Thomas Wallace Knox

“ Some of the grand avenues have wretched little streets leading from them, and the more you look around in Calcutta the more do you find these contrasts. The only relief to the general squalor of the Black Town is an occasional palm-tree, that half looks as if it was ashamed to be here. The native children play in the dust or mud of the streets as though they were a part of it, and their parents encourage them in the sport. ”

“ Tiles were falling from the roofs, walls were crashing into heaps of ruins, seams opened in the earth, men and women were shouting and screaming in terror, and what had been only a few minutes before a peaceful and sleepy city, was now a scene of wild excitement and desolation. ”

“ They had charming scenery all the way, and in many places it was unusually attractive. At one station (where they changed horses) the view from the veranda included a magnificent water-fall, where a good-sized river dashed in three streams over a precipice and united just below in a single torrent. As they rode along, the panorama of mountain and valley was constantly changing, and every minute seemed to have a new surprise in store for them.
They reached Newera-Ellia late in the afternoon, and were glad to surrender their seats in the uncomfortable coach. ”

“ The first land they saw in approaching Burmah was, as Fred expressed it, a light-house without any land visible for it to stand on. The light-house is on a dangerous reef of rocks more than a mile long, and quite covered at high-tide, and many a ship came to grief there before the beacon was erected. As there is no sign of land at the point where the light-house is first seen, the sight is a curious one. Fred and Frank were much interested in the spectacle, and when they first saw the tall structure of stone, 150 feet in height, they could hardly believe the evidence of their eyes. ”

“ The people are so poor and so heavily taxed that it takes all they can earn to support them in times of plenty; when the crops fail they have nothing laid by to live upon, and must starve. This year they have had famines in two parts of India, one in the Madras presidency and one in Bengal, that of Madras being the worst. It is said that a million of people have died of starvation in Madras, and half that number in Bengal. Think of a number as great as all the inhabitants of New York city perishing of hunger, and then judge what a calamity it must be! ”

“ To the youths who had been so long in the tropics, and had struggled with the heat nearly every day and hour since their departure from Hong-Kong, it was rather a strange sensation to tread on soft carpets and sit around a cheerful fireplace, and they began to wonder whether they were really in Ceylon, or were dreaming. ”

“ The sight could not fail to impress us with the grandeur of the city of the Mogul emperors, and since we left home we have seen no better illustration of the changes which time works than in Delhi and the surrounding country. Empires and kingdoms that had their capitals here have been overthrown one after another, and in each instance the conquerors have shown little or no respect for the conquered. Magnificent tombs are decaying, palaces are crumbling into ruins, and the gardens which were once the secluded retreats of crowned heads are converted into fields and pastures. ”

“ The power of the Government is not the same all over India. In some parts of the country the title of the native princes has been quite extinguished, while in others they live almost as they did before the English went to India; they collect their taxes, maintain their armies, make their own laws, have their thrones, courts, and ceremonies, and do pretty much as they like. An English official, called a 'resident,' or political agent, lives near the prince, and when he thinks the latter is going too fast he gives a gentle hint to that effect. ”

“ There are many public buildings that would do honor to a large city in Europe or America; there are public gardens, beautiful little parks, handsome lawns, artificial ponds, and the like, which are collectively very attractive. There is a large open space called the Maidan, or Esplanade, with several roads across it, and one along the bank of the river, and the society of Calcutta comes here for its daily drive at sunset. We rode there last evening and saw a great many showy turnouts, some of them belonging to wealthy natives, who seem to be fond of display. ”

“ There are men from Cashmere and Thibet; men from Southern India and Nepaul—Hindoos, Parsees, Arabs, Afghans, and various other tribes and nationalities that we cannot name without making a long list. There are men on horseback, with saddles and trappings richly set in silver, and possibly adorned with semi-precious stones; every little while you see carriages of European construction in which natives are riding, and occasionally a stately elephant moves along with an elegant howdah on his back. ”

