility for the safety of the people, was in a 
 manner compelled to act as master of the ceremonies, 
 our party was placed close alongside of the rope- 
 pullers between them and the men who were ranged 
 on either side of the car and its ropes, bearing bamboo 
 ladders longways to ward off the general crowd. It 
 speaks not a little for the good humour and self-control 
 of this crowd, that when the signal was given to start, 
 amidst all the excitement, so slight a barrier proved 
 sufficient for the purpose. 
 
 Now that the car had started, we thought we should 
 surely discover who it was that our invalid deity was 
 going to see. But no. The car was pulled, amidst 
 deafening shouts, a comparatively short distance and 
 then it was left. All was over, we were told. 
 Jagannath had reached his destination, from \\iiich it 
 seemed that the friend he was visiting dwelt invisible 
 in the middle of the road; was a kind of Sairey 
 Gamp's "Mrs. Harris," in fact. Having seen him 
 safely to his journey's end, we extricated ourselves 
 from the crowd and made our way back. 
 
78 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 The sight of this same festival was the occasion of 
 deep soul-stirrings to the early missionaries. Some of 
 my companions were their successors, but I could not 
 perceive that they, more than I, were moved with the 
 holy horror and indignation which many might think 
 necessary in Christian witnesses of so idolatrous a 
 scene. We indeed with one mind, as I believe, regarded 
 it much as in other days we had regarded the Easter 
 Monday excitements of Hampstead Heath and the like 
 places of holiday resort. Doubtless the missionary of 
 to-day has moved somewhat from the position of his 
 predecessors, but in all probability the nature of this 
 festival has changed still more. The outward ob- 
 servances are the same ; that is all. To the English 
 eye it is marvellously like an English fair with its 
 merry-go-rounds and swings, and, while Jagannath is 
 doubtless the supreme attraction for some half hour 
 or hour, these swings are doing a thriving trade 
 throughout the whole day. To a large proportion of the 
 natives the festival is losing its religious significance. 
 Probably the owners of the car are the least convinced 
 of the divinity of their black idol, but considerations of 
 profit and loss forbid any decrease of honour being 
 shown; and, in view of the immense crowds which 
 pour in by the extra trains from Calcutta during the 
 day, the same considerations must weigh pretty 
 strongly with every petty tradesman in Serampore. 
 The festival is not likely to become less popular the 
 profits of the day forbid that. In fact, not many years 
 ago, a second car, of size and proportions similar to 
 
TJie Car of Jagannath. 79 
 
 the old one, was built, and the combined attractions of 
 the orthodox and heretical rivals are doubtless being 
 
 O 
 
 utilised by the persons concerned to bring grist to 
 both mills. But it is becoming, I imagine, more and 
 more a big social fair, and less and less a religious 
 convocation.* To think of poor deluded wretches 
 bowing in worship before such a wooden-headed idol is 
 indeed sad enough ; but to see a multitude enjoying a 
 holiday in as harmless a way probably as is compatible 
 with any large concourse, is, on the contrary, rather a 
 pleasant sight. 
 
 Then, again, in earlier days were witnessed suicides 
 and accidents which are now happily impossible, A 
 trifling disappointment is enough to make a Hindu 
 destroy himself, and to all crossed with adversity, the 
 rolling of these ponderous wheels presented a fas- 
 cinating opportunity. Especially was this the case 
 since by throwing themselves beneath them they could 
 deceive the god in the top window into thinking that 
 what they were doing, prompted by a sense of misery, 
 was intended as an act of homage to him. Thus by 
 one act they expected to gain release from present 
 trouble and a divine favour beyond. But in addition 
 to this, after seeing the drawing of the car, one cannot 
 conceive how it was possible in former days for such a 
 ceremony to take place without numerous unintentional 
 sacrifices of life to prevent which to-day calls for much 
 precaution and the personal superintendence of the 
 
 * We have of late even heard rumours that the brahmans are 
 being forced to hire coolies to drag the cars. 
 
80 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 magistrate. Everything is under his control, and the 
 car moves along escorted by armed police and fenced 
 round by the ladders carried on either side. In former 
 years, when the natives were left to their own devices, 
 no such care was taken, every one who could seize the 
 rope had a right to do it, a special blessing being 
 supposed to attach even to the touching of it while the 
 car was in motion. This means that while the car was 
 being dragged along, there was a steady pressure of the 
 crowd into the space immediately before it. In this 
 crush the weak would inevitably go down, and it was 
 woe even to the strong who should once lose their 
 footing. As we walked alongside of the rope-pullers, 
 though we were not crushed, we had to keep a sharp 
 look-out lest the car should overtake us, especially 
 through the uncertainty of the pace, every now and 
 then the most frantic spurt being made amid deafening 
 and exultant outcries. After noticing how clearly 
 freedom from accident was the result of the magis- 
 trate's presence and precautions, we were prepared 
 to credit statements about the annual loss of life 
 at the Jagannath Festivals which at one time we 
 had suspected to be exaggerations. 
 
" No kind of beast is there on earth, nor fowl that flieth with its- 
 wings, but is a folk like you : nothing have we passed over in the 
 book: then unto their Lord shall they be gathered." The Koran* 
 
 " A wailful gnat." KEATS. Endymion. 
 
 i( [Naturalists] call a mosquito by a difficult name, and know 
 how its stomach looks under a microscope ; but this view, though 
 intrinsically valuable, scarcely rises to the subject. There is no 
 feeling, no poetry in such treatment of a mosquito, and the know- 
 ledge is of a lower kind than seems required." 
 
 PHIL EOBINSON. In My Indian Garden. 
 
 "Earth in her rich attire 
 Consummate lovely smiled; air, water, earth, 
 By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walk'd 
 Frequent." MILTON. Paradise Lost. 
 
 " I understand animals better than any other class of human 
 creatures." ARTEMUS WARD. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "THE CUEIOUS HUMANITY OF BEASTS AND BIKDS 
 AND LITTLE INSECTS." 
 
 EVERY man who has been in India is supposed to have 
 snake-stories and tiger-stories to tell. In the imagina- 
 tion of some people the country is made up of these 
 creatures. That there are indeed plenty of them is a 
 fact, but in a large centre of population like Calcutta 
 one sees comparatively few snakes, and no tigers outside 
 the zoological gardens. 
 
 But what are tigers to mosquitoes ? A tiger loose 
 in the city would arouse to aggression a populace which 
 against mosquitoes can do no more than stand feebly 
 on its defence. This conscienceless fly is destitute 
 alike of fear and shame. He, or more accurately she, 
 sails calmly in front of you within half an inch of 
 your nose, and sings her teasing metallic song in your 
 ear close enough to tickle your creeping flesh by the 
 touch of her wings. She is perfectly aware that your 
 clumsy hand will sweep her harmlessly out of its own 
 reach on the rush of air made by itself. Seldom is she 
 to be overtaken unless laden with spoil. Even under 
 the punkahs, which might be expected to clear the air 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 of such a gossamer creature, she will carry on her 
 iniquity ; and when the punkah-walla wakes up to 
 fitful periods of exceptional vigour, she adjourns to the 
 under side of the table to test the thickness of the hose 
 on one's ankles. 
 
 Man's only refuge is to retire behind the mosquito- 
 curtain. And even so strong a hint as that is scarcely 
 sufficient, for granted a hole in the netting or a little 
 carelessness in the fixing of it, and the man will 
 presently find it out indirectly through the insect's 
 previous discovery. It seems impossible that she 
 should accidentally fly just exactly to the weak point. 
 There is no explanation satisfactory except that she 
 looks for it. Whence this instinct of research it would 
 be difficult to tell. The number of mosquitoes in the 
 world which are tempted by human blood must be but 
 an infinitesimal proportion of the mosquitoes in their 
 native swamps who know not what a man is. Yet 
 where man dwells, their skill in strategy as against 
 him is such that the conclusion appears irresistible 
 that the proper study of mosquitoes is man, and that 
 in their youthful days they attend schools of the 
 science and art of circumventing their human victim, 
 and perhaps take lessons in the construction of mos- 
 quito-nets. How else does it happen that they hit at 
 once on the weak and likely places without wasting 
 time over an expanse of continuous net-work ? 
 
 The helplessness which one feels in regard to these 
 almost invisible tormentors, these nearly spiritual 
 wickednesses, finds expression in a story, which some 
 
" The Curious Humanity of Beasts and Birds," etc. 85 
 
 of my readers may have heard, though I have never 
 seen it in print. A ship was lying in the Hughli. 
 On board were two sailors terribly worried by mos- 
 quitoes, and as night approached they found things 
 getting worse rather than better. From one corner to 
 another they went, and the insects followed. At last 
 they seemed to have found a retreat, and, after a little 
 yarning, were dropping off to sleep, when a fire-fly 
 came sailing through the air. One of them saw it 
 and exclaimed, " Jack, I give up ; it's of no use, here 
 they've been and fetched a lantern to look for us." 
 
 I resist the obvious temptation to moralise concerning 
 being frighted with false fire, and merely give the story 
 in illustration of the helplessness which the Anglo- 
 Indian feels in presence of some of the minor evils of 
 India, or rather of the evils that take a minor form. 
 
 This mention of the fire-fly leads the thoughts from 
 one of the most irritating to one of the most beautiful 
 of insects. With its soft green light floating gently on 
 the evening air, associated necessarily with the coolest, 
 and therefore, the most pleasant part of the twenty-four 
 hours, it deserves the kindly feeling with which it is 
 universally regarded. Even in the centre of the city a 
 large number might be seen flying about the gardens ; 
 but 011 the outskirts, bushes and trees would appear 
 literally covered by them. And since their light has a 
 pulse, and the light of thousands would ebb and flow 
 synchronously, the effect was marvellous. Mindful of 
 the bush at Horeb, one was tempted to imagine that he 
 had found a revelation of a possible pantheism, and that 
 
86 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the presence of Deity was the pulsating life-blood of the 
 trees and shrubs around him. The grace of an Indian 
 night is not trifling to one who can select that which is 
 gracious, and of this the fire-flies are no small part. 
 
 But the night has horrors as well as charms. Out 
 from their thousand holes in the garden in which during 
 the day they have been hiding from the fierceness of 
 the sun, creep forth at evening the jewel-eyed toads, 
 and signal to their cousin frogs in all the tanks within 
 a mile. Musical emulation strains the throats in tank 
 and garden as pseans of triumph are sung over the 
 discomfited god of day. 
 
 But pour not out your vials of bitterest wrath upon 
 these batrachians. It will not be long ere you hear 
 what by comparison will make you consider their music 
 sweet and low. Kind friends had warned us ere we 
 retired to sleep the first night in Calcutta, not to 
 suppose that there was anything the matter if we 
 should hear the cry of the jackals. But for that warn- 
 ing I do not know what our feelings would have been, 
 when, awakened from our first sleep by them, we heard a 
 pack pass close to the house. It seemed to us as though 
 the conscience of the whole city had unbarred the 
 portals of hell and put a trumpet in the hand of every 
 liberated fiend. I had presumptuously imagined that 
 familiarity with the concerts of London cats would 
 enable me to sleep through the jackals' efforts. But 
 though the cat has undeniable power, he can never 
 hope to reach the top-notes of the jackal. This latter 
 indeed lacks the conversational variety of the more 
 
" The Curious Humanity of Beasts and Birds" etc. 87 
 
 domestic animal. He confines himself mainly to one 
 tune, which begins in a semi-apologetic, low note ; then 
 ascends a little, still with a suspicion of apology and 
 explanation that he did not mean to make quite so 
 much noise but could not help it ; and then the flood- 
 gates are open, and seeming to say that he does not 
 care, he yells with an ecstatic abandon. 
 
 Sometimes a solitary brute will be found sitting on 
 his haunches under your bedroom window. An object 
 of pity sad-hearted as sad-coated. What private 
 griefs he has, alas ! you know not. He may be a 
 creature of tender conscience, unable to connive at or 
 participate in the villanies of his fellows, vexed with 
 the filthy conversation of the wicked, and self-banished 
 from the pack. But more probably he is a sinner who 
 has been ostracised for bad behaviour, and is thinking 
 sadly of his lot. If he would think quietly he might 
 win a measure of sympathy. But the picture of his 
 woe is probably too vivid and he will lift up his voice 
 and weep. When you hear the first low note it will be 
 worth while to seize any handy article of not too great 
 value and sacrifice it ruthlessly ere the baby wakes, for 
 it is not easy in a hot climate to get the baby to sleep 
 again when he has been aroused by a nightmare. 
 
 Terrible as " a wandering voice " of the night, the 
 jackal appears a poor creature should he be come upon 
 in his own proper person by day. True, his teeth are 
 to be respected, but that is because, like all carrion 
 feeders, his bite is more or less poisonous. He is 
 himself a sneaking coward. Useful, however, beyond 
 
88 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 description. No system of drainage will enable Cal- 
 cutta to dispense with its natural scavengers, and of 
 these the jackal is among the most efficient. Peering 
 into dark corners and with a nose keen to scent out 
 what has escaped even the crow's bright eye little as 
 that seems to miss he fills a special place in the sani- 
 tary economy of the City of Palaces. 
 
 In places too strait for him his duties are deputed to 
 the rats. There be land-rats and water-rats, as Shylock 
 says, though he and the popular nomenclature have 
 here joined together what the naturalist would put 
 asunder. Of all rats, pace the naturalist, the musk-rat 
 is the most notable. It is a creature to smell and to be 
 smelt, the active verb being indicated by the length of 
 its nose, and the passive proved by experience. A noisy 
 little quadruped, he scuttles along after dusk with rapid 
 ejaculations of the schoolboy's please-sir-it-was-n't- 
 me type. No one supposes that its " chit-chittering," 
 as Mr. Eobinson happily calls it, is a cry of exultation 
 or a happy, much less a defiant, announcement of its 
 presence such were unnecessary : it can be detected 
 by its odour it is rather the apology which that odour 
 renders obligatory. Indeed the creature seems to live a 
 life of eager explanations. 
 
 A beast with so little self-respect is not likely to 
 command respect from others. Nor does he. He is- 
 among the most abject and contemptible of vermin, and 
 yet he is by no means to be left out of account. The 
 scent seems strong enough to infect his voice, and the 
 man who, walking on the roof, hears the creature on 
 
" The Curious Humanity of Beasts and Birds" etc. 89 1 
 
 the ground below him forthwith smells, or thinks he 
 smells, as well as hears. It is commonly believed that 
 the crawling of a musk-rat over a well-corked glass bottle- 
 will taint its contents, and Bass's ale has often been 
 sent from the table on this account. Being an abstainer 
 from the various forms of alcohol, I cannot vouch for 
 the necessity of this : I have never had to reject, as- 
 musk-rat flavoured, any temperance beverages ; perhaps 
 they are healthier in 'their constitution and more 
 capable of resisting evil influences. But, alas ! for 
 the hand that touches the creature. Here's the smell 
 of musk-rat still ; all the perfumes of Arabia will not 
 sweeten this little hand. 
 
 Belonging properly to the scavenging department, but 
 always attempting to shirk their legitimate responsi- 
 bility, are the ants. " Of this sort are they that creep 
 into houses," and if they can forage in a store cupboard 
 among things that would otherwise keep, they care not 
 to pay attention to matters outside that would decay. 
 The necessity of setting all four of the feet of food 
 almirahs in saucers of water, in fact the manufacture 
 of saucers of a peculiar form especially adapted for this 
 purpose, is a standing commentary on their maurauding 
 instincts. In defeating these precautions and in getting 
 at the sugar they exhibit a perseverance and firmness of 
 purpose that are remarkable. In all legitimate occupa- 
 tions proper to them they manifest an apparent aimless- 
 ness equal to their undoubted industry. Like Mr. Will 
 Carleton, in regard to the circling gnats, I've " wondered 
 if they thought sometimes they'd maybe get somewhere." 
 
"90 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 It is perhaps due to them, as to others, to suppose that 
 they ought to know their own business best, but what 
 is gained by an ant's rushing madly a yard and a half 
 in an easterly direction, and then retracing his steps 
 westwards before starting out again in a southerly 
 direction from the original starting-point, has not been 
 revealed to me. 
 
 I once witnessed a furious battle between two 
 bodies of ants. The armies came up from opposite 
 sides. There was no strategy, no fencing. It was 
 warfare in its simplest form. Every ant rushed at its 
 enemy with open jaws, and seized him in that middle 
 segment where ' already he was refined by nature to 
 almost nothing and bit through. And, since his 
 enemy had simultaneously seized him in the same 
 manner, where there had been two ants there were now 
 four half ants. The battle over, neither victorious nor 
 -conquered army was to be seen only a heap. But 
 what they killed each other for I could not well make 
 -out. At the same time it must be admitted that con- 
 duct analogous to this and as inscrutable is found else- 
 where. Is it not Carlyle who pictures for us thirty sons 
 of the British village of Dumdrudge meeting on the 
 plains of the Peninsula thirty from the French Dum- 
 drudge whom they had never before seen, and at the 
 word of command killing and being killed so that sixty 
 corpses lay where two bands of thirty men had stood ? 
 
 The birds which share in the quotation serving as 
 the title of this chapter must be reserved for the next. 
 
Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture 
 Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, 
 By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens." 
 
 LONGFELLOW. Evangeline. 
 
 " Third Servant. Where dwellest thou ? 
 Coriolanus. Under the canopy. 
 Third Serv. Under the canopy ! 
 Cor. Ay. 
 
 Third Serv. Where's that ? 
 Cor. T the city of kites and crows. 
 
 Third Serv. T the city of kites and crows ! What an ass 
 it is ! Then thou dwellest with daws too ? " 
 SHAKSPEEE. Coriolanus. 
 
 " Thou buoyant minion of the tropic air." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 "THE WING'D PEOPLE OF THE SKIE." 
 
 WE pass from night to day, from fur to feathers. 
 Among the inspectors of nuisances whose duties fall 
 in the daytime are some of whom it becomes us to 
 speak respectfully. For among them are included the 
 adjutant, the vulture and the kite. 
 
 The adjutant holds military rank, and mounts guard 
 on Government House. He stands between three and 
 four feet high when his head is buried, as it usually is, 
 in his shoulders ; when he raises it at the length of his 
 neck, he can return one's gaze with a disadvantage the 
 most trifling. His face is wrinkled, and his head bald 
 with a few straggling hairs scattered upon it. Alto- 
 gether, except in his early youth, he has a care-worn 
 expression. But there is a dignity in the stride of the 
 long legs, and withal a wicked look in the eye that 
 indicates a self-possessed soul, conscious of relative 
 superiority, if not of absolute perfection. One can 
 imagine indeed a certain feeling of shame in an adjutant 
 detected sitting down, for there is something approach- 
 ing the ludicrous in the figure he cuts in that attitude ; 
 but, on the other hand, if the sitting lowers him beneath 
 
94 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the dignity of his standing, his flying proportionately 
 exalts him. Far above the lowlier wings, he wheels in 
 majestic circles, high enough for the legs to be lost to 
 sight entirely and the large feet to appear like nebulous 
 satellites. His outspread wings appear motionless, and 
 the white on their under sides and on his breast, which, 
 it must be confessed, looks rather dirty on close inspec- 
 tion, is purified in the sunlight. The bird that may be 
 seen sweeping through the heavens under the bright 
 Indian sun on a tireless wing hour after hour must be 
 accounted worthy of the roof of Government House by 
 day and of the highest pipal trees by night. 
 
 Early in the morning he and his friends are accus- 
 tomed to take a constitutional over the dewy grass of 
 the niaidan, on the trees round which they have been 
 roosting. One day, as I was driving across to Hastings, 
 I saw what struck me as a particularly comic sight. 
 About a dozen adjutants were standing in a straight 
 line and at regular intervals as though they were being 
 drilled. The distance between them just allowed the 
 stretching out of their wings till the tips met. There 
 they stood, as solemn and still as statues facing the 
 rising sun, whose level rays were drying the inside 
 feathers of their outstretched wings after the damps 
 of the night-dews, which in Calcutta are very heavy. 
 There was reason in the act, but the picture was 
 irresistibly ludicrous. 
 
 One of these birds was once attached to the Chand- 
 ney Hospital. His appointment on the hospital staff 
 happened in this wise: Kite-flying in Bengal is an 
 
" The Wing'd People of the SMe" 95 
 
 amusement that excites great interest among all ages 
 an interest one would think greatly disproportionate to 
 the unexciting nature of the occupation. There is not 
 the skill displayed in the variety and workmanship of 
 the kite itself which is seen in China, where during 
 the kite-season the air teems with mammoth centipedes,, 
 gigantic beetles and butterflies, besides aerial men and 
 Avomen, and is filled with the sound of music as though 
 the morning stars were rehearsing. The Bengali pretty 
 uniformly makes his kite of a square piece of very thin 
 tissue paper, stretched on a cross of very thin bamboo, 
 which, being exceedingly light, can be held by a very 
 fine thread. It is in manipulation rather than in con- 
 struction, that he displays his skill, and a common trick 
 of the kite-fliers is to get their thin strings across each 
 other and so to add to their pleasure in manoeuvring 
 their own kites the excitement of cutting each other's 
 adrift. Now a native flying a kite found that an 
 adjutant was circling in a stratum of air below that in 
 which his kite was sailing. It occurred to him at once 
 to try his skill, which he did only too successfully.. 
 He got his fine thread across the bird's path surely 
 that bird was asleep though his pinions were spread 
 and, with the wing muscle cut through, the bird 
 descended earthwards. The man who had achieved this 
 probably unexpected success felt some compunctious 
 pity for the bird exiled from the realms of air, and took 
 him to the Chandney Hospital. There his severed 
 flesh was stitched together, and in time healed, but that 
 muscle could never again bear the strain of his weight, 
 
Do Turbans and Tails. 
 
 and he became henceforth an inmate of the hospital 
 compound, making himself thoroughly at home, not even 
 evincing uneasiness at the close of the rains when his 
 kind forsake Calcutta for the swamps of the Sunder- 
 bunds. On the arrival of a patient in palki or gari 
 he would stalk up to the conveyance and make a 
 preliminary examination of the case to satisfy himself 
 as to the likelihood of recovery. 
 
 The vulture and the kite have been spoken of from 
 time immemorial with aversion and contempt. But 
 it is the aversion and contempt of conventionalism. 
 Doubtless the vulture is not a clean feeder, and to see 
 him gorging himself on the municipal rubbish-heaps 
 -at Sealdah, is not an edifying spectacle. But, as with 
 the adjutant who shares his orgies, let him rise into the 
 air, and he compels respect not only from the impartial, 
 but even from those whose prejudices have been excited 
 against him as they have seen him revelling in carrion. 
 A line of these birds will come into sight on the 
 horizon, will pass directly over your head, and be lost 
 to sight in the horizon opposite, one following in 
 another's wake, like the war-ships of the gods, and from 
 the time you first distinguish them as specks in the 
 sky, till they are lost again in the distance, you will 
 not have seen the movement of a wing. We can deny 
 of neither the adjutant nor the vulture what may 
 be called " corrupt practices," we must admit in both 
 cases, a baldness of head that would hint at though 
 we trust, for personal reasons, without being conclusive 
 proof of uncleanness of habits, but, in spite of this, no 
 
" The Wing'd People of the SJcie" 97 
 
 man who lias seen either on the wing will venture to 
 speak other than respectfully of him. 
 
 As for the kite, he neither reaches the heights nor 
 sinks to the depths of the vulture. His flight may be 
 esteemed noble where the vulture is majestic. When 
 the latter is in the air, from the tip of one wing to the 
 tip of the other, a strong, straight line will run along 
 the margin of both. With the kite the outline of the 
 wings is a broken line, a sort of collapsed M. But he 
 is not bald-headed. One species, the brahmany kite, 
 as he is familiarly called, has the head and shoulders 
 covered with white feathers, giving him the venerable 
 and patriarchal look of age, but his eye is not dim, nor 
 his natural force abated. A scavenger is the kite, with 
 no preference, however, for putridity. Nay, there is 
 something of the falcon instinct in him, for a friend 
 who owned some tumbler-pigeons, told me that he saw 
 a kite strike one of his pets on the wing, and after- 
 wards another's place in the dove-cote was vacant, as 
 he suspected, from the same cause. As I have seen 
 ordinary pigeons fly fearlessly among a whole assembly 
 of kites, it is possible that it was the accomplishment 
 of tumbling, that sealed the fate of my friend's birds, 
 the kite regarding it as a sign of disease or sickness, 
 bringing them legitimately within his province. If so, 
 it is a warning to those who spend labour in acquiring 
 accomplishments, which to the untaught in such 
 matters, are undistinguishable from unnatural defects. 
 
 The kite has the virtue of self-knowledge. He 
 knows his weak points, and has confidence in,his strong 
 
 H 
 
98 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 ones. It is usual to speak of him as cowardly. A judg- 
 ment at once more accurate and more generous would 
 pronounce him cautious. He recognises that the 
 shortness of his legs forbids ease of movement on the 
 ground, and that not having the power of doubling 
 quickly, it would be unwise to allow himself to be 
 tempted into corners. But where there is wing-room 
 for the mighty rush of his pinions, his confidence 
 touches the limits of audacity. For example, if 
 opposite doors of a ship's galley be open so that he can 
 dash clean through, he will do it taking with him the 
 cook's proudest triumph. He will do it too, with such 
 dexterity and lightning-like speed, that not unlikely 
 the true marauder may be lost in the cook's astonish- 
 ment, and the blame attached to the crows that are 
 hanging about the rigging. 
 
 Picnickers know his boldness, and while some of the 
 servants wait upon their masters, others have to be 
 told off to the duty of guarding the cloth with long 
 bamboos. On one such occasion a kite, sweeping down 
 between my neighbour and me, tore a tempting slice of 
 beef from his plate while both knife and fork were 
 busy upon it. Perhaps the boldest thing I ever saw in 
 this bird was in the Wellesley Street, a large thorough- 
 fare, full of traffic. A native woman was walking on 
 the path holding something with both hands in front 
 of her under her chudder. One of these unmannerly 
 creatures swooped down over her shoulder and seized 
 it with his talons. For some seconds the woman and 
 the bird wrestled for it, but, to the credit of the woman 
 
" The Wingd People of tJie SMe." 99 
 
 be it recorded, the bird had to go without it. As a 
 rule, he will attempt nothing that involves hindrance 
 in his flight, and on this occasion I am inclined to 
 believe that he had calculated on feminine nervousness 
 prompting the dropping of the coveted prize at the 
 moment his wings flashed past the woman's ear; in 
 which case he would have caught it ere it reached the 
 ground, and with unimpeded flight, have pursued his 
 way triumphant. That he, disappointed in this natural 
 expectation, should have ventured to attempt to tear 
 it through the chudder in which it was wrapped, from 
 the hands of a woman proved not to be nervous, speaks 
 loudly for the courage of this maligned bird. Though 
 a crow may venture to creep behind him on the terrace 
 of a house and pull his tail, this speaks rather of the 
 nimbleness and humour of the crow, than of the 
 cowardice of the kite. The crow's attack when both 
 are in the air, is a very make-believe effort, exciting an 
 irritation in the larger bird which always has in it a 
 large proportion of lordly disdain. 
 
 As for the Indian crow, one scarcely knows what to 
 say. "We have it on the authority of the ' Law Book ' of 
 Manu, that in a previous birth he stole milk, and by 
 our own observation we know that the pilfering instinct 
 has not been altogether eradicated by the punitive 
 transmigration. That he has wrung from the naturalists 
 the name of Corvus splendens we are aware, though the 
 fact is one of ever fresh astonishment to his best friends, 
 for what there is splendid about him, except his im- 
 pudence, it were hard to discover. That, indeed, may 
 
 H 2 
 
100 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 give some propriety to the term, for there is an assurance 
 in his manner which compels something like admira- 
 tion and an instinctive acknowledgment of his right 
 and proprietorship in the land where human beings 
 dwell on sufferance and so long only as in carrying out 
 their own purposes they further his. At the first point 
 at which our vessel touched India, when we were still 
 about three miles from shore, several crows were seen 
 making direct for us. We had doubtless been noticed 
 as soon as we showed the tops of our masts above the 
 horizon, and these were the deputation appointed by 
 the crow parliament to wait on us, and arrange about 
 our landing, which act, in its recognition of the require- 
 ments of courtesy, asserted the claim to the possession 
 and the authority which rendered that courtesy obli- 
 gatory. 
 
 I incurred a crow's displeasure once, and do not wish 
 to do it again. It happened after this manner : There 
 was a pandanus near my verandah, which was one of 
 my favourite trees. Four or five crows' nests were 
 already located in various parts of the garden, with the 
 occupants of which I was on the best of terms, but one 
 pair of the crows determined to build in this pandanus. 
 At first I offered no objection, but when the nest was 
 finished, the cock bird found his energies aroused by 
 the task of building suddenly deprived of direction. 
 He therefore occupied his leisure moments, therein 
 satisfying his conscience that with true marital de- 
 votion he was dancing attendance on his wife, by 
 digging with his strong beak at the heads of the 
 
" The Wing\l People of the Skie." 101 
 
 pandanus shoots. It was a piece of the most wanton 
 mischief. Now as the pandanus is an endogen, this 
 procedure threatened its life. I expostulated with the 
 bird; he would desist from his work and listen with 
 mock gravity, and the moment I had finished, would 
 dig out a fresh piece of the plant and throw it down to 
 me as I stood beneath him. When I found that he 
 was not to be reasoned with, I felt it necessary to give 
 the mali orders to remove the nest from the tree alto- 
 gether. This was done, and as far as I could see, the 
 mali remained in favour, but I was visited with the 
 most serious displeasure. Whenever I ventured into 
 the garden that crow would signal to his friends, and, 
 in an instant, from twenty to fifty crows, according as 
 the exigencies of the hour might allow, would flock 
 around me and make the most unpleasant remarks. If 
 I even showed myself on the upper verandah, that 
 offended bird would at once fly on to the balustrade of 
 it, and stretching out his neck, would accuse me of 
 every conceivable enormity in such deep and sepul- 
 chral tones, as went far towards making life miserable. 
 This deep-seated ill-will, this rancorous hatred was 
 maintained for quite a long while, till, prompted to try 
 another tree, in which he found he was not molested, 
 his wrath became appeased, and, his thoughts being 
 diverted by household cares, I was at liberty once more 
 to walk in the garden. 
 
 Mischief is the crow's occupation. He delights to 
 torment the kites, for whose claws, however, he has 
 an evident respect. He will most wantonly pull a 
 
102 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 sparrow's nest to pieces if it be not far enough up the 
 water-spout to be out of his reach. "When he walks, he 
 has a side-long gait, and jerks his wings with a motion 
 irresistibly suggesting both the wink of a person in- 
 tending to attempt some practical joke, and the rubbing 
 together of the hands of the person who has succeeded. 
 And, indeed, this is just his position ; he has always 
 just done some trick, and is always about to do another. 
 But not without an air of solemnity. As Mr. Phil. 
 Eobinson says, his step is grave and he ever seems on 
 the point of quoting Scripture, while his eyes are 
 wandering on carnal matters. 
 
 Howbeit, he is friendly and willing to fit himself into 
 the arrangements of your household. You never have 
 to wait for him at meal times. He knows and observes 
 your hours from chota-hazri till dinner, and is as ready 
 to join you at the meals prepared, as he has been in the 
 intervals to assist the cook in preparing them. 
 
 He has an admirable self-possession, and a most 
 perfect control over his countenance. I have only once 
 seen a crow to use a familiar phrase taken aback, 
 forced to own himself discomfited. It was one morning 
 before breakfast, and I was speeding across the maidan 
 on my bicycle. A crow, to whom the machine was 
 perhaps a novelty, for at that time there were not 
 many in use in Calcutta, came flying towards me to 
 satisfy his curiosity. The bright steel spokes were, of 
 course, invisible to human eyes, and, as it proved, to 
 his. In the spirit of impudence and frolic, exhilarated 
 by the early morning freshness, he made a dash to go 
 
The Wingd People of the Skie." 103 
 
 tlirough what seemed to him to be simply a hoop on 
 which my saddle rested. It need hardly be said that 
 he did not get through. I looked back, there he lay on 
 the ground hopelessly surprised there was not the 
 slightest use in his attempting to disguise it. His caw 
 expressed perplexity mingled with disgust. His head 
 was sore, his feathers ruffled, and when he got up and 
 went away to think about it, he looked more like a 
 crow ashamed of himself than I had ever before seen. 
 
 Like many other persons who seem to have genius 
 in some departments, this bird appears to lack even 
 common-sense in others. By some youthful indiscre- 
 tion a crow too young to fly had got out of one of the 
 nests. My attention was called to the fact by the 
 terrible hubbub that his relatives were making. The 
 young bird was on the grass under the mango-tree in 
 which was the nest which he had left. He was 
 attended by a dozen or more of his friends who were 
 eagerly vying with each other for the honour of most 
 loudly lecturing him for leaving home against his 
 parents' wishes. I went out and examined him, and 
 since there was no hurt on his body that I could detect, 
 I left him to his friends, thinking that, as it was then 
 early morning, he would before evening become suffi- 
 ciently practised in hopping and fluttering to get into 
 the tree for the night. I knew moreover that, as at 
 present attended, he was perfectly safe from harm 
 during the day. But, by evening, he seemed to have 
 acquired a liking for his terrestrial exercises and to be 
 quite happy in hopping about the ground, nor in any 
 
104 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 way disposed to climb into a safer roosting-place, though 
 the elder birds were renewing their vociferous advice. 
 
 Knowing that such a helpless thing could not hope to 
 escape the prowling jackals, I put him up in the tree 
 myself, but after he had tumbled out, and been replaced 
 two or three times, I left him. The old birds continued 
 to give advice for some time longer, but ultimately they 
 too left him to the darkening shadows, and next morning 
 no trace of him was to be found. 
 
 I cannot help feeling that if a half of the ability and 
 genius which those crows had on occasions exhibited in 
 playing tricks on their neighbours had been devoted to 
 the getting of that young relative into the tree of his 
 birth and keeping him there, he might have become a 
 valuable member of the race and a leading spirit in their 
 commonwealth. 
 
 Counting himself not unworthy to rank with kite or 
 crow, notwithstanding disparity in size, is the republican 
 myna a serious bird, very quiet in dress and in manner, 
 yet, withal, having an air of as complete self-possession 
 as has his corvine neighbour, and of just so much self- 
 assertion as necessitates a general recognition of his 
 claims. He is not quarrelsome, nor is he mischievous ; 
 but he is both able and prepared to defend his own, and 
 neither the kite, depending on his strength, nor the crow 
 on his versatility may offer him insult with impunity. 
 His assemblies parade the maidan or deliberate on the 
 terraces with a mien of self-respect and responsibility 
 becoming an important people. Sometimes, it must be 
 admitted, a specially burning question produces an 
 
" The Wing'cl People of the 8kte." 105 
 
 unwonted excitement, and the meeting is disgraced by 
 unseemly and noisy wrangling, vituperation taking the 
 place of argument, and personalities being freely in- 
 dulged in an evil incident to communities trained in 
 democratic traditions. But this is the exception. The 
 rule is that the myna should bear himself with a grave 
 and becoming dignity in his private walk, and that in 
 public assembly he should observe the strictest decorum. 
 
*' The nautch-girls in their spangled skirts and bells, 
 That chime light laughter round their restless feet." 
 
 SIB E. ARNOLD. Light of Asia, 
 
 'The Reverend McPherson believed that a nautch 
 Was a very diabolical kind of debauch, 
 He thought that that dance's voluptuous mazes 
 
 Would turn a man's brain, and allure him to blazes. 
 ***** 
 
 Then suddenly sounded a loud-clanging gong, 
 
 And there burst on the eyes of the wondering throng 
 
 A bevy of girls 
 
 Dressed in bangles and pearls 
 
 And other rich jims, 
 
 With fat podgy limbs, 
 
 And bright yellow streaks 
 
 All over their cheeks, 
 
 Enormous gold rings 
 
 And other queer things 
 
 In the ears and the nose, 
 
 On the ankles and toes, 
 
 Which shuffled and beat 
 
 A strange time with the feet, 
 
 And sang a wild air 
 
 Which affected your hair, 
 
 While behind them a circle of men and of boys 
 With tom-toms and pipes made a terrible noise, 
 And retainers stood by waving censer and torch; 
 
 And the Reverend McPherson was in for a nautch F 
 
 ***** 
 
 The minister took 
 
 A pretty close look, 
 
 And the minister said, 
 
 With a shake of the head, 
 
 * If with lassies lik' thae, dear, Gehenna is graced, 
 I don't think the de'il has got muckle gude taste.' " 
 
 " ALIPH CHEEM." Lays of Ind".. 
 
 "Were you with these, my prince, you'd soon forget 
 The pale, unripen'd beauties of the North." 
 
 ADDISON. 
 
( 107 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE NAUTCH. 
 
 I HAD been in India for two years, and had never seen 
 
 the Indian dance. When, therefore, Mr. accosted 
 
 me with the inquiry, " Do you care to go to a nautch ? "" 
 I had no answer but a ready acquiescence. I would 
 go, and for ever roll away the disgrace of not having 
 seen India, the true India, the India of pre-European 
 taint. 
 
 At the hour for starting, we were joined by a mutual 
 
 friend, Captain , who was to accompany us. He was 
 
 skipper of a fine steamer trading between London and 
 Calcutta, and during his stay in the latter port always 
 hired a buggy, which he drove himself. The vacant seat 
 in this was at my disposal ; but I preferred to share the 
 
 accommodation of Mr. 's gari, for I had had from 
 
 Captain 's own lips some accounts of his driving 
 
 experiences which had a little shaken my faith in his 
 skill as a Jehu. Thus he had only a day or two before 
 assisted in a small collision that left him aground, as 
 he expressed it, in the middle of the road. He explained 
 
 that it was not his fault. " was with me in the 
 
 buggy, and he knows far more about navigating these 
 
108 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 things than I do, and he said that what I did was 
 perfectly right." I concluded to watch that buggy's 
 fortunes rather than share them ; and, indeed, got some 
 considerable amount of amusement from so doing, 
 especially at the corners of the streets. Nevertheless, 
 we all reached our destination safely. It was the house 
 of a wealthy Hindu. Entering by a gateway into the 
 quadrangle, we found it full of people of all sorts 
 walking round the open court and standing on the 
 steps of the puja-dalan, or worship-hall, facing the 
 gateway, in which for it was during the Durga Puja 
 holidays was a very elaborate image of Durga with 
 her ten arms, her satellite gods and goddesses, animals 
 and demons. 
 
