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A
Retrospect—I start from Calcutta—Our steamer and cargo—
Down the bay—Penang—The couree festival.
For many
years I had braved the burning heats of
Hindostan, and borne a by no means inactive part in
"the burden and heat of the day," incident to a
planter's life in our Eastern Dependency. Several
years of incessant exposure in very unhealthy
districts had at length told
their inevitable tale; and early in
1875 I was fain to turn my steps homeward to the old
parent nest, to try the restorative effects of the
"caller", Scottish air among my
dearly loved native Grampians.
Any one
who has lived in India for over twelve years
finds it difficult to settle down comfortably elsewhere.
On the voyage home I was not half careful enough
of myself; I did not make enough
allowance for the differences of temperature between the Koosee Diarahs
(plains) and the chops of the channel. The quick
sudden changes and exigencies of a Scottish spring
and summer proved too much for
my relaxed and enervated frame,
and a complication of rheumatic disorders set
in, shortly after I arrived at home, which rendered a
speedy return to the more congenial Indian heat an
advisable step. So said the doctors.
It was
hard to tear myself away from the grand old
heather-clad hills—the sparkling burnies with their
silvery trout, and the homely, kindly hands and
hearts of kith and kin; but
there was no help for it. Barely
four months at home, I was compelled to bid a
reluctant adieu to old Scotland, and set my face once
again towards the East.
The trip
home seemed to have done me little good.
My rheumatic tendencies became more pronounced the
nearer we approached the sultry shores of Ind. On
arrival at Calcutta I had to undergo several
severe surgical operations, and
at length, when not nearly
recovered, I accepted sole charge of some very extensive Government Grants
of Waste Lands in Oudh and the
North-west Provinces, and set out to survey the
scene of my future labours, though weak, reduced, and
scarcely able to crawl.
My new home was away up
in the north-west corner of
Oudh, about thirty-four miles from Shajehanpore,
and the grant was located in the midst of
wild, untilled jungle
country. There were few villages, and little
cultivation contiguous; and the locality bore the
reputation of being the very haunt and chosen home of the
dreaded malarious fever. How I worked and
hoped and struggled, I may
hereafter recount. My spirit was
willing, but the flesh was weak. I had to build
indigo vats and start
factories and cultivation. I reclaimed
lands from the dense virgin forest—I dug wells,
founded villages, built
granaries, constructed roads and bridges,
and tried my best to be a brave and useful pioneer;
but the deadly climate was the victor in the
end. It could not well be
otherwise. I was in reality very
weak and ill. All my old servants who had followed
me to this far-off nook from the Tirhoot
villages sickened with the
insidious fever, and had to go
back to their homes. I battled with my growing
weakness as long as I dared. Many a day, when
I could no longer walk, I
was carried over the cultivation
in a
pallcee. Many a day have I lain in the jungle in
the throes of fever and ague, while I directed
the operations of my coolies in the ever-widening clearing;
but at last I had fairly to yield, and I was
sent down by my kind and
liberal employer to Bombay, on full
pay, to see if a course of salt-water baths would
drive the gnawing rheumatic
demon from the lodgment he
had effected in my joints.
All
was in vain. Salicene, salycilic acid, hot baths,
sulphur bandages, electricity, friction,
liniments, all kinds of
medicaments were tried, but all were unavailing. The only thing that
left me was my balance at
the bank; and my brother just then arriving from
England, took me over with him to Calcutta a
crippled and helpless
burden. In Calcutta I had the best advice, and all the alleviations
that unbounded brotherly
tenderness could procure, but the doctors could do
nothing for me, and sea air and prolonged
change of climate were
prescribed as a last desperate resource,
although even then it was feared I would remain a
cripple for life.
When
my two brothers carried me in their arms up
the steamer's steep sides, and bade me adieu with
faltering speech and moist eyes, little did they imagine
that a few short months of the wonder-working
air of sunny Australia would
transform me into a hale and active man again; and alas ! as little did
I imagine that in little
more than a year my gentle younger brother would succumb to that dreaded
Indian scourge— cholera.
