Kolkata

“ How can we ever take in all this varied life, so different from the life we are used to? The women sitting on the balconies above, the pariah dogs prowling for scraps below, the druggists and spice-sellers, the fruit and vegetable stalls? Over it all is that peculiar, scented, musty bazaar smell, made up of saffron and wood and dirt, with which we are already so familiar.
Wonderful Delhi! A city teeming with myriads of men of many races and customs, living side by side. ”

“ It is not necessary that we should argue about Calcutta‘s disadvantages. It is enough to say that, of all Indian cities, we have selected for our capital the most distant and the most unhealthy. The great question is, Shall we have one capital, or two? Shall we keep the Viceroy all the year round in a central but hot position, such as Delhi, Agra, Allahabad, or Jubbelpore, or else at a less central but cooler station, such as Nassuck, Poonah, Bangalore, or Mussoorie? ”

“ Lacking the antiquity of the cities of the interior, Calcutta does not possess many things of interest to the tourist, no elaborate tombs, no massive mosques and few temples of importance, although all shades of religion are represented here. There is a very pretty Jain temple in the suburbs, and in the city there is a Hindu temple where goats are offered as a sacrifice, but the center of Hinduism is at Benares, while Agra, Delhi and Lucknow furnish the finest specimens of the taste of the Mohammedan rulers. ”

“ Beyond the sheeny ribbon of the Jumna, north, south, east, west, into the blurred horizon, you can see only land and land and land—a million acres with nothing on them to see—except the wealth of India and the secret of the greatness of Delhi.
Then look down past your toes and you will see the evidence of some of Delhi’s falls. From the ground you will have noticed ruins about you; but there the Kutb Minar dwarfs everything. Now you see that you stand above a field of broken arches, solitary pillars, stumps of towers, and in the middle of what must once have been a town of mosques and tombs. ”

“ The only fine houses are those occupied by the Europeans and the Sultan, and they front the harbour, which is considered a very good one, and is very constantly filled with shipping, the Sultan's men-of-war, foreign square-rigged vessels, and a host of buggaloes from Aden, Muscat, Catch, and Bombay. The back of the town is very much like a common Indian bazaar, but there is a hollow square in its centre, which nowadays is peculiar to this place—it is the slave-market. ”

“ It is a good rule in travelling, as in rhetoric, to keep the best to the last, and wind up with a climax. But it would be hard to find a climax in India after seeing the old Mogul capitals, whose palaces and tombs outshine the Alhambra; after climbing the Himalayas, and making a pilgrimage to the holy city. And yet one feels a crescendo of interest in approaching the capital. India has three capitals—Delhi, where once reigned the Great Mogul, and which is still the centre of the Mohammedan faith; Benares, the Mecca of the Hindoos; and Calcutta, the capital of the modern British Empire. ”

“ You know this town—this Calcutta—this melting pot of all India—and remember, that brick-faced reprobate of a Roos-Keppel had been telling me tales of it—grim, fantastic, true tales—and here they were at my feet, the witnesses and actors, the heroes and villains in his tales—hurrying along the street in a never-ending procession—a vast panorama of Asia’s uncounted races. There were men from Bengal, black, ungainly, slightly Hebraic shuffling along on their eternal, sissified patent leather pumps. ”

“ History has abundantly vindicated the choice of the site of what was for so long the capital of India and what is still to-day its most important commercial centre. But no credit for the choice rests with those who were in authority at home. Indeed, if the short-sighted directors who ruled the East India Company at this period could have had their way there would have been no Calcutta and very possibly no British domination in Bengal. ”

“ Wherever the viceroy may hold court, wherever the government may sit, Delhi always has been and always will be the capital of India, for have not the prophets foretold that the gilded marble palaces of the Moguls will stand forever? Although Benares and Lucknow have a larger population, Delhi is regarded as the metropolis of Northern India, and in commerce and manufactures stands fourth in the list of cities, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras only surpassing it in wealth, industry and trade. ”