 Enclosing a space in the centre of the courtyard 
 were two or three rows of chairs reserved for the more 
 important guests, among whom we presently had the 
 honour of finding ourselves. It was in this space, as 
 we understood, that the nautch would presently be 
 -executed; but we were rather disgusted to find that 
 meanwhile our attention was invited to the tricks of a 
 
 
 
 certain European conjuror, styling himself Professor 
 Dashwood, and very indifferently maintaining the credit 
 of his profession. Perhaps our native fellow-guests 
 enjoyed this performance, but, as Laurence Sterne said, 
 " An Englishman does not travel to see Englishmen/' 
 and our Western craving for oriental sights was hardly 
 satisfied by it. We schooled our impatience, as on similar 
 occasions, by the consideration that purely oriental 
 sights of any sort are not to be expected in Calcutta. 
 
The NautcL 109 
 
 Consciously, or unconsciously, the European element 
 is admitted into everything. Thus one sees pictures 
 drawn by natives illustrating legends of their gods 
 supposed to refer to times anterior to the creation of 
 Europeans, in which the gods are protected by body- 
 guards dressed in the uniform, and armed with the 
 weapons, of the private in the British army of to-day. 
 And even in what we might expect to find par excellence 
 an oriental scene a torchlight wedding procession it 
 is becoming customary to introduce horsemen dressed 
 in this same uniform, minus the boots, and with the 
 addition of a cocked hat. We therefore accepted 
 Professor Dashwood, groaning secretly at the length to 
 which his proceedings threatened to drag themselves 
 out. But time is no object to a native of India, and we, 
 being in a native's house, had to submit to native 
 ways, hoping that in the end patience would be re- 
 warded. 
 
 Our patience was not doomed to so severe a test as- 
 we feared, for presently a babu informed us that in a 
 room upstairs there would be a nautch almost imme- 
 diately. We hailed the welcome news, and at once 
 followed our informant's kindly guidance to a long 
 apartment down either side of which was arranged a row 
 of chairs. Here we found ourselves part of a somewhat 
 promiscuous gathering, for, though our host and the 
 majority of the guests were Hindus, there were a goodly 
 sprinkling of Mohammedans, some Marwaris, a few 
 Parsis, with probably specimens of other races whose 
 specialities I was not at that time skilled to detect, in 
 
110 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 addition of course to the Europeans among whom we 
 were numbered. 
 
 About midnight a nautch girl entered, followed by 
 three men and a boy. It was an imposing spectacle. 
 The men varied much in personal appearance, but they 
 had this in common, that each was the ugliest man any 
 of us had ever seen ; i.e., each was ugliest when you 
 looked at him. Look at number one, and a more ill- 
 favoured man could not be found. But turn to number 
 two, and he was more ill-favoured in direct view than 
 number one in memory, so we gazed and marvelled. 
 As for the boy, he gave promise, if time for growth were 
 allowed, of qualifying for the place of any of the three 
 who might become unfit for duty. 
 
 The girl was pretty without qualification. She had 
 good features, a pleasant expression, a graceful figure, 
 and scarcely needed the foil afforded by her companions. 
 Her dress was of a light flimsy muslin, as far as my 
 uninitiated discrimination could judge, of a general red 
 tone, and the style of dress gave the impression that 
 she had begun to dress at the top with great care, 
 proceeding downward and becoming tired and negligent. 
 The jewellery that almost muffled up the head and 
 arms was tastefully arranged, the drapery of the body 
 and shoulders hung in graceful folds. Then came a 
 skirt reaching about to the knees destitute of a single 
 line of beauty, and then we passed from the negative 
 to the positive, for below this was a pair of what may 
 be best described as tinsel-treated water-hose of small 
 diameter, but, judging by their horizontal folds, of 
 
The Nautch. Ill 
 
 enormous length, which were prevented from coming 
 over the feet by two exceedingly clumsy anklets with 
 bells, which we hoped would by their melody make 
 some amends to the ear for the offence they were to 
 the eye. 
 
 Two of the men carried stringed instruments, the 
 boy a pair of cymbals, and the third man, when he 
 entered, appeared to be carrying a large baby. The 
 bundle which so appeared when lowered into position, 
 was found to contain two tom-toms and a pockethand- 
 kerchief of the size of a shawl or table-cloth. This 
 pertained to the danseuse though from its size and 
 weight there was an obvious advantage to her in letting 
 her attendant take charge of it with his tom-toms. 
 
 And now the performance began. At first the girl 
 stood perfectly still while the music indulged in some 
 preliminary flourishes. After a while it seemed to us 
 a long while she showed signs of movement, slowly, 
 as an awakening serpent unfolds itself, both arms 
 were extended very gracefully ; and then a few steps 
 were taken forward very ungracefully, the feet being 
 strooched along the ground, and then the heel brought 
 down heavily to bring out the music of the ankle bells. 
 A half dozen of these awkward steps and she uncere- 
 moniously turned round and walked back, making 
 straight for the handkerchief. We thought that she 
 had beaten a retreat in consciousness of failure, and 
 pitied her, admiring her courage as she almost imme- 
 diately faced round with as smiling an expression as 
 the sternest necessities of her profession could demand. 
 
112 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 Presently she started again and got a few steps farther 
 with the same stiff and heavy gait, and again turned 
 sharp round, walking back to her original position. 
 This happened repeatedly enough to convince us that 
 our thought of failure was a mistake and our pity 
 misapplied. The ignominous failure had been a con- 
 spicuous success. For some time the nautch consisted 
 in a succession of these advances followed by abrupt 
 cessations of all rhythmic movement and quiet non- 
 chalant walks back. In each advance the attendant 
 musicians followed closely on the dancer, retreating 
 backwards still playing when she retreated. 
 
 After some considerable amount of this she broke 
 out into singing, repeated the former movements to the 
 same musical accompaniment, but with her own vocal 
 efforts added. When we were almost satiated with 
 this, a welcome change took place welcome partly 
 because it was a change ; Singling out one of the 
 European ladies among the guests, she settled herself 
 on the floor in front of her. Her exercises were now 
 confined to the swaying of the body, the movements 
 of the head, neck, and arms, and since all that was 
 graceful in movement as in costume pertained to these 
 parts of the body, we lost nothing by this change, but 
 what could well be spared. 
 
 This kind of thing continued much longer than our 
 enjoyment in it, and we began to want to see if another 
 girl would do as this one did. Eventually our curiosity 
 on this point was gratified. A new group appeared in 
 the doorway as before in the matter of number and 
 
The Nautch. 113 
 
 relative attractions. The second girl had not quite so 
 good features as the first, but she made up for this in 
 the possession of an exceedingly happy expression and 
 an intensely mischievous twinkle in her eye. She was 
 apparently a wayward, spoiled child, and if the men 
 who accompanied her had ever tried to manage her 
 they had doubtless given up the endeavour some time 
 ago. The two girls met with a loving kind of smile, 
 exchanged a few words in an undertone, during which 
 eyes were flashing and facial muscles active enough to 
 give us the impression that we guests were the subject 
 of the hurried conversation, and that the subject was 
 not being treated with the severe gravity that it 
 demanded. This second damsel was dressed much as 
 the other, except that the general colour of her costume 
 was green instead of red, and that being younger, and 
 probably a shorter time in the profession, she had not 
 had as long an opportunity of loading herself with 
 jewellery. She went through a set of promenadings 
 and singings similar to that of her predecessor, and we 
 went through the same successive stages of interest, 
 indifference, and weariness, probably reaching the third 
 stage sooner in this second case. The only added 
 interest was that derived from occasional contretemps 
 between the fair performer and the gentlemen who 
 were acting as her guides, philosophers, and friends. 
 Now and then we saw one of them, indiscreetly as we 
 judged, bending a little forward and whispering some 
 suggestions. Immediately the little vixen's face would 
 catch fire, and she would turn a look on him as though 
 
 I 
 
114 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 it would be rather a pleasure to consume him. Generally 
 the periodic appeal to the handkerchief gave her the 
 private opportunity she needed of telling her friends 
 what she thought of them, but once or twice, to the 
 amusement of the spectators, she broke off in the 
 middle of the song and dance and compressed into a 
 pithy word or two a good proportion of her mind, 
 "We never supposed that what she did just after one 
 of these little episodes was what had been advised, but 
 it might have been. 
 
 To her succeeded a woman of mature years, dressed 
 in more matronly style, the sight of whom gave us 
 quite a different feeling from that excited by these two 
 girls. With regard to them, though we knew both that 
 they were thus earning their living, and that it would 
 not be pleasant to follow out in thought what, by a 
 figure of speech, may be called their home-life, yet 
 when we looked at their merry faces we could cheat 
 ourselves out of serious thought, and could think of 
 them as enjoying the dance more than many of the 
 spectators of it. It seemed in them play rather than 
 work, the exercise of surplus youthful vigour like the 
 Barnes of school children in their holiday hour. But 
 this woman w r as past playing, she \vas obviously 
 working, and with the full responsibility of womanhood 
 on her. The way she went about her dancing, not 
 with the vivacity of the others, but with a sense of 
 duty sternly lined on her face, dispelled the previous 
 happy delusion that it was all recreation ; and enjoy- 
 ment in the dance was no longer possible. Here the 
 
The Nautcli. 115 
 
 relation between the woman and the attendants was 
 confessedly reversed. They made no attempt to 
 control or guide her, but humbly listened for any hints 
 she might quietly throw back to them under cover of 
 resorting to the handkerchief, which, for her, as for the 
 others, occupied a large part of the tom-tom performer's 
 luggage. This woman, at the request of one of the 
 native guests, perhaps partly out of regard to her age 
 and presumed infirmities, very soon seated herself with 
 her musicians before one of the European ladies, so 
 that we saw but little of her dancing and were not 
 sorry. 
 
 By this time we were tired of a performance pre- 
 senting so little of variety, which had already stretched 
 out till after two o'clock and which showed every sign of 
 prolonging itself to daylight. So we took a stroll into 
 the gallery running round the open courtyard where we 
 had left Professor Dashwood, looking down into which 
 we saw that the guests there also were now being enter- 
 tained with nautch dancing. Then we went along the 
 gallery where the girls were accommodated kennelled 
 would almost seem the suitable term. The ground was 
 partitioned off into squares by fences of pillows, cloths 
 were spread, and there, on the ground, each party in its 
 own square, sat or lay the unoccupied performers, 
 Most of the men were availing themselves of the chance 
 of a sleep, notwithstanding the noise of people coming 
 and going, while most of the girls were sitting up, wide 
 awake, and on the look-out for a chance of a flirtation 
 with any of the guests who might indulge them. As, 
 
 I 2 
 
116 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 we were not of this number, we made our way back 
 again, found our host, made our salaams and departed 
 home. 
 
 We were glad to have seen a nautch, but our 
 appetite in the matter was abundantly satisfied. As 
 
 Capt. put it, "I would not go the length of my 
 
 foot to see another." Our visit had however given us 
 an opportunity of increasing our knowledge of native 
 life and we saw much that evening that was of more 
 interest to us than the nautch itself. The well-to-do 
 natives in their own homes are different people 
 altogether from the native servants and clerks that do 
 their best to distract a man in his house and office. 
 The profuse politeness and the overflowing ceremony of 
 the native gentleman who is not straining after English 
 manners or seeking English employments, but is simply 
 showing hospitality and courtesy in obedience to the 
 demands of his own national customs, seem to have 
 become a second nature, free from all artificiality, and 
 are a pleasant study. 
 
 But, with all their graceful courtesy, they do not 
 seem to allow any infringement of rule to pass from 
 fear of hurting the feelings of the infractors. It is a 
 little dangerous to generalise ; but, from what I have 
 seen, I should be inclined to say that where a European 
 would overlook a fault with the remark, " It's very 
 unfortunate, but we must accept it, and make the best 
 of it;" and so let it pass with as little notice as 
 possible, the Hindu would correct it without fear or 
 favour. One or two little incidents occurred during this 
 
The Nautcli. Ill 
 
 evening illustrating this. One of them recalled the 
 words of our Saviour about the danger of a more 
 honourable man coming when the highest seats were 
 taken, and the less honourable, though invited, guests 
 being compelled with shame to take the lower places. 
 Two natives of evident respectability entered and took 
 two vacant chairs. But these chairs had been reserved 
 for possible " more honourable " comers. The host went 
 up to them, saluted them, and with the utmost politeness 
 spoke a few words to them, then with a parting salute 
 left them. They at once rose and took their places in 
 the doorway literally, the lowest room where they 
 stood, seatless. The utmost courtesy and apparent 
 cordiality were maintained, no irritation was expressed, 
 the placid surface of friendliness was unruffled, but the 
 chairs were vacated. We could not but admire the 
 firmness with which the host's arrangements were 
 carried out, each guest being kept in his own place and 
 rank, and the courtesy and blandness with which the 
 host did this himself, instead of deputing it, as a 
 disagreeable business, to some dependent or subordinate 
 who might have done it more offensively. 
 
 Another thing that struck us was the delicacy 
 manifested in the showing of special attentions. Thus 
 once or twice a Mohammedan gentleman who was very 
 much at home in the house and gave orders pretty 
 freely to the servants, wished the nautch girl to pay 
 special attention to one or other guest. In these cases 
 he managed it by calling one of the servants, bidding 
 him tell the girl's attendants, but, lest this should seem 
 
118 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 to rob the attention of its spontaneity, the servant was 
 instructed when he received his order to hurry out of 
 the room as though the order was concerning some 
 matter outside ; taking care however to pass close by 
 the performers and to whisper his instructions as 
 quietly as possible in passing. So well was this done 
 that we should not have detected it but for the accident 
 of the performers on one such occasion being so close to 
 us that the order was executed within our hearing. 
 After this we could of course understand the act when 
 repeated out of ear-shot. 
 
"... The soft delicious air, 
 To heal the scar of these corrosive fires 
 Shall breathe her balm." MILTON. Paradise Lost. 
 
 " The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds, 
 Grain- tinctured, drenched in empyrean light." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. The Prelude. 
 
 "The dry land appeared, not in level sands forsaken by the 
 surges, which those surges might again claim for their own ; but in 
 range beyond range of swelling hill and iron rock, for ever to claim 
 kindred with the firmament, and to be companioned by the clouds- 
 of heaven." EUSKIN. 
 
 " Northwards soared 
 
 The stainless ramps of huge Himala's wall, 
 Ranged in white ranks against the blue untrod, 
 Infinite, wonderful whose uplands vast, 
 And lifted universe of crest and crag, 
 Shoulder and shelf, green slope and icy horn, 
 Eiven ravine, and splintered precipice 
 Led climbing thought higher and higher, until 
 It seemed to stand in heaven and speak with gods. 
 Beneath the snows dark forests spread, sharp-laced 
 With leaping cataracts and veiled with clouds : 
 Lower grew rose-oaks, and the great fir groves 
 Where echoed pheasant's call and panther's cry, 
 Clatter of wild sheep on the stones, and scream 
 Of circling eagles ; under these, the plain 
 Gleamed like a praying-carpet at the foot 
 Of those divinest altars." SIB E. ARNOLD. Light of Asia- 
 
 "Earth's crammed with heaven, 
 And every common bush a-fire with God ; 
 But only he who sees takes off his shoes, 
 The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries, 
 And daub their natural faces unaware 
 More and more from the first similitude." 
 
 E. B. BROWNING. Aurora Leigh^ 
 
( 121 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 "THE MOUNTAINS SHALL BRING PEACE TO 
 THE PEOPLE." 
 
 KUSKIN says that the spirit of the hills is action, and 
 that that of the lowlands is repose. It may be so. But 
 if the lowlands sleep they dream uneasily. Who that 
 has been compelled to live on "the plains" on the 
 wide stretching alluvial delta of the Ganges during the 
 rainy season, has not felt that the lowland repose has- 
 been quick with the activities of life ? Its palms and 
 pipals,its bamboos and tamarinds that stand all the year 
 are lost in a new, exuberant, luscious growth holding 
 high revel, intoxicated, mad with a summer frenzy, de- 
 lirious. Even one's personal effects within the house 
 are overrun. A grey forest waves triumphantly over 
 the books, defying brush and duster; and, while men 
 sleep, an enemy sows spores on their shoes which ere 
 morning are transformed into horticultural gardens. In 
 a night, with the rapidity of Jonah's gourd, and with as- 
 ill an effect on the human temper as had that luckless 
 vegetable, grow the lively and unlovely fungi. Not that 
 any one becomes as vigorously angry in regard to the 
 flourishing mould as was the prophet in the matter of 
 
122 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the withered gourd ; there is too complete a sense of 
 helplessness for that. Vigour, even in wrath, is out 
 of the question has not one's whole nature grown 
 mouldy ? Are not the faculties of abuse and complaint 
 sodden ? There is no crispness left in one's invective. 
 Struggling with fate is hopeless ; objurgation, unsatis- 
 factory. These are the rains. You welcomed them 
 when the monsoon first broke upon you, and envied the 
 crows and sparrows as they came out from the dark 
 places of the trees, where they had been hiding with 
 beaks agape, and settled themselves on the tops of the 
 branches, loosening their feathers that the acceptable 
 drops might penetrate the more easily to the skin. You 
 welcomed them, for, after the scorching, merciless sun- 
 shine of May and early June, their waters seemed cool 
 and refreshing, and it was an undeniable relief to have 
 & cloud veil over the face of the sun. 
 
 But those waters have become heated now, the earth 
 no longer thirstily absorbs them, as they fall, the air is 
 charged with steam, and nothing but the hopelessness 
 and the lassitude born of the rains themselves prevents 
 your as eagerly desiring their departure as a little 
 while ago you looked forward to their advent. You 
 wish them gone but it is languidly. 
 
 From the hills cometh your help. And the hills are 
 nearer than they once were. What of ease and comfort 
 there may be in the journey in these days I know not, 
 but even before I left India some years ago now there 
 was a line of rails not only to the foot of the Himalaya, 
 but up to the sanatorium itself, and I had the pleasure 
 
" The Mountains shall bring Peace to tlie People" 123 
 
 of an early trip on the Darjiling Steam Tramway 
 Company a name since superseded, I believe in a 
 little experimental toy train that timorously bore six 
 first-class passengers on a small seated platform, and of 
 unclassed natives as many as could sprawl on the top of 
 tho luggage, along a line of parallel rails laid down on 
 the old road to the much disconcertment of various 
 ponies and bullocks which had not yet got accustomed 
 to the innovation, and ran before the train for long 
 distances until happily shunted by some wayfarer into 
 one or other of the occasional open spaces or more 
 practicable slopes on which they could be passed. 
 
 No one can tell the relief of the mountain air to a 
 limp visitant from the plains. And the charm of the 
 scenery, ever changing but always glorious, is an almost 
 unsafe excitement, like too stimulating a diet for one 
 returning from the dead. Even the ride in the train was 
 exhilarating as we climbed upwards and ever upwards, 
 from the heavy atmosphere of the terai, up through the 
 leafy lower slopes, and now and then crept out on to a 
 bolder ridge, looking back on the way already travelled 
 and seeing short sections of the line appearing below 
 and behind us, and looking forward to where we could 
 see occasional indications of our course marked out on 
 higher levels and, as it seemed sometimes, on such un- 
 connected hills that we wondered however we could get 
 there. Oftentimes the rails were laid quite on the edge 
 of the road affording us the opportunity of looking 
 directly down steep precipices and wishing that the con- 
 structing engineers had seen fit to give an inch or two 
 
124 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 more of margin. At one place, where the old road had 
 been led round the shoulder of a hill rather too sharply 
 to allow the rails to follow it, a supplementary hill-side 
 had been built out and the rails led out on to it and 
 then, in a loop, brought back and carried by a bridge 
 over themselves and so up again on to the old road, thus 
 giving a greater length through which to divide the rise 
 to the easing of the gradient. The glittering micaceous 
 rocks through which the road was cut, the trickling of 
 the water-courses down the faces of them of which 
 water-courses we availed ourselves to water our little 
 engine through a split bamboo the beauty and delicacy 
 of the mountain flowers by the wayside increasing pro- 
 portionately with the grandeur of the general scenery as 
 we were ever reaching higher altitudes, combined to form 
 a varying panorama of unflagging interest and charm 
 which no number of journeyings to and fro upon the 
 road would be able to dissipate. 
 
 But if the ride up was exhilarating, the excursions 
 on foot or in the saddle from Darjiling itself were even 
 more so. One ride that I took to a friend's plantation 
 some fifteen miles distant, I remember not so much for 
 the loveliness of the scenery or the elasticity of the air 
 or the joyousness of the exercise, as because it gave me, 
 as I thought at the time, a less inadequate symbol of 
 eternity than I had so far met with. It is easy to 
 speak of a fifteen mile ride. You think of the starting 
 out, you mention the paltry fifteen miles, and at once 
 you think of the arrival at the end. But when one is 
 on a diminutive mountain pony that is without am- 
 
" The Mountains shall bring Peace to the People" 125 
 
 bitions and not without much ease-regarding philosophy, 
 travelling along a path that is narrow, in many places 
 rotten and unreliable and in some broken away alto- 
 gether, so that it craves wary walking, the ears vexed 
 with the sizzling conversation of the cicadas as of a 
 minor species of forest imps slightly given to sarcasm, 
 and the route buried mile after mile in innumerable 
 trees, useless as landmarks, since they are all alike on 
 the right hand and on the left, before and behind, giving 
 no clue themselves and shutting out from sight any 
 other possible clue to the knowledge of how much of 
 the way has been traversed and is behind and ho\v 
 much is yet before, one comes to believe that the way 
 has no end, and that, compared with this, the snake 
 with its tail in its mouth constitutes but a poor symbol 
 of eternity. You turn your snake round, and once in 
 every complete revolution you come to where the ex- 
 tremes meet and start again. But in such a journey as 
 this the circle seems to start again at every cicada- 
 blessed tree, and they stand as close together as circum- 
 stances will permit. 
 
 And yet the way though so apparently interminable 
 was not monotonous. It was full of natural delight 
 and irresistible fascination, not unmingled with more 
 doubtfully pleasing influences. Occasionally a certain 
 unpleasant taint in the air would most unambiguously 
 indicate a small settlement of the natives. These 
 people have put on their garments once for all in unre- 
 mernbered days. They cannot tell when they put them 
 on for it was long ago. They never take them off. 
 
126 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 When a garment becomes too thin to keep out the cold,, 
 or shows signs of wearing out, they get another and 
 place it over the old one, which is then at liberty to seek 
 its kindred dust, gradually and unseen. Then some- 
 times the pony would express his displeasure at the 
 state of the road. We would come to a steep place 
 where perhaps running water had washed away the 
 earth and left the rocks bare, slippery and of uncertain 
 stability, and he would stop short and contemplate the 
 scene. Being remonstrated with and urged onwards, 
 he would pretend a readiness to climb the steep rock- 
 face on the one side, or to plunge headlong down the 
 khud or slope on the other side, by way of intimating 
 his estimate of the path on which he was required to 
 go. Being checked from illustrating his irony in these 
 side directions, he would again contemplate the position 
 in front for a few moments, and then wisely and 
 sorrowfully shake his head as he thought of the degene- 
 racy of modern road makers. Such incidents sometimes 
 resulted in compromise, I getting off and dragging him 
 where he declined to carry me. Every now and then I 
 caught glimpses of my guide, the syce, who was mostly 
 taking short cuts through the jungle, turning up at 
 intervals however, and indeed not failing me often 
 where there was any special difficulty in the road or 
 any likelihood of a mistake in the direction. Once and 
 again I gave him the pony to lead where the road made 
 walking more pleasant than riding, and I took the 
 responsibility of a fat and podgy puppy which he was 
 carrying to a friend. 
 
" The Mountains shall Iring Peace to the People' 1 127 
 
 The journey did come to an end at last, and in the 
 midst of cordial welcomes and hearty greetings there 
 arose a loud and bitter cry. It was Master Fred. He 
 had seen the syce's pup, and refused to be comforted,, 
 because it was not for him. 
 
 During my stay among the mountains, I enjoyed the 
 hospitality of friends in three different places at some 
 distance apart, and from each house had glorious views 
 of the snowy range. How the chest expands and the 
 lungs swell in sympathy with the eyes as they are 
 drawn from forest to forest, from ridge to ridge, on and 
 on, through softening shades of colour until it seems as 
 though the verge of the earthly is passed, and, in the 
 glory of those luminous peaks bathed in the early sun- 
 light, the first glimpses of the heavenly are revealed. 
 While standing with a friend one morning, looking 
 across the intervening forest-clad summits to where 
 Kanchinjinga shone resplendent, enthroned amid the 
 " Abode of Snow," and where, to the right, the crown of 
 the lesser, but still mighty, Tchumalari towered soli- 
 tarily over the nearer mountains, I was led to ask 
 about the national boundaries. My friend explained, 
 showed where this boundary line ran and where that, 
 told me that Tchumalari was in Tibet, and, then, turning 
 towards Kanchinjinga, he indicated the limit of British 
 territory on the side of it, and added, pointing to the 
 eternal and untrodden snows of the majestic peaks, 
 " These belong to the Eajah of Sikkim." It was simply 
 a way of stating a fact in political geography, but the 
 phrase grated on my ear. Nothing of the sort was 
 
123 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 meant, but it seemed a profanation and a sacrilege. To 
 speak of those sublime snow-clad mountains that 
 appeared nothing less than the battlements of heaven, 
 or the pearly gates of the celestial city, as belonging to 
 a man a dusky little rajah it was as though the seer 
 of Patmos, when he saw the Great White Throne and 
 Him that sat on it, from Whose face the earth and 
 the heaven fled away, had had his eye caught by an 
 inscription on the base of that throne, "John Smith, 
 sculpsit." 
 
 Doubtless men can live constantly in the presence of 
 such glory till the sense of it is lost. Nay, many of the 
 native inhabitants have probably never been awakened 
 to a sense of it at all, and pursue their various callings 
 as unaffected by the sublimity of their surroundings as 
 the snakes and eagles. These hill-tribes work among 
 the tea-gardens of their hills with about as much and as 
 little interest as the inhabitants of the plains work in 
 the rice-fields. They see the eagle strike the pigeon 
 and the lizard seize the cricket, and hear the great sand 
 wasp humming contentedly as she buries green grass- 
 hoppers in the hole with her egg, and these lessons are 
 more obvious to them than would be those that a 
 Wordsworth or a Kuskin might draw from the rocks 
 and the flowers, the mountains and the clouds that 
 crown them. 
 
" He dared not mock the dervisli whirl, 
 
 The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell ; 
 God knew the heart; Devotion's pearl 
 Might sanctify the shell." 
 
 J. G. WHITTIER. My Namesake. 
 
 " The prayer of the infidels is only in error." The Koran. 
 
 " Much of the apparently harmful influence of the hills on the 
 religion of the world is nothing else than their general gift of 
 exciting the poetical and inventive faculties, in peculiarly solemn 
 tones of mind. . . Strictly speaking, we ought to consider the 
 superstitions of the hills, universally, as a form of poetry ; regret- 
 ting only that men have not yet learned how to distinguish poetry 
 from well-founded faith." RUSKIN. 
 
 " In silence, in the Eternal Temple let him worship, if there be 
 no fit word." CARLYLE. Past and Present. 
 
 "The dew is on the lotus! rise, great sun! 
 
 And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave. 
 Om mani padme hum, the sunrise comes ! 
 The dewdrop slips into the shining sea! 
 
 SIR E. ARNOLD. Light of Asia. 
 
( 131 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 
 PKAYEK-FLAGS, OR THE TREES OF THE LAW. 
 
 TEA YELLING on the Himalayas, one will frequently see 
 lifted up high above the little squat huts of the people, 
 objects which at a distance look like the blades of 
 immense carving knives, the handles of which are 
 planted firmly in the ground. These are tall bamboos 
 with narrow strips of silk running up the entire height, 
 tapering off to a point at the top and inscribed 
 with prayers which the wind is supposed to repeat 
 every time it flaps the flag. In these same districts one 
 finds also prayer- wheels, turned some by hand and some 
 by water, with other precatory devices of Lamaism. 
 
 The people who pray thus do not bear very high 
 characters. Buddhism, as reflected in Arnold's Light 
 of Asia, is lovely, but its modern developments are not, 
 and it is a problem of some interest that is before 
 us when we place side by side the facts that the 
 teaching of Gautama is pure enough to command the 
 admiration of Christendom, and that Buddhism in 
 its living idolatrous forms is vile enough to earn 
 the contempt of heathendom. It presents itself in 
 different aspects under different conditions. But how- 
 ever widely the Buddhists of Bhotan, Ceylon, Burmah, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 Siam, Japan and China, may differ in other things they 
 seem to agree in being as unlike their founder as they 
 can possibly be. Here, in China, for instance, where I 
 write these lines, no word of deeper opprobrium can 
 be found wherewith to brand a man than the term 
 " Buddhist Priest." t When you have called him that 
 you have exhausted your repertory of insult. 
 
 At the time I first saw these liturgical appliances, 
 however, I knew less of the Buddhists than I do now, 
 and when I beheld their devotions my spirit was stirred 
 in me more favourably than would perhaps be the 
 case were I to revisit those mountain slopes. 
 
 It is easy to laugh at the superstition involved in 
 such things, but it is scarcely wise. Superstition in 
 prayer does not depend on the form but on the spirit. 
 Amid the grandeur of that scenery, where everything 
 is calculated to suggest a pantheistic creed, those flags 
 seem to bear witness to man's seeking after the living 
 God, and to lift up his petitions before Him, nay more, 
 they force the very winds of heaven to become his 
 intercessors. It is true that the words inscribed are not 
 in the form of direct supplication. They contain the 
 magic phrase : " Om mani padme hum " " The dew is 
 on the lotus " with which Sir E. Arnold has made us 
 familiar in his poem, and to which Professor Ehys 
 Davids attaches the meaning, The Self-Creative Force is 
 in the Kosmos. But what form of prayer could more 
 suitably present a helpless man before the mighty God 
 with Whom he instinctively felt kinship, and from 
 Whom he sought for blessing, but blessing according to 
 
Prayer-Flags, or The Trees of the Law. 133 
 
 the Divine wisdom rather than according to human 
 ignorance ? Have we not read with sympathy of 
 the boy who was found on his knees in a meadow 
 repeating the alphabet, and who, on being questioned 
 as to what he was doing, said that he was praying. He 
 knew he needed to receive, he knew God was able to 
 give, but for what he ought to ask he knew not, and so 
 bending before God he presented the alphabet, trusting 
 that from those letters God would frame for him right 
 petitions. Is not this an illustration of the words : 
 " The Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ; for we know not 
 how to pray as we ought " ? Is it not in accord wit! \ 
 the highest form of prayer ever heard : " Thy will be 
 done " ? And are not these flags these " trees of the 
 law," raised heavenwards as signs of human need with 
 the sacred words that speak of the Divine control of the 
 universe, possible expressions of the same feeling ? 
 
 If it be said that the flags are flapping on their bam- 
 boos all the day long while the men who placed them 
 there are otherwise occupied, and all night long while 
 they are unconscious, is that necessarily a condemnation 
 of the method ? Have we not a parallel to the planting 
 of these flag-staffs in the admittedly pious prayer of the 
 Eoundhead captain on the eve of battle, " Lord, there 
 is hot work before me and I may perchance forget 
 Thee ; but however much I forget Thee, do not Thou, O 
 Lord, forget me " ? Was not that a prayer-flag, bravely 
 planted that morning to flutter its petition all the day 
 in the ear of God ? What is defective in these prayers 
 is not special to these mountain slopes, it is nothing more 
 or less than what is defective in too many prayers else- 
 
134 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 where. The superstitious character must be admitted, 
 but it is a superstitious character which they share with 
 perhaps our own petitions. Because this " form of 
 prayer " is not usual in European countries, Europeans 
 are able to judge it in a dispassionate way, and they 
 condemn it, as they suppose, on the ground of its 
 mechanical nature. But there is nothing really more 
 mechanical in turning a phrase round on a wheel or 
 inscribing it on a fold of silk than there is in sounding 
 it through the mechanical apparatus formed by the 
 human larynx, vocal chords, teeth, tongue and lips. 
 This charge of being mechanical may as easily be 
 brought against prayers in European lands whether 
 liturgical or extemporaneous as against these vexillic 
 or rotary prayers. All expressed prayer must be 
 mechanical, and is in danger of becoming formal. Yet 
 the spirit that feels after God calls for expression. It 
 is when the form takes the place of the spirit which it 
 should express that we have superstition. The phari- 
 sees of old were condemned because they thought to be 
 heard for their much speaking with their vocal organs ; 
 the Buddhists of to-day lie under the identical condem- 
 nation because they think they shall be heard for their 
 much turning of wheels and fluttering of silk. But 
 just as that much speaking of the pharisee the 
 mechanism of which can be described in physiological 
 terms might have been made the reverent expression 
 of continuous, sincere and acceptable prayer, his repe- 
 titions not being " vain," so these inscriptions on flags 
 and wheels in Tibet, Nipal and Bhotan may be, and in 
 some cases perhaps are, the outward expression of a 
 
Prayer-Flags, or The Trees of the Law. 135 
 
 piety sincere and deep, of a prayer in the heart as un- 
 ceasing as the day-long flattering of the silk in the 
 breeze. As long as the heart is in the act, whatever the 
 agent may be wind, water, or the human hand there 
 is real prayer, and no more can be said for the worship 
 of the most decorous of congregations with the stateliest 
 liturgy; or for the extemporaneous utterances of the 
 most demonstrative in our " Christian lands." 
 
 But this is the theoretically possible. The fact remains 
 Buddhists are not the holy and devout saints that we 
 could wish. One thing that may perhaps help to ex- 
 plain their debased character, though perhaps as largely 
 the effect as the cause of it, is this : Their worship at its 
 best, that is, when most sincere, is not a worship of love 
 or hope, but of dread. They have no such conception 
 of the love of God as the Christian has in the reve- 
 lations of Jesus Christ ; they have no conception of the 
 capacity of God to satisfy the affections of the heart ; 
 they have only a conception of His ability to hurt. 
 Their religious acts, therefore, are rather with a view to 
 ward off evil than in the hope of receiving good, and 
 the much fluttering of their flags is the expression of 
 their sense of the need of constant watchfulness imposed 
 oil them by the supposed unfriendly attitude of spiritual 
 powers. Such an idea paralyses the faculty of worship 
 and renders impossible the development of the perfected 
 humanity that grows out of a true conception of God. 
 
 But in this again, we who have had Christian training 
 may far more profitably correct our own faults than 
 condemn theirs, for not all among us have yet reached 
 the stage in which perfect love has cast out fear. 
 
" Confusion now hath made his masterpiece ! " 
 
 SHAKSPEEE. Macbeth. 
 
 "Let not my weak tongue falter 
 In telling of this goodly company, 
 Of their old piety, and of their glee." 
 
 KEATS. Endymion. 
 
 "0, 'twas a din to fright a monster's ear, 
 To make an earthquake! Sure, it was the roar 
 Of a whole herd of lions ! " SHAKSPERE. Tempest. 
 
 "Rout on rout, 
 Confusion worse confounded." 
 
 MILTON. Paradise Lost. 
 
 " Mercy o' me, what a multitude are here ! 
 They grow still too; from all parts they are coming, 
 As if we kept a fair here ! " SHAKSPERE. Henry VIII. 
 
 "... raptures cheer 
 On some high festival of once a year, 
 In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire." 
 
 GOLDSMITH. The Traveller. 
 
( 137 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MOHAKREM. 
 
 WHEN Hamlet charged his father's ghost with making 
 night hideous, he was hardly fair to the ghost. Strange 
 as was the apparition, there was nothing hideous about 
 it ; it came in " that fair and warlike form in which 
 the majesty of buried Denmark did sometimes march." 
 Hamlet should have witnessed a Moharrem, and then 
 he might have coined his expressive phrase with a clear 
 conscience. 
 
 This Mohammedan festival occupies some nine or 
 ten days, the earlier of which pass without attracting 
 much attention, but on the concluding night the fun 
 rages fast and furious to the confusing of all one's ideas 
 of funeral propriety, for be it remembered that what 
 is then witnessed is the obsequies of two deceased 
 heroes, " mirth in funeral " with a vengeance. These 
 heroes were brothers, grandsons of Mohammed, named 
 respectively Hasan and Hosein, who both a not un- 
 common fate with ancient heroes suffered violent 
 deaths and laid thereby the foundation of eternal funeral 
 rites. 
 
 Although it was the rival claims of their family, and 
 
138 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 of the house of Ommiyah to the kaliphate, that split 
 the Mohammedan world into the two main sects of 
 Shiites and Sonnites, both are prepared to do them 
 honour. But in this the union ends. Both sects are 
 represented in Calcutta, the one by the Arabs and 
 kindred immigrants, the other by the natives of India 
 whose conversion from Hinduism dates from the sword 
 of the Mohammedan conquest. Both celebrate the 
 Moharrem, but not together, and not with identical 
 rites. Each party holds the observances of the other 
 in contempt. 
 
 " You know our Sonnites, hateful dogs ! 
 Whom every pious Shiite flogs 
 Or longs to flog 'tis true they pray 
 To God, but in an ill-bred way, 
 "With neither arms, nor legs, nor faces 
 Stuck in their right canonic places." 
 
 By a simple reversing of the names these words would 
 as accurately express the feeling of the other party. 
 
 It was on a Saturday that I saw something of the 
 ceremonies of the Arabs in their quarter in Chitpore 
 Eoad, but the following night revealed the scene that I 
 would have liked to commend to the Danish prince. 
 I had been spending an hour or two with a friend after 
 church service and was returning home about eleven 
 o'clock. As I walked along Chowringhee, all was still 
 and dark. There was a threatening in the sky of a pos- 
 sible storm, but for the present it was nursing its wrath 
 and calm prevailed. Stillness was overhead, and quiet in 
 the street. When I reached Dharmatola corner- " the 
 
The Moharrem. 139 
 
 scene was changed," as one of our own poets lias said. 
 This street looked like a furnace-scene in the Black 
 Country, flanked on either side by the whitewashed 
 dwellings of the City of Palaces. 
 