Let me
carry you back to the muddy, swift, and
silent Hooghly. The engineers have gone below, and
we are busily getting up steam. What a motley
ever changing scene the deck
of the steamer presents to my
view as I lazily survey it from my easy-chair! Here
are Chinese, habited in blue and black calico,
returning to the. land of
the sun, each with a heterogeneous
assortment of odd-shaped cups, tea-pots, and cooking
vessels, destined to prepare the mysterious
mixtures and decoctions in
which the soul of the Chinaman
delighteth.
Perched high on a pile of boxes are several Arab
Jews and Jewesses, swathed in shawls and
turbans of the gaudiest
colours. One is a watchmaker from
Baghdad, another a jeweller from Aden, while, to
complete the group, we have a blind beggar
from Damascus. With his
shaven poll, his close-cropped
dark beard, and his staring, sightless eyes, he looks
perhaps the most picturesque of the group.
A
noisy party of low-caste Germans are shrugging,
shouting, and gesticulating with amazing vigour and
volubility. Their flash jewellery and brazen
looks proclaim them
pot-house runners or crimps, very vultures in human guise. Lascars,
Malays, Armenians,
negroesfrom Mozambique, Mussulmans from the Straits,
Jews, Christians, Turks, and Greeks flit about
the deck like figures in a
phantasmagoria. A party of Armenian
Jews, with Hindu servants, are busy attending to the
wants of over a thousand goats and sheep,
which, cooped and confined
between barricades, stagger on
the slippery deck, or, with terror in their eyes, and
cries and moans of fear and pain, jostle and
lurch from side to side with
every movement of the steamer.
Farther forward, near the cooking galleys of the
Chinamen, are two or three rows of cows and bullocks which
seem quite as miserable and as much abroad as
the poor sheep and goats.
All of
these animals are intended for the Penang and
Singapore markets. The trade is entirely in the hands
of a few Jews and one or two Mussulmans, who
make it pay most handsomely.
Far
over the length and breadth of India, from
Dinapore, Patna, Bhangulpore, and in many a village
of Bengal, their emissaries buy up all the
goats and sheep they can
collect, at prices ranging from a rupee
to four or five rupees, but rarely more. They pay a
freight of two and a half to three rupees a
head, and get seven and
eight, and not unfrequently ten and even
twelve dollars for each animal landed at Penang or
Singapore. Deducting losses by deaths,
expenses of fodder, &c., our
dealers still realize the handsome
average profit- of from three to four dollars, say,
seven to eight rupees a head
on each goat or sheep. These
Jews are fine-looking fellows, perfect linguists, and
clever, versatile, shrewd men of business; but
one and all aboard our
steamer betrayed a marked partiality
for spirits. They drink a most intoxicating liquor,
distilled from dates and flavoured with
aniseed, and during the
whole voyage were more or less drunk.
By-and-by, as the busy crowds settle down to their
places, the medley of sounds dies away, and
the unhappy goats, at last making up their minds to the
inevitable, begin to turn their attention to
the bunches of dried grass,
which, twisted into the strands of a
long rope, are hung all over the deck at short
intervals. We are an
animated farm-yard; and when the wind is
ahead, the odour from the pent-up animals is strong
enough to "kill bees," as the Scotch mate
remarks.
There
is little of interest on either of the river's
banks. "We have left the shipping and the jute mills
far behind, and already sniff the faint far
odour of the sea. Near the
light-ship, we pass two strongly-built,
red-striped boats, with clumsy platforms of bamboos
projecting over the sides. The bulwarks are
open, but the crafts seem
stiff sea-boats, able to live in a
strong gale of wind, as indeed they are. I find these
boats are from the Maldive islands, where they
are built. They make one
voyage a year to Calcutta,
loaded with shells, cowries, dried fish, cocoa-nuts and
coir fibre, and return with rice, ghee, dall,
and other, edibles. A
Yorkshire captain on board, travelling, like
myself, in search of health, tells me that the
islanders are fanatic
Mussulmans all, but very hospitable. He
was once wrecked among them, and they kept him and
his crew for six months, and would take
nothing whatever as the
price of their hospitality.
