Across India; Or, Live Boys in the Far East

by Oliver Optic

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  ALL OVER THE CITY OF CALCUTTA

  "I shall be glad to be on board of the Guardian-Mother again," said Scott,after the four live boys had taken a place by themselves in the conferencecarriage. "I have seen enough of India."

  "But you have not seen one-half of India," replied Louis.

  "I read a story in an old schoolbook Uncle Moses had used when he didn'tweigh as much as I do now, which was called 'The Half is Better than theWhole;' and it proved the proposition with which it started out. That isjust what is the matter now."

  "But you have been seeing new things all the time, and learning something,"added Louis.

  "That's very true; but we have seen all the big mosques and things, andenough is as good as a feast," suggested Scott. "I suppose if we stayedhere a couple of years more we should not see the whole of the country. Wehave got a specimen brick of the principal cities; and a dozen specimens ofthe same thing don't amount to much."

  "But you haven't seen Calcutta yet, and that is the biggest toad in thepuddle," said Felix. "The ship will be there, and if you are homesick youcan go on board of her."

  But the call for attention from Captain Ringgold interrupted theconversation, and Sir Modava had seated himself in front of the company togive one of his "talks."

  "Our route will be along the Ganges till we come to Luckieserai Junction,where the loop-line falls into the main line," the Hindu gentleman began.

  "Is it much of a fall, sir?" asked Felix.

  "I don't understand you, Mr. McGavonty," replied the speaker blankly.

  "The expression 'falls into the main line' is somewhat different from whatwe use at home; but the young man ought to have understood you," interposedthe commander.

  "What would you have said, Captain?"

  "The loop-line we call a branch, and we say connects with instead of fallsinto," replied the captain. "But your meaning was plain enough, and ourboys must fall into the methods of expression used here."

  "Though you have seen the Ganges several times, not much has been saidabout it; and I will tell you a little more concerning it before we leave,not to see it again. It rises in Gahrwal, one of the Hill states,north-east of Delhi. It has its source in an ice-cave nearly fourteenthousand feet above the level of the sea. It is not called the Ganges tillit has received the flow of two other rivers, a hundred and fifty miles ormore from its lofty source. Just below Allahabad it takes in the Jumna,itself a mighty stream.

  "As you have learned, it is the holy river of the Hindus; and it deservestheir homage, for, aside from the religious character they give to it,three hundred thousand square miles are drained and fertilized by theGanges and its tributaries. Of its sanctity, that it washes away sin, andthat death in its waters or on its shores is the passport to eternal bliss,you have learned. But it renders a more immediate and practical service tothe people; for it is navigable for small craft from the point where itenters the lowlands, seventy or eighty miles north of Delhi.

  "The river is 1,509 miles long. Though it rises and falls at differentseasons, it never fails, even in the hottest summer; and its inundationsrender, to some extent, the benefit which the Nile does to the soil ofEgypt. Like the Mississippi, in your country, it has sometimes changed itscourse, as proved by the ruins of cities that were once on its banks.

  "Now you have a view of the Ganges for quite a distance, and can see thekinds of boats that navigate it. It is one of the most frequented waterwaysin the world, though the building of railways and canals has somewhatdiminished the amount of freight borne on its tide. About L6,000,000 isneeded to complete the Ganges canal, which will reach all the citiesthrough which you have passed. There is a very complicated mythologyconnected with the river, which it would take me all day to relate, andtherefore I will not meddle with it."

  For a couple of hours the passengers watched the boats and steamers on theriver, and the scenes on the other side. While they were thus employed,Lord Tremlyn gave to each person a map of Calcutta, intimating that heshould soon tell them something about the city; and they all began to studyit, so as to form some idea of the place they were next to visit. Of coursethey could make out but little from the vast maze of streets, but some ofthem obtained a very good idea of the situation of the city and many of itsimportant buildings.

  "People coming from England or America generally arrive at Calcutta orBombay, the larger portion at the former. From the sea the metropolis ofIndia is reached by the Hoogly River, the most western outlet of theGanges," his lordship began. "It is sometimes spelled Hugli. Under thisname, the stream is known sixty-four miles above Calcutta and seventeenbelow. Vessels drawing twenty-six feet of water come up to the city; thoughthe stream, like the Mississippi, is liable to be silted up."

  "I see that some of you look at me as though I had used a strange word.Silt is the deposit of mud, sand, or earth of any kind carried up and downstreams by the tide or other current. But the river engineers here areconstantly removing it; the course is kept open, and the Hoogly pilots arevery skilful. The river has also a bore, though not a great bore, like somepeople I know.

  "We know the book-agent better than this one," said Scott.

  "Some of our rivers in England have bores, though not book-agents; so havethe Seine, the Amazon, and others with broad estuaries. High tides drive avast body of water into the wide mouth; and, as the stream is not largeenough to take it in, it piles it up into a ridge, which rolls up theriver. It forms a wall of water in the Hoogly seven feet high, which issometimes dangerous to small craft. Enough of the Hoogly.

  "Calcutta, by the last census, 1891, had a population of 861,764; but it isnot so large as New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago; and London is the onlylarger city in the United Kingdom. It became a town in 1686. After it hadattained considerable importance, in 1756, it was attacked by the Nawab ofBengal, the king or rajah; and after a siege of two days the place yielded.The tragedy of the 'Black Hole' followed."

  "I have heard of that, but I don't know what it means," said Mrs. Belgrave.