 An annual sight this, yet ever fresh in attraction ; 
 verandahs, tops of godowns, and roofs of houses 
 exhibited crowded and picturesque groups of spectators, 
 while the street itself was thronged. Down the 
 centre of the roadway, adding temporarily to the 
 architectural beauties of the city, was a long procession 
 of innumerable tazeas, as they were called. I say 
 innumerable advisedly, for I tried to number them and 
 gave up in despair. These tazeas were, I was led to 
 understand, the tombstones of Hasan andHosein. They 
 certainly offered every kind of accommodation that 
 could be desiderated for the corpses of these heroes. 
 All were of one material bamboo frames covered with 
 coloured, silvered, and gilded paper, and adorned with 
 little glass lamps. These lamps, with true Bengali 
 economy of labour, were mostly left unlighted, "because," 
 as was remarked to me, " the wind may begin to blow 
 presently and they would then go out; what, then, 
 would be the use of lighting them ? " Under this unity 
 of material there was the greatest diversity of design. 
 The architect of each mausoleum seemed to have got 
 his instructions from a different ghost. Some few were 
 quite imposing structures, built on the general outline 
 of a candle extinguisher, but with that outline broken 
 by storied tiers and ornithological projections consisting 
 usually of golden peacocks of aldermanic proportions, 
 
140 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 whose slender necks terminated in human heads with 
 feminine features, each surmounted by a Chinese man- 
 darin's hat. The tops of many of these " extinguishers " 
 towered up to the level of the windows in the upper 
 rooms of the houses. Adorned with lamp-glasses, if 
 not with lamps, silvered or gilded with the sparkling 
 tinsel so dear to the native heart, glorious in the blaz- 
 ing torchlight, it was no wonder that their appearance 
 called forth the most exuberant expressions of delight. 
 Mingled with these in the same stately procession were 
 other structures reminding one forcibly of the juvenile 
 efforts to reproduce on one's earliest slate the comforts 
 and stability of a farmhouse. The poverty of design, 
 the lack of finish, and withal, an uncertainty of outline, 
 forced them into an unfavourable comparison with the 
 more ambitious edifices. Between these two extremes, 
 and marshalled among them, were to be seen tazeas of 
 all degrees of size and beauty as the processional grave- 
 yard wended its way along. 
 
 There were no riderless horses led in this cortege as 
 in that of the Arabs, which might be partly accounted 
 for by the fact that a large proportion of the celebrants 
 were gari- wallas, whose daily occupation of swearing at 
 and thwacking such horses as they were accustomed to 
 harness in their shafts had probably blunted their 
 admiration for the noble quadruped, and led them to 
 hold him in so poor repute as to render them incapable 
 of believing that their honoured Hosein ever bestrode 
 a horse. One ingenious designer indeed exhibited a 
 partial exception to this feeling, for he sent forth on 
 
The Moharrem. 141 
 
 the heads of his men a colossal silvered figure con- 
 structed as nearly into the shape of a horse as the 
 refractory nature of bamboo would allow, and on this 
 creature he mounted his tombstone like a howdah upon 
 the back of an elephant. 
 
 The necropolitan procession pursued it course with 
 becoming slowness. Beyond this there was nothing that 
 an Englishman would consider funereal about it. As 
 has been intimated, it was illuminated by torches, and 
 they were many and bright. Each consisted of a strong 
 staff, around the top of which had been wound with no 
 sparing hand a rich supply of cloths and rags till the 
 outline of a full foliaged tree was suggested, and one 
 could imagine Birnam Wood once more to be marching 
 on Dunsinane. Whence people whose sartorial neces- 
 sities are so trivial and whose wardrobes are so meagre, 
 could provide themselves with so large a stock of cloths 
 remains a mystery. Suffice it to say that the provision 
 was made. These rags copiously anointed with oil and 
 set on fire made splendid torches, and, lest, during the 
 long hours of pilgrimage, there should be any slackening 
 of their lurid glory, bullock-hakris laden with further 
 supplies of rags and oil were admitted into the pro- 
 cession. 
 
 Certain athletes excited great admiration by their 
 performances with long poles ha ring an overgrown rag- 
 mop flaming on each extremity. They twisted them 
 round and round in all planes until they appeared to 
 be dancing in a globe of gauzy light a pleasant 
 spectacle to all but to those nearest, into whose eyes, 
 
142 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 by the law of centrifugal forces, the constantly eman- 
 cipated fragments of burning rag directed themselves. 
 Nevertheless the worst stung did not dream of com- 
 plaining. It was a holiday. There are, I believe, 
 natives of few lands who can submit to inconvenience 
 and pain more good-naturedly and philosophically 
 than these dusky folks when they choose. Let it 
 be a question of the executing of some wish of a 
 European master, and expressions of inability fill up 
 about one half of their dictionary. But when it is 
 a matter of pleasing themselves, nothing seems im- 
 possible, their energy and their good humour seem 
 alike exhaustless. 
 
 Beside the torches, and depending on them for effect, 
 were large semi-circular screens with a diameter of 
 about six feet. These were carried by men evidently 
 under orders not to stand still a minute, but to dance 
 up and down and to twirl their half-plates around as 
 far as their endurance justified. I though at first that 
 these screens were intended for peacock's tails spread 
 out into ] exaggerated fans. I saw afterwards that 
 they were intended as receptacles for the shields of 
 the mighty vilely cast away. To each were affixed a 
 number of shields, sometimes seven, sometimes eight, 
 and sometimes nine. Some of these were black, some 
 silvered, others gilt. The spaces between the shields 
 were mostly filled up with small steel plates like those 
 of a coat of mail. The circumference was edged with 
 fringe, and down the centre hung long tinselled tassels. 
 Their sheen as they were danced in the torch-light was 
 
Tlie Moharrem. 143 
 
 rather effective ; but the motion was ridiculously 
 suggestive of the jerky movements of the zoology of a 
 Christmas pantomime. 
 
 The propriety of silence is another subject on which 
 Mohammedan and European ideas concerning the right 
 ordering of a funeral are found to be scarcely in accord. 
 So far from silence being solemnly observed, this pro- 
 cession was unutterably noisy. One element in the 
 noise was the ringing of bells, certain individuals 
 being provided with what looked like clumsily made 
 bows, in which the bow-string consisted of a chain of 
 bells. Holding these things over their heads, with one 
 hand on the bow and the other on the chain, the lucky 
 possessors of these instruments exhilarated themselves 
 by bending and shaking them, dancing the while in 
 the most grotesque manner to the music they thus 
 called forth. How riper experience enables us to 
 smile at past agonies ! I once lived in a village where 
 some foolish man of philanthropic disposition presented 
 every boy in the largest Sunday School in the place 
 with a penny whistle. I remember the horror with 
 which I took my walks abroad, knowing well the kind 
 of song-bird to be found perched on every five-barred 
 gate. But, after the Moharrem, methinks I could hear 
 those strains and think less unkindly of the indiscreet 
 philanthropist than, it must be confessed, I did then. 
 There is some use in going to India if it be no 
 other than to reconcile one to tin-whistles. But this 
 is moralising. To return. The voice of the inevitable 
 tom-tom was of course heard, "the vile squealing of 
 
144 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the wry-necked fife," and the supplementary efforts of 
 all manner of other musical monstrosities. The vocal 
 din, however, resounding from all parts well-nigh 
 drowned the instrumental. Sometimes the predomi- 
 nating sound would be that of a kind of funeral chant 
 consisting mainly in the repetition of the names of the 
 deceased, at other times there would be nothing dis- 
 tinguishable amidst the loud spontaneous shouting of 
 the crowd, more frequently the ear would be caught 
 by the sharp battle-cries that were uttered to the 
 accompaniment of the clashing of the swords of the 
 combatants. For each tazea was preceded by a number 
 of men armed with swords apparently of metal swathed 
 in cloths, and as often as the tazea stopped the torch- 
 bearers swinging round their torches cleared a space in 
 front of it in which the swordsmen executed some of 
 the most approved stage-fencing. With fierce coun- 
 tenances and complicated posturings they hammered 
 away at each other's weapons in a manner calculated 
 to reflect great credit on the manufacturers, for, as far 
 I saw, not one of them got broken. This was to recall 
 the bloody conflct in which Hosein fell, poor Hasan 
 had previously fallen the victim of a wife's treachery. 
 
 In addition to this fancy fencing, there was another 
 kind of sword-exercise which did command an approach 
 to temporary silence. The weapon in this case would 
 almost have merited David's eulogium on the sword of 
 Goliath : " There is none like that." It was about six 
 feet long and made of bamboo. The handle was 
 formed by cutting away a portion for about a foot of its 
 
The Moharrem. 145 
 
 length, leaving a half cylinder ; the blade by cutting 
 away all but a flat slice. This flat blade was silvered 
 over, the fore-arm of the swordsman was tied into the 
 half bamboo as into splints, and all was ready. Like 
 a youngster playing the hero with his grandfather's 
 stick, the valiant man gesticulated round the circle he 
 had cleared for himself by the terror of his weapon, 
 moving with a vibratory action of the limbs added to 
 the general action of a horse with the springhalt, the 
 bamboo blade pointing forward, quivering flashingly in 
 the torch-light. After a little of this performance, 
 tragic in the possibilities suggested by the savage mien 
 and the threatening aspect, and which was watched with 
 breathless interest; all at once the long blade was 
 flashing and flying in 'all directions till its form was 
 entirely lost in a glittering mist, he who wielded it 
 meanwhile attitudinising in a way that would have 
 called forth rapturous applause from the spectators, 
 had any there conceived themselves as such. But all 
 seemed to think that even the mere walking about 
 constituted them joint-performers, so, though there was 
 evident approval, no applause was expressed. 
 
 Thus with their tazeas and their flags, with their 
 half-moon shield-racks, their tom-toms and their 
 swords, do these Mussulmans invade the quiet hours 
 of the Sunday night, 
 
 "Huzzin' an' maazin' the blessed [streets] wi* the divil's oan 
 team." 
 
 But midnight brings relief; slow as is its course, the 
 
 L 
 
146 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 procession at last draws after it its hindmost tail, the 
 blaze of the last torch passes by, the din of the bells, 
 the gongs, and the tom-toms dies away in the distance, 
 until, in the words of the medical poet, 
 
 "Silence, like a poultice, comes 
 To heal the wounds of sound." 
 
THE MAN OF HAN 
 
 I, 2 
 
"There's no art 
 To find the mind's construction in the face." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. Macbeth. 
 
 " The greater number of nations, as of men, are only impressible 
 in their youth ; they become incorrigible as they grow old. When 
 once customs have been established and prejudices have taken root 
 it is both dangerous and futile to try to reform them ; the people 
 cannot endure even that their ills should be touched with a view of 
 amendment, like those stupid and faint-hearted invalids who tremble 
 at the sight of a doctor." KOUSSEAU. 
 
 "A dog, an outcast kindly treat, 
 And so shalt thou be blest in turn." 
 
 Mahdbhdrata. 
 
 " * Your guest, Eabbi Zimri, must read the treatise of the learned 
 Shimei of Damascus on " Effecting Impossibilities." ' 
 
 " ' That is a work ! ' exclaimed Zimri. 
 
 " ' I never slept for three nights after reading that work/ said 
 Kabbi Maimon. 'It contains twelve thousand five hundred and 
 thirty-seven quotations from the Pentateuch, and not a single 
 original observation.' 
 
 " ' There were giants in those days,' said Zimri. ' We are 
 children now.' 
 
 " * The first chapter makes equal sense read backward or for- 
 ward,' continued Eabbi Maimon. 
 
 " * Ichabod ! ' exclaimed Rabbi Zimri. ' 
 
 " * And the initial letter of each section is a cabalistical type of 
 a king of Judah ! ' 
 
 " ' The temple will yet be built,' said Rabbi Zimri." 
 
 LORD BEACONSFIELD. The Wondrous Tale of Alroy. 
 
( 149 ) 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE MUNDANE CELESTIAL. 
 
 THE Chinaman has been compelled to open his country 
 to barbarians as he calls us when, in politeness, he 
 refrains from using the more natural term, foreign 
 devils but he has not opened to us his heart. He is 
 ready to sell us his teas and his silks, but not to give 
 us his confidence and his love, and we, so long as this 
 is so, shall have to be content with guesses at the 
 hidden workings of his mind, in which guesses it be- 
 hoves us to guard against the suspicion, which this 
 very reserve on his part tends to generate, that, like 
 the antediluvians of old, "Every imagination of the 
 thoughts of his heart is only evil continually." As 
 Mr. Froude says, "One never knows exactly what is 
 inside a Chinaman." 
 
 It is easy to credit the Celestial with goodness to 
 which he can lay no claim or to suspect him of 
 evil of which he is guiltless. We take note of him 
 and observe certain facts from which, did the object 
 of our observation belong to any other nationality, we 
 should unhesitatingly infer certain other facts ; we see 
 certain characteristics which, in any one else, would 
 justify us in assuming the absence of certain other 
 
150 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 characteristics. But inference and assumption are 
 misplaced here. Amid all their unlikenesses, the 
 diverse types of men who dwell in the "Celestial 
 Empire," and own allegiance to the "Lord of all 
 under Heaven" are uniformly and liberally endowed 
 with a gift, peculiarly their own, of embracing, if not 
 harmonising, the incongruous and the contradictory. 
 Bunyan's Mr. Facing Both Ways is outdone. These 
 sons of Han can not only face, they can go, both ways. 
 They can swallow and maintain contradictory pro- 
 positions, avow contradictory opinions and do con- 
 tradictory deeds with a facility that is little less than 
 miraculous. " The Three Religions," as they are called, 
 have struggled together with excommunicating zeal 
 and exterminating purpose. To the simple-minded 
 foreigner, their teachings appear antagonistic and 
 mutually destructive, but the Chinaman of to-day 
 accepts them equally and is at once a Confucianist, a 
 Taoist and a Buddhist " three single gentlemen rolled 
 into one." He prides himself on being a follower of 
 " the Master," bows indiscriminately before Taoist and 
 Buddhist idols, and fees with equal anxiety Taoist and 
 Buddhist priests, rejoicing in the generally accepted 
 formula, which no one has the hardihood to dispute : 
 " The Three Eeligions are One." That this is a genuine 
 capacity for incongruities, and not simply the easy- 
 going indifference to all religions that allows a man to 
 bow before every idol because he has faith in none, 
 may be judged the more likely from the fact that it is 
 not in theological creed, or even in religious worship 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 151 
 
 alone that this gift is illustrated. Archdeacon Gray 
 tells us, " The moral character of the Chinese is a book 
 written in strange letters which are more complex and 
 difficult for one of another race, religion and language 
 to decipher than their singularly compounded word- 
 symbols. In the same individual, virtues and vices 
 apparently incompatible, are placed side by side. 
 Meekness, gentleness, docility, industry, contentment, 
 cheerfulness, obedience to superiors, dutifulness to 
 parents, and reverence for the aged, are in one and 
 the same person the companions of insincerity, lying, 
 flattery, treachery, cruelty, ingratitude, avarice, and 
 distrust of others." 
 
 It is not surprising that concerning such a people we 
 should have had contradictory accounts given us by 
 different writers whose opportunities of observation and 
 whose desire to arrive at a just judgment have been 
 equal. If honest men could, contradict each other 
 regarding the colour of a shield which had only two 
 sides, how much more may they be expected to do so 
 regarding the heart and mind of a Chinaman ? This 
 one cannot forget how he has been the victim of his 
 lies and extortions; he condemns him accordingly. 
 That one is rendered forgetful of the ways that are 
 dark by the smile that is so child-like and bland, the 
 manner that is so gracious and the honorific titles with 
 which he so naturally and without the slightest appear- 
 ance of artificiality addresses him ; and his praise 
 accordingly is as loud as is the other's condemna- 
 tion. This one sees the filthiness of his homes and his 
 
152 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 habits, perceives the pollution of even the country air, 
 and suffers from the almost intolerable stench of his 
 cities; he turns from him with disgust. That one 
 recalls his early civilisation, his anticipation of the 
 West in the art of printing, the invention of gunpowder 
 and the discovery of the properties of the lode-stone ; 
 and he attributes to foreign bigotry all inability to 
 recognise his worth. This one watches the procedure 
 of his courts and the administration of his laws, notes 
 the venality of the magistrate, the torture inflicted on 
 the accused, and the barbarities to which the condemned 
 are subjected ; his indignation boils and he brands him 
 as a savage. That one reads his wonderful literature, 
 learns how high in honour he holds his sages and 
 moralists, nay more, how reverently he regards even 
 the pages on which are impressed their sentences 
 written in those characters more " mystic, wonderful " 
 than was the white samite of Sir Bedivere's vision, so 
 that, as a work of merit, he sends men through the town 
 to collect waste printed paper from the tradesmen, at 
 whose hands it might otherwise suffer the indignity of 
 the kitchen fire, and to gather from the streets all scraps 
 which the still less scrupulous may have cast away, and 
 on which perchance the priceless maxims of some sage 
 are in danger of being trampled in the mire, that they 
 may burn them in the sacred altar flames of the temple 
 courts ; and, learning all this, he is prepared to enter 
 the lists forthwith as a champion of China the land of 
 a culture and civilisation as noble as ancient. This one 
 sees the superstitious practices in the actual worship of 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 153 
 
 the common people, or learns about their fear of spirits 
 and their bondage to geomancers and priests who made 
 profit out of their ignorant terrors ; he pities them with 
 a pity allied to contempt. That one reads about the 
 annual sacrifices of the emperor the Huang-ti to 
 the supreme and invisible god Shang-ti--at the Altar 
 of Heaven and the Altar of Earth, where no idolatrous 
 accessories degrade the adoration paid by the sovereign 
 as the representative of his people ; and he acknow- 
 ledges a reverent awe which silences criticism in the 
 presence of a nation's worship. It may be assumed, I 
 think, that the judgment of the student who, not 
 having lived in China, has formed his opinion of 
 the country from English translations of its classical 
 literature will be likely to err on the side of excessive 
 praise. He has read, but he has not seen or smelt. 
 On the other hand, it may be as readily granted that 
 the judgment of foreign residents in China is likely to 
 err on the side of excessive blame. For every one who 
 lives there is necessarily brought into contact with the 
 uncultured classes, only a few come to know also the 
 scholarly and the cultured, and, though not every one 
 who has to do with the educated Chinese will learn to 
 esteem them highly, as not every one who has to be 
 served by cooks and coachmen will come to despise 
 them, it may be taken for granted that the judgment of 
 the many who see the country chiefly as expressed in 
 the life and conduct of persons of a rank in life inferior 
 to their own, will be less favourable than that of the 
 few who can judge also by what they see in a social 
 
154 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 rank equal or superior to that in which they themselves 
 move. 
 
 One thing that ought to prepossess us with a kindly 
 feeling towards the Chinaman is his love of nature. 
 Whatever doubts may be entertained by the sceptical 
 as to his claim to priority in the arts and sciences, in 
 such matters as gunpowder and bells, there is little 
 room to doubt that his eyes were opened to the charms 
 of mountains, dales, forests, and lakes long before ours. 
 We have had to wait till comparatively recent days for 
 our poets of nature. He has boasted them for genera- 
 tions. His appreciation of natural beauty often receives 
 illustration as we climb among the hills or wander 
 through the glens. In the secluded nook, in the spot 
 which the artist would seize upon for his " bit," at the 
 turn in the path where we instinctively stop to gaze 
 upon the view, we shall have evidence that the native 
 eye has seen and the native heart felt the charm before 
 us. Just where the beauty or grandeur of the scene 
 has stayed our feet, we shall probably find the ruins of 
 a shrine or little temple that tell how in years long 
 gone, Nature revealed her glory to the open eye and 
 made the heart feel the place to be sacred. 
 
 Within the limits of his own garden, the Chinaman 
 indulges this love of scenery, and builds up wonderful 
 rockworks overhanging pools bright with gold-fish 
 or lotus blooms. But it must be admitted that a 
 certain taste for the unnatural and the grotesque seems 
 always ready to discover itself. These rockeries are 
 seldom kept within the limits of the merely picturesque. 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 155 
 
 They are supposed to represent mighty mountains, as 
 the ponds beneath them the broad expanse of ocean- 
 like lakes, but no mountains, under the weathering of 
 our earthly atmosphere with its heats and frosts, could 
 present such exaggerated crags and precipices as are 
 here imaged forth. These are caricatures. In the fish 
 below them, the same taste is seen. Though there will 
 be perhaps a number of ordinary golden carp, the 
 creatures in which chief delight is taken are the podgy 
 little gold-fish with eyes protruding far out of their 
 heads like telescopes, and with tails so amplified and so 
 lengthened as to appear to be positive inconveniences 
 to their possessors, useless incumbrances that have to- 
 be towed after them. 
 
 We in the West are not altogether free from this 
 desire to improve upon nature, we breed pouters and 
 fantails, clip our poodles, trim the ears of our terriers, 
 and dock the tails of our spaniels ; but the Celestial 
 excels us all. In his national emblem he has given 
 freedom to his imagination and has taught Nature the 
 kind of animal she ought to have made ; and when, in 
 accordance with the custom of other nations, he devised 
 a flag which his newly-launched fleet should bear, he 
 caused his impossible but imperial dragon to struggle 
 on a field of imperial yellow in ever unsuccessful en- 
 deavour to seize and devour a blood-red sun. 
 
 The shrubs too suffer from the same perversion of 
 taste, which, while it does not run riot and distort 
 everything, is seldom altogether absent. As you enter 
 a garden you see green junks and pagodas, horses and 
 
156 Turlans and Taih. 
 
 cranes. The ingenuity and patience with which most 
 unpromising plants have been twisted, stunted and 
 clipped, " cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in " to these 
 several forms are worthy of praise and worthy also of 
 a nobler enterprise. 
 
 To this his instinctive desire to perfect Nature's 
 defective work may perhaps be attributed the extra- 
 ordinary custom of foot- binding, which renders so large 
 a proportion of his women more helpless than they 
 need be. " Golden Lilies " he calls these mutilated feet, 
 and he likens the awkward waddle of the crippled 
 woman to the swaying of the willow in the wind his 
 fondness for plants asserting itself in his phrases and 
 terms, though their application may occasionally seem 
 to suggest an exceedingly imperfect sense of their 
 true beauty and grace. Thus, while there can be no 
 question as to the honour he pays in going to them for 
 a designation to set forth the dignity of his native 
 country, which he calls " The Flowery Land," the com- 
 pliment seems more equivocal when he selects them 
 also as a name for so loathsome a disease as the small- 
 pox, which he calls " The Heavenly Flowers." This 
 however may be a name given with the same thought- 
 ful and propitiating anxiety as that with which the 
 Greeks of old respectfully referred to the Furies as the 
 Eumenides, in which case the compliment to the flowers 
 may be considered sufficiently complete, for a China- 
 man's flattery is not doled out in half measures and 
 the terms and figures he uses will be those to which he 
 attaches the highest value. He may cramp the flowers 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 157 
 
 of his garden and the feet of his girls, but he will not 
 cramp his own tongue. The freedom and the breadth 
 of nature are in his words ; he regards it as a sign of 
 our defective culture that we restrain ourselves in 
 speech and say little, if anything, more or less than we 
 mean. Like the Hindu, he has learned to wonder at 
 and, in business, to see the convenience of, an English- 
 man's average accuracy and truthfulness. Neverthe- 
 less, as an artist, he is compelled to regard our speech 
 as brutal in its directness. It is photographic and 
 exact, but it offends by its lack of atmosphere. For 
 example, " No admittance except on business," is simple 
 and unambiguous. Perhaps " Trespassers will be pro- 
 secuted," is even simpler and more decided. To the 
 Celestial these notices are unmannerly and much too 
 absolute. He would post up such an intimation as 
 " Persons of leisure are not invited to enter." But in 
 the event of trespass, the offending person of leisure 
 would probably prefer to be dealt with by the unman- 
 nerly European. The Celestial is polite in his phrase 
 but he is savage in his penalties. He is grandiloquent 
 and opens his mouth wide, but I doubt if magnanimity,, 
 largeness of soul, openness of spirit, can be claimed for 
 him as his special virtue by even his most ardent 
 admirers. 
 
 Not out of harmony with the flower- clipping and 
 foot-binding is the method of mental discipline and 
 culture which in China corresponds with education 
 elsewhere. The mind too must be clipped and bound, 
 made to grow in a certain direction and brought into the 
 
158 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 required fashion and limits. The educational system, 
 as it is called, of China, has been loudly praised. Not 
 only does the Chinaman regard it as perfect and point 
 to it proudly as the crowning illustration of his 
 country's superiority over every other land on the face 
 of the earth, but foreigners have very largely joined the 
 chorus of laudation and expatiated on the severity of 
 the tests in the examination halls excluding rigidly 
 all incapacity, on the open gates of eligibility through 
 which the poorest may enter and win the distinction lie 
 merits, subject to no disadvantage on the ground of his 
 poverty, and on the still more remarkable fact that the 
 avenue to official life and the path of promotion under 
 the Dragon-throne lie through these examination halls, 
 so that, in theory at any rate with the exception of 
 the members of certain trades and callings which are 
 disqualified all are eligible, not only to compete at 
 these examinations, but if proved competent by success, 
 eligible also for the most responsible offices under 
 government. It is a special feature, which has often 
 been enlarged upon to the credit of the Celestial em- 
 pire, that it regards tested personal ability rather than 
 hereditary rank or inherited wealth as the ground on 
 which appointments should be made and promotion 
 granted. There is no other country in which the 
 student and the scholar hold so relatively honourable a 
 position and are so highly esteemed as here. Yet not 
 a few regard it as a misapplication of the term to speak 
 of " education " in connection with these studies and 
 examinations. Our Western idea of education is the 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 159 
 
 drawing out, exercising and developing whatever of 
 natural aptitudes the student may possess, the stim- 
 ulating of individuality and, if possible, of original 
 effort ; and so education is a means of progress. But 
 the Chinese educationalist would deprecate originality, 
 development, progress above all things. His system of 
 mental discipline does not educate, it represses, turning 
 the thought backward, running all minds into a 
 common mould and that of an ancient pattern. It is 
 undoubtedly a serious matter for a girl to let her feet 
 grow to their natural proportions. She must expect to 
 be looked down upon with contempt and to hear the 
 scornful feminine titter as the question is asked, " Do 
 you see those two boats going by ? " But even more 
 serious would it be for a candidate in the examination 
 to be suspected of letting his mind grow naturally. His 
 prospect of -passing would be ruined were he suspected 
 of thinking for himself, having an opinion of his own, 
 or writing anything that was not in the approved con- 
 ventional form. The subject of the examinations, and 
 therefore of the student's studies, is the national clas- 
 sical literature. The student's aim is to acquire a 
 perfect mastery of this literature, to know every sen- 
 tence that occurs anywhere in it so familiarly as to 
 recognise any two or three consecutive characters that 
 may be quoted, and to recall the context without re- 
 quiring the quotation of the remainder of the passage. 
 Volume after volume he has committed to memory in 
 a manner practically inconceivable by us ; he becomes 
 so saturated with these old books as to have gained a 
 
160 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 facility in writing treatises and poems upon them, or 
 upon any sentiment taken from them, in which each 
 sentence shall be moulded on the model of, or contain 
 a veiled reference to, some passage in them that any 
 other scholar will at once recall, which passage will 
 furnish him with a key to the meaning that is as much 
 suggested as expressed, while the people that know 
 not the classics, recognising no reference and reading 
 simply the characters that are written, wonder at and 
 admire its obvious unintelligibility. Thoughts beyond 
 the teachings of the sages of old, expressions not war- 
 ranted by their example and precedent are inadmissible. 
 Therefore it is very largely the case that the more a 
 Chinaman is " educated," the more he is turned back- 
 ward to the study of a dead past, fettered and rendered 
 incapable of participating in or sympathising with the 
 life and progress of the present. The past is made the 
 standard of utility and possibility the limits of which 
 none need hope to exceed. Centuries ago a certain 
 engineering scheme was urged on the emperor Wu-ti ; 
 his answer was that had the scheme been a feasible one 
 it would have been carried out by their ancestors. 
 Though I believe he was ultimately persuaded to 
 undertake a work not executed by his predecessors, the 
 spirit of his answer survives and will survive until the 
 " educational system " of China is rendered educative. 
 
 There are indeed signs which suggest hope of even 
 this. Perhaps the first direct evidence of much value 
 was that afforded at the Provincial Examination at 
 Wuchang in the year 1885, or 1886, I forget which. 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 161 
 
 Certain officials in that city had recognised the pos- 
 sibility of wisdom existing outside the ordinary studies 
 of Chinese scholars. They had been especially im- 
 pressed with the value of mathematics as taught in the 
 West, and had established a monthly examination in 
 this subject. A competent examiner was found in the 
 person of a Nanking graduate, and examinees were 
 induced to come forward by the offer of a prize of four 
 taels to the candidate who headed the list. Notwith- 
 standing the trifling value of this prize, it drew some- 
 thing like a hundred needy scholars to these monthly 
 examinations to be tested in algebra, geometry and 
 elementary mechanics. This in itself was a fact of 
 value as an indication of awakening. But clearer in- 
 dication was to follow. Wuchang is a provincial city, 
 and when the next provincial examinations were held, 
 to which only those who had taken the degree of siu- 
 tsai were eligible, thirteen thousand candidates pre- 
 sented themselves to contend for the sixty-one chu-jen 
 degrees that were to be given. In the third part of 
 that examination in which the more general questions 
 are set, the competing siu-tsai were asked to give a 
 comparison between certain ancient and the modern 
 mathematical methods. This was a question which 
 scarcely any of them could answer, and the excitement 
 which it aroused was not allayed when it was subse- 
 quently found that the examiners had evidently at- 
 tached considerable value to it, since among the names 
 of the sixty-one successful candidates appeared that of 
 the student who had won the highest distinction in 
 
 M 
 
162 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the monthly mathematical examinations though it was 
 generally understood that his literary essays were too 
 weak to have justified any expectation of his passing 
 through their merit. A friend, whose " teacher " was 
 among the unsuccessful candidates, wrote me at the time 
 that the said teacher was highly disgusted that pure and 
 soul-elevating literature should have been to any degree 
 set aside for studies so useless and puerile as mathe- 
 matics. My friend offered to coach him up in the subject 
 for the next examination, but he was too conservative 
 to accept the offer. Courteously but firmly he declined. 
 He would rather fail again as a student of his native 
 literature, than win success by means of foreign in- 
 novations. 
 
 Corroborative testimony of China's awakening from 
 sleep comes to us from the hospital in Tientsin under . 
 the care of Dr. Mackenzie, of the London Mission. 
 The facts are shortly these : In the year 1881 a 
 number of young Chinamen whom an Educational 
 Commission had sent to America for the purpose of 
 acquiring a general English education were suddenly 
 recalled after residence in the States extending in some 
 instances to a period of ten years. They were hurried 
 home, not because they were wanted, but because rumours 
 were rife that they were becoming denationalised, losing 
 their affection for their own Flowery Land and learning 
 to love too well the Land of the Flowery Flag.* Some 
 little difficulty therefore was experienced on their 
 return in deciding what was to be done with them. 
 
 * The Chinese interpret the stars in the American flag as flowers. 
 
TJie Mundane Celestial 163 
 
 Dr. Mackenzie who enjoyed the friendship and confi- 
 dence of His Excellency the Viceroy of Chihli the 
 famous Li Hung Chang in whose family he had 
 Tendered valuable professional service, offered to under- 
 take the medical training of some of these youths if 
 His Excellency would place them entirely under his 
 charge. The viceroy agreed to the doctor's proposal 
 and a small medical school has since been an integral 
 part of Dr. Mackenzie's hospital. The first class of 
 students to enter on the course of training here con- 
 sisted of eight of these young Chinamen from America. 
 They began their studies in the end of 1881. In 1883 
 a second class, consisting of students who had been 
 trained in English in Hong Kong, and in the next year 
 a third class, also from the Southern British colony, 
 were added to the school. The training is as far as 
 possible assimilated to that of the medical schools in 
 Great Britain. Dr. Mackenzie has received help in 
 teaching from other medical missionaries and from the 
 surgeons of the American and British navies who have 
 been resident during the winter months in Tientsin. 
 The examiners have been medical officers of these 
 navies and of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, 
 or such medical missionaries as have been in the 
 neighbourhood and available when examinations were 
 due. Of the eight composing the first class, six com- 
 pleted their course and passed their examinations to 
 the satisfaction of the board of examiners. They 
 received diplomas in Chinese and English which were 
 not only signed by the examiners but were stamped 
 
 M 2 
 
164 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 with the government seal. Moreover, through the 
 influence of the viceroy Li, these students received 
 civil rank, and were enrolled in the ninth degree, the 
 head student receiving a crystal button and honorary 
 fifth rank, the other five receiving white buttons and 
 honorary sixth rank. Thus this examination in a 
 Western science and art, conducted by foreigners, has 
 received a government recognition which classes it 
 with the great examinations as u path to office and 
 social position. 
 
 This is more than the most sanguine would have 
 dreamed of a few years ago. But it is evidence of 
 enlightenment and a readiness to accept reforms 
 within a very narrow circle. The viceroy of Chihli 
 is a great man, but he is not China. No amount 
 of official recognition can give to these foreign-trained 
 doctors the confidence of the sick and diseased in a 
 purely native city or secure to them a remunerative 
 private practice. The acupuncture and the monstrous 
 and nauseous doses of the native practitioners will hold 
 the favour of this conservative race for many years to 
 come. Did not Mencius quote with evident approval 
 from the Book of History, " If medicine do not distress 
 the patient, it will not cure his sickness " ? and if 
 Mencius was not a physician, what of that ? He was a 
 sage, which is more. In the treaty ports, where there 
 are a goodly number of Chinese who have lost their 
 distrust of foreigners and learned to recognise the 
 superiority of many things which foreigners have 
 intorduced, there may be a chance of a foreign-trained 
 
The Mundane Celestial 165 
 
 native doctor getting a living, but his prospect as a 
 private practitioner in China anywhere outside these few 
 towns and settlements is not a cheerful one. His only 
 hope is in the official appointment, which the power of 
 the viceroy and the government seal on his diploma 
 are sufficient to insure him. 
 
 But these can no more insure his being appreciated in 
 the camp or on board a gunboat than in a country village. 
 Dr. Mackenzie, in the China Medical Missionary Journal 
 for September, 1887, shows how the real difficulties of 
 the new scheme seriously commence when the school 
 career is completed. Of these six young men who thus 
 received diplomas and rank, the head of the class was 
 appointed to the school and hospital and is, of course, in 
 a congenial atmosphere in assisting his former tutor in 
 the instruction of students or the treatment of patients. 
 One of the others is appointed to a new military college 
 in Tientsin, where he has the medical oversight of about 
 two hundred students. His position is a good one, 
 though it appears that his salary is not in proportion to 
 it. A third is surgeon on board a cruiser but has the 
 dissatisfaction of seeing officers and engineers, many of 
 them formerly fellow-students with him in the United 
 States, advanced in rank and pay while his own position 
 is hopelessly without prospect of improvement. Two 
 others were also in the navy one having been pre- 
 viously sent into the army and transferred but have 
 obtained leave of absence from which they appear to 
 have no intention of returning. Their relations with 
 their commanding officers became strained as soon as 
 
166 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 their stock of drugs supplied on leaving the hospital 
 was exhausted and application had to be made for a 
 fresh supply. Both of these men, Dr. Mackenzie 
 believes, would prefer to continue the practice of the 
 art in which they have been trained, yet both for the 
 present have felt compelled to relinquish it. 
 
 The career of the last of the six seems to have been 
 somewhat more fortunate, since he has been able to 
 continue at his post. He "was placed," I give the 
 account in Dr. Mackenzie's own words " at the service 
 of General Chow, who has the command of a body of 
 troops, said to number fifteen thousand, encamped some 
 twenty miles from Tientsin. Soon after he had joined 
 the general's staff an interesting though curious, and 
 possibly unique experience awaited him. At the 
 central camp, where the general's headquarters were 
 located, there resided a native doctor who professed to 
 treat upon foreign principles, but his practice fell sadly 
 short of his profession, indeed it was of the most 
 elementary kind, consisting in the administration of a 
 few simple drugs backed up by much skill in rhetoric. 
 He had the faculty of adapting his medicines to the 
 theoretic notions of his patients, which is in China a 
 great gift. 
 
 " The question arose, should the newly-arrived man be 
 retained at headquarters, and the old occupant of the 
 post be removed to another camp, or should the new- 
 comer be placed elsewhere ? A brilliant idea originated 
 in the mind of the great man. He himself, aided by 
 the other red-buttoned generals under his command, 
 
The Mundane Celestial 167 
 
 would sit as a sort of court of inquiry and investigate 
 into the respective abilities of each. The order went 
 forth, and on a fixed day, under a canvas pavilion 
 erected for the occasion, the generals and colonels, 
 attended by their respective staffs and even a colonel 
 requires a staff in China assembled in full parapher- 
 nalia, and seated themselves in order of precedence. 
 The two unfortunate medicos were then called in, and 
 before this august assembly and in presence of each 
 other, underwent an examination, the court putting the 
 questions and deciding the verdict. Each candidate 
 for the favour of the court was expected to show all he 
 knew, but considering that one of the parties was an 
 astute man of the world of fifty odd summers, equally 
 conversant with Chinese etiquette and with Chinese ideas 
 of anatomy and disease, while the other had not long 
 entered upon man's estate, whose knowledge of human 
 nature was drawn from the stand-point of the American 
 youth of the nineteenth century, while his anatomical 
 and medical learning, though agreeing with that of the 
 Western schools, differed in toto from the innate know- 
 ledge of the examiners, the result may readily be 
 imagined. The elder was adjudged the victor and was 
 retained at his post, while the younger was placed at a 
 small cavalry camp some distance away. The ex- 
 aminers, scarcely one of whom could read or write, as 
 became men who have to wield the sword rather than 
 the pen, returned to their quarters satisfied, no doubt, 
 that they had upheld the dignity of their country. 
 This surgeon is, however, comfortably situated, having 
 
168 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 better allowances than any of his fellow-students, and 
 complaining chiefly that he has too little to do." In 
 another paper on the same subject, Dr. Mackenzie 
 sums up thus : " As for the army and navy, China 
 needs fully trained surgeons, with such status and pay 
 as will attract capable men into their ranks, but they 
 should be formed into a district corps and not remain 
 dependent upon the caprice of the commanding officer. 
 It seems, however, as though many other reforms must 
 come about before this one is ripe." 
 
 Those who are hopeful of seeing China one day free 
 herself from her rusted fetters and enter upon the path 
 of progress, may find encouragement in the officially 
 recognised medical school at Tientsin and in so un- 
 expected and unconventional a question as that put to 
 the students at Wuchang, but they will do well to 
 temper hope with patience. Every effort of the spirit 
 of emancipation makes discovery of the strength of the 
 bonds it would break. The most useless and injurious 
 practices and customs, if they have been handed down 
 from the past, will find advocates in a land where it is 
 accounted akin to impiety to suggest that the usages 
 of the fathers are susceptible of improvement. The 
 Chinese reverence for old age invests even ancient 
 abuses with a sacred character. 
 