“ But even if outraged national feeling could be set aside as a sentimental complaint, the other grievances are strong. Calcutta is justly claimed by all Bengalis for their own capital, as well as the capital of India. It is the centre of their culture and trade, of justice and government. It has the best Indian newspapers; it is the home of the best social intercourse; its University sets the standard of knowledge; its High Court is regarded with confidence by all Indians as a sure appeal against injustice. ”

“ A comfortable railway journey of seventeen and a half hours brought us to the capital of India, which is likewise the capital of Bengal—Calcutta. Like Bombay, it has a population of nearly a million natives and a small gathering of white people. It is a huge city and fine, and is called the City of Palaces. It is rich in historical memories; rich in British achievement—military, political, commercial; rich in the results of the miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings. And has a cloud kissing monument to one Ochterlony. ”

“ The changes in the administration of India, resulting from the announcement made by me at the great Durbar at Delhi, will affect to a certain extent Calcutta. But your city must always remain the premier city of India. Its population, its importance as a commercial centre and great emporium of trade, its splendid historic traditions, all combine to invest Calcutta with an unique character which should preserve to it a pre-eminent position. ”

“ Running always east and southerly, the train carries him from the torments of the northwest into the wet, woolly warmth of Bengal, where may be found the hothouse heat that has ruined the temper of the good people of Calcutta. The land is fat and greasy with good living, and the wealth of the bodies of innumerable dead things; and here—just above Mokameh—may be seen fields stretching, without stick, stone, or bush to break the view, from the railway line to the horizon. ”

“ This was Nagendra's boita khana. To left and right of the grass plats stood a row of one-storied buildings, containing on one side the daftar khana (accountant's office) and kacheri (court-house) ; on the other the storehouse, treasury, and servants' dwellings. On both sides of the gate were the doorkeepers' lodges. This first mahal was named the kacheri bari (house of business) ; the next to it was the puja mahal (division for worship) . The large hall of worship formed one side of the puja mahal; on the other three sides were two-storied houses. No one lived in this mahal. ”

“ The King of this fair city should declare the blockade absolute, and refuse to be troubled with any one except "Colon-nel Baltah, Agenty Sahib Bahadur" and the Politicals. If ever a railway is run through Kotah, as men on the Bombay side declare it must be, the cloistered glory of Boondi will depart, for Kotah is only twenty miles easterly of the city and the road is moderately good. In that day the Globe-trotter will pry about the place, and the Charitable Dispensary—a gem among dispensaries—will be public property. ”

“ Calcutta, on the contrary, offers to the stranger's eye an aspect so striking and imposing, brings so strongly to the mind the notion that its merchants are princes, and that it ranks crowned heads amongst its vassals and its tributaries, that we see at once that it must be the seat of a powerful and permanently established government. Nor does it seem possible, even in the event of Bombay taking the ascendance as the capital of British India, that the proud City of Palaces shall upon that account dwindle and sink into decay. ”

“ Calcutta, the capital, indeed, was superimposed; one felt that always at this time, when the glow came and stood in the air among the tamarinds, and there was nothing anywhere but luminous space and indolent stillness, and the wrangling and winging of crows. What persisted, then, under the span of the sky was the old India of rich traditions, and a thinking bullock beneath the yoke, jogging through the evening to his own place where the blue haze hid the little huts on the rim of the city, the real India, and the rest was fiction and fabrication. ”

“ From a long distance we can see the white band of breakers dashing against the beach, and as we approach closer a forest of steamer funnels, sails, and masts, and beyond them a long row of Asiatic and European buildings. That is Colombo, the capital of Ceylon, and a very important port for all vessels which ply between Europe and the Far East. Gently the Delhi enters the passage between the harbour moles, and is at once surrounded by a fleet of rowing boats from the shore. Singalese and Hindus swarm up the gangways, and throw themselves with much jabbering on the traveller's possessions. ”