“ There are hundreds and hundreds of these flowers, and there is a vast amount of stems and scroll-work and sacred writings, and as you look around you are fairly bewildered with the display. Bishop Heber says the builders of the Taj 'designed like Titans and finished like jewellers;' the wealth and elaboration of the interior are in full keeping with its great external beauty and symmetry.
"There is a wonderful echo in the dome of the Taj; it repeats every sound of the voice with great distinctness, but will disappoint any one who tries to sing a complicated piece of music beneath it. ”

“ While the snake is dancing the man suddenly drops the flute, and, at the same instant, grasps the snake around the neck. The snake becomes enraged, and at the first opportunity bites its master on the hand; the latter appears greatly excited, and rubs the wound with a stone, which is said to be an antidote against snake-bites, and he offers to sell it to you for a high price. The fact is, the snake is perfectly harmless, as his fangs have been removed, and he might bite the performer a hundred times over without the least injury. ”

“ CHAPTER XXIII. SIGHTS IN PONDICHERRY.—THE FRENCH EAST INDIES.—VOYAGE TO MADRAS.
The steamer lay quietly at anchor during the night, though she rolled somewhat from the motion of the waves that sweep almost constantly from the Bay of Bengal. The anchorage is only an open roadstead, and sometimes the surf beats on the sandy beach with such force that landing is next to impossible. There is a small river emptying into the sea at Pondicherry, but it is only accessible to native craft, which draw but little water, and to the smallest of foreign vessels. ”

“ American ships are fast disappearing from the ports of the East, and at the rate they are going we should not be able to find one of them in the harbor of Calcutta a decade hence. What a pity it is! as our flag flying from the mast of a ship, when we are so far away from home, is always a most welcome sight to a travelling American. We wonder if our foreign trade will ever revive so that our ships will be as abundant in Eastern waters as we are told they were before our civil war? ”

“ We have a couple of sharp-eyed natives with us, and they keep a steady watch for the beast. Sometimes he comes at dusk, sometimes two or three hours later, and sometimes not at all, and you have your night's watch in a tree for nothing; but if he comes you must be very careful about your aim, and try to bring him down at the first shot, since you are very unlikely to get a second. It is no easy matter to shoot a tiger in the dim light that you have under the circumstances, and many a skilful hunter has had the chagrin of seeing the brute escape. ”

“ We went into several of the shops where shawls and other products of Indian looms are for sale; and we also visited the famous jewellery establishments of Delhi where silver is wrought into a great many fantastic forms. If anybody wonders what becomes of all the silver that is taken out of the ground, he has only to come to India. This country, with China and one or two others of the East, has long been known for absorbing a vast amount of silver every year; it is made into jewellery and sold to all classes of people, but principally to those who cannot afford anything more costly. ”

“ Frank wished to know how long the trees lived, and how soon they began to bear fruit.
A YOUNG COCOA-PALM.
"They begin to bear about the seventh year," replied the coffee-planter, "and are in full bearing at twelve years. As long as they live they produce from forty to fifty nuts a year on the average, and they keep it up for seventy or eighty years. They produce their fruit at different times in the year, so that you may see it in all stages of growth, from the blossom up to the nut that is ripe and ready to fall. Look at any of the trees as we ride past them, and see for yourselves." ”

“ The harbor is the finest in all India, as it is twelve or fourteen miles long, by five or six in width; the city stands on an island about the length and shape of the one where New York is built, and in other respects it reminds you of the commercial metropolis of the United States. Bombay has its business section at the lower end, and its residences elsewhere, very much as we find things in New York; it has its Stock Exchange and other places of speculation, and when we went to the Apollo Bunder, or general landing-place, we were reminded of Whitehall and Castle Garden. ”

“ In some places the villages were close to the track of the railway, and as it was near the hour of breakfast a good many of the natives were engaged in cooking their morning meal. The apparatus they used was exceedingly simple, as it comprised an earthen pot, in which a tiny fire was kindled, and a shallow pan for steaming the rice, which is the universal article of food. The low price of labor in India can be readily understood when we bear in mind the simple process of cooking, and the monotony of the bill of fare. ”