 A natural result of the narrowing, cramping system 
 of intellectual training is the arrogance that is born of 
 learned ignorance, the pride with which the Celestial 
 regards his own country, and the contempt for other 
 nations which he scarcely deigns to disguise. His is 
 
The Mundane Celestial 169 
 
 the Celestial Empire, and his sovereign is the Son of 
 Heaven. His modern geography locates Kussia, France, 
 Germany and England along with Japan and Corea, in 
 a circle round his native land the Empire of the 
 Centre, the Middle Kingdom like the rim round a 
 plate. His older geography found no place for them 
 at all. They are the lands of barbarians with whom it 
 is little worth his while to acquaint himself, of whose 
 very existence he would gladly still be as ignorant as 
 were his fathers. It is true that Confucius said : " All 
 within the Four Seas are brethren," a phrase which, 
 without a very clear idea of what seas are meant, his 
 followers to-day understand to be a rhetorical ex- 
 pression for the whole world. Still the saying has 
 been robbed of its apparent catholicity by the in- 
 veterate habit of the Chinese mind of regarding the 
 whole world as co-extensive with the Chinese empire. 
 And though China can no longer seriously regard 
 herself as the sole and only nation under heaven since 
 other nations have, in unmannerly fashion truly, forced 
 themselves on her attention, she still affects to despise 
 if she cannot ignore them. Mencius has given a 
 sentence which provides the modern scholar with an 
 apt quotation : " I have heard," says he, " of men using 
 the ways of our great land to reform barbarians, but I 
 have not yet heard of any being reformed by bar- 
 barians." This utterance of the sage was supposed to 
 receive a striking illustration when Dr. James Legge, 
 the eminent sinologist, was appointed to the chair of 
 Chinese in the university of Oxford. " Dr. Legge," said 
 
170 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the gratified Celestials, " is a man of a great and 
 impartial mind. He came out to China, tinder the 
 auspices of the London Missionary Society, to teach us 
 the doctrines of Christianity, but he studied our 
 literature, and, becoming convinced by his study, he 
 has now returned to his native land to teach English- 
 men the doctrines of Confucius." 
 
 In the matter of mechanical arts, engineering skill 
 or military discipline and power, there are indeed many 
 individuals whose eyes have been opened to see their 
 own inferiority. But these enlightened ones form a 
 small proportion of China's millions by the great 
 majority of whom the delusions of old are unfalteringly 
 held to the nursing of self-satisfaction. They are not 
 ready to believe even, certainly not to admit, that any 
 nation can be superior to their own in any particular. 
 In the days when foreigners, while allowed to build 
 their factories in a certain prescribed spot in the 
 suburbs of Canton, were forbidden to enter within the 
 walls of the city proper, the wonders of that unseen 
 region were the Chinaman's reply to whatever was told 
 or shown him. Tell him of some European building of 
 noble design ; with unmoved face he would reply : 
 " Have got allee same inisidee citee." Show him some 
 mechanism of intricate workmanship and ingenious- 
 device, some picture of bold conception and masterly 
 execution it mattered not what the invariable reply,. 
 " Have got allee same inisidee citee," excused the tribute 
 of admiration. Archdeacon Gray, if I remember rightly, 
 tells how on the arrival at Canton of the first steamboat 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 171 
 
 that reached that port, a Chinese gentleman was taken 
 on board, was shown through her engine room, receiving 
 explanation of the various parts of her machinery, and 
 was told of her independence of favouring gales, her 
 speed and in how short a time she had traversed the 
 thousands of miles that lay between them and Europe. 
 She was a wonder to the Europeans, but the Chinaman 
 regarded all with a calm and unmoved countenance,, 
 and presently came the familiar words : " Have got 
 allee same inisidee citee." That reply serves no longer - r 
 since then, the gates of that city have been thrown 
 open to the foreigner, its narrow streets profaned by 
 his tread, and its wonders sought out by his untiring 
 curiosity. But the arrogance and self-complacency 
 remain, blinding the understanding to the most ob- 
 vious evidence. Ministers and ambassadors, whom 
 foreign governments have forced upon China at th& 
 point of the bayonet, are regarded as servants in the 
 pay of the emperor; treaty rights, which foreigners 
 have wrung from China by force of arms, are spoken of 
 as the expression of the emperor's spontaneous pity, 
 excited by their wretched and destitute condition, and 
 every invading army is understood to be a humble 
 einbassage bearing tribute. Mindful of the way in 
 which the officials direct the popular interpretation of 
 events, the allied powers of France and England, when 
 they took Peking in 1860, were not content to insist 
 that the treaties they compelled China to sign should 
 be inserted in the Peking Gazette which the unlearned 
 people could not read ; they determined to leave behind 
 
172 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 them evidence intelligible to all both of their having 
 been there, and of their having been there on a hostile 
 mission. With this end in view, they burned down 
 the emperor's magnificent summer palace at Yuen 
 Ming Yuen, his favourite resort, full of the most costly 
 treasures of art. But all has been in vain. Though 
 the ruins of that paradise still lie at Yuen Ming Yuen, 
 it is commonly reported in China, I believe, to this 
 day that in the year 1860, a large and important 
 mission brought offerings and tribute from the distant 
 barbarian countries of France and England and was 
 allowed by the gracious condescension of the Lord, of all 
 under Heaven to enter the city of Peking. 
 
 In speaking of the Chinese bearing towards the 
 foreigner, I have spoken of their national pride. At 
 the same time, it may be doubted whether there is, 
 strictly speaking, any such thing as patriotism among 
 them. The spirit that shuts off their sympathy from 
 subjects of other countries necessarily tends to paralyse 
 it even within their own borders. For within the 
 boundaries of their empire are included a diversity of 
 men and manners, customs and dialects. Foreigners, 
 more especially in former days, when means of com- 
 munication were fewer than now, often fell into errors 
 through failing to bear this in mind. Thus the Kev. 
 W. C. Milne, who had travelled through the provinces 
 of Chehkiang, Kiangsi, and Kuangtung and seen not 
 .a little of Chinese life during a lengthened residence 
 in the country, undertakes to disprove the charge of 
 infanticide, which is often brought against the Chinese, 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 173 
 
 and a strong point in his argument is this : It is said 
 that in Peking carts are sent through the streets in the 
 early morning to gather the dead bodies of the infants 
 cast out during the night, which, he contends, must be 
 false, because every one who has seen the streets of a 
 Chinese city knows that they are too narrow for a cart 
 to go along them. Now this seems conclusive, but Mr. 
 Milne failed to remember that his acquaintance, say, 
 with Canton, gave him no authority in speaking of 
 Peking. The principal streets in the former are too 
 narrow for a cart to traverse, but the streets of the 
 latter would be accounted wide even in a European 
 capital. Nor is it foreigners alone who make mistakes 
 of this kind. The Chinamen themselves often know 
 nothing beyond the customs of their own province, and 
 yet assume that, knowing that one province, they know 
 all China. Thus I remember hearing a Shanghai man 
 inveighing loudly against the outrageous misrepresen- 
 tations which foreigners are guilty of in speaking 
 about his native land, and he cited, as a most flagrant 
 instance of the injustice which had been done hi& 
 countrymen, the fact that in more than one book he had 
 found it stated that Chinamen ate rats ! Could con- 
 temptuous and malicious fabrication further go? He 
 challenged any one to bring forward a single case of a 
 Chinaman doing anything of the kind. Here again is a 
 forgetfulness of the fact that no one province is the 
 whole of China. It is perfectly true that rats are not 
 an article of diet in Kiangsu, but if our Shanghai man 
 had gone to Canton he could have seen, as I have, 
 
174 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 hundreds of these " small deer " exposed for sale in the 
 provision dealers' shops. Natives of the Kiangsu pro- 
 vince and those of the Kuangtung province dress in the 
 same blue cotton and wear the same black queue, but 
 they are practically foreigners to each other, speaking 
 mutually unintelligible languages, and capable of the 
 most crass ignorance of each other possible. Speak to 
 a man of Shanghai concerning a man from the more 
 southern province as his fellow-countryman, and you 
 will not infrequently be met by a look of surprise and 
 the reply : " He no b'long Chinaman, he b'long foleign 
 man b'long Canton man." 
 
 A larger illustration of the lack of sympathy between 
 the inhabitants of the different provinces which go to 
 make up the one empire of China, of the absence of any 
 common feeling of patriotism, was furnished during the 
 late troubles between France and China, by the apathy 
 of the Chinese in all districts not attacked or threatened 
 in regard to the movements of the French. Not only 
 were the ignorant agriculturists of the interior indifferent 
 to what was transpiring at the coast, but, owing probably 
 to a large extent to the system of independent vice- 
 royalties, the mandarins in one province seemed 
 scarcely to interest themselves in the struggles taking 
 place in another. While the Southern fleet was being 
 sunk in the river Min, the well-equipped Northern 
 fleet remained in masterly inactivity in the gulf of 
 Pechili, and that though the Frenchmen had put 
 themselves in the most convenient and tempting of 
 traps. What was happening at Foochow was, without 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 175 
 
 doubt, of gravest concern to the viceroy responsible for 
 the well-being of the Fuhkien province, but the viceroy 
 of Chihli could hardly be expected to concern himself 
 with affairs so far off. The patriotism of a Chinaman 
 is limited by his own province ; it is easy to narrow it 
 still more and bound it by the limits of his own village. 
 In fact, it is not difficult to complete the contracting 
 process till all sign of patriotism is lost in an un- 
 blushing selfishness. Selfishness is by no means 
 confined to the Chinaman, nor does every Chinaman 
 belong to the school of the philosopher Yang Choo, 
 whose teaching of the principle, " Each one for 
 himself," so roused the indignation of Mencius, as to 
 compel him in one~ passage to exclaim : " Though by 
 plucking out one hair he might have benefited all 
 under heaven, he would not have done it." At the 
 same time, considerations of self are allowed to control 
 the conduct of the average Chinamen in about as 
 candid a manner as may be observed anywhere. 
 Though not a very religious person, he does engage in 
 religious ceremonial. But it will never be found that 
 he is stirred by the joy of worship ; he can always give 
 a reason for his devotional exercise, sufficient to satisfy 
 the most irreligiously selfish questioner, in the fear of 
 some evil he wishes to ward off or in the hope of some 
 advantage he wishes to gain. He has the credit of 
 being charitable, and indeed the number of outstretched 
 palms into which he drops a cash in the course of a day 
 is very considerable, while foundling hospitals and the 
 like in every city further attest the deservedness of this 
 
176 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 reputation. But almsgiving and benevolence are popular 
 methods of " making merit." Every single cash that is- 
 given is a wise investment, and when the beggar gives 
 the gentleman the opportunity of charity, and therefore 
 of having so much merit put down to his account in the 
 books from which his next birth will be determined, he 
 is the gentleman's benefactor rather than the gentleman 
 his by as much as merit is of more value than cash. 
 To give to a Buddhist mendicant is even more meri- 
 torious, and, for this reason, when the said mendicant 
 takes his begging bowl in hand and starts upon his- 
 rounds, the rule of his order forbids him to ask for 
 anything, to look as though he wished for anything, 
 or to thank any one for what is put into his bowl. He 
 must accept it as one conferring rather than receiving 
 a favour. 
 
 The freedom from simple promptings of benevolence in 
 benevolent deeds, and the patent intention of making 
 them serve the interest of the benefactor more than of 
 the beneficiary, or, strictly speaking, of making the bene- 
 factor the beneficiary, may be seen most strikingly 
 when the object of them belongs to the animal kingdom. 
 The teaching of Gautama was as full of tender pity for 
 birds and beasts, fishes and insects as for men. Sir 
 Edwin Arnold tells how, when he returned to his royal 
 home " to teach the law in hearing of his own/' the 
 whole universe hung upon his words. 
 
 "The^ birds and beasts and creeping things' tis writ 
 Had sense of Buddha's vast-embracing love, 
 And took the promise of his piteous speech ; 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 177 
 
 So that their lives prisoned in shape of ape, 
 Tiger, or deer, shagged bear, jackal, or wolf, 
 Foul-feeding kite, pearled dove, or peacock gemmed, 
 Squat toad, or speckled serpent, lizard, bat ; 
 Yea, or of fish fanning the river waves 
 Touched meekly at the skirts of brotherhood 
 With man, who hath less innocence than these, 
 And in mute gladness knew their bondage broke 
 Whilst Buddha spake these things before the king." 
 
 The master's living principles of unselfish sympathy 
 and compassion have come down to his disciples of the 
 present day in the form of rigid rules for the winning 
 of merit for one's personal advantage. The master's pity 
 for captive bird or beast would lead him to release it. 
 To-day there is quite a business going on at certain 
 festivals in the emancipation of sparrows which have 
 been specially caught for the sake of giving the bene- 
 volent an opportunity of letting them go again at so 
 much a head. Merit is laid up thus in rich store, but 
 the birds enjoy an equivocal advantage. One festival 
 day I saw a woman in the settlement of Shanghai 
 carrying a fish most carefully by a string that had 
 been so fastened to its dorsal fin, that it hung in 
 the horizontal position natural to it in the water. 
 Noticing her special care of it, I was led to follow and 
 see what she was going to do. She took it to the 
 cathedral compound, held it over a pond that is in the 
 grounds, cut the string and let it fall into the water. 
 Here was a fish that had apparently been netted out 
 of one piece of water that a woman might win merit by 
 setting it free in another, though it is just possible 
 
 K 
 
178 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 in this case, since the pond was within the com- 
 pound of a religious building, that the broad-minded 
 Buddhist woman supposed herself placing the fish in a 
 place of special safety, and even of special sanctity. 
 
 The most bare-faced making of spiritual capital out of 
 unnecessary and useless " kindness " to animals, that I 
 ever came upon was in Japan, but so Chinese an artifice 
 was it that it surely must have been introduced from 
 the mainland. At the end of a bridge an old woman 
 kept a number of pigeons in a large cage. Devout 
 Buddhists, pitying their sad captivity, bought their 
 freedom. The birds, received from the old lady, were 
 taken to the centre of the bridge and released, when 
 after a longer or shorter flight they, as pigeons do all 
 over the world, returned to the pigeon-house, some of 
 them flying thither direct from the hands of the pious 
 emancipators. Thus one pigeon might be bought and 
 freed over and over again, as fast, indeed, as com- 
 passionate zeal demanded, to the accumulating of merit 
 and, therefore, to the much future profit of those to 
 whom it afforded repeated opportunity of doing " a 
 good deed in a naughty world." 
 
 The methods which the Chinaman adopts to defend 
 himself against the cold of winter are not without a 
 certain value as aids to the reading of his mind. We 
 put wooden floors in the rooms of our houses for 
 others to walk on as well as ourselves, we even 
 carpet them to make walking on them more pleasant, 
 and in winter time we provide a fire which is intended 
 to warm the whole room arid all who are in it. A 
 
The Mundane Celestial. 179 
 
 Chinaman renders himself independent of floors and 
 carpets : he puts a two-inch sole on to his shoe, and thus 
 makes sure of having a piece of floor under his own 
 feet. In winter time he piles garment over garment 
 upon his own back, slips little fur-lined cases over his 
 ears, and envelopes his head and neck in a monstrous 
 hood. If driven by the cold to the use of fuel, he does 
 not light a fire for the sake of the family at large, but 
 puts his red-hot charcoal balls into the metal vessel he 
 uses as a footstool, and into the smaller one which he 
 carries in his capacious sleeves for the warming of his 
 hands. Of course, the rest of the family can do the 
 same ; and perhaps, on the whole, the Chinese method 
 is as effective against the cold as the English, though 
 no one with our national restless activity could consent 
 to be thus wrapped up into helplessness even for the 
 sake of being kept warm. A Chinaman naturally 
 portly is a sight in the cold season, while a little child 
 clad in his winter clothes becomes a most comical 
 object. He cannot get his arms down to his sides, they 
 stick out horizontally, and should he fall, he is as 
 incapable of getting up again as an overturned turtle or 
 a mislaid sheep. However, he is Chinese, not English, 
 so he wastes no strength in vain strugglings, he lies where 
 he falls, calmly and contentedly, with his four limbs 
 in mid-air, till some passer by thinks it worth while 
 to pick him up. In the end, by the Chinese method in 
 China, and by the English method in England, the 
 comfort of the entire family is secured, yet it is surely 
 not uninteresting to notice how in the latter case the 
 
 N 2 
 
180 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 object is attained by the common interest of the whole 
 being arranged for from the beginning, while in the 
 former case it is attained by each independently taking 
 care of himself. 
 
 From the Chinese stand-point much is to be said 
 for the Chinese method, but this very fact is instructive 
 as to the stand-point, and the method is not without 
 suggestiveness, not merely in regard to the Celestial's 
 deliberateness, his freedom from hurry and undue 
 activity, but also in regard to the personal centre of 
 his thought. 
 
"The flowers open, and lo! another year." 
 
 WEI YING-WUH. A.D. 702-795. 
 
 " The birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be preter- 
 mitted by king or cobbler." C. LAMB. 
 
 "New Year is the universal holiday. There are other fete 
 
 days But it is only on New Year's Day that the 350,000,000 
 
 of his Celestial Majesty's subjects give themselves up to. mutual 
 congratulations, unreserved festivity, and washing." 
 
 W. C. HUNTER. Bits of Old China. 
 
( 183 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 CHINESE NEW YEAR. 
 
 CHINESE New Year is a great time with the Chinaman, 
 and the foreigner is not indifferent to it. A man, 
 having been kept awake night after night for about a 
 week by the noise of crackers let off in honour of 
 the approaching day, will be likely to take an interest 
 in it, though whether friendly or otherwise need not 
 be explained. 
 
 A happy season is this for creditors, since it is a time 
 for the general squaring up of accounts on earth and in 
 heaven. A Chinaman will sacrifice a good deal rather 
 than fail to set himself right with his earthly creditors 
 at the New Year, and thus it becomes a time of debt- 
 paying, a kind of Festival of St. Xmas Bills. And now 
 also the " Kitchen god " of every house, who has for a 
 whole year watched the domestic life of the family, has 
 ascended to give in his record according to a most 
 tenacious memory, not unaffected, as the poor earth- 
 dwellers hope, by the special court and attention which 
 he has received during the week or so before. 
 
 It is a season also for the interchange of courtesy and 
 the exhibition of friendliness. On some cards so to 
 
184 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 call them as indicating their purpose, they being, to 
 describe them more exactly, slips of thin red paper 
 which I found on the table of the friend with whom 
 I was staying during my first Chinese New Year, I 
 noticed that there were some bold characters on the 
 front, and some more modest characters on the back. 
 The bolder characters were the name of a mandarin. 
 The smaller characters on the other side corresponded to 
 the printed matter one finds on the back of railway 
 tickets explaining the conditions on which they are 
 issued, and were to the effect that the card had been left 
 by the great man as an act of New Year's condescension, 
 but it was to be distinctly understood that it was not 
 to be used as representing more than this annually 
 blossoming courtesy. Whether this be a custom be- 
 tween Chinamen and Chinamen or whether it is a 
 custom forced upon Chinamen in relation to foreigners, 
 as a means of showing politeness and at the same time 
 keeping the hated foreigner at a distance, I have not 
 been able to learn. 
 
 At Soochow, on the testimony of a friend long resi- 
 dent there, this annual courtesy takes a stranger form, 
 and one more inconvenient to the recipient of it. The 
 magistrate sends round his servant with his card ac- 
 companied by a long list of the presents which he offers 
 you in token of his high regard. The list enumerates 
 choice wines, luscious fruits, and game in the richest 
 profusion. But you would be foolish to look for the 
 realities corresponding to the list. You express your 
 thanks for the honour done in so highly rating your 
 
Chinese New Year. 185 
 
 worth, and for the munificent gift : you hand a dollar to 
 the coolie who has brought the card and is supposed to 
 have brought the present, and return the catalogue to 
 be used at the next house. Verily the heathen Chinee 
 is peculiar. 
 
 The preparatory night explosions and the numerous 
 tales about the New Year customs which I had heard 
 made me anxious, when the day really dawned, to see 
 something of it within the city walls where, rather than 
 in the foreign concessions, I presumed the distinctively 
 Chinese element would be most perfectly seen. Un- 
 fortunately for me the principal ceremonies take place 
 in the forenoon and even early in the morning, and I 
 was not able to get away till after tiffin. But then, 
 under the able guidance of a missionary of between 
 thirty and forty years' acquaintance with Shanghai, I 
 set out. As a preliminary initiation into Chinese life, 
 we went into an opium-den in the French concession. 
 Such establishments were not in those days tolerated 
 in the native city, and the Chinamen were wont to 
 affect a keen sense of horror at the morals of foreigners 
 who license and supervise opium, and other even more 
 infamous, " dens," which they profess to forbid entirely. 
 Tacts seem rather against the Chinaman when he tries 
 to claim for his brothers and sisters a high moral 
 standard. None the less, it is true that disreputable 
 people who want to carry on disreputable businesses- 
 flock from the various native cities into Shanghai, 
 where they know the extent of the municipal taxes 
 and licenses, while the amount of squeeze which is- 
 
186 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 the price of official blindness to their doings in their own 
 cities is more difficult to calculate. 
 
 To see the drowsy, stupid look on the faces of the 
 opium-smokers mostly men, though a few women 
 were included in the number no one would imagine 
 that Chinamen w r ere capable of making any noise at all. 
 Evidence however had been already forthcoming to 
 prove not only that they could make, but that they 
 could enjoy it. 
 
 We entered the city by the New North Gate, a gate 
 made by the French during the time they were in pos- 
 session, or rather a gate made at the same place at 
 which the French had made one ; for the French mode 
 of constructing a city portal met with too little favour 
 in Chinese minds for them to allow their work to 
 remain. The French idea was to open out a wide space 
 in the wall and approach it by a broad street. Not so 
 the Chinese. Why, the veriest numskull among them 
 could see that, with a wide street leading at once 
 through an open gateway, especially on the north, all 
 the good luck of the city would flow out into the ad- 
 journing foreign settlement. As soon, therefore, as the 
 French had gone, the city fathers proceeded to recon- 
 struct the gateway according to the orthodox method, 
 and you now enter by a passage labyrinthine, narrow, 
 filthy. The city's good luck will scarcely find its way 
 out under the present arrangement. 
 
 Safely inside, we threaded our way along the narrow 
 alley-ways, that are dignified by the name of streets 
 because there were none wider, among our celestial 
 
Chinese New Year. 187 
 
 fellow travellers, who did this day appear somewhat 
 like troops of the shining ones. For it was New Year's 
 Day, and silks and satins and furs which had slept 
 peacefully for a whole year in the pawn-shops were 
 enjoying their once-a-year airing. Gray, radiant and 
 festive appeared cook and boy, compradore and coolie, 
 arrayed in flowing robes with white-soled shoes and 
 up-turned hats. The beggars too appeared to be 
 honouring the day with special attention to personal 
 appearance, being more carefully unwashed and pitiable 
 looking than usual, as well as in fuller force. The 
 " streets " were thronged, and where they ran along by 
 the side of an indescribable creek a kind of cloaca 
 magna it required one's wits to be awake to avoid 
 being crowded into it, than which a more horrible fate 
 can with difficulty be conceived. 
 
 In every available open space, especially at the 
 "tea-gardens," dramatic legend spinners, and punch-and- 
 judy establishments were attracting gaping audiences, 
 while fortune-telling folks were plying a busy trade, 
 deciding destinies for the coming year. Numerous 
 stalls were improvised along the ways for the sale of 
 sweetmeats, and blank walls were utilised by dealers 
 in pictures which Polonius might have described as 
 " tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, 
 historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical- 
 historical-pastoral." The subjects of these works of 
 art were mostly scenes of well-known dramas. My 
 stopping to buy some of them was a matter of great 
 interest. The crowd thickened around to see what th 
 
188 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 foreign devil wanted and to what extent the celestial 
 picture dealer would be able to fleece him, for, however 
 much the literary Chinaman affects the nil admirari, 
 the average Chinamen of the streets behave like verit- 
 able children, ready to be amused with the merest trifle, 
 and making no attempts to hide their curiosity, and the 
 cheating of a foreigner by a Chinaman, though a diver- 
 sion both frequent and old, never seems to lose its 
 charm. 
 
 The pictures I purchased were wortli study, but 
 transcend my powers of description. If men whose 
 physiology is normal are fearfully and wonderfully made, 
 what shall we say of men to whom must be added 
 tigers and horses concerning whose construction the 
 most learned physiologist and the most skilled anatomist 
 would have to admit that they stood on a level of 
 ignorance with the little ragamuffins who mould mud- 
 creatures in the gutters ? 
 
 We passed on to the temple of the guardian god of 
 the city. It covers a good deal of ground, but it has 
 nothing imposing about its architectural proportions. 
 For its detail it might challenge admiration, were it 
 not that this is largely obliterated by dirt. The 
 softening, unifying haze that one finds in a forest of 
 larch-firs, where the fine needles, too small to be seen 
 separately, spread a gauzy veil of green over the whole, 
 toning down and even wiping out distinctions, is 
 reproduced, though in a less pleasing manner, in a 
 Chinese temple. Clouds of dust and columns of in- 
 cense-smoke, with grease of candle, have done their 
 
CJiinese New Year. 189 
 
 part; and over lamps and banners, tablets and gods 
 there is one pervading grimy haze. You are reminded 
 of the store of some dealer in useless rubbish, among 
 whose stock no hand, prompted by the requirements of 
 a customer, disturbs the accumulating dust. It matters 
 not that the skin of the god was once of the brightest 
 gilt : " How is the gold become dim, how is the most 
 fine gold changed ? " It matters not that the costume 
 of his runners was once radiant in colour, the blue and 
 the vermilion have long since given place to drabs and 
 blacks. 
 
 In front of the temple is an open square in which 
 stands a large upright stone-slab covered by inscrip- 
 tions, and enclosed in a wooden framework supporting 
 a tiled roof over it. There is also a large bronze altar 
 for the burning of the mock-sycee or paper-money. 
 On this New Year's Day it was covered with the ashes 
 of burnt paper, representing untold wealth, though 
 probably purchased for a paltry trifle. Fresh gifts 
 were being thrown into this altar as we looked on. 
 Passing from the square under the roof of the temple 
 proper, one first enters into a kind of lobby, on either 
 side of which stand four large and unhandsome figures. 
 In front of each of these is a jar for incense sticks, and 
 before each of them paper-money was being burnt as 
 in the altar in the open court. For doorkeepers and 
 such these eight are supposed to be are important 
 persons in China. Whether or no one is to gain admis- 
 sion to the presence of the master of a house depends 
 on the favour of the keeper of the door : and, admission 
 
190 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 being granted, the kind of reception one gets depends 
 on the character that has been already given by that 
 official. It would almost seem as though a magistrate 
 leaves to his porters the duty of catechising any who 
 come to him for redress of grievances, and, since the 
 primary aim of a Chinese magistrate is not to dispense 
 justice but to " squeeze," perhaps the porter is more 
 competent to deal with the matter than would at first 
 appear. He, at any rate, is less hampered than his 
 master, whose dignity would be compromised by the 
 bare-faced questioning and bargaining which the 
 servant is at liberty to indulge in by way of discovering 
 the squeezability of a visitor. 
 
 Now, since the temple of a god is the counterpart of 
 the yamen of a magistrate, in the temple, as in the 
 yamen, the man at the door has to be propitiated. 
 The paper money, incense and candles burnt before 
 these eight figures, between which one has to pass on 
 entering the temple from the front, testify to the 
 worshippers' sense of the necessity of bribery. Having 
 propitiated the door-keepers, one can enter the temple 
 proper ; but, before getting into the immediate presence 
 of the idol, one finds a place spread with mats, from 
 which its face can be dimly seen through a forest of 
 incense-holders, candlesticks, and other temple para- 
 phernalia. Here the worshippers kneel down and go 
 through a set form, including the knocking of the 
 forehead nine times on the earth. Immediately before 
 the idol is a smaller space devoted to similar exercises. 
 I cannot say whether this is set apart for any special 
 
Chinese New Year. 191 
 
 class or rank, or whether, as in English churches, 
 native modesty retires to the more distant mats, and 
 self-importance takes possession of the "highest rooms." 
 I saw some repeat in the second the ritual performed 
 in the first place, but whether all who bow at the first 
 would be admitted to the second I could not discover, 
 The necessary formularies having been gone through, 
 the offerings placed before the deity, and the candles 
 lighted on their iron " sticks," the priests indulge the 
 suppliant with a little fortune-telling, to indicate the 
 answer that the god is pleased to make. A box made 
 of a section of a bamboo stem, containing a number of 
 bamboo slips is placed in his hand. He shakes them 
 up thoroughly, and then chooses one of them and 
 draws it from the box. This slip has a mark or legend 
 on it, which refers to some special passage in a book of 
 answers. The idolater generally goes away happy, 
 since if the answer be not a favourable one he refuses 
 to accept it, and draws again, and yet again if the 
 second be also unfavourable, until, by his importunity, 
 he wearies the god to give a satisfactory reply. 
 Whether he thus alters the inevitable is not so 
 clear. 
 
 Behind this shrine are the courts in which the 
 runners or messengers of the god some fifty-six in all 
 in this particular temple stand ranged along the 
 walls. One or two of these attendants were, at the 
 time of our visit, recent substitutes for some who had 
 decayed or fresh additions to the staff, for by their 
 clean and bright appearance they made the rest look 
 
192 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 more than venerable. Over the heads of these runners 
 near the ceiling were suspended two models of junks, 
 presumably the votive offering of some successful 
 trader. 
 
 Behind these courts again is a second shrine, con- 
 taining an image of the consort or some female relative 
 of the god. The arrangements of this second shrine 
 were a repetition of those of the first, except that they 
 were simpler. 
 
 Around this large temple cluster quite a number of 
 smaller ones parasitic temples as it were where 
 other gods are propitiated, though it is difficult for the 
 uninitiated to appreciate the differences in their form, 
 feature, or expression. The rough distinction between 
 the smooth face of a Buddhist and the usually mous- 
 tached and bearded visage of a Taoist deity is readily 
 perceived ; but there is nevertheless a monotony in the 
 inane and expressionless faces which the occasional 
 tendency to an idiotic simper hardly breaks. These 
 gilt-faced deities bear witness to a conservatism in 
 style among the artists worthy of an ancient, perhaps 
 decrepit, country. Occasionally when several deities 
 are to be placed side by side, the necessity of marking 
 distinctions forces itself on the maker of them, and he 
 effects his purpose by making one or two of their 
 number monsters. It is so in a small shrine outside 
 the court of this Shanghai City Temple. Here five gods 
 board and lodge together, and over each one's head is 
 written his name ; but, to make assurance doubly sure, 
 there is a dreadful distortion of features, a triumph of 
 
Chinese New Year. 193 
 
 liideousness wrought in at least one of them. These 
 five are the gods respectively of Injuries, Wealth, 
 Serpents, Oaths and Dreams. The second of these is 
 the popular god, his votaries are legion. Notwith- 
 standing the " religious " observances of the Chinese, it 
 has been often said by men who have known something 
 of them that they are without a religious instinct. 
 Their anxiety to propitiate the god of wealth is an 
 illustration of their spirit. Of a religion the motive 
 of which is love and which involves self-sacrifice and 
 self-denial, they know little. Their religion is the 
 giving paper money to a god from whom they hope to 
 get a return in more solid currency. Their religious 
 aims are the very reverse of those set before men in 
 the Sermon on the Mount. At the same time, as often 
 as we judge the heathen we have to admit, I fear, that 
 there are men who think themselves Christians whose 
 worship is not the spontaneous outburst of a heart s 
 gladness or confidence in God independently of changing 
 earthly conditions, but the calculated effort to gain 
 some advantage it may be to give to their lives an 
 air of respectability, to buttress up their credit, to 
 conform to custom, to please a friend, or, more seriously 
 perhaps, to escape undesirable consequences in the 
 next life by propitiating God in this. It is difficult to 
 see wherein this kind of " Christianity " differs from 
 the heathenism of the Chinese. 
 
 o 
 
" Your railroad, when you have come to understand it, is only a 
 device for making the world smaller ; and as for being able to talk 
 from place to place, that is, indeed, well and convenient ; but suppose 
 you have originally nothing to say." RUSKIN. 
 
 "To employ an uninstructed people in war is what is called 
 destroying the people. A destroyer of the people was not tolerated 
 in the age of Yaou and Shun. Though by a single battle you 
 should vanquish Ts'e and so get possession of Nan-yang, the thing 
 ought not to be done." MENCIUS. 
 
 "Build me straight, worthy master! 
 Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel 
 That shall laugh at all disaster, 
 
 And with wave and whirlwind wrestle." 
 
 LONGFELLOW. The Building of the Ship. 
 
( 195 ) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 A LAUNCH AT KAO-C HANG-MIAOU. 
 
 CHINA is the Middle Kingdom. As to the Greeks of 
 old all other nations were barbarians, so to the Chinese 
 are the subjects of the outer kingdoms that are not 
 under the immediate sway of the Son of Heaven who 
 sits enthroned at Peking. Bitter is the hatred and 
 contemptuous the pity of the Celestial for all foreigners. 
 " Granted that you have your railways, that you can 
 build steamships and gunboats, that your inventiveness 
 is wonderful ; you have no literature ! what is a nation 
 without the Five Classics and the Four Books ? " 
 
 But notwithstanding this sense of superiority and her 
 deep-seated hatred, there are matters in which China 
 seems not only willing but anxious to follow the lead 
 of other nations. Fas est db hoste doceri; and even 
 where the foes are inferiors, some lessons may be 
 learned. Has it not been said that a wise man can 
 learn more from a fool than a fool can learn from a 
 wise man ? If the Central Kingdom can learn from 
 the Circumferential, surely in that fact is evidence of 
 her superiority and wisdom! But she is doing this 
 wise thing in a way less wise than might have been 
 
 o 2 
 
196 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 expected in a nation so exalted in privilege. She has 
 long regarded with suspicion any attempt to develop 
 the resources of the empire by railways,* or by applying 
 the result of Western research in chemistry and ex- 
 periment in engineering to her celestial agriculture, 
 river-embankment and mining. The whirl of machinery 
 in arsenals and the din of hammers in ship-yards 
 have more attractions. There is more noise in these 
 things and which is of still more importance more 
 opportunity of official squeeze than there would be in 
 quietly increasing the strength of the nation by adding 
 to the prosperity and contentment of the people. To 
 manufacture big guns, to collect a fleet of heavily- 
 armed gun-boats, to supplement the rusty spears and 
 tridents of her braves with modern breech-loaders 
 these are the ways in which China seems most ready to 
 make the West her model, even though, in so doing, 
 she beggars the country and fills her hands with costly 
 war material enough to tempt the cupidity of any 
 nation that itches to become possessed of a fine fleet 
 without the delay and expense of building it. It is a 
 pity that China does not develop herself first, and 
 her fighting apparatus afterwards. A tiger's tooth is 
 nothing without the mighty muscle that gives it grip. 
 
 With purity of government and local administration 
 and other so much needed reforms, there might arise 
 in the land a patriotism that should be the nation's 
 strength, the ships being bravely manned, and the navy 
 
 * Since this was written something has been done in this 
 direction. 
 
A Launch at Kao-Chang-Miaou. 197 
 
 an object of truly national pride, supported not merely 
 by Imperial decrees, but by public enthusiasm. As it 
 is, it is most likely that the estimate of a Chinese 
 naval officer, with whom I was speaking in regard to 
 the Northern Fleet, was correct when he said: "We 
 have a very fine coat, but there is no man inside it." 
 It cannot but " make the judicious grieve " to see the 
 imperial dragon sprawling in his yellow triangle over 
 the scare-crow of military and naval parade. 
 
 During the French invasion of Tongking and the 
 carrying out of M. Jules Ferry's scheme of " intelligent 
 destruction " of property and life on the coasts of 
 China proper, the activity of this latter country in 
 preparing warlike material was greatly stimulated. In 
 the Kiangnan Arsenal at Kao-Chang-Miaou, near 
 Shanghai, work in the heavy-ordnance department 
 was for some time carried on day and night, and it 
 was at that time that the first steel cruiser which the 
 Chinese ever built, was launched. All the material 
 had come out from Europe ready to be put together, I 
 believe, which perhaps detracted somewhat from the 
 credit due to the authorities at Kao-Chang-Miaou. 
 The day of the launch was nevertheless a high day and 
 as such nobly honoured. Having been invited to the 
 ceremony, I went with one or two friends in a small 
 steam-launch. We arrived off the arsenal about an 
 hour before the time and found the whole river bank 
 on either side of the building-shed already lined with 
 eager Celestials whose almost universally indigo-dyed 
 clothes formed a bright blue margin along the water's 
 
198 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 edge. Fences were crowned with them, all kinds of 
 scaffoldings were covered, an old frigate lying in the 
 dock was crowded, while a watch-tower of open wood 
 work in several stories was so thoroughly filled that we 
 were reminded of the pictures of the wicker-work 
 figures stuffed with men from which we had been early 
 taught to imbibe appropriate horror of the cruelty 
 of the Druidical cult. Every point of vantage was 
 occupied, every available space thronged by blue- 
 clad Chinamen stirred to an unwonted enthusiasm, yet 
 maintaining their characteristic patience; smoking, 
 chatting and laughing, confident that now at last the 
 greatness of China would be recognised throughout the 
 West. It looked at first sight as though it would be 
 impossible for us to effect a landing, so thickly stood 
 the phalanx of spectators along the river bank. We 
 succeeded, however, in getting on shore, and forced our 
 way through into the open space behind, and made for 
 the gateway of the shed under which the vessel had 
 been built. Here a soldier was on guard to keep the 
 gate closed against the crowd outside, but to serve what 
 useful end we could not divine since inside there was 
 another crowd which seemed as numerous and as dirty 
 as that outside and was in every way indistinguishable 
 from it. But having been long enough in the East to 
 have got over the foolish occidental habit of expecting 
 to find reasons for things, we simply asked to have the 
 gate opened for us. The soldier promptly admitted us, 
 and the whole rabble seeking to make our entrance the 
 means of theirs, pressed in at the opened gate in a stream 
 
A Launch at Kao- Chang- Miaou. 199 
 
 which the poor soldier was powerless to shut out. As 
 he had opened the gate for us, it seemed only fair that 
 we should help him to shut it, however little reason 
 we might see for the exclusion of the outside crowd 
 from the privileges that the apparently similar crowd 
 inside enjoyed. In a moment we were shoulder to 
 shoulder, bearing back the celestial wave that was 
 surging in, and almost succeeded in re-excluding our- 
 selves, as our soldier, encouraged by our alliance, forced 
 the gate to again. Beceiving his thanks for our assist- 
 ance we passed on through the multitude, almost stifled 
 with the heat and the very appreciable adulteration of 
 the fresh air inseparable from such a gathering of 
 Chinamen. 
 