“ The old saying, 'Who holds Delhi, holds India,' has its dark counterpart in the unwritten belief that no alien ruler, enthroned at Delhi, shall endure. Hence the dismay of many loyal Indians when the British Government deserted Calcutta for the Queen of the North. And here, already, were her endless, secretive byways rivalling Calcutta suburbs as hornet-nests of sedition and intrigue. ”

“ The walls of Old Delhi and of Tughlukabad, it is true, have not been entirely removed; but of the other four cities next to nothing remains to show their limits. Much the same thing may be seen at Old Goa, where churches stand scattered about on a plain, without a house at hand to shelter a worshipper.
It may well be asked, "Why did they abandon a city which had been surrounded by walls, and was therefore secure ; why pull down those walls to build others not so very far off ?" Many a city in India still occupies the same site which it has occupied for many a century ”

“ It is a Mohammedan city, as much as Delhi, the mosques quite overshadowing the Hindoo temples; and the Mohurrim, the great Moslem festival, is observed here with the same fanaticism. But it is much larger than Delhi, and though no single palaces equal those of the old Moguls, yet it has more the appearance of a modern capital, in its busy and crowded streets. It is a great commercial city, with rich merchants, with artificers in silver and gold and all the fabrics of the East. ”

“ Hindus come from afar to die at Benares, where their bodies may be burned and their ashes consigned to the sacred waters of the Ganges. And after Benares, by easy stages, Lal and I reached Delhi, the old capital of India, until the seat of government was shifted to Calcutta, to be again brought back to Delhi three years ago. ”

“ When entering the city one sees that strange combination of meanness and dirt with grandeur with which travellers in Eastern lands are so familiar. In the neighbourhood of Government House there are a number of shops in the European fashion, but a very large proportion of the business of Calcutta, we suppose the most of it, is carried on in bazaars, in which there are no showy shops, but where there is abundance of goods of every description. ”

“ Nor has one to go so very far from the heart of Calcutta to be reminded that the "premier city" of modern India derives its name from Kali, the most sinister of Indian goddesses. She was the tutelary deity of Kali-Kata, one of the three villages to which Job Charnock removed the first British settlement in Bengal when he abandoned Hugli in 1690, and her shrine has grown in wealth and fame with the growth of Calcutta. Kali-Kata is to-day only a suburb of the modern city, but in entering it one passes into another world—the world of popular Hinduism. ”

“ The beggars of Delhi are proverbial for their importunity, and on the steps of the mosque they glean a rich harvest. The maimed, the halt, the blind, pursued us till we were fain to take refuge in the carriage from the armless stumps, the twisted and distorted limbs, that were thrust forward, to excite our pity. Not less troublesome are the hawkers and vendors, who swarm everywhere in the verandahs of the hotels, but nowhere worse than at Delhi. They leave you no peace, pursue you everywhere, and even insinuate themselves in at your bedroom door. They are the pest of Indian travellers. ”

“ Delhi is indeed a glorious city as viewed from the Ridge. It is surrounded by a lofty crenelated wall, strengthened with detached martello towers, and with eleven bastions, each mounting nine guns, the work of our own engineers, but in admirable architectural keeping with the towers. Conspicuous, on a high table rock rising almost perpendicularly in the heart of the city, is the Jumma Musjid, the great mosque, a superb pile of building, with its domes and minarets. ”

“ The people of Oude never submitted to the new government; and in the Mutiny of 1857, not only the sepoys but the people rebelled. The insurrectionists concentrated at Lucknow, the capital, and captured some of the forts, as has been related to you. This city has now a population of two hundred and seventy-three thousand, which makes it the fifth city in size in India. It is regarded as a very attractive place. The streets are wide, and the buildings are well-constructed, with the wooden balconies you see all over India, and the shops and bazaars may entice the ladies to make purchases. ”