The air is now getting chill;
a fine fresh breeze ahead of the
beam, and a crimson bank of cloud to
leeward, changing to grey and bluish-black as the sun
sinks, tell us it is time to go below; so we leave
the crowded deck to seek the
solitude of our cabins, and
dream perhaps of health renewed. The sea air began
soon to work wonders on the shattered invalid. My
fellow-passengers the Yorkshireman and a genial
American from Philadelphia were kindness itself, and we
had some pleasant musical evenings on the run down
the bay. Little of incident occurred, and little
worthy of narration, beyond the
periodical squabblings of the
freely bibulous Israelites, as they quarrelled over their
cups—and on the 28fch of January, about sunset, we
sighted Penang island in tlio hazy distance, but
it was not till midnight that
we. dropped anchor in the
harbour.
Next
morning we were threading our way among
crowds of Chinese, Malays, and Klings. This day
was being held the great couree festival of the
Madras- ses, and all were
dressed in their brightest holiday
colours. A vast concourse were hurrying up to the
waterfall that comes tumbling over a lofty wooded
crag behind the town.
Getting
into a gharry, we rattled through the crowd
at a tremendous pace. The gharries here are all drawn
by very small ponies from the province of Deh-li
on the mainland, and the pluck,
pace, and endurance of the
little animals are surprising. Earely exceeding
twelve hands in height, they are the hardiest and most
spicy-looking little "tats" I have ever seen, the
beau- ideal of a hockey tat, and
to be bought for from 80 to 100
dollars. "Were the aristocratic sportsmen of Lillie-
bridge but to import these little equine wonders,
Polo in perfection might be
enjoyed in England, such as the
famed Muninpoorees themselves might not equal, and
such as has never certainly yet been witnessed by any
Polo club in the United Kingdom.
On we
went, between neatly-trimmed hedges of
China bamboo, past Chinese shops with quaint signs,
and dried fish of curious shape and fearful odour,
flapping in the breeze. Past groups of Malays with calabash hats and gaudy
silks shimmering in the sun;
dusky beauties bedecked with golden ornaments on
nose, hair, ears, feet, arid arms; such a wealth of
jewellery. What a splendid loot Penang would make
! On past plantations of
areca-nuts; past the baths built
on the face of the hill, with the murmur of falling water
sounding pleasantly in oar ears; past the fair
with its noise and glitter and
heat; with its merry-go-rounds,
and rocking-boats in full swing, peep-shows, stands of
confectionery, and a Chinese theatre, crammed to
the door with a noisy and
excited audience; Fakeers shouting and singing, and rattling their strings
of beads on their polished
cocoa-nut shells; beggars in every attitude of deformity, and in every
stage of disease.
Such a
sight I never saw before. Far up the
tortuous road wound the streams of devotees, among
the luxuriant tropical vegetation, looking like a
huge crawling snake, displaying
fresh folds of ever-changing
colour at every moment. A clear stream came dancing
among the boulders, and here, in each pool and under
every rippling cascade, we beheld a noisy group of
bathers, the long black hair of the women
streaming in the sparkling
water, like a vision of (a nut-brown)
Undine and her nymphs. On every hand, huge boulders of
granite reared their rugged fronts from a wilderness of flowers and tangled
ferns; while far up the wooded
mountain-side the flashing waterfall bounded
from rock to rock, tossing its shattered spray
among the sunbeams. The scenery was magnificent;
the changing groups, the bewildering colours, the
varied costumes, the bustle and stir, and noise
and laughter. One almost felt as
if he were assisting at some mad
festival in the shadowy realms of dreamland.
All this time, however, the heat and its attendant thirst
were painfully real; but having quenched the
latter in a bumper of cocoa-nut
milk, we again made for the
steamer, leaving the transformation scene behind us.
Next day we bade good-bye to Penang, and left for
Singapore. |