 As there was still plenty of time we did not take our 
 plages at once but strolled round among the people and 
 since some of our company were experts in ship- 
 building struck critical attitudes and made critical 
 comments at the various points from which the " lines" 
 of the vessel could be best seen. Due study having 
 been given to, and comments passed on the vessel herself 
 and the examination having been made of the arrange- 
 ments for launching her, which I understood were more 
 elaborate and expensive than would have been made at 
 home for a vessel of much larger size, we sought the 
 stage on which the arsenal officials were seated and 
 supplied with tea. Having got through the ceremony 
 of several introductions, we prepared to wait. Most of 
 the company were standing, there being but one or two 
 chairs upon the platform, but as we had a lady in our 
 
200 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 party a chair was vacated and she was invited to be 
 seated. It was a little amusing to see the official, 
 whose chair was next to that offered to Mrs. , pre- 
 cipitately rise and retire to the rear with a look of 
 anxiety, if not terror, as he started and a look of relief 
 and re-assurance as he gained his refuge and began 
 volubly to converse with his brethren. Such close 
 proximity to a European lady was evidently a new 
 experience for him, and he doubtless congratulated 
 himself on being well out of a post of danger, if of 
 honour. Just where we were standing there was no 
 press. The crowd was held back at a distance of some 
 four or five yards by the august presence of the man- 
 darins and the uniform of a single soldier who wore a 
 startling dress of deep blues and reds surmounted by a 
 huge hat with a diameter equal to that of a good sized 
 umbrella, but which must be useless as a protection 
 from the sun in front since, as the wearer of it walks, 
 the great flapping brim flies upward and backward in a 
 manner that is most picturesque but that leaves the 
 face completely exposed. The av/e felt at the official 
 presence was imperceptible at any distance greater than 
 that mentioned. Encircling us was a group both dense 
 and motley. In the very fore-front of it, nearest, there- 
 fore, to the silks of the men of wealth and rank, were 
 some of the richest specimens of dirtiness and ragged- 
 ness that could well be imagined, unkempt, nondescript 
 figures whose clothes and persons were so over-laid 
 with what was unnecessary and probably inconvenient, 
 that the colour of their garments or the complexion of 
 
A Launch at Kao-CJiang '-Miaou. 201 
 
 their skins afforded material for speculation. Such 
 juxtapositions strike new comers as strange but after 
 a while one gets accustomed to them. The raggedest 
 Chinese outside the ranks of the professional beggars 
 whose rags are their fortune are generally to be found 
 in the retinues of the mandarins. Such associations of 
 dignity with impudence and rank with rags having 
 become familiar to me, I doubt if I should have noticed 
 it in this case had it not been pointed out by a more 
 recent arrival in the Flowery Land. 
 
 Mr. , an Englishman, under whose superinten- 
 dence the cruiser had been constructed, was to be seen 
 here, there, and everywhere, as calm as the anxiety of 
 the hour would permit. At last he came upon the 
 stage where we were and, through his interpreter, spoke 
 to the mandarin in charge. Then again he disappeared 
 to take a last look at the preparations, and to give his 
 final instructions. Eeturning, he took off his hat to 
 the mandarin and by gesture intimated that the vessel 
 was ready. The word was then given, and in forcible 
 Chinese, all junks, sampans, and other craft on the 
 river were suitably objurgated, and with a very babel 
 of confusion, the workmen scrambled to their places. 
 At another word the hammers fell, the ropes were drawn 
 tight, and the huge mass of steel and wood began to 
 move slowly at first, but with a speed ever-increasing 
 until, amid many cheers, it slid down into the water 
 with a rush that carried it into the middle of the 
 stream, where, bending round with the tide, it stood 
 revealed, a vessel presenting her broadside to her 
 
202 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 builders, as if conscious that all eyes were upon 
 her. 
 
 This was the moment of mutual congratulations, of 
 Chinese kotowing and European hand-shaking. All 
 trace of anxiety was gone from the face of the builder 
 though he looked flushed with success and the hot 
 weather. The countenances of the officials beamed 
 with triumph, for there had been no hitch of any sort, 
 and although probably another twelvemonth's work 
 would be yet needed upon her before she would be 
 fit for service, one more vessel could be counted as 
 belonging to His Imperial Majesty's navy, and the 
 Kiangnan Arsenal could pride itself on the first entirely 
 steel-built vessel which it had launched. 
 
 The European visitors were now invited to adjourn 
 to a neighbouring shed where a table had been covered 
 with a cloth and surrounded by chairs for their use, 
 the Chinese hosts either standing or sitting in an outer 
 circle. There was tea on a little table in the corner 
 but we saw none offered to the guests. The arsenal 
 authorities seemed to have been taught that Europeans 
 prefer champagne and in their hour of pride they 
 scorned to appear mean. For my own part I took the 
 liberty of asking for the unoffered beverage, not only 
 for the lady member of our company but for myself, 
 and while the toasts were being drunk and spoken to, 
 we, at our side-table, duly honoured them in our tea, 
 made, a la Chinoisc, in the lidded cup that serves for 
 both tea-cup and tea-pot, and guiltless alike of cream 
 and sugar. 
 
A Launch at Kao-Chang-Miaou. 203 
 
 As we were sitting thus somewhat back from the 
 rest of the visitors, we noticed that something about us 
 had attracted the attention of the head-mandarin. 
 Clearly he was particularly interested in something 
 and most probably curious about it. So I rose to 
 speak with him, and found that the object of his 
 curiosity was my spectacles ordinary slightly-made, 
 gold-framed spectacles, but evidently extraordinary to 
 him. He was anxious to try them on, and offered me 
 his own immense circular Chinese-made instruments 
 with large tortoise-shell rims, not unlike the port-holes 
 of a steamer. I at once took off mine and handed them 
 to him, accepting and putting his on my nose in their 
 place. We were not able to appreciate the figure we 
 cut as we could neither see ourselves nor, with each 
 other's glasses on, could we see each other, but either 
 the proceeding itself or the resulting appearance 
 mightily tickled the Chinamen standing round who 
 laughed heartily, and the mandarin returned my glasses 
 and received back his own evidently highly gratified 
 with the sensation he had made. 
 
 Soon after this we left cordially joining in the hope 
 expressed in one of the toasts that this newly-launched 
 cruiser might be a peace-maker, and, while armed to 
 the teeth, might live long years of undisturbed in- 
 dolence and finally decay in peace, having neither 
 suffered nor inflicted injury in serious conflict ; hoping 
 also that as little harm as possible would result from 
 the Chinamen's deference to foreign prejudice in the 
 matter of beverage, and regretting that more honour 
 
204 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 was not paid by them to their own national and home- 
 grown tea. Our hopes in this matter, however, were 
 not strong enough to compel us to disbelieve the report 
 that afterwards reached us, that, before the company 
 separated, many of them developed eccentricities of 
 speech and movement that gave the sons of Han 
 legitimate occasion for congratulating themselves that 
 they were not as these barbarians. 
 
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 
 To have a thankless child!" 
 
 SHAKSPEEE. King Lear. 
 
 " Filial piety and paternal submission are they not the root of 
 all benevolent actions ? " YEW THE PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 "In short, even Christians may learn from Hindus, as indeed 
 from Oriental nations generally (notably from the Chinese, as well 
 as from the Hindus), * to love, honour, and succour their father and 
 mother, to submit themselves to all their governors, teachers, 
 spiritual pastors, and masters, and to order themselves lowly and 
 reverently to all their betters.' " 
 
 WILLIAMS. Indian Wisdom. 
 
 "... And so, twirling his mustachios, and flinging down his 
 piastre, the young janissary strutted out of the coffee-house. 
 
 " * When we were young,' said the old Turk with the white beard 
 to his companion, shaking his head ' when we were young - ' 
 
 " * We conquered Anatolia, and never opened our mouths,' rejoined 
 his companion. 
 
 " * I never offered an opinion till I was sixty,' said the old Turk, 
 * and then it was one which had been in our family for a century.' " 
 LORD BEACONSFIELD, The Eise of Iskander. 
 
 "Parents without exception demand that their children be filial, 
 but the filial piety is not necessarily love." CHUANG-TSI. 
 
 " Oh, my friend, cultivate the filial feelings, and let no one think 
 himself relieved from the kind charities of relationship ; these shall 
 give him peace at the last ; these are the best foundation for every 
 species of benevolence." C. LAMB. Letter to S. T. Coleridge. 
 
( 207 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FILIAL PIETY OF THE CHINESE.* 
 
 in administering the Government uphold Filial 
 Piety as the first of all the virtues." Thus says His 
 Imperial Majesty the Emperor of China in the decree 
 published in 1885, relating to the release and return to 
 Corea of the Dai-In-Kun ; and in so saying, H. I. M. is 
 in full accord with the laws, traditions and customs of 
 his empire. 
 
 Nothing is lacking in legal penalty or in "olo 
 custom " to compel a reverential demeanour in young 
 China in relation to parents. Disrespect or injury, 
 even accidental, being visited with severe punishment 
 in this world and with an introduction into the next 
 where, according to the very favourite Buddhist tract, 
 usually called The Jade Register, those who have failed 
 in filial piety receive the special attention of the 
 demons of the Eighth Hell, who crush them under 
 heavy rollers. I suppose that there is scarcely a year 
 in which the Peking Gazette does not contain the notice 
 of at least one instance of the horrors of the ling-ch'ih, 
 
 * The substance of this chapter was read before the China branch 
 of the Royal Asiatic Society at Shanghai, October 15th, 1885. 
 
208 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 or lingering death, penalty having been inflicted on 
 some poor lunatic, who, not knowing what he was 
 doing, had taken a parent's life, or on some youth who 
 had killed a parent by accident, or on some unfortunate 
 girl who had been forced to murder in defending her 
 honour from some debauched old father-in-law. The 
 last volume published at the date of this writing re- 
 counts the horrible piecemeal-slicing of a lunatic who 
 had killed his grandmother, the said grandmother 
 having been previously warned of the dangerous nature 
 of her grandson's lunacy and repeatedly urged to place 
 him in safe keeping. On the other hand, the most 
 outrageous barbarities and wilful cruelties are condoned 
 when the elder generation is dealing with the younger. 
 It is true that in the Penal Code there is a penalty of 
 one hundred blows for the man who beats a disobedient 
 son to death if he do it unintentionally, and of one 
 hundred and sixty with a year's banishment if he do 
 so designedly, but these penalties are seldom if ever 
 inflicted. One is sickened by the horrors that every 
 now and again crop up in the Shanghai papers. In 
 the Hunan province it would appear that it* is the 
 custom for girls to be betrothed as mere infants, after 
 which they are handed over by their mothers to their 
 future mothers-in-law. Not long after I arrived at 
 China I read of one of these mothers-in-law-to-be 
 searing a child's face with a hot iron as a punishment 
 for crying and then scalding her to death with boiling 
 water, and of another seeking to save the doctor's bill 
 by strangling her son's fiancee who had fallen sick. A 
 
The Filial Piety of the Chinese. 209 
 
 little before this, the newspaper,, in which I read of 
 these atrocities, had contained an account of a mother's 
 burying a child alive without incurring a word of rebuke, 
 and more recently the Hua Pao, an illustrated Chinese 
 newspaper, gave its subscribers an illustration of a 
 similar tragedy. The crime was represented as per- 
 formed without haste or secrecy in the presence of a 
 large and sympathetic crowd sympathising however 
 not with him who was to officiate as corpse, but wj.th 
 her who was officiating as chief mourner. Laws and 
 customs that invest parents with practically irrespon- 
 sible power, while they contain no hint of such in- 
 junctions as, "And ye fathers, provoke not your 
 children to wrath," may be expected to rob the love of 
 the parent of its rightful influence in the home ; and 
 though they may result in filial piety indeed it will 
 be a piety in which love is likely to have little place, 
 and reverence, lacking love, to become a hollow sham, 
 punctiliously observed for reasons that may seem 
 sufficient to the Celestial rather than commendable 
 to us. 
 
 In truth, the filial piety on which the stability of the 
 Chinese empire is supposed to depend, and to ensure 
 which so many laws have been framed, so many ethical 
 books written and tracts distributed, is a poor virtue 
 after all. It is boldly asserted by those who know the 
 people well, that it consists far less in loving service to 
 the living than in religious formalities at the tombs of 
 the dead. Even Bishop Moule, of Hangchow, who says 
 he thinks the outcome of the doctrine and practice of 
 
 p 
 
210 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 filial piety in China to be on the whole good and 
 claims to agree with the moralists of the last century 
 in holding that the country owes her national longevity 
 very much to her national filial piety, admits that he 
 has heard of a son grudging his parent the " savoury 
 meat " he craved on his death-bed, as a futile expense, 
 yet, when the season arrived for the funeral feast, 
 beggaring himself to provide a costly banquet ; while an 
 American missionary, who writes with the authority 
 attaching to a lifetime's residence in the Flowery Land, 
 hesitates not to say : " Of all the people of whom we 
 have any knowledge, the sons of the Chinese are most 
 unfilial, disobedient to parents, and pertinacious in 
 having their own way from the time they are able to 
 make known their wants." He then adds, " The filial 
 duties of a Chinese son are performed after the death 
 of his parents. A son is said to be filial if he is 
 faithful in doing all that custom requires for his 
 deceased ancestors." This is doubtless a rough judg- 
 ment in both senses of the word, and is out of accord 
 with the impression left on the mind after the perusal 
 of Chinese filial piety as illustrated in the Twenty- 
 four Examples. There we see how the emperor Shun, 
 in his pre-imperial days, bemoans the evil in himself of 
 which he is unconscious, but which, since he is in- 
 capable of attributing wickedness to his parents or 
 injustice to Heaven, he infers from the, as he supposes, 
 Heaven-accorded cruelty of his unnatural father and 
 little less than devilish step-mother, and how he seeks 
 by all the means in his power to serve faithfully 
 
The Filial Piety of tlie Chinese. 211 
 
 and dutifully those who have more than once made 
 attempts upon his life, until his virtue excites the 
 admiration and compels the help of the very birds of 
 the air and beasts of the field. There we see the young 
 Wu Mung lying on his parents' bed to allow the 
 mosquitoes to take the edge off their appetites before 
 the venerable severe one and the venerable com- 
 passionate one retire to rest. There again may we see 
 how the septuagenarian philosopher Lao Lai-tsz dresses 
 himself in childish garments of the brightest colours 
 and risks the breaking of his aged limbs and reverend 
 neck in juvenile antics, to the end that he may keep 
 from the minds of his still more aged parents the fact 
 that they are tottering on the verge of the grave and 
 may deceive them into thinking themselves a young 
 couple happy in the frolics of their first-born. But, 
 notwithstanding all this, the words of my missionary 
 friend above quoted are not without corroboration. 
 The Twenty-four Examples may possibly represent the 
 conduct of men at the date of its compilation, but 
 we have fallen on degenerate clays. If Confucius had 
 occasion to say in reference to virtues known in his 
 early years: "Now, alas, there are no such things," 
 how much more we ! Filial piety as taught by the 
 maxims and examples of the ancients, does not live 
 in the filial piety that is practised by their modern 
 descendants which, notwithstanding the occasional 
 cutting off of filial flesh to make medicinal broth for 
 moribund parents, consists chiefly, we may suspect, as 
 my friend asserts, in the observance of funeral rites 
 
 p 2 . 
 
212 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 and the worship at the tombs. Dr. S. Wells Williams, 
 in his Middle Kingdom, quotes from a Chinese tract, 
 written against Christian missionaries, in which the 
 writer unintentionally offers confirmation of our 
 suspicion. This Chinese apologist affirms that it is 
 monstrous in barbarians to attempt to teach his 
 countrymen, and among their many disqualifications 
 which he enumerates, he includes their lack of this 
 particular virtue. He says : " Further, these would-be 
 exhorters of the world are themselves deficient in filial 
 piety, forgetting their parents as soon as dead, putting 
 them off with deal coffins only an inch thick, and 
 never so much as once sacrificing to their manes, or 
 burning the smallest trifle of gilt paper for their 
 support in the future world." From this vigorous 
 indictment we may infer the things which the zealous- 
 pamphleteer considers constitute filial piety, viz., pro- 
 viding one's parents with thick coffins of good wood,, 
 sacrificing to their manes and burning gilt paper for 
 their support in the future world. There is not a word 
 about the filial attentions of which this world- affords 
 the opportunity. It will be noticed, moreover, that 
 the absence of any accusation of neglecting living 
 parents in this sweeping charge in which Christians 
 are supposed to be proved unfilial, offers further 
 evidence, if such be needed, that care for the living has 
 but a small place, if any, in the Chinese idea of filial 
 piety. And even " the Master " in substantiating his 
 exclamation : " How greatly filial was Shun ! " though 
 he refers generally to his virtue and dignity, specifies 
 
The Filial Piety of the Chinese. 213 
 
 but one act : " He offered his sacrifices in his ancestral 
 temple." "We have reason to believe that this is not 
 an exhaustive account of the filial piety of the evidently 
 worthy, if somewhat doubtfully historical, Shun ; but 
 when we have said : " He offers his ancestral worship," 
 we have, I fear, exhausted the grounds on which many 
 .a living Celestial can claim to be " greatly filial." 
 
 If then it be a fact that the expression of the filial 
 piety of the Chinese is postponed till after the death of 
 their parents (and the evidence that this is at least 
 largely the case seems to me to be conclusive), it is a 
 fact calling for explanation. Nor is the explanation 
 far to seek. The claims of the living parent are by no 
 means to be neglected, as may be seen from what we 
 have said of the savage barbarities that are condoned 
 in a parent bent on enforcing them. But when a 
 parent has joined the majority, the matter craves even 
 more serious attention. There is need to brush up 
 one's filial piety when one's parent is promoted to 
 fiendship. And it is done. This is filial piety as 
 taught and practised in China propitiating a devil! 
 .a son's precaution against his father's dreaded demoniac 
 rage ! What would a child brought up in the careful 
 nurture and tender affection of an English home, to 
 whom his father and mother are the living embodiments 
 of every virtue, think when told that, should a China- 
 man get sick, one of the first things to be done is to 
 present offerings at the ancestral tablets on the as- 
 sumption that the sickness is the work of some inad- 
 vertently neglected, and therefore dissatisfied, father 
 
214 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 or grandfather ? Yet, misled by the phrase, our in- 
 structors not infrequently hold up the Chinese to 
 us as worthy examples.. Such filial piety as they 
 exemplify may be found but too abundantly in the 
 back slums of all our large cities, but it is not held up 
 for admiration here. It may be seen where children 
 crouch and tremble before the home-return of fathers-, 
 heavy-booted and maddened with drink, able and not 
 im willing to thrash, kick, curse, and even murder them. 
 When we take away the foreign flavour and look at 
 this Chinese filial piety in an English dress the in- 
 clination to admire and imitate is lost. There are 
 many who mourn in England over the decay of filial 
 respect, and wonder to what we are drifting when they 
 see so much more pains taken to train up the parent in 
 the way he should go than to train up the child ; but 
 the homes of England have still their sanctities, and 
 woe be to her should the day ever come when such 
 back slum scenes furnish the examples of our home- 
 life, and the fearful forebodings and pitiful pleadings of 
 helpless children, the examples of our filial piety. 
 
 It need scarcely be pointed out that this filial-pious, 
 worship will often be paid as grudgingly as scrupulously. 
 The man who most fully appreciates the necessity of 
 rendering it may as keenly regret that it is a necessity 
 and may recognise that it would be better to remove 
 the risk than to pay the cost of insurance against it. 
 Now a Chinaman seems to combine with his fear of 
 spirits a marvellous faith in their stupidity, as is wit- 
 nessed by the expedients he adopts with a view to 
 
The Filial Piety of the Chinese. 215 
 
 circumventing and deceiving them. He apparently 
 attributes to them, among other things, a curious in- 
 capacity for recognising their claims upon their OWE 
 people if only they can be got to enter upon their 
 spiritual existence on the premises of others. In such 
 a case the penalty of any neglect will most probably be 
 visited on these latter unfortunate persons. It is they 
 who had better provide the funeral and pay the expenses 
 of it, lest the spirit, starved or piqued, should return to 
 the place whence he had set out to wreak his vengeance. 
 On this account no innkeeper will knowingly receive 
 into his house of rest and entertainment an obviously 
 moribund traveller. He can safely refuse him admit- 
 tance and allow him to die on the road outside. If he 
 admit him to the comforts of his establishment, he can 
 refuse him neither coffin, funeral rites nor worship 
 with safety. An incident that occurred in the experi- 
 ence of a Shanghai missionary, somewhat amusingly 
 illustrates a bold attempt to remove altogether the 
 risk that men ordinarily provide against by their 
 ancestor-worship. The missionary was sitting one cold 
 winter evening at his study table. A servant came 
 and informed his master that a dead man had been 
 found in the garden. The missionary went out to look 
 into the matter. Sure enough, under the wall of the 
 garden lay a human body, loosely covered over with 
 straw. An economical family had evidently brought 
 the dying man and laid him there that they might save 
 themselves the expenses of the funeral by throwing 
 them on the foreign missionary, and the ruling passion 
 
216 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 of thrift had further dictated the substitution of a 
 covering of straw for his personal clothing. The mis- 
 sionary felt the body all over and found it already cold, 
 but, on the chance of there being life left, he had it 
 carried indoors where he poured down its throat a dose 
 of a patent medicine in which he had great faith, at 
 the same time ordering more straw to be thrown upon 
 it. He then returned to his study. Sometime later he 
 thought he would go and see how his corpse-patient 
 was getting on. On this second examination he fancied 
 he detected a faint sign of life in the region of the heart. 
 More of the patent medicine was given and more straw. 
 To make a long story short, the dead man came to life 
 again and stood up in all the naked dignity of his man- 
 hood. Well, the missionary, who was a particularly 
 tall and large man, rigged out the little Chinaman as 
 best he could in clothes from his own wardrobe, and, as 
 soon as he was well enough, sent him back to his loving 
 wife and filial sons. As he approached the house some 
 of the latter saw and recognised him, notwithstanding 
 the strangeness of his garb, and, being sincere believers 
 in the doctrine of transmigration, rushed to their mother, 
 crying aloud that their father had come back again to 
 earth and that this time he had been born a foreigner. 
 Many a friendly interview in after days did the 
 missionary and his patient have, the latter always 
 profuse in gratitude, declaring that his daily prayer to 
 Foh was that when his next change came he might be 
 foaled a donkey for the special riding of his foreign 
 friend who had added to his life so many years in which 
 
The Filial Piety of the -Chinese. 217 
 
 to eat rice. No meagre gratitude this considering the 
 weight of his benefactor. 
 
 Our estimate of this much vaunted virtue will not be 
 raised if turning from the consideration of it as the 
 result of laws that environ living parents with protec- 
 tion in the exercise of the most savage passion, and of 
 teachings that render possible the conception of one's 
 deceased parents as vicious demons, we now seek to 
 judge it from the results of which it has become itself 
 the cause. It is probably the most potent of the 
 influences that have moulded the Chinese character. 
 That what is meant by the term has not always been 
 what is meant now may be readily admitted, but the 
 present perversion is not of yesterday and has had time 
 to do its work. The Chinaman of to-day is pretty 
 much what his filial piety has made him. I am not 
 unmindful of what is said in the Mahdbharata : 
 
 "An evil-minded man is quick to see 
 His neighbour's faults, though small as mustard-seed; 
 But when he turns his eyes towards his own, 
 Though large as vilva-fruit, he none descries." 
 
 It is with no evil mind that I would judge the 
 Chinese, nor with any blindness to our own faults. 
 The good temper and patience of their poorer classes 
 may well challenge the admiration of the irascible, im- 
 patient and impetuous European, and be reckoned 
 among the sweet uses of the adversity of the mandarin's 
 squeeze and oppression ; but even for these long-suffering 
 ones our admiration is not unqualified, while, when we 
 
218 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 look at the conceit and ignorance of their "gentry" 
 and literati, and the well-nigh universal corruption of 
 their officials, we almost forgive the mild pharisaism 
 of the verse : 
 
 "I thank the goodness and the grace 
 
 That on my birth have smiled, 
 And made me in these Christian days 
 A happy English child." 
 
 ISTor is it to be forgotten that unlike some horrible 
 doctrines which, while they cannot but taint the heart 
 of him who believes them, are comparatively innocuous 
 from their believers' impotence to give them practical 
 expression, the Chinese theory of Filial Piety, not only 
 corrupts the individual heart but dominates the life and 
 conduct of the entire nation, making its effect felt from 
 thel centre of every family to the circumference of the 
 whole empire. It controls every institution. Marriages 
 are consummated earlier than would be the case but 
 for the feverish anxiety to ensure the perpetuation of 
 the worship at the tombs, threatening to introduce a 
 system of child-marriage approaching that which is ac- 
 knowledged to be so great an evil in India. A criminal 
 whose parent has recently died, is either acquitted or 
 receives a more lenient sentence than justice demands 
 in order that his duties at the grave may not be 
 interfered with. A prominent instance of the require- 
 ments of justice being made to stand aside for those of 
 filial piety occurs in the decree regarding the restitu- 
 tion of the Dai-In-Kun to which reference is made at 
 
TJie Filial Piety of the Chinese. 219 1 
 
 the beginning of this chapter. In that decree His 
 Imperial Majesty states that it is by a special act of 
 grace that Li Kan-ying (the Dai-In-Kun) is liberated 
 "to satisfy the filial longings" of his son, the king of 
 Corea, and that " the Board of Kites is to let the Corean 
 king understand that in this act we are benevolent 
 even beyond the law." The teaching of Mencius on 
 this point is clear. He distinctly taught that an 
 emperor ought to set the claims of filial piety above the- 
 demands of justice. A disciple asked what would have 
 been done if when Shun was emperor and Kaou-Yaou 
 chief minister of justice, Koo-Sow Shun's father, the 
 inhuman old wretch spoken of on p. 210, and whose 
 name, composed of two characters both meaning " blind, ' r 
 is said to have been given him on account of his mental 
 and moral blindness had committed murder. The 
 sage replied that Kaou-Yaou would have had Koo- 
 Sow arrested. " But would not Shun have forbidden 
 any such proceeding ? " inquired the other. " No," said 
 Mencius, "how could he, Kaou-Yaou having received 
 his authority from Heaven ? " The disciple then wanted 
 to know what Shun, the great example of filial piety,, 
 would have done, and Mencius replied, " Shun would 
 have regarded abandoning all under heaven as throwing 
 away a worn-out sandal. He would privately have 
 taken his father on his back, and withdrawn into con- 
 cealment, living somewhere on the sea-board. There 
 he would have been all his life, cheerful and happy, 
 forgetting the empire." Thus filial piety would not only 
 have required him to shield a murderer from justice* 
 
220 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 but would have compelled him, for tlie purpose of 
 doing it, to withdraw himself, the ideal monarch, and 
 to deprive his empire of the peace and security it was 
 -enjoying under his rule. The succession to the Dragon 
 throne is no less under the despotism of filial piety's 
 requirements. The statesmen of China may acknow- 
 ledge the truth of the words : " Woe to tliee, land, 
 when thy king is a child," but, since filial piety must 
 find expression in ancestor worship, no one of them 
 dare question the necessity of each emperor being the 
 junior of his predecessor, at however tender an age that 
 predecessor may have died. The emperor of to-day 
 must be accounted the son of the emperor of yesterday, 
 that there be 110 failure in funeral rite or ceremony. 
 
 And not only must the administration of the law and 
 the succession to the throne conform thus to necessities 
 created by this theory of filial piety, the direction of 
 the imperial policy must yield also. The affairs of the 
 -empire may be in a most critical condition and there 
 may be only one man possessing the ability to steer the 
 .ship of state at such a juncture, but should that man's 
 father or mother die, he must relinquish all into the 
 hands of less competent statesmen and go into the 
 regulation period of mourning retirement lest his 
 deceased parent not only visit him with his displeasure 
 but bring calamity on the empire, attention to the 
 .affairs of which had been the occasion of the unfilial 
 neglect.* This tyranny is felt of course in all depart- 
 
 * The Chinese law allows a man two wives, and public opinion 
 approves the law when a man's first wife has no children ; but the 
 
The Filial Piety of the Chinese. 221 
 
 ments and through all ranks. At a meeting of the 
 China Branch of the Eoyal Asiatic Society, Mr. C. F. K. 
 Allen, of Her Majesty's Consular Service, gave the 
 following instance that had come under his notice. A 
 native of Peking having been appointed to an official 
 post in Yunnan, had to borrow money to defray the 
 expenses of so long a journey. When he had gone the 
 greater part of the way, the news of his mother's death 
 overtook him. The necessary result was the man's 
 bankruptcy and the state's loss of his services. Mr. 
 Allen added that he thought the Chinese themselves- 
 must have an uneasy feeling that there is a certain 
 amount of humbug in the law about the three years'" 
 mourning, as occasional exceptions to it are permitted. 
 This feeling unquestionably possessed at least one 
 Chinaman as long ago as the days of Confucius, since 
 it is recorded in the Analects, that one of the sage's 
 disciples, by name Tsae Wo, had the temerity to say 
 that he considered the three years' mourning ordained 
 for sons on the death of their parents to be unneces- 
 sarily long, and that one year would be amply sufficient 
 with which sentiment, if the mourning be simply 
 that ordained by law, my readers will probably agree. 
 Said Tsae Wo to Confucius : " If the superior man 
 
 second wife is always regarded as the representative of the first, on 
 whose death her children have to assume mourning. It may there- 
 fore happen that the services of a valuable officer in the state have 
 to be lost by his compulsory mourning for a woman to whom his 
 relation is fictitious and for whom he may never have felt the- 
 slightest affection. 
 
222 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 .abstains for three years from the observances of pro- 
 priety, those observances will be quite lost. If for 
 three years he abstains from music, music will be 
 Tuined." " The Master " asked if he would be at ease 
 in eating good rice and wearing embroidered clothes 
 after a single year of mourning. On Tsae Wo's replying 
 that he would, Confucius severely said that if he could 
 feel at ease in so doing it would be legitimate for him 
 to do so ; but that the superior man would not feel at 
 ease unless he denied himself palatable food, comfort- 
 able lodgings and the pleasures of music for the full 
 period. " Tsae Wo," we read, " then went out." 
 
"0 wad some power the giftie gie us, 
 
 To see oursels as others see us ! 
 It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 
 And foolish notion." BURNS. 
 
 "He cannot flatter, he, 
 
 An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth ! 
 An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain." 
 
 SHAKSPEKE. King Lear. 
 
( 225 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 SHANGHAI FROM A CHINAMAN'S POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 Ix the spring of 1884, a Mr. Sing San published an 
 Illustrated Guide to Shanghai. The aim of the author 
 was to give to his fellow-countrymen a description of 
 life in the foreign settlements, depicting not only the 
 customs of the foreigners themselves, but those also of 
 their Chinese fellow-residents as affected by them. 
 These two volumes contain forty-two illustrations in 
 red ink, accompanied by letter-press in black, and are 
 exceedingly interesting, affording to the foreigner in 
 Shanghai a favourable opportunity of seeing himself 
 as others see him. 
 
 The first picture is of a Bowling Alley in a Chinese tea 
 and opium shop, clearly enough a foreign importation 
 the second is a landscape of paddy-fields, with the Lung- 
 hua pagoda set well in the middle the only picture in 
 the work in which the foreign element is hard to detect. 
 The fourth is the first picture distinctively foreign. It is 
 intended to disfigure or to present, as Peter Quince 
 would say, the Central Police Station, and though it is 
 not an accurate picture, it, at least, gives a fair cata- 
 logue of the contents of the place. There is a bell- 
 tower in the drawing, with a house, an electric-light 
 
 Q 
 
226 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 standard, a small, leafless magnolia in bloom and a 
 fence. All these things in the spring of 1884 were to 
 be found in the station compound, but any stranger to 
 the neighbourhood, designing a picture and introducing 
 these items according to taste, would be as likely to be 
 as successful as Mr. Sing San in producing a represen- 
 tation of the Central Police Station. 
 
 Following this, is a sketch of an auction, in which 
 the Chinese idea of a foreigner's personal appearance is 
 first seen. It is to be doubted if there be an auctioneer 
 in Shanghai who would feel flattered by it. But the 
 figure here delineated is not special to the auctioneer. 
 It is one of a large family. Throughout this Guide, 
 wherever a foreigner is represented, he will be found 
 to be a reproduction of this far from flattering picture. 
 The face is, roughly speaking, a circle, with a diameter 
 about equal to the width of the body at the hips, or a 
 little less than the width across the shoulders. The 
 hat has a crown in size proportionate to what the head 
 ought to be, but since the head is so excessively de- 
 veloped, the sides of the hat have to be made to slope 
 from the crown outward as well as downward, to be of 
 sufficient size to encircle it. In one picture repre- 
 senting some sailors making merry in a grog shop, a 
 hat is seen upon the table and, being out of use, its 
 sides are allowed to descend vertically, giving it a more 
 usual shape but a most ridiculous size as compared 
 with the bulbous head of the owner who could clearly 
 swallow it with more ease than he could wear it. The 
 lower half of this circular face is usually surrounded 
 
Shanghai from a Chinaman's Point of View. 227 
 
 by a fringe of unsteady flourishes or a semi-circle of 
 short rays of tolerably uniform length, while a little 
 shaky shading crosses the face in a horizontal bar. 
 The facial hair of Europeans is a mystery to the smooth- 
 faced Celestials. They are not supposed to indulge in 
 moustaches till they reach the mature age of forty or 
 thereabouts, or in beards till they reach the happy 
 dignity of grandfatherhood, and the beards and mous- 
 taches that are then allowed to grow are of the 
 scantiest. It confuses all their ideas of relative age to 
 see the variety of style in which foreigners wear their 
 beards, whiskers, and moustaches. When I arrived in 
 Shanghai, I was thought to be more than sixty on the 
 strength of about six inches of beard, while, when 
 travelling in a house-boat at some distance in the 
 country, I was once carefully scrutinised by an old 
 lady who ultimately inquired as to my age a question 
 which in China is an act of politeness and not of 
 impertinence as with us and went away with the 
 satisfied look of a person whose judgment has been 
 confirmed when my companion told her that I was two 
 hundred years of age. 
 
 About once a year one sees short hair on the Chinese. 
 With constant shaving of the fore part of the head, the 
 razor naturally encroaches little by little on the cir- 
 cular region from which the hair that forms the queue 
 is grown. This area is therefore periodically enlarged, 
 by the barber leaving a border round it, when hair at 
 once begins to stand up all round the man's head, 
 forming a halo, the image of which had perhaps do- 
 
228 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 minated the mind of the artist, alike in studying and 
 portraying the whiskers of his foreign subjects. It 
 has been remarked by some housekeepers that their 
 servants are specially stupid during the halo period 
 the stage between the hair beginning to grow and be- 
 coming long enough to work into the queue. If this be 
 a fact, it may not be without bearing on the generous 
 way in which the Chinese artist supplies nearly every 
 foreigner with luxuriant whiskers of the halo pattern. 
 
 Our Eecreations seem to have been taken less notice 
 of than would have been expected, since in scarcely 
 anything is the difference between the Chinaman and 
 the foreigner more obvious and striking than in them. 
 A Chinaman derives his idea of a man's worth or 
 otherwise from his equatorial circle. He localises the 
 intelligence in a lower region than we, and estimates 
 men by their corpulence. Where we, to indicate 
 mental deficiency, say of a man that "he has no 
 brains," the Celestial would say in pidjin English, 
 " He no b'long clever inside." And so he regards with 
 amazement the narrow lines within which a foreigner 
 may live and yet command respect among his country- 
 men, and looks with a wondering pity at the slim and 
 wiry forms of men playing at cricket, foot-ball and 
 other athletic sports, and marvels that they do not hire 
 coolies to do the work for them, while they, as would 
 better befit their position, sit still and grow fat. It is 
 surprising therefore that in Mr. Sing San's gallery of 
 illustration, the race-course and the regatta should 
 alone represent the foreigners' holiday-making. The 
 
Shanghai from a Chinaman s Point of Vieiv. 229 
 
 picture of the former is calculated to delight the heart 
 of all who would pour conten>pt on horse-racing, and 
 to send a thrill of pleasure thiough those who denounce 
 the conventional attitudes of horses in pictures. The 
 attitudes in this representation are in no wise like those 
 into which the mind interprets the perceptions of the 
 eye, and which therefore previous artists have at- 
 tempted to depict on their canvas. They are as strange, 
 stiff and ludicrous as the attitudes caught by Mr. 
 Muy bridge's cameras in his interesting experiments. 
 One cannot but wonder how horses with such action 
 are going to finish the race, but this wonder is balanced 
 by the other, as to how they began it. The represen- 
 tation of the regatta in the Soochow Creek is as 
 wonderful as that of the horse-race, and implies varied 
 accomplishments on the part of the oarsmen, for they 
 could never have got themselves as mixed up as they 
 seem there to have done and at the same time have 
 preserved the equilibrium of the boats without acro- 
 batic talents of a high order. Perhaps in the China- 
 man's view, the grog-shop belongs to the same category, 
 and the picture of Jack ashore is intended further to 
 illustrate foreign recreations. Poor Jack is the victim 
 of land-sharks in every port at which he makes a call, 
 and the ports of China are no exception. But it must 
 be admitted that Jack is too often an exceedingly 
 willing victim. The Chinaman who wants to represent 
 the Britisher in an unfavourable light has the material 
 ready at hand. A sailor, staggering along, brandishing 
 a bottle in each hand, is the picture he draws. 
 
230 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 The Volunteers and the Fire-Brigade are subjects 
 of two notable illustrations. Our volunteer force is 
 divided into companies rnd possesses a flag, the 
 honour of holding which is given for the year to that 
 company which, at the annual inspection, is accounted to 
 have acquitted itself most to the satisfaction of the in- 
 specting officer. Mr. Sing San has chosen tliis " fight for 
 the standard " as his special subject, but his under- 
 standing of the competition is evidently at fault. He 
 depicts the captains of two of the companies engaged in 
 a hand-to-hand conflict with naked swords, while the 
 companies stand ranged in the background. One of 
 the combatants holds the coveted banner at the moment 
 chosen by the artist, but seems heavily handicapped by 
 its possession, as it obliges him to wield his sword in the 
 left hand, and the eyes of all are turned sympatheti- 
 cally upon him, with the exception of those of the 
 three horses, two of which exhibit a cold indifference 
 to the whole proceeding, while the third is taking a 
 sleepy interest in his rival. The illustration of the 
 Fire Brigade is quite a spirited one. The fire is repre- 
 sented as raging furiously and the Chinamen are busy 
 rescuing their goods from the burning houses. Three 
 foreigners in something like the brigade helmets are 
 seen in charge of a fire-engine and hose, while a 
 member of the Hook-and-Ladder Company is performing 
 prodigious feats aloft. 
 