“ Futtehpoor-Sikra was once a city three miles in length, with a rocky hill in the centre. The Mogul Emperor, Akbar, father of the Emperor Juhangeer, selected it as a royal residence, and built one of the finest palaces in all India on the rocky hill I have mentioned. The city has gone, and its site has been converted into fields; the ruins of the palace remain, and are the most extensive we have yet seen. They are a century older than the Taj Mahal, at Agra, and are not in as good a state of preservation. ”

“ NATIVE WOMAN OF BENGAL.
"A gentleman who has lived here for some years, and written about the women of Calcutta, says they are very pretty when young, but their beauty fades quickly; at twenty-five they have 'crows'-feet' around the corners of their eyes, and at thirty they begin to stoop and walk like a man of seventy in America. They all wear rings in their noses, and sometimes you will see a pearl in the side of each nostril, in addition to a hoop of thin gold that almost covers the mouth. ”

“ We took a stroll there this afternoon, and found it delightful; every few hundred yards there are seats where you may sit and look at the scenery, and from some of the points you can look for miles over the lovely valleys and the hills covered with trees clear up to their summits.
"Kandy is the capital of Ceylon, and it is to this fact that it owes the great number of charming walks and drives; nearly every road and path bears the name of Lady Somebody or other, and there are so many of them that the list becomes tiresome after a while. ”

“ The failure of the rains is the cause of the famines; the south-west monsoon (which brings the rain) is looked for with great anxiety all over India, and is considered of so much importance that its arrival is telegraphed to the newspapers of Europe and America. When you read in the telegraphic column that the monsoon has burst in the provinces of Central India, you may know that all fears of famine for the year are over, unless, as sometimes happens, the rains are so great in quantity that they flood the fields, and prevent the farmers from performing their work. ”

“ Our young friends greatly desired to visit the interior of Borneo; but as the Osprey would only remain a couple of days at Sarawak, and they wished to continue in her to Manilla, they were obliged to abandon the idea. The Doctor engaged a native boat to take them a short distance up the Sarawak River, so that they could see something of the great island away from the sea, and they gladly accepted the proposal. "Half a loaf is better than no bread," said Frank, and his opinion was promptly echoed by his cousin. ”

“ Segovia told the boys that the boa-constrictor was a very common snake in the Philippines, and sometimes grew to great [Pg 80] size, though less so than in Sumatra and Borneo. "He is far less dangerous than you might suppose," said he, "as he rarely attacks man, and there is no poison in his bite; in fact, he has no bite at all, and his mode of killing his prey is by crushing it as you have just seen. Once in a while a native is killed by a boa, but the occurrence is rare, and generally owing to the carelessness of the victim rather than the superior cunning of the snake. ”

“ RESTORED FOSSIL REPTILES OF NEW JERSEY.
"If such things have lived, why is it impossible for some members of the family to be prowling around to-day in the depths of the ocean? If the size of the monsters causes us to be sceptical, let us remember that there are inhabitants of the deep that quite equal them in bulk. Whales that exceed eighty feet in length are not uncommon, and when we consider their great depth in proportion to their length, we can easily have enough to make a first-class sea-serpent, and leave a few tons to spare. ”

“ Are not these aerolites parts of shooting-stars?"
"Circumstantial evidence favors the theory that some of the aerolites come from falling-stars; but, at the same time, no solid matter has reached the earth that can be directly traced to one. The amount of solid matter in an ordinary shooting-star is so small that it is thought to be consumed in its passage through the air, where its great velocity causes it to be heated to a very high degree; whenever anything has fallen from the sky to the earth, and been found at the time of its fall, it is always intensely hot." ”

“ The manager of the hotel assigned the strangers to rooms, and then told them to select their servants. As he did so, he pointed to a row of servants that had filed in from a yard just outside the hall, and stood there a little way from the office. Frank and Fred inquired what it all meant, and the manager thus explained,
"It is the custom here for each person staying in the house to have a servant to himself. You pay him half a rupee a day, and as much more as you choose, if you are satisfied with what he has done for you." ”