 The Missionary world finds recognition in two 
 pictures. In one of them a gentleman of long residence 
 in Shanghai suffers much at the hand of the artist, but 
 
Shanghai from a Chinaman's Point of View. 231 
 
 ample amends for the injustice done to the face are 
 made by the extravagant eulogy of the character given 
 in the letter-press unless, indeed, it be thought that 
 the injustice is repeated by the extravagance over- 
 stepping the boundary that divides eulogy from ridicule. 
 The other missionary picture, which, by-the-bye, Mr. 
 Sing San thought it appropriate to put next to the race- 
 course, is very amusing though naturally its subject is 
 serious. Here are two missionaries preaching to an 
 audience of two women and a child on one side of them, 
 and two men on the other side. They are moon-faced 
 and haloed, as we have noticed are most foreigners in 
 these volumes, and are dressed in a costume which is 
 neither Chinese nor Western, but a curious combination 
 of both. Whether our artist is acquainted with the 
 narrative of the Book of Exodus I cannot say, but 
 since the gentleman who is not speaking, is burdened 
 with an oblong object which, judging from the straight- 
 ness of the arm that supports it, appears to be very 
 heavy, it looks a little as though he was intended for 
 Moses laden with the stone tables, while the speaker 
 may be assumed to be Aaron, who was to be to Moses 
 " instead of a mouth." One of the women is turning 
 her head in a coy sort of way as though affecting to 
 disapprove of what she is apparently interpreting as 
 personal flattery. The other woman looks as though 
 bewildered and meditating flight. One of the men has 
 a very solemn look, and with uplifted little finger, 
 appears to be telling the other missionary the Moses 
 that he knows he ought not to be doing so, and 
 
232 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 Moses appears to be dangerously near responding with 
 a wink. 
 
 The picture representing a sitting of the Mixed Court, 
 a tribunal where a Chinese magistrate sits with a foreign 
 assessor to try cases in which Chinese are defendants, 
 and foreign interests are involved, adds nothing to one's 
 sense of the majesty of the law. Nor is one's sense of 
 the sublimity of architecture deepened by the picture 
 of the French Municipal Buildings with the statue of 
 Admiral Protet a picture into which two Chinamen 
 are introduced striking attitudes of astonishment which 
 would not be unnatural were the buildings as here 
 portrayed. 
 
 Of all the pictures the one that is perhaps most true 
 to life is that of a Chinaman in a jinriksha passing an 
 electric light. The tired, creeping manner of the 
 riksha coolie is admirably depicted. His passenger has 
 made his bargain with him, and the number of cash he 
 has promised to pay does not call for speed. The poor 
 coolie, free from stipulations as to the time to be taken, 
 is crawling along at a pace suited to his opium-shaken 
 constitution. The passenger, not being a " great man," 
 is at liberty to manifest his curiosity, and is pushing 
 aside the screen at the back and looking at the light 
 with undisguised interest. 
 
 The Public Gardens, the one place in the settlement 
 where one can go without being crowded by the Chinese, 
 are made the scene of the meditations of a foreigner 
 who, from his expression, may be judged to be des- 
 perately in love. 
 
Shanghai from a Chinaman's Point of View. 233 
 
 In many of the illustrations the foreigner does not 
 appear at all, though his influence may be apparent 
 enough. Thus there are pictures dealing with the wine 
 and tea-shops* the theatres, the opium-dens and places 
 and doings of even more questionable character con- 
 cerning which Chinese writers are not so accustomed as 
 are we to use circumlocution and paraphrase. Even in 
 these things which are patronised exclusively by the 
 Chinese, the foreign element is not absent, for the 
 foreigner is generally the landlord, and it is the foreign 
 control that seems conducive to their multiplication 
 and publicity. The foreign settlements of Shanghai 
 bear a bad name among the Chinese. They regard 
 them as the refuge and hunting-ground of the worst 
 characters among their fellow-countrymen. Very rough 
 and ready are Chinese methods, and justice does not 
 seem to be the chief end aimed at in the proceedings of 
 the mandarins; still there is little doubt that, amidst 
 the indiscriminate penalties inflicted, evil-doers often 
 meet with their deserts. Coming into these settlements, 
 however, the evil-doer in common with others enjoys a 
 considerable freedom and is able to evade the power of 
 squeeze to a very large degree. Things which are not 
 allowed openly in the native cities and which have 
 therefore to exist under assumed names and by the 
 sufferance of heavily bribed magistrates, flourish un- 
 blushingly within the municipal limits. 
 
 In the year 1883 a gentleman, who was in a position 
 to know, told me that some time previous to that the 
 authorities at Nanking had made a raid on all the 
 
234 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 houses of ill-fame in that city, whereupon the keepers 
 of them had migrated in a body to Shanghai, where the 
 .abominable trade is licensed and undisturbed, and had 
 been readily absorbed. Facts such as these justify the 
 Chinaman, as he thinks, in regarding foreigners as less 
 careful in moral matters than himself. As for his 
 fellow-countrymen, he knows how many of the most 
 depraved of them have come into the settlements, and 
 since he does not for a moment suppose that their 
 character has or will be improved by intercourse with 
 foreigners, he has no hesitation in placing the moral 
 average of the Shanghai Chinese below that of the 
 population of any other city in the empire. 
 
"A man I am crossM with adversity." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 
 "... one Pinch, a hungry, lean-faced villain, 
 A mere anatomy. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch, 
 A living-dead man." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. Comedy of Errors. 
 
 "The happy man's without a shirt." 
 
 JOHN HEYWOOD, 
 
 " life ! thou art a galling load 
 Along a rough and weary road, 
 To wretches such as I ! " BURNS. 
 
 "... least of all can aught that ever owned 
 The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime 
 Which man is born to sink, howe'er depressed, 
 So low as to be scorned without a sin." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
( 237 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GO HANG, THE TJKSHA COOLIE. 
 
 Go HANG was a jinriksba coolie. The jinriksha by 
 simple abbreviation, and usually, riksha ; by abbrevia- 
 tion, touched with a slight suspicion of affection, rikky ; 
 and by abbreviation, dominated to re-enlargement by 
 a spirit of descriptiveness, rickety is a small two- 
 wheeled carriage, a miniature buggy drawn by a man 
 who takes the place of the horse between the shafts, 
 from which is derived its name made up of the three 
 words : man, power, cart; leading to its being playfully 
 and most accurately, though at the same time, most 
 misleadingly, called a Pullman car. It was imported 
 into China from Japan where it is said to have 
 originated in the fertile brain of an American resident 
 and where it is a respectable carriage drawn by a wiry 
 muscular fellow who laughs at his work. But into 
 China it has come with an abject and apologetic air, and 
 so far has failed to inveigle into its shafts many but 
 those who have fallen on melancholy days. Men who 
 had been all their lives living as beasts of burden in 
 the capacity of- chair-carriers, and men who had 
 staggered through their years between the handles of 
 
238 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 unmanageably over-weighted wheel-barrows looked 
 with scorn upon the jinriksha and felt that it would 
 be derogatory to their human dignity to put their 
 hands upon its shafts. They would not thus demean 
 themselves. No man would enter the profession who 
 could possibly get anything else to do, and its ranks 
 were largely recruited from the list of poverty-stricken 
 opium smokers against whom most other avenues of 
 deriving an honest living were shut. 
 
 There are some in China and medical men are among 
 them who affirm that opium smoking does no harm, or 
 at least, but little. There are others including all the 
 medical missionaries, I believe who as firmly maintain 
 that it is the ruin of the people. Perhaps both are- 
 right. It seems to be pretty generally admitted that a 
 well-fed man of firm will can smoke opium for years, 
 smoking it regularly but in very small quantities, 
 without receiving any perceptible harm. It has to be 
 admitted however that a man cannot smoke opium 
 moderately who cannot afford to "live well." With 
 him whose frame is ill-nourished, whose stomach is 
 empty, the craving becomes more and more imperative ; 
 he is compelled to sacrifice everything to his pipe, he 
 must return to it again and again, it must be kept 
 filled at whatever costs : furniture and house, children 
 and wife must be sold to supply it. In such a case the 
 drug does a terrible and short work.* 
 
 * I purchased a picture by a native artist in Peking, representing 
 a poor shrivelled, skin-covered skeleton with an opium pipe in his 
 hand beseeching .a tiger to devour him. The tiger was turning 
 
Go Hang, the 'RiksJwt, Coolie. 
 
 Go Hang belonged to the emptier and sadder class, 
 He knew nothing of those rich repletions and super- 
 abundant satisfying? with which the more favoured defy 
 the opium. For him were none 1 of those comfortable 
 post-prandial thunders with which in China the guest 
 courteously acknowledges the affluence of his host's 
 entertainment, nor did his abdominal measurement 
 approach the figure that indicates respectability. He 
 was long and lank and brown as is the ribbed sea-sand, 
 though perhaps his memory could take him back to 
 days when he was inclined to embonpoint, when his 
 table was sumptuously provided and his chopsticks 
 dallied daily with shark's fin, sea-slug and other 
 delicacies, when a whole district stood in awe of him 
 as the mandarin who had a right of squeeze over his 
 fellows. Such a case was portrayed not very long ago 
 in the Hua POLO. A Chinaman coming out of a shop 
 calls for a riksha; a number of coolies rush forward 
 and offer their vehicles. The one who is first on the 
 spot and who would naturally have the first chance, 
 suddenly hides his head and turns away his wheels. 
 Mutual recognition has taken place. The riksha coolie 
 was once a petty mandarin and the would-be passenger 
 had been his servant. 
 
 Go Hang is miserable but not witless. He draws a 
 jinriksha duly licensed by the municipality, for has not 
 
 away his head and with his right paw waving aside the miserable 
 suppliant. The expression on the great beast's countenance said, 
 as plainly as the artist could make it, that he disdained so un- 
 promising a dish. 
 
240 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 a policeman observing a certain looseness about the 
 machine, demanded his authority for dragging after 
 him so crazy a chaos of boards and wheel-spokes, and 
 has he not shown his license and the council's stamp on 
 the jinriksha itself ? He has been to the periodical 
 inspection with a friend's sound jinriksha and obtained 
 nil necessary credentials, and has carefully taken from 
 the stamped and approved machine the board that 
 bears the stamp and placed it in his own rickety 
 -contrivance, his friend's sounder vehicle, meantime 
 repaired, going up to be passed and stamped anew. 
 
 And now Go Hang forms one of a dismal funeral 
 procession. Certain cheerful-looking and eminently 
 ragged and unreverend coolies by forced marches and 
 frequent rests are hurrying along a coffin under 
 bamboos to the intoned grunts with which all residents 
 in China are familiar. Following them in a string of 
 rikshas are the mourners in their dirty white rags, 
 endeavouring by their inordinate lamentations to 
 impress the magistrate of the spiritual yamen, before 
 which the deceased is now supposed to be, with a sense 
 of his great worth, and scattering paper sycee for the 
 benefit, and to the appeasing, of vagrant spirits who 
 might otherwise take advantage of a new coiner and 
 cause him unnecessary inconvenience. When the 
 coffin-bearers rest, the whole procession stops and the 
 mourners cease their wailings and their grimaces and 
 look a little more like ordinary beings. As soon as the 
 march is resumed, the yellings and howlings are 
 resumed also. Go Hang and his brethren of the shafts 
 
Go Hang, the 'Rikslia Coolie. 241 
 
 are under no obligation to identify themselves with the 
 solemnities of the occasion. Anything beyond the 
 conveyance of the mourners "no b'long their pidjin." 
 They therefore pass the time in the cracking of such 
 jokes as misery can deceive herself with, finding them- 
 selves a little more cheerful than usual perhaps, as the 
 sight of alien griefs takes their thoughts from their 
 own. 
 
 By-and-by, the hard earned cash having been counted 
 one by one into his hand, he finds himself once more 
 within the municipal limits, and, having quenched his 
 thirst at one of the great street-side tubs of tea provided 
 by the charitable for public use and as a work of 
 merit, he sets down his jinriksha in the shade of a wall, 
 loosens his jacket, rubs himself down with a filthy rag 
 which he carefully puts back under the cushion of the 
 seat, and draws out his fan to cool himself as best he 
 may. 
 
 Presently he seizes his jinriksha and rushes forward. 
 He has seen a sailor who appears to be looking for the 
 services of such as he. There is no fare for whom 
 Go Hang is so eager as a sailor. In taking him about 
 there is an element of uncertainty which is dear to the 
 gambling-loving Chinaman; Go Hang has not yet 
 learned how greatly the morals of the present race of 
 seamen have been changed for the better as compared 
 with those of their predecessors. Occasionally one may 
 have engaged him who knew where he wanted to go, 
 and, to his surprise, steered him straight for the Tem- 
 perance Hall. Generally speaking, the sailor does not 
 
 E 
 
242 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 know where he wants to go ; he gets into a jinriksha 
 and bids the coolie go ahead; and the coolie assumes 
 that he must take him to those regions where the 
 Municipal Council draws its revenues from grog shops 
 and worse. Of course Jack gets drunk while his 
 carriage waits, and it is an even chance whether, by the 
 time he wants to pay off his coolie, he will have any 
 money or no. And again, if he have, it is another even 
 chance whether he will have got into a good-humoured 
 stage in which he will turn his pocket inside out and 
 gladden the coolie's heart with all his loose change, or 
 whether he will have got into a stage in which a sug- 
 gestion about payment will call forth a savage oath and 
 yet more savage blow. Go Hang is ready to take his 
 chance. If he gets paid at all he will probably be paid 
 liberally, and if he gets nothing it will not be much less 
 than he would get from a Chinese passenger in the 
 ordinary course of travel. So he secures Jack and 
 trundles him off to the nearest public-house in which 
 for a while he is lost. When he comes out Go Hano- 
 
 o 
 
 regards him critically to see how he is influenced 
 whether towards good-humour, stupidity, or savagery. 
 His hopes rise a little as Jack jumps into the riksha, 
 throws himself back in it, and, with a lordly wave of 
 the hand, bids him go on. At other houses of call his 
 fare stays longer, and at last comes out of one wonder- 
 ing where he is. Presently he becomes conscious of 
 the riksha and gets into it. " Drive on," he manages 
 to hiccough out, emphasising the order with a stamp of 
 the foot. Go Hang takes him at a slow pace along the 
 
Go Hang, the 'RiJcsha Coolie. . 243 
 
 Bund, and the more open streets, in the hope that the 
 air will sober him a little. He lies contentedly and 
 helplessly, making no sign as long as there is motion. 
 Very little evidence is there of returning sobriety and 
 Go Hang is getting worn out. He stops, doubtful as to 
 what he had best do. Evidently he may wheel his fare 
 about as long as he likes, but to what profit ? Jack stirs 
 a little uneasily at any cessation of movement and 
 mutters, " Drive on." 
 
 At last Go Hang stops short. "Drive on," growls 
 Jack. Go Hang turns round in the shafts and looks at 
 him. " Drive on," again says Jack, this time with a 
 little more force. " What side wantchee walkee ? " asks 
 almost piteously the bewildered Go Hang. " Drive me 
 
 to " and Jack names a place not "mentioned usually 
 
 in ears polite. Go Hang has probably already done his 
 best to anticipate this instruction, and his uncertainty is 
 still unresolved. But light at last dawns on his inde- 
 cision and a fierce imagination fills his dull soul. His 
 labour shall not be for nought ; he has learned very 
 heartily to hate his burdensome old man of the sea and 
 now he knows what he will do with him. The fields to 
 which he had gone earlier in the day pass before his 
 vision. He will go there again. Even in his growing 
 desperation he would not venture to tackle a foreign 
 seaman capable of defending himself, but this man is 
 stupid with drink, and it is now dusk and will soon be 
 dark. He will wheel him out of the settlement and into 
 the country where he may leave him to the sobering 
 humours of a ditch after wreaking his vengeance on him 
 
 R 2 
 
244 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 and paying himself from his pockets and, if need be, 
 from his clothes. Buoyed up by this resolve, the 
 wearied and worn-out coolie puts on a spurt, is soon out 
 of the busy streets, has passed the race-course, and is; 
 making his way along the Bubbling Well Eoad. 
 
 But stimulus is not strength. He is going ploddingly, 
 like a man in his sleep, and his chariot drives heavily as- 
 erst did Pharaoh's at the Eed Sea, howbeit the road is. 
 better. Just as he is passing the gateway of one of the 
 villas, a bright light dazzles him ; it is the lamp of a 
 carriage coming out into the road. He had not heard 
 the wheels as they rolled down the gravel path and the- 
 horse is already upon him. He makes a sharp turn to 
 clear it too sharp a turn, for his somnolent and un- 
 conscious passenger is lying over the side, and his 
 weight together with the little momentum of the 
 jinriksha proves sufficient to overturn it. Jack is; 
 thrown out in front of the horse's hoofs, a little hurt 
 but more sobered, and thinks he has fallen from the 
 maintop. But what of Go Hang? Poor fellow, the 
 shock is too great for his opium-undermined constitu- 
 tion. He has fallen in his harness, and other hands* 
 draw home the fragments of his jinriksha. 
 
"Wearisome nights are appointed to me." JOB. 
 
 " For see, the morn, 
 All unconcerned with our unrest, begins 
 Her rosy progress, smiling." 
 
 MILTON. Paradise Lost. 
 
 "But yonder comes the powerful king of day, 
 Eejoicing in the east." THOMSON. Seasons. 
 
 " The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, 
 And the third hour of drowsy morning name." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. Henry V. 
 
 "Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, 
 With charm of earliest birds ; pleasant the sun, 
 When first on this delightful land he spreads 
 His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, 
 Glistening with dew." MILTON. Paradise Lost. 
 
( 247 ) 
 
 CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 SUNRISE. 
 
 SUNRISE is a subject of much rhapsody and many- 
 persons doubtless including officers of ships whose 
 watch covers its hour have seen a good deal of it. 
 For my own part I have once or twice been induced to 
 get up to see it, but this is not my habit, and these 
 exceptional enterprises have not been marked with 
 exceptional success. However, the climate does make 
 fools of us all, and often what we would not do from 
 choice we do from compulsion. The other night I 
 found my bedroom far too close to hope to have much 
 sleep in it. I therefore had my canvas stretcher set 
 up in a room that had a better aspect and in which 
 there seemed a little movement of air. This room faced 
 the east. There, tossing uneasily, I managed to sleep 
 more or less through the night till a rosy streak 
 stretched along the horizon. Here was a threat for 
 so I judged it, rather than a promise of another day. 
 Few men are optimists in the height of a Shanghai 
 summer. I did not care to try to sleep again with the 
 risk of sleeping on till the sun should have risen in 
 strength, and be pouring his rays fiercely on my un- 
 
248 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 protected head, so, between sleeping and waking, I 
 rolled off my stretcher and on to a bamboo lounge in 
 the verandah to watch the sky. As low down as the 
 roofs of some distant intervening houses would allow 
 me to see was a band of light every moment deepening 
 in colour ; above this a band of dark cloud ; above this 
 again, another band of light but without colour ; and 
 then the dark edge of the universal blackness that 
 stretched upwards to the zenith. Brighter grew the rosy 
 streak until, instead of looking like something on or 
 through which light was shining, it dazzled my blinking 
 eyes as though itself the source of light, and from it 
 there radiated upon the whole of the eastern sky a glow 
 of colour defining the edges of the more distant clouds 
 with a brickdust red and the edges of the nearer ones 
 with a bright crimson, while the horizon itself became 
 a glorious orange and the band that had been colourless 
 now revealed a depth of most delicate green and blue. 
 
 The growing beauty of the scene completely woke 
 me up. It was gorgeous as a sunset, but its effect 
 totally different as all the conditions were different. 
 The streets were quiet, the air was fresh and sweet as 
 it could never be at evening after absorbing the business 
 and smells of a town in China and after being baked 
 for a whole day by the summer sun. Doubtless I too 
 was more thoroughly a different man from myself after 
 a day's work than I realised. 
 
 A bulbul in a mulberry-tree just in front began to 
 sing his little song, at first with a quiet apologetic note, 
 'but gradually he reached his full compass and sang 
 
Sunrise. 249 
 
 gaily, . welcoming the advent of the sun as though 
 forgetful that when the object of his praise really rose, 
 he and his fellow-songsters would have to seek the 
 shadiest coverts they could find. One unblushing 
 cicada for a moment startled me with his shrill pipes, 
 but, realising that he would have it all his own way 
 presently when the sun at noon would be scorching 
 everything but him and his.chitinous race into silence, 
 even he had not the conscience to go on and modestly 
 -desisted. 
 
 The bats still filled the air but seemed hurried. I 
 knew that they would soon hang themselves out of the 
 way in dark corners of the houses in the immediate 
 neighbourhood, some perhaps in the very verandah 
 where I was lying, but I could not resist the imagina- 
 tion, as they flew on leathern wings across the glowing 
 sky, that they were evil spirits hasting conscience- 
 stricken before the dawn of light and colour to some 
 far off and deep abyss. One was flying directly east- 
 ward down my line of vision to the very brightest 
 point in the horizon where the sky seemed glowing 
 with an almost white heat. Owing to its direction its 
 position remained unchanged, and no motion could be 
 seen but the fluttering of its wings as its size gradually 
 decreased till in the brightness it was lost from sight. 
 Blame me not if I thought I was watching, in a parable, 
 an evil spirit bathing in light and, to paraphrase 
 Milton, purging and unsealing her long abused soul at 
 the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while the 
 doves were beginning to coo of mutual love. 
 
250 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 Just then, our neighbour's baby since the beginning 
 of the hot weather, a sad sufferer from boils and 
 prickly-heat awoke and expressed its sense of the 
 inconvenience of the same in the manner usual to an 
 infant crying in the night, but with perhaps unusual 
 vehemence. A white-necked crow on a roof hard by 
 with distinct enunciation called out most opportunely, 
 " Hark ! hark ! " but instead of silence there broke 
 forth a sudden and noisy remonstrance from a hitherto 
 quiescent colony of sparrows. I had not seen the sun 
 rise but the glamour was gone. The baby, the crow, 
 and the sparrows were too prosaic, and I determined to 
 desert the verandah and try if in the bedroom I might 
 possibly yet doze, or even by good fortune sleep, an 
 hour or two longer. 
 
" With money you may move the gods, without it you cannot 
 move a man." Chinese Proverb. 
 
 " When Confucius was crossing the T'ai Mountain, he overheard 
 a woman weeping and wailing beside a grave. He thereupon sent 
 one of his disciples to ask what was the matter ; and the latter 
 addressed the woman, saying, ' Some great sorrow must have come 
 upon you that you give way to grief like this ? ' ' Indeed, it is so,' 
 replied she. * My father-in-law Avas killed here by a tiger ; after 
 that, my husband ; and now, my son has perished by the same 
 death.' 'But why, then,' enquired Confucius, 'do you not go 
 away?' 'The government is not harsh,' answered the woman. 
 ' There,' cried the master, turning to his disciples, ' remember that. 
 Bad government is worse than a tiger. '" T'AN KUXG. 
 
 " A goodly, portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent ; of a cheerful 
 look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage ; and, as I think, his 
 .age some fifty, or by'r lady, inclining to three score." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. 1. Hen. IV. 
 
 "... Hissed the locust-fiends that crawled 
 And glittered in corruption's slimy track." 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. The Destiny of Nations. 
 
 " Let me have men about me that are fat." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. Julius Cxsar. 
 
( 253 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 CHINESE OFFICIALDOM. 
 
 SANCHO PANZA could not read or write but he- 
 doubted not his ability to govern the island which the 
 prowess of Don Quixote was to win for him. It may 
 even be that the personal element in the testimony 
 excepted he was not very far from the mark when he' 
 told the duchess that he had seen more asses than one 
 go to a government. Nevertheless the illiterate is not 
 the ideal ruler of men even when blessed with as much 
 sagacity and proverb-born wisdom as the squire of La 
 Mancha's knight. In their rulers men look for not 
 only mother- wit but culture, not only shrewdness and 
 natural ability but ability disciplined to the possession 
 and exercise of its full possibilities. Eusticity may be- 
 decked with ribbons by poets and painters, and ignorance 
 may be of large comfort to him who enjoys it, but in 
 mercy withhold power from his hands, or it will prove 
 of but small comfort to those under his sway. It was 
 when the queen of Sheba saw the wisdom of Solomon,, 
 she exclaimed how happy were the people over whom< 
 he was king to do judgment and justice. 
 
"254 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 But if Israel was to be congratulated on the control 
 of one wise man, China must merit a chorus of con- 
 gratulation, governed as she is by scores of wise men 
 having in all the offices of her eighteen provinces 
 mandarins who have ascended the steps of power from 
 the avenues of learning, who have been proved by 
 questions as difficult as any that the queen of Sheba 
 put to Solomon, and who have stood the test of writing 
 poems and essays on morals and government. The red 
 umbrellas, the sonorous gongs, the processional tablets, 
 the pheasants' tails and sugar-loaf hats, nay, the very 
 rags of the retinues, the personal rags beneath and the 
 official rags, which, for the nonce and somewhat scantily, 
 cover them above, all, in their several ways, proclaim 
 the praise of learning. 
 
 The uncivilised West is not unacquainted with the 
 manner in which filthy lucre buys power and foolishness 
 inherits it; in defiance rather than in conviction she 
 speaks of the honour paid to Wisdom, and tells of its 
 worth sadly as mindful of how little it is accounted. 
 What the author of Ecclesiastes wrote in Western Asia 
 is read sympathetically in Western Europe. The " poor 
 wise man" saved the little city from the great king 
 that besieged it and "by his wisdom delivered the 
 ^ity ; yet no man remembered that same poor man." 
 How our eyes ought to glisten with the dews of admira- 
 tion as we hear of and see a mighty empire in which 
 learning is not despised, in which the highest offices and 
 the most honourable places are before the feet of him 
 who walks in wisdom's ways. It is no matter of sur- 
 
Chinese Officialdom. 255 
 
 prise that this wondrous land has been held up as an 
 example for all nations. What men more incorrupt, 
 more competent to hold the reins of power than those 
 whose minds have been regulated by the severe study 
 of the ancient moralists and sages ? What people more 
 secure than those who live under such a philosophy- 
 chastened rule? The emperor is the son of heaven 
 and father of the empire, and every viceroy is the 
 father of his province. Peace, plenty, patriotism 
 these are the natural consequences of such a system 
 of government. Blessed among nations must be the 
 Middle Kingdom. 
 
 But the awkward fact remains that it is not. There 
 is probably no other country as thoroughly honey- 
 combed with caves of Adullam, as full of sedition, as 
 seething with discontent, for there is no other country 
 in which official life is so corrupt. " The big fishes eat 
 the little fishes, and the little fishes eat the shrimps," 
 says the not unobservant proverb of this happy people, 
 adding with a sad bitterness, " and the shrimps eat 
 mud." Squeeze pidjin is the life of China. And 
 this is not merely the cynical testimony of "mer- 
 cenary merchants," who come to the land to make 
 money out of the people, and live at Treaty Ports 
 knowing almost nothing of China proper ; nor is it the 
 biassed testimony of " fanatical missionaries," who have 
 come with preconceived ideas of heathen depravity, and 
 are too blind to see any good in customs and morals 
 which they hope to change. No ; it is the witness of 
 the Chinese themselves. The proverb just quoted is a 
 
256 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 Chinese proverb,* and for the severest criticisms on the 
 manners of the mandarins, one must look to what the 
 censorate says to the emperor as published in the 
 Peking Gazette. Official after official, who has qualified 
 for his office by writing essays in the purest and most 
 polished classical style on the necessity of a ruler 
 studying the welfare of the ruled at any cost and self- 
 sacrifice, is accused of making his office the means of 
 grinding the faces of the poor. It is true that on 
 investigation a large proportion of these charges are 
 declared to be without foundation. But this is a fact 
 of easy explanation. The censors are themselves 
 Chinese officials and doubtless something has to be 
 allowed for possible personal grudges, accusations that 
 have been duly paid for, and the like. The investiga- 
 tors also are Chinese officials, from which it follows that 
 the accused will find it quite worth while, and not 
 always hopeless, to devote one part of his ill-gotten, 
 gains to the saving of his credit and the other part of 
 them. There is little occasion for surprise at the 
 verdict of not guilty pronounced in so many of these 
 cases, but, with all deductions, the number of accusa- 
 tions that either receive or are susceptible of confirma- 
 tion is simply appalling. 
 
 Further than this the accusations actually made are 
 
 * It finds indeed a wondrously close parallel in the wisdom of 
 Shakspere learned by the study of Englishmen of his day : 
 
 Third Fisherman. Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the 
 
 sea. 
 First Fisherman. Why, as men do a-land ; the great ones eat 
 
 up the little ones." Per. II. 1. 
 
Chinese Officialdom. 257 
 
 but samples of what are possible. The imperial frown 
 is supposed to be dark on every form of bribery and 
 extortion, yet, since the salaries which the officials 
 receive are ridiculously inadequate to cover the legiti- 
 mate expenses of their offices, it is perfectly well under- 
 stood that they must pay themselves from other sources. 
 Confucius said it was shameful when officials thought 
 only about their salaries, in which remark, though not 
 in his sense of it, they heartily concur. Their salaries 
 are the smallest part of their income and the least 
 worth thinking about. Courtesy demands that they 
 accept what the government pays them, but the 
 exigencies of their position demand that they pay 
 themselves. The only thing that is really required 
 of them is that they pay themselves discreetly ; that 
 they set a tolerable limit to their squeeze. As long as 
 they do this every one is satisfied ; the people below 
 submit cheerfully, and the greater men above in their 
 turn squeeze comfortably and proportionately. But 
 where a mandarin squeezes so inconsiderately and reck- 
 lessly as to provoke discontent, he is imperilling the 
 peace of the empire, and it will go hard with him. An 
 official extortion that drives the populace to united 
 action is an unpardonable sin, even though it be an 
 extortion to which the poor official considers himself 
 driven by some imperial demand. The people may 
 rise in a body against such an officer, mob him, and 
 even put him to death, and their conduct will be con- 
 doned and his condemned. It seems to be assumed 
 that whatever arouses general and organised resistance 
 
 s 
 
258 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 must be blameworthy. It should be borne in mind that 
 China is governed by the emperor by grace of the 
 people. The emperor is the son of heaven, and, as 
 such, the people obey him and invest him with an air 
 of sanctity, regarding him with an almost idolatrous 
 reverence. He claims their loyalty as the earthly 
 representative of heaven. But if he do anything un- 
 worthy of such filial relation to heaven, he, by such an 
 act, dethrones himself, proves himself to be no son of 
 heaven but an impostor, and his people are thereby 
 absolved from allegiance, and perfectly justified in rising 
 against his power. Long years ago, Mencius was bold 
 enough to say in one of his books, " The people are the 
 most important element in a country ; the spirits of the 
 land and grain are the next ; the ruler is the lightest." 
 And further, "When the prince of a state endangers the 
 altars of the land and grain, he is changed, and another 
 appointed." In another book he deals with the question 
 of heaven appointing the emperors, and, being asked 
 by his disciples for explanation, speaks of the people 
 and heaven as equally accepting the candidate for the 
 throne, adding, " This view is in accordance with what 
 is said in the Great Declaration, ' Heaven sees as my 
 people see, heaven hears as my people hear/ w Doubt- 
 less if in these days the people endeavoured no change the 
 occupant of the throne on the ground of the unworthy 
 character of some imperial 'act, the emperor would seek 
 to prove that the act was not unworthy, and among the 
 arguments he would use would be the Manchu soldiery, 
 but if the people succeeded in confuting these some- 
 
Chinese Officialdom. 259 
 
 what solid arguments, there would be no question of 
 treason or guilt. Their view would have been confirmed 
 and therefore their action justified. ISTow if the people 
 have an acknowledged right to rise against an emperor 
 shown to be unworthy, how much more right have they 
 to rise against a viceroy or less official ! 
 
 Squeeze within limits, then, is tacitly assumed to be 
 legitimate and necessary. But the man who has learned 
 the art for the sake of practising it within limits will 
 be sorely tempted to experiment beyond. It requires 
 more moral courage than Chinese training is calculated 
 to call forth to stop firmly in such a matter at an un- 
 certain and indeterminate border-line, marked by no 
 definite law but only by one's own discretion and sense 
 of the fitness of things. Most feel that they are lacking 
 in justice to their dependents and themselves if they 
 stop short of the limit of what is allowable ; up to that 
 they must surely go. And that limit is seldom found 
 except by the act of passing it. Who can tell before- 
 hand at which straw the camel's back will break ? Yet 
 all short of that is permissible, all beyond extortionate. 
 
 A resident in Peking some time ago got hold of the 
 following figures, which he gave to the foreign public 
 through the press. The condition of tilings which 
 they illustrate is well known, but it is not always 
 that one can lay the hand on the exact figures as 
 in this case. In 1876 the Peking lekin on foreign 
 opium was forty taels a chest, and in that year 
 two thousand three hundred chests were taken into 
 Peking, of which five hundred were smuggled and 
 
 s 2 
 
260 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 eighteen hundred paid duty. This should, at forty 
 taels a chest, have amounted to seventy-two thousand 
 taels, whereas the Superintendent of Customs acknow- 
 ledged the receipt of only eleven thousand two hundred 
 and ninety-nine, leaving sixty thousand seven hundred 
 and one taels unaccounted for ! The proportion reminds 
 one of the sack and the bread in FalstafFs tavern score. 
 Although it grates harshly against the national pride, 
 the government has seen the expediency of retaining 
 the Imperial Maritime Customs under foreign manage- 
 ment. The head of the service is an Englishman, and 
 all the servants on whom the least responsibility rests 
 are Europeans or Americans, and, roughly speaking, it 
 has been said that in these Maritime Customs ten per 
 cent, goes in salaries, and ninety per cent, goes to 
 Peking ; while in the inland Customs, which are under 
 native management, the figures are reversed, only ten per 
 cent, ever reaching the capital. This balanced arrange- 
 ment of figures may have been affected somewhat by con- 
 siderations of simplicity and effect, moreover they may 
 possibly be susceptible of partial explanation on account 
 of just provincial claims, but they will require a good 
 deal of manipulation to make them other than an illus- 
 tration that the literary officials in China are, of all 
 officials that fatten in any land, the most guilty of 
 malversation, and this notwithstanding the much-lauded 
 practice of raising to office only those whose virtue and 
 culture have been tested by examinations in the 
 classics and the writing of moral essays. 
 
 That this should be so is not strange. In a previous 
 
Chinese Officialdom. 261 
 
 chapter I have tried to show that what is called educa- 
 tion in this favoured land is something altogether 
 different from what is meant by education among us, 
 that the two things indeed have little in common. 
 Culture in China is skill in playing with quotations and 
 veiled literary references, legerdemain in words and 
 phrases, with a pious conservative horror of innovations ; 
 in which is a development of cleverness, but no puri- 
 fying of the heart or preparation for the governing of 
 men. To maim the mind rather than to expand it, is the 
 effect of Chinese study even at its best, when carried on 
 for study's sake, for the love of the learning itself. But 
 the average candidate is little likely to seek the simple 
 advantage of disinterested culture. The very com- 
 mendable notion that prompted the decision that every 
 aspirant to office should be required to become familiar 
 with Confucian ethics has somewhat defeated itself, and 
 the said Confucian ethics are far less likely to be 
 studied and valued for their inherent worth by reason 
 of their manifest value as the ladder from the earth of 
 the oppressed to the heaven of the oppressor. Literary 
 attainment is with him a means of political advance- 
 ment. The ancient writings are not studied for the 
 love of them, but with a view to esteem and influence, 
 power and office. And so it comes to pass that a man 
 learns to write elaborate panegyrics on impartial justice 
 as magic charms to open the gates of the hall where he 
 may shamelessly fill both hands with bribes, and justify 
 the common proverb, " The yamen-doors are open wide 
 to him with money on his side." Having no interest in 
 
262 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 study except as a passport to office, he will even as 
 testified by the censors and published in the Peking 
 Gazette hire a poor scholar to personate him in the 
 examination and to write for him the required plati- 
 tudes on Integrity and Uprightness. 
 
 The educational system that has not freed Chinese 
 officialdom from the avarice and like vices, against which 
 it was supposed to be specially the safeguard, is not 
 likely to have freed it from superstition. And so we 
 find the Gazette enlivened by all manner of memorials 
 presented by these literary and cultured mandarins to 
 the emperor for tablets and other signs of imperial 
 favour to be shown to canonised saints, and river gods, 
 and tutelary deities of hills and forests for all sorts of 
 supernatural assistance rendered by them. There is 
 possibly a good deal of the knave mixed with a propor- 
 tion of the fool in some matters of this kind, as when, 
 a memorial being threatened against some mining project 
 on the ground that the intended operations will disturb 
 the peace of the Earth Dragon, it is soon discovered 
 that a sufficient favour bestowed on the person proposing 
 to memorialise will still all anxiety in regard to the Earth 
 Dragon's discomfort. But it is most probable that the 
 literary graduate, while he would undoubtedly be ready 
 to make use of the popular superstitions for the purpose 
 of managing the people, even if he did not believe in 
 them at all, has, as a matter of fact, almost as firm a 
 faith in them as the veriest rustic. The following 
 notice of a memorial concerning a gifted dragon that 
 lives in a well, and from its murky depths answers the 
 
Chinese Officialdom. 263 
 
 people's prayers for rain, I copy in full from the 
 Gazette. 
 
 " A Postscript Memorial of P'an Yu requests that an 
 additional title of rank and a tablet written by His 
 Majesty's own hand may be conferred on a Dragon 
 Spirit, who has manifested himself and answered the 
 prayers made to him. 
 
 " In the Ang-Shan mountain, a hundred li from the 
 town of Kuei-hsi, there are three wells, of which one is 
 on the mountain top in a spot seldom visited. It has 
 long been handed down that a dragon inhabits this 
 well. If pieces of metal are thrown into the well they 
 float ; but light things, as silk or paper, will sink. If 
 the offerings are accepted, fruits come floating up in 
 exchange. Anything not perfectly pure and clean is 
 rejected and sent whirling up again. The Spirit dwells in 
 the blackest depths of the water, in form like a strange 
 fish with golden scales and four paws, red eyes, and long 
 body. He ordinarily remains deep in the water without 
 stirring. But in times of great drought, if the local 
 authorities purify themselves and sincerely worship him, 
 he rises to the top. He is then solemnly conveyed to 
 the city, and prayers for rain are offered to him, which 
 are immediately answered. His temple is in the district 
 city on the Ts'ang-hsi Ling. The provincial and local 
 histories record that tablets to him have been erected 
 from the Mongol and the Ming dynasties. During the 
 present dynasty, on several occasions, as for instance in 
 the years 1845 and 1863, he has been carried into the 
 city and rain has fallen immediately. Last year a 
 
264 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 dreadful drought occurred, in which the ponds and tanks 
 dried up to the great terror of the people. On the 15th 
 day of the 8th month the magistrate conducted the 
 Spirit into the city, and with the assembled multitude 
 prayed to him fervently. Thereupon a gentle rain 
 falling throughout the country, brought plenty in the 
 place of scarcity and gladdened the hearts of all. At 
 about the same time the people of a district in the 
 vicinity, called Chin-yu, also had recourse to the Spirit 
 with equally favourable result. These are well-known 
 events, which have happened quite recently. 
 
 " It is the desire of the people of the district that some 
 mark of distinction should be conferred on the Spirit ; 
 and the memoralist finds such a proceeding to be 
 sanctioned both by law and precedent. He therefore 
 humbly lays the wishes of the people before His Majesty, 
 who perhaps will be pleased to confer a title and an 
 autograph tablet as above suggested." 
 
" A very ancient and fish-like smell." 
 
 SHAKSPERE. The Tempest. 
 
 " The people here live in alleys two yards wide, which have a 
 smell about them which is peculiar but not entertaining. It is well 
 the alleys are not wider because they hold as much smell now as a 
 person can stand, and of course if they were wider they would hold 
 more, and then the people would die. These alleys are paved with 
 stone and carpeted with deceased cats and decayed rags and de- 
 composed vegetable tops and remnants of old boots, all soaked in 
 dish-water, and the people sit around on stools and enjoy it." 
 
 MAEK TWAIN, on Civita Veccliia. 
 
( 2C7 ) 
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 ACEOSS THE HEAVENLY FOKD. 
 
 TROUBLES that gather round one's head in the very hour 
 of congratulation that they have been escaped, are hard 
 to bear. Such troubles are not unheard of, however. 
 Travelling northward from Shanghai, on one occasion, 
 we had a remarkably pleasant trip through the Yellow 
 Sea, the water being as placid as though it never had 
 harboured ill-designs on man's comfort : getting into 
 the Gulf of Pechili, we were conscious of just a sus- 
 picion of -a ground swell it was no more than a 
 suspicion, yet it called to mind seasons of sea-sickness 
 which the motion of the more open sea had failed to 
 awaken so that it was with a feeling of relief that we 
 heard we should make Taku Bar about six o'clock in 
 the evening. The swell became no more agreeable on 
 further acquaintance but we thought we could hold out 
 against it till then. Alas, we did make Taku Bar at 
 six, and we found all manner of craft lying at anchor 
 outside pitching mercilessly and straining mightily at 
 their anchor- chains, for a storm of wind and rain had 
 arisen, and it was with a shudder that we admitted the 
 thought that the reasons which caused them to lie outside, 
 might detain us also. The horror of the thought was 
 
268 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 our comfort, we judged it too horrible to be possible. It 
 could not be. But it came to pass. The air was too 
 thick with the rain to admit of our seeing the signals 
 which tell the depth of the water on the bank. There 
 was nothing for it but to drop our anchors one would 
 not hold us till it should clear up, of which there was 
 no likelihood during the little daylight remaining. 
 So we lay all that night at the mercy of the waves, 
 tantalised by the knowledge that just across the bar and 
 within the river's mouth the waters were still. Here 
 was the point at which we had hoped to bid farewell to 
 all our fears ; here in our sanguine anticipations the 
 ground swell would cease from troubling and we should 
 be at rest; and here it was that our troubles really 
 began. As long as the steamer was ploughing her way 
 through the waters, her own uniform movement did 
 something to neutralise their vagaries and to correct 
 their irregularities. But as soon as the fatal order, 
 " Stop her," was rung to the engine-room, she lay a toy 
 for the waves to play with as they listed. Here, where 
 we had hoped to gain a steady motion or a quiet 
 anchorage, we had to steel our hearts to the prospect of 
 a night's wild tossing. Here, where we had expected to 
 be able to laugh at forebodings of sea-sickness, we had 
 to succumb to its power, and watch for the morning. 
 It seemed a long watch but the morning dawned at 
 length and, as soon as the tide allowed, we crossed the 
 bar and steamed into the river. The crossing was not 
 without difficulty since the water was scarcely suffi- 
 cient for us. At last evening-tide, as we now learned, 
 
Across the Heavenly Ford. 269 
 
 the water was two feet higher, the storm from which 
 we were then suffering driving the water landwards 
 and piling it up at the river's mouth, though it obscured 
 from our eyes the signals which would have told us 
 how free a course it had provided for our keel. By 
 this morning the wind had shifted and tended to drive 
 the water out of the river's bed, so that we were in 
 danger of being detained yet another tide. Fortunately 
 we managed to drag across. 
 
 Though the price of it was greater than we would 
 have paid voluntarily, we enjoyed a sight this fine 
 morning which ( would have been stripped^ of its im- 
 pressiveness had we steamed into the ^Peiho in the 
 darkening twilight and the drizzling rain. Among 
 our passengers was the General Chow, mentioned on 
 page 166 as holding an examination in medicine and 
 surgery. He had been down to Nganking, or some 
 other city or town in Nganhwui, to fulfil the decreed 
 days of mourning retirement for the death of his 
 mother. He was now returning to his command. A 
 young Chinaman among our saloon passengers informed 
 us that the general was in charge of the whole of the 
 Tientsin Army whatever that might be and that he 
 was under orders to march thirty thousand men from 
 Taku to Tientsin,* to be inspected by the Seventh 
 Prince Prince Chun the father of the reigning 
 emperor, who was breaking through the imperial 
 
 * This was probably a natural Chinese exaggeration. Dr. 
 Mackenzie, as quoted on p. 166, gives fifteen thousand, and that in 
 a somewhat qualified phrase, as the number of his entire command. 
 
270 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 customs and traditions, and starting on a tour of in- 
 spection of the army, the navy and the fortifications 
 at Taku, Port Arthur and Wei-hai-wei. As we passed 
 into the river, between the forts, we found troops 
 drawn up upon the ramparts, and banners were un- 
 furled and cannon fired in honour of General Chow, to 
 the dazzling of our eyes and the deafening of our ears. 
 One of the steamer's officers had asked the gallant 
 soldier for his flag to hoist at the mast-head, but he 
 had preferred to put it on a small launch and send it 
 ahead. Of course the steamer soon left the launch 
 behind, and the general was flagless. But, though- no 
 longer advertised by the introductory banner, he was 
 known to be on board and was blazed at with blank 
 charges and honoured from every point of vantage 
 where men could be drawn up on gunboat or on shore. 
 There was a sinister whisper through the ship about 
 our being kept for some twenty-four hours here on this 
 old gentleman's account, and it is astonishing how low 
 he sank at once in his fellow-passengers' estimation, so 
 low, indeed, that we were all perfectly satisfied and 
 pleased to say good-bye, when, after keeping us waiting 
 awhile for his steam launch to overtake us, he was 
 persuaded to go on board of it. There was great ko- 
 towing of his subordinates, who were be-silked, be- 
 satined and be-feathered to a degree which contrasted 
 strangely with his not only plain but shabby and dirty 
 costume. A member of one of the foreign legations, who 
 was well versed in Chinese etiquette, expressed himself 
 strongly, as he watched the proceedings from our deck, 
 
Across the Heavenly Ford. 271 
 
 in regard to the old general's discourtesy in not landing 
 in more becoming and suitable dress. But these 
 military mandarins will not bear comparison with the 
 civil. They are often rough and ill-mannered men 
 who have obtained promotion for some act of personal 
 courage, or for skill in archery, or for great physical 
 strength uncouth bears, whom no taming or training 
 can teach to dance other than clumsily. 
 
 After we had got rid of our general, we started afresh 
 and at the next camp we passed, the garrison, not 
 knowing how empty of worth our vessel now was, 
 turned out duly, the men in ranks with their banners 
 outspread, the cannon blazing, while one of the feathered 
 officials, in a most prominent position, first knelt, and 
 then prostrated himself, reverently holding forth toward 
 us a large red paper. When a Chinaman on board 
 shouted out that the great man was no longer honour- 
 ing us with his presence, the expression of disgust that 
 spread over the faces of those troops was a sight 
 which we .would gladly have studied at a less distance. 
 The prostrate official tumbled up indignantly with none 
 of the educated grace which had marked the processes of 
 descent, and the men threw their flags down or began 
 to twist them up with an emphasis indicating that 
 Chinamen are human and do not like to be sold. 
 
 The passage of the river was restful to the pas- 
 sengers. To the captain it must have been a somewhat 
 anxious one, demanding incessant attention. He was 
 on the bridge the whole time and the engine-room 
 signals and the wheel were scarcely ever still. The 
 
272 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 river is as devious as a river can be, so devious in fact 
 that it is wonderful how the water finds its way down 
 and out of it ; the bottom of it seems getting very near 
 the top ; and it is crowded with junks, which always 
 seem thickest where the channel is narrowest which 
 may be accounted for by the channel being narrowest 
 all the way. The annual freshets do something to 
 deepen and widen the bed, but, whether it be from in- 
 creasing draining off of the waters for irrigation and 
 canals, or from other causes, there seems to be a 
 growing difficulty, where the difficulty need not grow 
 very much to make the river altogether unnavigable 
 by such steamers as are now on the Chinese coast. 
 But the responsibilities of the captain did not prevent 
 the irresponsible from enjoying the quiet surface after 
 the tossing of outside Taku, and the bright spring green 
 of the crops after the grey horizon of the rain-storm at 
 sea ; we had leisure to lie back in lounge chairs and to 
 follow the swinging wing-stroke of the terns and the 
 more gay skimming of the swallows, which, though 
 they never by any chance allow themselves to lapse 
 into intentional frivolity, too seldom gain the credit 
 they deserve for serious attention to business. We 
 listened with a kind of lazy indifference to the suc- 
 cessive orders and signals from the bridge, till we heard 
 the order, "Let go the anchor," about eight or nine 
 miles short of the Tientsin wharves. That touched us 
 more nearly, but since it was the farthest we could get 
 in the then condition of the river, we had to make the 
 best of it and do the remaining miles in a small boat, 
 
Across the Heavenly Ford. 273 
 
 for which, of course, the boatmen, feeling that they had 
 us in their power, demanded exorbitant fares. 
 
 Tientsin, the Heavenly Ford, was all agog about the 
 Seventh Prince, of whom we got as heartily tired as 
 the brave Geraint did of the sparrow-hawk in Earl 
 Yniol's town. But the doings of lesser personages soon 
 became of more pressing moment to us, affording quite 
 unnecessary illustration to our already initiated under- 
 standings of that spirit of obstructiveness by which, in 
 important matters and in unimportant, the Celestial 
 endeavours, and not seldom successfully, to thwart the 
 stranger that is within his gates, nullifying the stipula- 
 tions of treaties with nations and the promises to 
 individuals. The " No-can " of a Chinaman, blandly 
 smiling regret at inability, while making no attempt to 
 hide the most palpable evidences of ability, is an earth 
 rampart into which the fiery shot of a foreigner's go- 
 aheadness, buries itself helplessly. Not long ago, I 
 wanted to go into an empty house and asked the gate- 
 keeper for the key. He at first affected not to under- 
 stand me, and then, when he found that that would 
 not do, he told me that he had not got the key, that 
 
 Mr. had got it. I pointed to a key hanging on the 
 
 wall, which I felt sure was the key I wanted, but he 
 said, " No, that was not the key," and refused to give 
 it to me. Not caring to take it from him by force, I 
 
 wrote a chit to Mr. , asking for the key of the 
 
 house which the gatekeeper said he had. Mr. 
 
 wrote back that the gatekeeper had it. I now attacked 
 
 that functionary with Mr. 's letter in my hand, 
 
 T 
 
274 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 and calmly and without hesitation he took down the 
 key, to which I had before pointed, and gave it me. 
 As far as I know, he had no other reason for keeping 
 me out than that I wanted to get in, and all the 
 advantage he could derive from it was the pleasure of 
 putting me to as much inconvenience and subjecting 
 me to as much delay as possible. And now in the 
 North, I found the same spirit as in Mid China. Our 
 amah came to us the evening of the day we landed, 
 saying that she had had nothing to eat all day, and was 
 feeling very faint. The servants had refused to give 
 her any food. On being questioned, they admitted the 
 facts as stated by our famished woman. It was so, and 
 of course, it would have to be so : the amah was a 
 Shanghai woman, and therefore could not eat Tientsin 
 chow, and they were Tientsin people, and therefore 
 could not cook Shanghai chow, and so the amah 
 would have to go without ; there was no help for it. 
 Our good hostess remonstrated with her servants, and 
 asked if the amah was to have nothing to eat while 
 she stayed in Tientsin. They replied by saying that 
 they did not see how it could be done they could nojb 
 get the proper food they could not cook it they could 
 not, &c., &c. So our good friend accepted the situation 
 and made an appeal on other grounds, She pointed 
 out that if the amah got no food, she would certainly 
 die ; and further if she died there, they would as 
 certainly be held responsible, and that the least evil 
 that they would suffer would be the bearing the ex- 
 pense of the coffin and full funeral rites. This was not 
 
Across the Heavenly Ford. 275 
 
 put as a joke but as a serious argument, and it had 
 the effect of bending a little the previously inflexible. 
 By-and-by it was apparent that the impossible was 
 becoming possible and that an effort would be made 
 to see if, for a suitable and sufficient consideration, 
 Shanghai chow could be got and cooked for the 
 intruder. The motive here was probably two-fold : first, 
 to inflict as much bother upon us foreigners as possible 
 and thereby incidently squeeze us a trifle extra for our 
 servant's food ; and second, to gratify their feeling of 
 dislike to the servant herself. For China is rich in 
 provincial jealousy. Cantonese amahs are the occasion 
 of a like trouble in Shanghai ; in fact, as pointed out 
 on an earlier page, many of the Shanghai inhabitants 
 deny to Cantonese the credit of being natives of the 
 Middle Kingdom at all. At last it was decided that 
 the cook should prepare the amah's food, and he 
 undertook to do so, but the very next morning he 
 failed her, stating that she could have nothing that day 
 as he had not time. Being remonstrated with mildly, 
 he found relief for his hurt feelings in thrashing his 
 wife, after which he felt better and the poor Shanghai 
 woman got something to eat. 
 
 Tientsin is built on a plain as flat as that on which 
 Shanghai stands, but it rejoices in a drier air. Certain 
 fertiliser - manufactures, of processes altogether too 
 simple, serve to indicate more effectually than plea- 
 santly when the wind is in certain quarters, though in 
 spite of their extensive business, the soil, charged with 
 soda or some such substance inimical to vegetation, 
 
 T 2 
 
276 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 refuses to adorn itself for the advent of Spring. The 
 landscape, as far as the eye can see, is one miserable 
 stretch of brown earth relieved only by brown grave- 
 mounds. The native city is surrounded by a moat for 
 which some have ventured to claim the palm for 
 fragrant filthiness among all the city-moats of China. 
 It may even merit it, though others will run it close for 
 the honour. Such a moat is naturally an object of pride 
 to the inhabitants, arid it is popularly understood that 
 whenever a stranger, unacquainted with the language 
 and with the topography of the place and therefore 
 more or less helpless, is committed to a jinriksha coolie, 
 to whom instructions are given as to destination, dis- 
 cretion being allowed him as to the route, that coolie 
 will take that stranger along the city inoat, if there be 
 any possibility of getting to his destination by that 
 way, however indirect it may be. It is one of the lions 
 of the place, and however unappreciative or ultra- 
 appreciative the stranger may be, he has got to be 
 trundled along it. 
 
 The city itself lieth four-square, having walls fronting 
 the four cardinal points of the compass, and in the 
 centre of each wall a gate. From the North Gate to 
 the South, and from the East Gate to the West, run the 
 main streets in the intersection of which, in the middle 
 of the city, stands the Drum Tower, from which the 
 signal is sounded in case of fire. From this tower a 
 capital view may be got of all there is to be seen: 
 the shell of the Eoman Catholic church destroyed 
 in 1870, the Mohammedan mosques, the temples, the 
 
Across the Heavenly Ford. 277 
 
 watch-towers on the walls and the junk masts in the 
 river. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, the ineradicable gambling spirit 
 of the Chinese is seen on every hand. The streets are 
 full of dealers in trifles, a man's entire stock-in-trade 
 being worth, perhaps, half-a-dollar, but among their 
 appurtenances, are inevitably the bamboo tube and the 
 bamboo slips marked at the lower end with dots like 
 that in use in the temples to indicate the answer of the 
 god. As I was told, if a man wishes to purchase some- 
 thing say the half of a walnut he draws two of these 
 slips from the shaken tube, and, according to whether 
 the number of dots on his slips exceed or fall short of a 
 given number, he gets his half walnut without paying 
 anything, or pays its value without getting it. But as 
 I observed for myself, the tradesman always saved 
 himself from loss, at least partially, by the preliminary 
 charge of one cash for the privilege of drawing the 
 slips. Wherever you go you hear the monotonous 
 rattle of these things as the hawkers thus advertise 
 their whereabouts in the intervals of business. In 
 .Shanghai the same thing is done by the use of dice in 
 a cup, the bamboo tube and slips being there reserved 
 for the use of priests deciding for suppliants the answers 
 which the gods are pleased to give to their petitions. 
 
 Peking is distant from Tientsin two days for those 
 who are prepared to travel all the way by mule-cart. 
 Those who are not in a hurry will devote longer time 
 to the journey going as far as Tung-chou by water. 
 We concluded not to be in a hurry, and engaged boats, 
 
278 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 sending them off from the Bund overnight, that they 
 might get through the bridges of boats, and other 
 obstructions, before we went on board. My friend 
 sent his cook and boy with them, instructing the former 
 to come to us next morning, after the boats were 
 moored, to act as our guide to the place. At breakfast- 
 time he arrived duly, and a procession of some half- 
 dozen jinrikshas forthwith started and were soon 
 buried in the narrow, crowded, crooked, uneven and 
 far from sweetly perfumed lanes of suburban Tientsin. 
 Our men shouted at others, and others shouted at them 
 to the little aiding, that we could see, of their or our 
 progress, and whenever we came to a block which 
 was at every corner, and generally about twice between 
 the corners we were jammed up helplessly against 
 some most unsavoury and redolent specimen of beggar- 
 dom giving himself a finger-nail shampoo on his. 
 liberally unclothed surfaces. This was sufficiently 
 disagreeable to make it a pleasant change when we 
 crossed, at the cost of some jolting, a bridge of boats 
 very defectively joined together, and entered a more 
 open country. But here we noticed that our riksha 
 coolies were making remarks, more or less sarcastic, to 
 the cook. We were certainly travelling in a rather 
 circuitous fashion and the men who had the pulling to 
 do seemed to doubt the profitableness of such indirect 
 procedure. At one point they all stopped to call the 
 cook an old grandfather with more effect, and to argue 
 the matter out. They were eventually persuaded to 
 go on again ; but presently *a more distinctly retrograde 
 
Across the Heavenly Ford. 279 
 
 turn exploded altogether their faith in the guide ; they 
 struck, and putting down the shafts of the rikshas, 
 refused to proceed further. This was at a village 
 the name of which we found to be, translated into 
 English, Brick Kiln Hollow, a name accurately sugges- 
 tive of unshaded heat. The cook cleared off at once to 
 see if he could find out where he was, and also, it may 
 be supposed, to escape the lively and withering sarcasm 
 of the irate coolies and the more sober, but not less 
 deep, displeasure of his master. For about an hour we 
 waited for him there in the sun, the whole village 
 turning out to do us honour and to inspect. Chinamen 
 are creatures of large leisure. Let it once get wind 
 among them that a foreigner is about, and that he is 
 going to do something, or that he does not know what 
 to do, or that he is going to remain still long enough to 
 be looked at, and all the available population will 
 attend at once, and stand placidly staring for a half- 
 hour, or an hour if necessary, the front row, perhaps, 
 squatting on their heels to allow the second row a 
 better view. During the hour we were waiting for our 
 lost cook, all domestic, household, and other duties in 
 Brick Kiln Hollow were deferred. With folded arms, 
 and solemn intentness, mostly in silence but with an 
 occasional interchange of comment, the patient villagers 
 ranked themselves before us like an audience at a 
 public entertainment. It was a great relief to us when 
 a man pushed his way through this decorous assembly 
 and announced himself as one of the boatmen. The 
 cook after an exhausting exploration, had at length 
 
280 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 found the boats, and had sent him to us as our guide. 
 A few minutes took us back to the Bridge of Boats, 
 which we recrossed, and found our craft and our cook at 
 a point close by which we had been a long time before. 
 
 Though the native house-boat is not fitted up like a 
 mail steamer, it is not by any means an uncomfortable 
 mode of conveyance, and when we got our bedding laid 
 out on the kangs, or raised platforms, which in native 
 houses and house-boats serve as bedsteads, we lay in 
 peace and coolness that compared favourably with the 
 sun-scorched and Chinaman-criticised rest which we 
 had been involuntarily compelled to take at Brick Kiln 
 Hollow. The Peiho had seemed devious below Tientsin, 
 we had not then seen its' reaches above it. At times 
 our boats would be passing up the stream in a line of 
 sails, and across the bank we would see close by 
 another line of sails on the right, perfectly parallel to 
 our line, and across the left bank, yet another parallel 
 line. These were not on other streams, they simply 
 marked our own course that had been, and that was to 
 be. At other times we would see close before us, and 
 at right angles to our course, a line of sails, apparently 
 continuous and yet, though we could with difficulty 
 see where the break occurred, one half of that line was 
 following, and the other half preceding us. 
 
 There was little to take note of by the way. The 
 country between Tientsin and Tung-chou is quite flat 
 and the river, notwithstanding its windings, mo- 
 notonous. An occasional turtle might be seen on the 
 bank; crows, magpies and swallows almost summed 
 
Across the Heavenly Ford. 281 
 
 up the fauna. Except a colony of herons at one point 
 on the river, where the trees were somewhat larger 
 and served them for a roosting-place, these were nearly 
 all that . we saw in the way of animal life. One pair 
 of crows attracted our special notice. They had built 
 among the ornamentation of the mast of a junk, and as 
 the junk was sailing on, one bird sat proudly on her 
 itinerating nest, while the other kept the look-out from 
 a decorative iron arm close by. A dignified self-posses- 
 sion, a sense of proprietorship marked their every 
 movement ; they most evidently regarded themselves 
 as in charge and familiar with all that pertains to the 
 management of junks. They therefore showed no 
 surprise when, just as we passed by, their sail was let 
 down with a great rattling of the bamboo ribs. The 
 clatter would have scared any other birds, but if these 
 felt nervous, they were bound not to show it, they had 
 to maintain their dignity as captain and mate how 
 could it be supposed that they should be startled by 
 the execution of their own order ? 
 
 The chief feature of this part of the Peiho, at the 
 season we were upon it, is the multitude of imperial 
 rice junks with square bows, full on the front of which 
 are painted wondrous eyes, the pupil black, the cornea 
 yellow, surmounted by fiery red eyebrows, the rest of 
 the square space liberally treated with blue and green, 
 and red and white according to taste. Of these we 
 were told that there are some two thousand five hundred 
 on the river manned by slaves, and travelling in strings 
 of about fifty, the leading junk bearing a distinctive 
 
282 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 flag and being preceded by a petty official in a small 
 house-boat. When the trackers pulling the leading 
 junk stop and its anchor is laid out on the bank, the 
 trackers of the next junk draw her up close against the 
 first, the third is drawn up against the second, and so 
 on till the whole of the series have their noses on the 
 bank and a busy village is improvised on shore as in a 
 moment. A cabbage market begins at once, the barbers- 
 are busy plying their trade, while the children and 
 puppy-dogs stroll across the plank to enjoy a game 
 with that oriental deliberateness, which is a reliable 
 safeguard against recreation degenerating into labour. 
 The progress of these junks is most leisurely. When 
 they are being pulled, they are pulled slowly enough, 
 and their stoppages are long and frequent, and inde- 
 pendent of any apparent cause in wind, current or 
 meteorological condition. Most probably they are pur- 
 posely delayed on the journey, on account of defective 
 arrangements for unloading at their destination. 
 
 The lot of these slaves is pretty easy if ignoble. 
 They have their wives and children on board and 
 generally a couple of pups, with a lark or siskin in a 
 cage, a rooster for a clock, and some little bit of green 
 stuff growing in a flower-pot. Their opportunities of 
 escape are many, in proportion as may be judged to 
 their unwillingness, for probably they consider them- 
 selves better off than many of their free brethren. There 
 are, indeed, in China, slaves who are wealthier than 
 their owners. It comes about in this wise. A man 
 finds among his slaves a man of exceptional ability and 
 
Across the Heavenly Ford. 283- 
 
 smartness, of capacity far beyond what is needed for 
 ordinary slave occupations. He will allow such a slave 
 to go into business, stipulating that a determined pro- 
 portion of his profit comes to him. The slave may 
 thus grow wealthy himself, and at the same time be- 
 greatly profitable to his owner. He can buy his liberty 
 of course, but then the price of his liberty would be 
 exceptionally high, corresponding to his exceptional 
 value, so he is content to go on with his owner as 
 partner in a thriving business. The great hardship of 
 slavery in China is the law that no slave can compete 
 in the examinations, nor indeed any free man who 
 cannot show a free parentage for three generations. 
 But this is a disability not confined to slaves. It 
 attaches to others, butchers, prostitutes, and yamen- 
 runners falling, I believe, into the category of those to 
 whose line. the anxieties and honours of examination 
 are forbidden till the fourth generation. 
 
 At Tung-chou, though perfect strangers, we were 
 hospitably entertained by the missionaries of the Ameri- 
 can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. 
 They were holding their annual meetings, to which 
 many had come from other stations, and their houses 
 were pretty thoroughly furnished with guests. Never- 
 theless they would not hear of our proceeding at once 
 to Peking and insisted in putting us up for the night. 
 We were easily persuaded, and it proved a great 
 pleasure to us both to make their acquaintance and to 
 attend the meeting that was held that evening though 
 I, at least, have long since forgotten most that was- 
 
284 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 said in the various speeches made. One statement, 
 far from being the most important, has, however, re- 
 mained entangled in the meshes of memory. Speaking 
 of the inability which the Chinese seem to have in 
 accepting the idea of a personal and supreme God and 
 Creator, and of their belief in the supremacy of a law 
 originating everything, one of the speakers said : " I 
 had a Confucian teacher a little while ago, and talking 
 with him on this subject, I said, ' Now, if I were to go 
 into the garden and pile up a heap of stones, and then 
 when I had piled them up, were to begin to pour water 
 on them, and you were to come and to ask me what I 
 was doing, and I were to reply that I was looking for 
 a living man to come forth as a result of the action of 
 water on matter, would you not say it could not be so ? ' 
 And the teacher unhesitatingly said, ' But it must have 
 been so in the beginning.' " The willingness of the 
 Confucian teacher to accept such a version of the 
 Chinese cosmogony as a fair one and to abide by it 
 -was too striking to be forgotten. 
 
"Thy voice is a complaint, crowned city, 
 The blue sky covering thee like God's great pity." 
 
 E. B. BROWNING. The Soul's Travelling. 
 
 " Leaving [Tung-chou] in the afternoon we went alongside, and 
 sometimes upon that famous causeway famed once for its grandeur 
 .and ease, but now a species of terrestrial purgatory, over which 
 ambassadors and tributaries pass on their way to audience with his 
 Celestial Majesty." DR. A. WILLIAMSON. 
 
 " It [Peking] is a city worthy of note on many accounts. Its 
 ancient history as the capital of the Yeu Kwoh (the 'Land of 
 :Swallows') during the feudal times, and its later position as the 
 metropolis of the empire for many centuries, give it historical 
 importance ; while its imperial buildings, its broad avenues with 
 their imposing gates and towers, its regular arrangement, extent, 
 and populousness, and diversity of costume and equipage, combine 
 to render it to a traveller the most interesting and unique city in 
 Asia. It is now ruinous and poor, but the remains of its former 
 rgrandeur under Kienlung's prosperous reign indicate the justness of 
 the comparisons made by the Catholic writers with Western cities 
 .one hundred and eighty years ago." 
 
 DR. S. WELLS WILLIAMS. Middle Kingdom. 
 
( 287 ) 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CITY OF THE GREAT. DUST. 
 
 THE block in the traffic at the East Gate at Tung-chou, 
 the gate by which we entered, is chronic. On each of 
 the three or four times that we had occasion to pass 
 through it, we found it and the street for some little 
 distance on either side filled with carts and barrows, 
 while the carters contentedly as to the manner born- 
 sat gambling or lay sleeping on the shady side of the 
 street as though they had given up all thought of ever 
 being able to move on. In order to get through we had 
 to thread our way round, and among, and over these 
 vehicles as best we could. Whether they were always 
 the same carts and carters that we saw I dare not 
 affirm. Perhaps not, but they looked the same. As we 
 had impedimenta necessitating our taking mule-carts 
 for the journey to Peking, it was fortunate for us that 
 our route lay in the opposite direction. The Western 
 quarter of Tung-chou offers a contrast to the Eastern. 
 Business is dull ; there seems to be scarcely any traffic 
 in the streets, and quiet inns take the place of thickly- 
 crowded shops. The West Gate is in a picturesque con- 
 dition of decay, and on the walls the genius of dilapida- 
 tion holds revel : the once horizontal lines of the bricks 
 run at all angles, and in many places large sheets of 
 
288 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 masonry are sliding bodily along and away from the 
 earth mass that constitutes the bulk of the wall. Our 
 carts passed through without hindrance, and a little 
 beyond the gate we ventured to get into them. 
 
 To our great comfort the weather for some little 
 time had been fine and we were therefore able to 
 travel by what is called the Mud Eoad, which is not 
 available in wet weather since it then too well deserves 
 its name to be passable. At such times passengers 
 have to follow the Stone Eoad, which has a more 
 promising name, and is indeed a road of considerable 
 pretensions, but which is never taken by any one who 
 can possibly go by the other, except high mandarins 
 and ambassadors " thrones, dominations, princedoms, 
 virtues, powers " in whose case noblesse oblige. We 
 had to take it for a short distance, and the sample was 
 sufficient to dispel any desire to test it further. It- 
 must have been a magnificent causeway once; this, 
 however, is small comfort to travellers of to-day. Think 
 of an embankment, on the top of which great blocks of 
 stone, from four to fourteen feet long, and about two feet 
 across, are laid in the fashion of the logs on a corduroy 
 road. When these were first laid there they were evi- 
 dently fitted close together. But constant traffic has 
 worn the stone at the joints that run in the direction of 
 the road, in some cases half way and in other cases the 
 whole way through, until the stones are mostly divided 
 by ditches about a foot deep, and six to nine inches 
 wide. The transverse joints have also been worn but in 
 less degree. In addition to this the stones on the edge 
 of the embankment are disappearing down the slope, 
 
The City of the Great Dust. 289 
 
 some have gone, others lift up one end in sorrowful 
 farewell while the other end points downwards, and 
 every now and again, even in the middle of the road, a 
 vacant and considerable hole now knows its stone no 
 more. It is enough to break the heart of any but a 
 Chinaman to see the poor wretched ponies, mules and 
 donkeys tugging the luggage-carts through all the 
 irregularities of this pavement. The loads are generally 
 such as require three or four beasts to draw them, and, 
 since the road, as I have described it, involves a constant 
 succession of fresh starts, and since the beasts are not 
 usually of equal strength* and do not all start at once, 
 the strain upon them, as the drivers shout and crack 
 their whips at them, is severe beyond the knowledge of 
 any but the beasts themselves. 
 
 The condition of the road may perhaps be best 
 realised from the fact that the drivers of the passenger 
 carts, such as we travelled in, will, to avoid a very short 
 distance over the stones, consider it worth while to go 
 down the steep slope of the embankment and travel 
 over the rough field at the side, scrambling up the 
 embankment again when compelled to return to the 
 stones. This relief, however, hardly purchased as it is 
 in any case, is impossible for the loaded luggage-carts, 
 for their centre of gravity is much higher and they can- 
 not venture on inclines. In fact, in the capital itself, 
 where, as in some other towns in the north, flagstones for 
 some inscrutable reason are placed, set on edge, across 
 
 * I once noticed an ox, a horse, an ass, and a mule attached 
 together to one cart. 
 
 U 
 
290 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the opening of a narrow street into a broad one, and 
 even across a main street should any narrowing of the 
 passage afford a favourable opportunity, I saw one of these 
 top-heavy carts overturned in the middle of the road. 
 It was too heavy for the mules to drag over the stony 
 ridge in a straight course, so the driver crossed diagon- 
 ally, getting first one wheel over and then the other. 
 By the time the second wheel was on the top of the 
 stone barrier the balance was lost and the cart capsized. 
 The shaft mule was kicking in mid-air, and two men, 
 passengers on the top of the luggage, were flung half-a- 
 dozen yards into a group of idlers, who suspended their 
 conversation and turned lazily round to see what 
 would happen next and how the carter would get 
 things righted. Not one of them volunteered to help 
 him. But they were all open to come to any suitable 
 arrangement whereby, for a consideration, their assis- 
 tance would be at his service. It will readily be 
 understood that carts of such unstable equilibrium that 
 they cannot safely get across what may be called the 
 legitimate obstacles to be met in the ordinary street 
 must not risk experiments on steep embankments, 
 These, therefore, have to keep upon the stone road. 
 Not only for the alleviation of our own discomfort, but 
 almost as much perhaps for the avoidance of the sight 
 of the wretched strugglings of which it is the scene, we 
 were glad enough when we left it a little outside the 
 gate .of Tung-chou, close by the Palikao Bridge. 
 
 But even on the mud road, a passenger unaccustomed 
 to the luxury of mule-cart riding is not soothed to 
 
The City of the Great Dust. 291 
 
 sleep. A mule-cart is a notable vehicle. Being a 
 passenger conveyance it is nicely polished, its windows 
 are of silk gauze, and its wheels are decorated with 
 metal bosses. But it is strong enough to go upon the 
 roads of the country and has no springs. The accom- 
 modation it affords is all above the axle and (unless the 
 passenger sits outside on the shaft, as carters do in 
 England, a mode which is not considered the thing, and 
 which has inconveniences beside that of sacrificing 
 one's dignity) he has to sit tailor-fashion inside. This 
 puts the uninitiated in a more helpless condition than 
 would be imagined by those who have not tried it, 
 making the two sides of the cart into battledores and 
 the passenger's head a shuttlecock, and a pretty lively 
 game is played. Practice may doubtless enable a man 
 to ride upon the storm that prevails inside a mule-cart 
 on a rough road. I speak only of the unpractised for 
 whom I would advocate the padding of the cart's sides, 
 not forgetting the top. Some foreigners in Tientsin, I 
 noticed, had private carts made with a little well into 
 which to drop the feet. This adds wonderfully to the 
 strength of one's defence. May the fashion take ! 
 
 The massive wall of Peking was a welcome sight, 
 though as we neared it the roads became worse and 
 worse. I remember just the turn in the road where it 
 came into view. The spot was fixed upon mind and 
 memory by a severe jolt, in the course of which both 
 sides of my head got into collision with the cart and I 
 settled at last, to its no small detriment, on the top of 
 my pith helmet, which was wandering aimlessly about. 
 
 u 2 
 
292 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 _ M 
 
 By a comparatively insignificant gate we entered the 
 Chinese, or Outer City, and found a broad border of 
 open ground running along inside the wall a political 
 precaution, I was led to understand, to secure the wall 
 from harm. Along this open space we jolted our spring- 
 less way until we came to the Ha-ta-men, a double 
 gateway through the main and enceinte walls of the 
 Tartar or Inner City. The walls of this city are much 
 higher and more massive than those of the other, and 
 th^, gateways which pierce them are quite respectable 
 tunnels. When we got here we realised that we were 
 in the city of the great dust. We had found something 
 of this as we came along the open space under the wall 
 of the outer city. The numerous carts going and coming 
 were rather indicated by travelling clouds than clearly 
 seen. But when we got to the Ha-ta-men, a gust of 
 wind rushed through, fortunately for us from behind, 
 and, in a moment, a dense black cloud completely 
 blotted from sight men, mules, carts and camels, of 
 which a mingled crowd were entering from the other 
 side. It was neither a vicious nor an unusual storm, it 
 was simply a frolic of the wind such as we soon saw 
 repeated, but it was our first introduction our recep- 
 tion at the Tartar city's gate, and therefore unlikely to 
 lose its specially appropriated niche in the memory. 
 The dust is a thing of mark in Peking a palpable 
 nuisance to the new arrival who experiences from it 
 undoubted inconvenience and knows no more, but, 
 according to some who are better versed in the mysteries, 
 the salvation of the city's life and health. Except 
 
The City of the Great Dust. 293 
 
 during the wet season, when all is mud and the carts 
 that go about the streets charge double fares, the city is 
 enswathed in dust. It covers everything and every- 
 body, within and without, epidermis and epithelium. 
 The rule that the streets in a Chinese city should be 
 narrow is so almost universal that the exceptions are 
 the more striking and noticeable. Nearly every one 
 must have heard that the streets in Peking are wide, an 
 undoubted fact, but one to which attention would not 
 have been so repeatedly called were it not the case that, 
 with this exception and that of Moukden in Manchuria 
 and I believe another city somewhere in the west, all 
 the cities of the. empire are content with streets across 
 which opposite neighbours could shake hands were 
 handshaking a custom of the land. The road proper is 
 not wide even in Peking. It consists of a raised portion 
 running down the middle about wide enough to allow 
 of two mule-carts passing. The open lower space of 
 either side of this is also used for traffic in the less busy 
 parts, but in the principal streets it is taken up by 
 booths and stalls of trinket-sellers and dealers in eels 
 and snails, of story-reciters and cloth-merchants, who, 
 under ordinary circumstances, do a thriving business un- 
 molested, although they are liable to a summary notice 
 to quit should the emperor announce that in some 
 weeks time he will pass down the street. Carts stand 
 for hire here, while at convenient intervals are openings 
 into the great stagnant sewers, with the liquid contents 
 of which the enlightened authorities water the raised 
 roads, while with what dries and hardens they macad- 
 
294 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 amise them. That dust should abound and be black 
 follows as a matter of course. Disgusting as this dust 
 is, the practices of the people are so much more so that 
 they turn the curse into a blessing. A medical friend, 
 resident in the place long enough to have observed and 
 not too long to be open to impressions, assured me that 
 were it not for the dust always in the air ready to settle 
 on, cover up, and in a measure disinfect the abomina- 
 tions of the place, the whole population would be 
 carried off by some epidemic in about a month. As it 
 is, the place has the credit for being healthy. An older 
 resident adduced its health as a reason for accepting 
 very cautiously the dogmas of doctrinaire hygienists. 
 He argued that, if what they are always so loudly 
 insisting on about personal cleanliness and drainage and 
 sanitary precautions in household arrangements were 
 true, Peking would be an impossibility ; and came to 
 the sage conclusion : " We " by which he meant they 
 " do not know everything yet." 
 
 The architecture of the capital is disappointing. 
 There is indeed much delicacy of detail in the wood- 
 work, and considerable taste in the colouring and gilding 
 which many of the tradesmen lavish on their shop- 
 fronts, but this loses a good deal of its effect in a very 
 short time from the action of the ubiquitous dust. In 
 general design the Chinese do not seem to have got 
 beyond their early nomadic ancestry. The great temple 
 of Confucius, the lamasary near it at the north-east 
 corner of the city, an establishment in which are over 
 a thousand monks, even the series of imperial buildings 
 
The City of the Great Dust. 295 
 
 are little more than various reproductions of the tent. 
 The consequence is a great sameness and monotony in 
 the view as one looks over the city from the top of the 
 high walls that surround it. The gateways are the 
 most prominent features, but they share the same 
 design and beside them, the Bell and Drum towers, a 
 pagoda, and the blue roofs of the Temple of Prayer for 
 the Year, which stands to the north of the Altar of 
 Heaven, there are few things that rise above the level 
 of the tree-tops. The views obtained in the streets are 
 often picturesque enough. There is a rich profusion of 
 contrasts, not to say incongruities. The raggedest 
 booths hide the wealthiest shops. Some of the pailos, 
 or archways, rejoice in the freshest of paint, others are 
 venerable to a degree in which they have lost all trace 
 of colour and so large a proportion of what goes to 
 make them pailos that they are little else than a 
 collection of forlorn poles. Before the shops are all 
 manners of signs in all conditions, new posts and 
 rotten ones, bright naming rags, and rags whose original 
 tint is problematic, while on the shop-fronts themselves 
 are to be seen carvings elaborate, and of intricate and 
 changeful patterns, with varying degrees of colour, 
 from the brightest vermilion and blue and gold on the 
 newly decorated, to the dingy greys on those which it is 
 time to embellish again. From the Marble Bridge 
 broader views may be obtained, which are really pretty 
 without depending for their interest, as do the street- 
 scenes, on quaint and grotesque detail, views in which 
 figure the walls, gateways and guard-houses of the 
 
296 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 palace, its moat of shallow water, where graceful 
 herons wade among the water plants, and the Tibetan 
 dagoba crowning the neighbouring hill. 
 
 The Confucian temple is of its sort a fine building. 
 It consists of a large oblong hall, forty or fifty feet high, 
 shrouded in dust from top to bottom. Between the 
 timbers of the roof are painted canvases, many of 
 which, at the time of our visit, were hanging suspended 
 by a few persistent threads while some were already 
 on the floor. The lacquer covering of the huge pillars 
 that support the roof gave evidence of the many 
 changing seasons it had seen ; in fact there was a mild 
 flavour of decay about the whole place which harmonised 
 well with the aspect of the venerable old cypresses in 
 the courtyard, under which we had walked to reach it. 
 
 In the central place of honour stands the tablet of 
 the great sage, inscribed in Chinese and Manchu char- 
 acters : " The Tablet of the Soul of the Most Holy 
 Ancestral Teacher, Confucius." Eound the walls over- 
 head are nine or ten larger inscriptions telling forth his 
 praise ; one, for instance, affirms him to be the fulness 
 of all sagely excellence, and another that since the birth 
 of mankind there has never been his equal. A third 
 reads : " The truth is here " ; while yet another ventures 
 the bold assertion : " His virtue fills the whole earth." 
 On either side of the tablet of Confucius are those of 
 Tseng-tsi, Mencius, Yen-hwuy and Tze-sze four of his 
 chief disciples and, in more reverent and distant atten- 
 dance in the background, are those of a dozen more. 
 
 Under the gateway of the courtyard of this temple 
 
The City of the Great Lust. 297 
 
 stand the ten granite drums, said by some to be two 
 thousand five hundred years old, covered with inscrip- 
 tions cut in the seal character where the decay of the 
 surface has not removed them. Strictly speaking, there 
 are only nine drums and a half, and for many years 
 there were only nine, one having been lost by some 
 mischance, until, in a farmstead at Kai-fung-fu in 
 Honan, a large stone horse-trough was found, bearing a 
 number of characters, by which it was identified as the 
 hollowed out half of the long-lost stone drum. It was 
 brought back to its place and stands with its fellows 
 to this day. Ten new marble drums of a most approved 
 modern pattern, were placed on the south side of this 
 same gateway by the order of the emperor, Kien-lung, 
 to preserve on their sides the memory of the inscriptions 
 which the old drums are shedding. As however they 
 have little age and no historic interest, and cannot be 
 used for the purposes which their name and shape indi- 
 cate, it is a little difficult to stir up much enthusiasm 
 concerning them. 
 
 Close by the temple of Confucius is the National 
 College, or Hall of the Classics, a small building sur- 
 rounded by a pond, across which, from each of its four 
 sides, radiates a bridge. The sides of the pond and the 
 bridges being all of white marble, the effect is very 
 pleasing. There are indications that this edifice once 
 blazed in gold and colour, but the glory has departed. 
 Inside it, in the centre, is a raised seat, and hither the 
 emperor is supposed to come periodically and, from 
 this throne, to expound the classics to his officers 
 
298 Turlans and Tails. 
 
 standing reverently round Jrim. Of late years this 
 imperial exposition has been dispensed with, owing, 
 among other things, to the minority of the emperors. 
 Surrounding the courtyard, in which this Hall of 
 the Classics stands, are cloisters or sheds, under which 
 are two or three hundred huge stone slabs like the 
 headstones of graves, rank behind rank. On these was 
 engraved the whole of the classics to provide an authori- 
 tative edition, but the weathering of the stone is largely 
 removing the characters and, if an authorised version 
 be still accounted a necessity, some other method of 
 providing and preserving it will have to be adopted. 
 Wherever in China an inscription becomes celebrated, 
 devotees and enthusiasts come and take rubbings of it. 
 As a consequence, nearly all the famous engraved 
 stones and tablets in the land are disfigured and 
 blackened. The granite drums, referred to just now, 
 have been made to look like ebony. Some enterprising 
 publisher, awake to the necessity of advertising, has 
 put a notice in the Hall of the Classics to the effect 
 that it is unnecessary for scholars to take rubbings of 
 these stones since complete copies can be obtained at 
 his publishing house. 
 
 In the same yard, just opposite the Hall, is a rather 
 handsome pailo, the arches being bordered with white 
 marble and the rest of the face being chiefly worked in 
 green and yellow porcelain tiles, though a blank space 
 in the most prominent part is of plain stucco. Dr. S. 
 Wells Williams, in his Middle Kingdom, speaks of 
 this as " one of the most artistic objects in China." 
 
The City of the Great Dust. 299 
 
 jSTot on account of its architectural merits but on ac- 
 count of its history, I found a little church of the London 
 Missionary Society one of the most interesting of the 
 buildings of the city. It was originally a temple of 
 the god of fire, and, though the idol and altar have been 
 of course removed, no changes have been wrought in 
 the arrangement of the building even the twin poles 
 that mark the entrance to a temple still stand so that, 
 as you go from the street through the tablet hall, 
 where once those who thought their prayers to the fire- 
 god answered hung their tablets of commemoration, and 
 through the little courtyard into the main building, you 
 naturally expect to be confronted by a hideous idol, 
 instead of which there stands before you an unpre- 
 tending pulpit or desk, while, along the walls, where 
 attendants had been imaged, hang copies in Chinese of 
 the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, 
 and the Ten Commandments. The natives refer to the 
 change tersely in four characters : " Gods out, devils 
 in." Such a transfer would probably be impossible to- 
 day. The feeling of the Chinese towards the foreigner 
 has not changed for the better lately, and now if any 
 one in time of adversity felt inclined to sell to foreigners 
 a temple built in palmier days he would find heavy 
 pressure put upon him by the officials. It is quite easy 
 for these gentry to forbid and prevent perfectly legiti- 
 mate acts, the legitimacy and even desirability of 
 which they are loud in affirming. For example, a man 
 at Hang-chow was bold enough to sell a piece of ground 
 to a foreign missionary against the wish of the local 
 
300 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 mandarin. He very soon found himself in prison of 
 course without any reference to the sale of the land 
 and he did not get out till he had been squeezed of 
 more than he had realised by the sale of his property. 
 That man concluded that it might be lawful but was 
 not expedient to sell to foreigners in the face of official 
 ' displeasure. 
 
 The unused Observatory is a monument of the past. 
 A solid tower, about fifty feet high, and so somewhat 
 overlooking the city-wall against which it is built, 
 dates back to the year 1296, when the Mongol Kublai 
 Khan ruled in Peking, or Khan-baligh as it was called 
 in those days. This tower was first occupied by the 
 bronze instruments which are now in the courtyard at 
 the foot of it, their place above being taken in the 
 seventeenth century by the instruments still to be seen 
 there, which were made by the Jesuit, Ferdinando 
 Verbiest, at the order of the emperor Kang-hi. Of such 
 excellent workmanship are they that they have lost 
 little of the keenness of edge and definiteness of design 
 either in the instruments proper or in the ornamental 
 supports, and it seems impossible to believe that they 
 are the handiwork of a man who died so long ago as 
 1688. But the same is true even of the older pieces 
 now down below, to which Byron might have said, as to 
 the ocean : 
 
 "Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow." 
 
 In a building just behind these is a clepsydra, con- 
 sisting of five copper cisterns arranged one over the 
 
TJie City of the Great Dust. 301 
 
 other, which, notwithstanding the invention of clocks 
 and watches, is still used to mark the time. It has an 
 advantage over that I saw at Canton in the number of 
 the cisterns, the Southern one having only four, and 
 also, I believe, in the matter of capacity, the water 
 having to be returned to the upper cistern twice in 
 every twenty-four hours in the Canton clepsydra, and 
 only once, as I understood, in that at Peking. 
 
 From copper cisterns the transition is natural to 
 copper cash. It is impossible to speak of all the objects 
 in and about Peking that are worthy of notice. The 
 city is full of much that is interesting if of little that is 
 admirable. But my pen would fail in the task, more- 
 over, are they not all written in the books of the 
 travellers ? But the efforts I had to put forth to 
 master the mysteries of the Northern coinage and 
 currency I never having been good at arithmetic 
 compel me to put on record what I think I found out 
 about it before closing this chapter. It had always 
 seemed to me that we were sufficiently confused in 
 Shanghai by our taels and Mexican dollars, and 
 Japanese cents and Chinese cash, with their ever- 
 varying relations. But we did at least call things as 
 we professed to find them. There were no obviously 
 fictitious values. When we got to Tientsin, however, 
 we found a change. Eeturning from a riksha ride in 
 the settlement, I said to my friend, " Would you kindly 
 tell the boy to pay the coolie three hundred cash " for 
 where one has to do with the clumsy, multitudinous 
 and dirty cash one naturally makes the boy paymaster. 
 
302 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 My friend said lie thought from the time I had been 
 out that the coolie deserved a little more. " All right, 
 let him have more." Some time after when I met my 
 friend again, he asked, " When you said three hundred 
 cash this morning, how many did you mean ? " " Why 
 three hundred of course, how many should I mean ? " 
 It then came out that in Tientsin they have a large 
 way of saying double of what they mean, and that my 
 order of three hundred meant the poor coolie's receiving 
 one hundred and fifty. No wonder my friend had sug- 
 gested an increase. So I discovered that one hundred 
 meant fifty, and two hundred meant one hundred, 
 twenty meant ten, and forty twenty. These copper 
 cash are strung together on a string running through the 
 square hole in the centre of them. Each string is called 
 a tiao, which means a thousand, and has on it five hundred 
 coins divided into hundreds by knots in the string ; that 
 is, it would have on it five hundred but for the further 
 complication of the string itself being counted, and so 
 between each knot are ninety-nine coins, plus a piece of 
 string. Therefore a tiao, or thousand, really comprises 
 four hundred and ninety-five coins and a piece of 
 knotted string. By the time I was ready to start for 
 Peking, I was getting familiar with this exaggerative 
 mode of reckoning four hundred and ninety-five as a 
 thousand, and proposed before setting out, to get some 
 dollars changed to provide myself with cash for the 
 payment of small sums. Then I was told that in 
 Peking they used a different coin altogether. These 
 little perforated coins which are used in the South 
 
The City of the Great Lust. 303 
 
 where twenty are twenty, and are used in Tientsin 
 where ten are twenty, are not used at all in the capital, 
 howbeit they are the legal tender of the empire. There 
 we found cash of monstrous size. The town cash are of 
 much greater weight than their poor relations and 
 country cousins ; and their greater importance justifies 
 them in dealing yet more recklessly with a poor 
 stranger's ideas of arithmetical nomenclature. Outside 
 Peking you have learned to call a string of four hundred 
 and ninety-five cash a tiao a thousand. You pass 
 within the walls, the cash are more than double the 
 size, and a string of them is six tiao six thousand a 
 tiao between each knot in the string. You count a tiao, 
 but, instead of finding one thousand, or even five 
 hundred, i.e., four hundred and ninety-nine plus the 
 string, you find fifty or rather forty-nine, for the string 
 still figures. I was wanting to go up on the city wall 
 one afternoon, so at tiffin I told my host, whom I knew 
 to be too busy to go with me, what I intended and 
 asked the best way up. Among his instructions was : 
 "Take five hundred cash to tip the gateman at the 
 bottom of the slope." I thought of the huge Peking 
 cash, and, knowing that I had no stitching about me 
 that would stand the strain of five hundred of them, felt 
 that I had not yet grasped the instruction. It could 
 not be five hundred, that I knew, but how many was 
 it? To elicit explanation I asked my friend if he 
 would lend me his coolie to carry it along for me. He 
 looked at me with astonishment, and I found at last 
 that five hundred meant twenty-five. Each cash bears 
 
304 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 the number, Ten, upon it, and presumably represents 
 ten of some now disused iron coins. This ten being 
 multiplied by two, as in Tientsin, gives the twenty, by 
 which in Peking it is necessary to multiply the actual 
 to arrive at the nominal value. Should a person wish 
 it to be understood that he means what he says, he uses 
 the word equivalent to " big," or " great." This, as it 
 were, puts him on his oath and compels accuracy. 
 " Twenty big cash," would mean twenty ; and, to 
 simplify the nomenclature, it seems that this mode of 
 speaking is adopted for low numbers. One is spoken 
 of as one big (cash) ; two as two big ; three as three 
 big ; and four as four big ; but five is spoken of as one 
 hundred ; six as one hundred and twenty, and so on. 
 Whatever other exceptions a -longer stay might have 
 revealed I know not. Just as I had learned to divide 
 by twenty with a fair amount of freedom, I left the 
 only place, as I trust, where the art is of any service. 
 
" Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight." 
 
 POPE. Elo'isa and Abelard. 
 
 " At such a time, 
 
 Between the hot walls of a nullah, stretched 
 On naked stones, our lord spied, as he passed, 
 A starving tigress. Hunger in her orbs 
 Glared with green flame ; her dry tongue lolled a span 
 Beyond the gasping jaws and shrivelled jowl; 
 Her painted hide hung wrinkled on her ribs, 
 As when between the rafters sinks the thatch 
 Rotten with rains ; and at the poor lean dugs 
 Two cubs, whining with famine, tugged and sucked, 
 Mumbling those milkless teats that rendered nought, 
 While, she, their gaunt dam, licked full motherly 
 The clamorous twins, yielding her flank to them 
 With moaning throat, and love stronger than want 
 Softening the first of that wild cry wherewith 
 She laid her famished muzzle to the sand 
 And roared a savage thunder-peal of woe. 
 Seeing which bitter strait, and heeding nought 
 Save the immense compassion of a Buddh, 
 Our lord bethought, ' There is no other way 
 To help this murderess of the woods but one. 
 By sunset these will die having no meat ; 
 There is no living heart will pity her, 
 Bloody with ravin, lean for lack of blood. 
 Lo ! if I feed her, who shall lose but I, 
 And how can love lose doing of its kind 
 Even to the uttermost?'" 
 
 SIE E. ARNOLD. Light of Asia. 
 
 Cloivn. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ? 
 
 Malvolio. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a 
 bird. 
 
 Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion ? 
 
 Malvolio. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his 
 opinion. SHAKSPEEE. Twelfth Night. 
 
( 307 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 THE CITY OF THE WHITE ELEPHANT. 
 
 BANGKOK is somewhat out of the world. Though it 
 stands on the banks of a deep river the Meinam no 
 vessels save those of the lightest draught are seen 
 alongside its wharves. All others are prevented from 
 entering the river by a deposit at its mouth. 
 
 This, of course, could be easily dredged were the 
 Siamese government inclined to dredge it, which it is 
 not. It has taken to heart what it has seen of the 
 dealings of European nations with its neighbours, and 
 has learned suspicion. It cherishes towards this bar 
 feelings akin to those with which the Chinese authorities 
 regard the " heaven-sent barrier " at "Wusung. It relies 
 for protection from hostile invasion on this fluvial 
 deposit and, to make assurance doubly sure, has sunk 
 some stone-laden junks in the channel behind it. In 
 former days its confidence in this obstruction was 
 perhaps as just as it was natural. Now, however, the 
 conditions are changed. Erance has annexed Tongking 
 and become neighbour to Siam on the one side, and 
 Britain has annexed Burmah and become her neighbour 
 
 x 2 
 
308 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 on the other, so that the kingdom of the White Elephant 
 has probably more occasion to anticipate evil from the 
 mutual suspicions of these two powerful friends than 
 from aught else. A bar therefore at the entrance of 
 the river in the south even if supported by a couple 
 of gunless forts is a somewhat inadequate safeguard 
 against the march of powers which, if they come at all, 
 will probably enter from the north-east or the north- 
 west. 
 
 Still the refusal to dredge the bar outside, the main- 
 tenance of forts and the sinking of junks at the 
 mouth of the river, the building of the fort and erection 
 of the watchstaff at Paknam within all have conduced 
 to the people's sense of security and to their confidence 
 in the forethought and ability of the royal house and 
 the government, which, even if misplaced, are in the 
 meantime worth something. That a channel will some 
 day be opened so that vessels of deep draught may 
 enter the port is not to be doubted, but this is not 
 likely to be speedily realised. Now that the vested 
 interests of a number of European merchants are 
 involved in the present condition of things, these will 
 be found more difficult to deal with than the original 
 Siamese idea of the political value of the bar. Eor 
 example, because steamers have to lie outside to receive 
 either the whole or part of their freight, a goodly fleet 
 of large and strong lighters, capable not only of coming 
 down the river but of crossing twenty miles of open 
 sea to Koh-Si-Chang, which is the steamers' anchorage 
 during a good portion of the year, has been launched at 
 
The City of the White ElepJiant. 309 
 
 considerable outlay ; all of which lighters would be 
 worth their weight in firewood on the day when the 
 bar is removed. In the owners of these, Si am has dis- 
 interested foreign advisers, who are not to be expected 
 very earnestly to urge such a step, and for a long time, 
 therefore, the trade of Bangkok capital city of a 
 kingdom though it be may have to be developed by 
 coasting steamers of the smallest class. 
 
 These, however, are considerations of more interest to 
 the mariner and merchant than to the ordinary traveller. 
 To him Koh-Si-Chang is one of a picturesque group of 
 islands. Even when the anchor is rattling down, he 
 thinks less of the fathoms of water beneath the keel 
 than of the trees that crown the heights and grasp with 
 firm roots the precipitous sides of the hills, and of the 
 huts that here and there peep out from among the 
 foliage along the shore, from which the primitive 
 inhabitants venture forth in their equally primitive 
 canoes. And as for the distance from the city and all 
 its consequences of delay and expense in the landing of 
 the steamers, he would not, at any rate for himself and 
 on his first trip, wish it less. He leaves his vessel to 
 the din of the steam- winches and starts off in some 
 smaller and slower craft. First Koh-Si-Chang is left 
 behind, and by-and-by the lighthouse at the bar standing 
 knee-deep in an expanse of shallow water, and at last 
 he enters the river. As his eye rests on the deep rich 
 green that shuts it in on either hand, he feels that he 
 would not care if he had twice as far to glide between 
 such banks ere he should reach his journey's end at 
 
310 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 Bangkok. It is true that there is nothing to be seen 
 beyond the immediate shore, the distance is shut out 
 by the foreground ; but the cocoanut and atap palms, 
 together with all manner of other trees and shrubs, 
 which constitute this foreground, satisfy the eye so 
 fully that it seeks for no beyond. These stemless 
 ataps springing up thickly side by side completely 
 hide the ground with their spreading leaves. The 
 natives use these for thatching, not however without 
 labour, for, although nature seems to have provided 
 them in a form almost identical with that in which 
 they are at last used, the pinnae are first stripped off 
 the stalk and then sewn together again in short comb- 
 like lengths, which are laid on the roofs overlapping 
 each other, as we place tiles or slates. 
 
 They are said to form very strong roofs, effective alike 
 against sun and rain. Standing out in front of the 
 dark green of their still living and growing kindred, 
 covering the huts that are built upon piles over the 
 water, or that are floating on rafts upon it, and still 
 more when partially revealed among the foliage, they 
 add much to the charm and brightness of the scene, as 
 do also the numerous little canoes gliding swiftly along 
 the water, breaking for a moment the reflected inver- 
 sion of huts and trees with a cheery ripple. At one 
 particular point, just when we passed to leeward of 
 the spot to which deceased elephants are towed down 
 from the city for the greater convenience of the vultures, 
 we felt in a little greater hurry and propounded to 
 ourselves a problem in proportion, asking if " dead flies 
 
The City of the White Elephant. 311 
 
 cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a 
 stinking savour," as the writer of Ecclesiastes affirmed, 
 what will dead elephants do ? But this was a passing 
 experience merely. It was pungent but it was brief, 
 and, with this exception, the whole of the winding 
 length of the Meinam below Bangkok thirty miles 
 was pleasantly and, as it seemed to us, almost too 
 quickly passed. Long before we were tired we found 
 ourselves passing the rice-mills and salt-sheds, and, 
 steaming in among the shipping, we anchored at the 
 " Venice of the East." 
 
 Our visit was short, shorter than we could have 
 wished and therefore necessarily hurried, but, thanks 
 to the friendly guidance of a gentleman familiar with 
 the place, we saw, probably, as much as could be seen 
 in the time, certainly sufficient to amply repay us for 
 our toil. To do this, however, although almost every 
 point of interest may be reached by boat, we had to 
 take a gari, as being a somewhat quicker if rougher and 
 more tiring mode of getting about. -The roads were 
 fairly good for an eastern city, very good but the 
 particular Jehu, of whose services we availed ourselves 
 in our first expedition, spared neither his ponies nor his 
 passengers, and the tops of our heads were every now 
 and again testing the roof of the gari. The Venetian 
 character of the place involves the necessity of carrying 
 the roads over the canals by a multitude of bridges 
 which are short and sharp. Up one steep incline and 
 down the other our coachman would make his little 
 ponies tear in the most reckless way, while along the 
 
312 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 level stretches between lie evidently considered that 
 the safety of the foot passengers that swarm the roads 
 would be far better studied if each cared for himself, 
 than if he were to assume the responsibility of caring 
 for them. He, therefore, rattled on unconcernedly, and 
 got us from place to place safely, swiftly and, happily, 
 without injury to our fellow-men. 
 
 While we were waiting for this gari to be got ready, 
 our eyes being open to new sights and our minds 
 sensitive to new impressions, we preferred strolling 
 along the road to sitting within the house. As we thus 
 loitered and talked with each other, we heard a distant 
 sound of shouting, and presently saw the approach of a 
 dense cloud of dust, out of which soon emerged a loudly 
 clamorous throng evidently in a high state of excite- 
 ment. Under an ornate but very tinselly and shaky 
 canopy, placed upon a sledge which was being dragged 
 along the road, stood, thanks to the support of cords 
 and kindly hands, a gilded Buddha, not of the comfort- 
 able portliness of the Future or Laughing Buddha as 
 he is conventionally represented with exaggerated and 
 untrammelled abdominal development, nor of the serene 
 gravity and meditative expression, also familiar to 
 frequenters of Buddhist temples, nor graceful only 
 lank and expressionless. Two ropes were attached to 
 the sledge and grasped eagerly by a mixed multitude of 
 men, women and children, while a venerable-looking 
 old gentleman, standing beside his godship, gave them 
 instructions when to go on and when to stop. The 
 enthusiasm was great and the expression of it pro- 
 
The City of the White Elephant. 313 
 
 portionately loud, not unassisted by gongs and drums 
 and other instruments of noise. It proved to be a 
 newly-made image which was thus being escorted with 
 great rejoicing to its temple, and all who had contributed 
 anything towards the making were entitled to share in 
 the privilege of dragging it along. Our thoughts went 
 back to Serampore. It was, on a small scale indeed, a 
 reminiscence of Jagannath. Nor is this surprising 
 when we remember that many whose right to have an 
 opinion is unquestioned, see in the Jagannath festivals 
 a survival of the Buddhist cult. So interested did we 
 become in this procession that, long before it had 
 passed by, the gari for which we- had waited was waiting 
 for us. 
 
 The best place at which to begin sight-seeing in 
 Bangkok is doubtless Wat-Si-Ket, and thither we drove 
 first. A wat is a temple or religious-house, and 
 generally in the compound of such a wat, beside the 
 large building containing the idol before which the 
 devotees worship, are a number of other buildings 
 terminating in graceful spires, in form not unlike the 
 pagodas of Burmah or the dagobas of Ceylon, many of 
 them covered with a rough mosaic of coloured glazed 
 tiling, giving them an exceedingly beautiful appear- 
 ance. In the palace grounds stands one which is richly 
 covered with gold leaf sent from England. One of the 
 buildings of Wat-Si-Ket is set on a little conical hill, 
 so that from it a general introduction to the whole city 
 may be obtained before the places of special interest 
 are visited and studied in detail. It is built four- 
 
314 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 square, and has windows on all sides. North and 
 south, east and west, you may look and, if the day be 
 fine, may get a splendid view of the city lying at your 
 feet, and of the country stretching far beyond. The 
 scene is charming. The sombre thatched roofs are set 
 in the varied green of the gardens and laced with the 
 sheen of the river and innumerable canals, while the 
 royal palaces and public offices, the graceful spires and 
 lofty roofs of the wats glittering in the sun, give a 
 beauty to the prospect which is all the more striking 
 if, as was the case with us, you come to it fresh from 
 familiarity with the monotonous level of the architec- 
 ture of Chinese cities. 
 
 We stood and gazed with delight, and while we gazed 
 there passed over our heads a line of vultures on out- 
 spread wings. One of them left his place, and, sweep- 
 ing through ever-narrowing circles, descended earth- 
 ward, passing almost, as it seemed, within reach of us, 
 drawing our eyes after him to a small dome just below 
 on which and on an adjacent tree some dozen or more 
 of his kind were congregated. What is the attraction 
 of this place that, among other apparently as available 
 roofs, it alone is chosen for this sleepy parliament of 
 carrion birds ? So we queried, and our friend said " I 
 will take you there and show you when we go down ; '* 
 and he took us. 
 
 We passed through a narrow doorway just inside of 
 which sat and begged an old man I was going to 
 say, on the verge of the grave, but what we saw just 
 after would suggest a doubt as to the appropriateness 
 
The City of the White Elephant 315 
 
 of the phrase. Under a roof beyond him was a boy- 
 priest reciting Buddhist scriptures to a number of men 
 and women patiently listening though what he was 
 reciting was in a language unintelligible alike to them 
 and to him. Near by under another roof was a raised 
 platform on which the bodies of deceased persons of 
 wealth and consideration were burned with becoming 
 ceremony. But the vulture cared for none of these 
 things. Passing through another door, however, we 
 apprehended the explanation by more than one sense. 
 Here was the yard on which the bird's eye rested or of 
 which he dreamed as he slept. On a shelf on one side 
 were a number of clean-picked human skulls stacked 
 in something like orderly array, while on the ground in 
 front were skeletons and bones piled up in a horribly 
 promiscuous heap. On the other side of the yard were 
 thrown together all the rough boxes in which the dead 
 bodies had been brought. These were the relics of the 
 poor who could not afford the luxury of cremation. 
 The only rites here witnessed are the casting of the 
 corpses to the attendant vultures to whose efficient 
 undertakership the matter is trustfully left. Each bird 
 tears away his share and adjourns with it to a neigh- 
 bouring tree or roof, and before all have participated in 
 the sepultural ceremony the bones have been picked 
 clean enough to satisfy the most exacting requirements 
 of Bangkok's sanitary officials. 
 
 Putting the protest of sentiment aside and having 
 regard merely to the interest of survivors, it must be 
 admitted that the digestion of a corpse in the body of a 
 
316 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 living organism is a process safer for the said survivors 
 than its decay in the earth on which they still walk. 
 But the method strikes a stranger, well as summary. 
 It is doubtless otherwise with those to the manner 
 born. Siamese sentiment does not in this matter 
 sympathise with ours, and good Buddhists, believing in 
 the sacredness of all life, and further, in the possibility 
 of their grandfathers and grandmothers, their uncles 
 and aunts, being incarnate in' these hungry vultures, 
 not unfrequently leave it in their wills that on their 
 decease their bodies, for which they will then have no 
 further use, shall be devoted to these fallen kindred, 
 these poor relations. And so with all ceremony and 
 respect, sorrowing friends bear their bodies to this spot 
 and reverently watch the useful toil of the carrion bird ; 
 or, since in this case the disposal of the body is esteemed 
 a work of merit, they assist in it themselves meri- 
 toriously taking a knife and slicing off tit-bits for any 
 weaker vulture that may seem in danger of being 
 crowded out of the solemn ceremony, or for the dogs 
 which are also in hungry and hopeful attendance. 
 "When the casting to the birds is determined by piety 
 rather than poverty, the dry bones are collected after 
 the vultures have finished with them and are burned 
 instead of being allowed to rot On the common heap. 
 
 From this place we went to the king's palace, not 
 far from which a temporary pramene or crematorium 
 was being erected for the burning of a deceased 
 member of the royal house. "When a king or queen, a 
 royal prince or princess dies, a great wooden temple- 
 
The City of the White Elephant. 317 
 
 like building, called a pramene, is erected, the wood of 
 which is provided from all the provinces of the kingdom. 
 In the centre is a raised platform on which the royal 
 corpse is burned. These buildings are made glorious 
 with gildings and illuminations, and are used but once, 
 each member of the royal house being honoured with a 
 new one. Nor may the timber, on its being pulled 
 down, be utilised for any secular or mean object ; it is 
 generally devoted to the construction of a wat or to 
 some similarly sacred service. And thus in our minds 
 the poor age-stricken beggar whom we had left with 
 his prospective undertakers dozing over his head and 
 His Supreme Majesty the King were associated together 
 in the frailty and fate of their common humanity. The 
 royal and special pramene was doubtless as imposing as 
 the public one was filthy and disgusting, but the uses 
 were the same, and we thought of Hamlet's words : 
 "Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable 
 service, two dishes, but to one table : that's the end." 
 
 Near the palace are the royal stables and the 
 elephant sheds, where the common herd stand in a 
 row under a common roof and the white elephants, as 
 becomes their sacred character and royal title, enjoy 
 separate apartments. At the time of our visit there 
 were two of these exalted pachyderms. One of them 
 was certainly as fine an animal as a man need wish 
 to see an immense creature, in good condition, with 
 a noble head and bearing. He had mighty tusks 
 curved upward with a bold and graceful sweep. As to 
 his whiteness, he was white but relatively. The other, 
 
318 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 also of a whiteness relative rather than absolute, was 
 evidently an aged animal and, though not without a 
 certain dignity, bore the responsibility of state with a 
 careworn look. His tusks were simply enormous but 
 were without grace of curve mere prolongations of 
 ivory. Like the other, he stood on a small platform 
 raised some nine inches or a foot, and his tusks reached 
 to the ground in front of this platform. How much 
 farther their natural termination would have been I do 
 not know, for the ends were truncated, the taper points 
 having been either intentionally sawn off for the 
 animal's convenience, or worn down by friction at the 
 level of the ground. 
 
 From the elephant sheds we went, to several wats, in 
 one of which, much to our astonishment and amusement 
 we found among the attendant disciples of Buddha a 
 couple of painted plaster casts of the first Napoleon. 
 These had most likely been purchased at the auction of 
 a foreign merchant by some devout Siamese, who, by 
 placing the European soldier in the train of the Asiatic 
 teacher, thought to make the "West pay homage to the 
 East. In another wat, Wat-Poh, is an image of Buddha 
 in the recumbent attitude which represents him dying 
 and attaining Nirvana. This is one hundred and sixty- 
 five feet long, and is said to be the largest image under 
 cover in the world. It is made of brickwork, coated 
 first with cement and then with a finer plaster to 
 receive the lacquer and gold-leaf with . which it is, or 
 once was, completely covered. Upon the soles of the 
 bare feet, which are perfectly flat, are inlaid beautiful 
 
The City of the White Elephant. 319 
 
 little pictures in mother of pearl, which one admires, 
 at the same time wondering how the sage could have 
 remained quiet under the necessary tickling by the 
 artist's toil. In this compound, a rather .extensive one, 
 we were about to pass through a gateway when our 
 priestly guide was courteously asked by some one 
 coming from the opposite direction whether we would 
 not wait a moment. Though not knowing the reason 
 of the request, we of course yielded the way, and 
 forthwith there passed through a number of Siamese 
 ladies followed by men carrying children and a string 
 of young men and maidens each carrying some small 
 article a fan, a spittoon, or an umbrella. These 
 proved to be some of the king's wives, children and 
 attendants taking an afternoon stroll. The present 
 king makes it his boast that he contents himself with 
 a less number of wives than any of his predecessors. 
 Sometime ago, when he had only about thirty, he 
 was reported to have said that he really did not care 
 to take any more. But occasionally reasons must be 
 found of force sufficient to compel the admission of 
 others, for, as I understand, the number is gradually 
 increasing. Considering the style in which each 
 member of the royal family is expected to live, the 
 maintenance of so large a luxury must be a considerable 
 burden on the poor Siamese taxpayer. 
 
 Leaving our gari we took a boat to the opposite side 
 of the river to visit Wat- Chang the highest of the wats 
 of Bangkok. This, instead of terminating in the ordinary 
 graceful needle-like form, has a blunted finger-shaped 
 
320 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 spire, which though not without grace, compares un- 
 favourably with the more usual type. By a flight of 
 steep steps one may climb nearly half-way up the face 
 of it, whence a good view of the country is to be obtained, 
 though less extensive than that from the hill-throned 
 Wat-Si-Ket. The whole surface is covered with varied 
 designs and patterns, wrought in many-coloured glazed 
 tiles, most of which are not larger than a finger-nail : 
 and to the multitudinous detail of colour corresponds 
 an equally multitudinous detail of outline. In both 
 perhaps the detail has been somewhat overdone to the 
 loss of effects that would have been attained by a 
 bolder and broader style. Nevertheless, the effect is 
 very pleasing, and when on high days and holidays 
 every point which it is possible to reach by steps or 
 ladders bears its little lamp, the sight must be beautiful 
 indeed. We were told that to increase this beauty, 
 prisoners under sentence of death were graciously 
 allowed the chance of redeeming their lives by climbing 
 and placing lamps upon points which ordinary people 
 considered inaccessible. As one looked at the places 
 indicated it seemed a barbarously cruel clemency that 
 offered pardon on such conditions. 
 
 Taking our boat from Wat-Chang we bade our 
 venerable oarswoman steer down the stream, past the 
 floating houses moored along the banks, many of which 
 were quite imposing stores filled with European goods, 
 to another wat that is owned and largely patronised by 
 the Chinese who, in this capital of the kingdom, rival 
 if they do not exceed in number the Siamese them- 
 
The City of the White Elephant. 321 
 
 selves. Here is a huge Buddha, the largest sitting 
 image under cover in the country. We found it an 
 interesting place; still we were conscious of getting 
 just a little tired of wats which, though they have 
 some distinctive features, seem to have much more in 
 common. But a little incident that occurred as we were 
 drawing up to the river steps of this temple struck us 
 forcibly and pleasingly as an illustration of the natural 
 courtesy and the desire to put others at their ease, even 
 when one is placed in an awkward predicament, that 
 we would gladly see yet more of. I may be judging too 
 favourably, but I hope and think not. Just in front of 
 us as we were heading for the steps was a young 
 woman paddling a canoe. All at once, in an apparently 
 most uncalled for manner, she upset her little craft and 
 precipitated herself into the water. We asked her why 
 she did it? She replied that she wanted to take a 
 bath. As her mats and other goods that would scarcely 
 be improved by a soaking, were floating in the water 
 beside her, we ventured to express scepticism as to her 
 intention, on which she admitted that she had been a 
 little startled at suddenly catching sight of foreigners 
 and had lost her balance a proceeding not calculated 
 for in the construction of Bangkok canoes. "But it 
 does not matter at all," said she, in response to our 
 expressions and looks of regret, "since I am in the 
 water, I will take a bath and so all will be well." 
 
 It was graciously said, and proclaimed her one of 
 Nature's true gentlewomen, who fair be they or 
 tawny sweeten the life and soften the manners of our 
 
 Y 
 
322 Turbans and Tails. 
 
 humanity, preserving for high and worthy use that 
 very term, which else might be in danger of degradation 
 into a synonym for selfish thought and base behaviour. 
 Long since hast thou righted thy canoe, my Siamese 
 sister, and pursued thy journey, forgetting, it may be, 
 in the daily routine of a toilsome life, the pale-faced 
 foreigners' intrusion among thy native streams, but the 
 pleasant memory of thee has crossed the weary waste of 
 the " black water " and lives on these Western shores of 
 which perchance thou hast never heard. 
 
 " God's benison go with you ; and with those 
 That would make good of bad, and friends of foes." 
 
 PRlfcTEb Bt \VM. CLONES AND SONS, 
 BTAMFOKD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
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 or to the 
 
 NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station 
 University of California 
 Richmond, CA 94804-4698 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 2-month loans may be renewed by calling 
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 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing 
 books to NRLF 
 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 
 days prior to due date. 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
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