  "You observe the large open enclosure at the right of your map of the city,the esplanade. Within it is Fort William, which has existed nearly twohundred years. It had a military prison, which has since been called the'Black Hole.' The nawab caused one hundred and forty-six prisoners, all hehad taken, to be shut up in a room only eighteen feet square, with only twosmall windows, both of them obstructed by a veranda. This was but a littlemore than two square feet on the floor for each person, so that they couldnot stand up without crowding each other. They spent the night there,pressing together, the heat terrible, enduring the pangs of suffocation. Inthe morning all were dead but twenty-three.

  "The nawab held the fort for seven months, when it was recaptured by LordClive. Calcutta extends about five miles on the bank of the river, beingabout two in breadth. I shall not follow out its history, for you will hearenough of that as you visit the various localities."

  "I used to think Calicut and Calcutta were the same city," said Louis.

  "Not at all, though the names of the two may have been derived from thesame source. The name of the great city is from Kali, a Hindu goddess ofwhom you heard in Bombay, and cuttah, a temple; and doubtless there wassuch a building here. Calicut is on the south-west coast of India, and wasa very rich and populous city when it was visited by Vasco da Gama, who wasthe first to double the Cape of Good Hope, in 1498. The cotton cloth,calico, generally called print, gets its name from this city."

  Dinner was brought into the carriages; and the tourists slept in theafternoon, arriving at Calcutta in the evening. The Great Eastern, one ofthe two largest hotels in the city, was prepared to receive them. Here, asin Bombay and elsewhere, every guest is attended by his own servant. Half adozen of them had been retained, but when the omnibuses set them down atthe hotel a hundred more could have been readily procured.

  The business of sight-seeing began early the next morning with a visit tothe espl
anade, which may be called a park, though it contains a variety ofbuildings besides Fort William, which is half a mile in diameter. Theenclosure is a mile and three-quarters in length by about one mile in depthfrom the river. The Government House occupies a position next to it, andthey passed it as they entered.

  "Whose statue is that--the Duke of Wellington?" asked Louis, as he walkedon one side of Sir Modava, with his mother on the other side.

  "Not at all; most of our streets and buildings are named after personsnoted in the history of India," replied the Indian gentleman, laughing."That is the statue of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck, the firstgovernor-general of India; and many important events dated from his time,for he suppressed the suttee and thugging."

  "Thugging?" repeated the lady interrogatively.

  "You have not been told about it; but I will give you its history when wehave time, for here are the Eden Gardens," replied Sir Modava.

  "Not the Garden of Eden?" suggested Mrs. Belgrave.

  "Only named for it; but it is a very beautiful garden in English style,though the trees and plants are, of course, different. It has water enoughfor variety; and there is no difficulty at all in getting it, for the cityis hardly above the river at high tide. All there is of the fort you cansee from here."

  "But what are those things over the other side of the park?"

  "They are all tanks; and, of course, they are to hold water. Each of themhas its name, generally Indian. Now we will walk across to the ChowringheeRoad, where the finest private residences of the city are situated. On ourleft is the Government House, which we passed when we came in. It is a finebuilding, and it has a large garden of its own."

  "But what is it for?" asked the lady.

  "It is the residence of the governor-general, generally called the viceroy;and he has his offices there. Now, if you look beyond Fort William, youwill see the race-course."

  "I don't care for that," replied Mrs. Belgrave, whose memories of the sportwere anything but pleasant.

  "Near it is the presidency jail, and there are two hospitals fartheralong."

  The party walked along the road to view the residences of the nabobs, andreturned to the hotel, where they seated themselves on the large verandaoverlooking the street. The first thing Louis did was to look at athermometer he discovered on a post.

  "How hot is it, Louis?" asked his mother.

  "It isn't hot at all; it is only 70 deg.."

  "The glass varies here from 52 deg. to 100 deg.; but we don't get the latter figureexcept in summer," added Sir Modava.

  "But you have awful cyclones here, an English lady told me last night,"said Mrs. Belgrave.

  "We do; but we never have them at this season of the year; they come inMay, September, and October, and sometimes in November the belated ones. In1867 we had one in the latter month which destroyed thirty thousand nativehouses; but you know they are built of bamboos and such stuff, and it doesnot take much of a breeze to demolish them. Another in June, 1870, didnearly as much damage."

  "I should think the bore would make mischief here," suggested Louis.

  "The monsoons here begin in July, and during their time the bore is themost mischievous. The big wave comes up the river at the rate of twentymiles an hour. All boats run for the middle of the river, where the billowdoes not break against the shore. Ships often part their cables, and knockthemselves to pieces against the walls. Sometimes the bore is twelve feethigh, though not much more than half that generally."

  "What are the prices at a hotel like this one, Lord Tremlyn?" asked Dr.Hawkes.

  "Here is the list of prices," replied his lordship, handing him a cardtaken from the wall.

  "Coffee at six in the morning, breakfast _a la fourchette_ at nine,tiffin at one, and dinner at seven. Price, Rs. six per day," the doctorread. "I suppose Rs. means rupees; and that makes it about twelve Englishshillings, or three dollars a day, which is not high."

  "There are no extras except for wines, liquors, and beer, which none ofyour people use," added the viscount. "But you have to pay for your ownattendance; and your servant's pay is from eight to ten rupees a month, orabout a pound."

  "Cheap enough!" exclaimed the surgeon. "I have to pay my waiter at home sixpounds a month."

  "Now, what is there to be seen in Calcutta?" asked the commander afterbreakfast.

  "If you wish to see mosques, temples, pagodas"--the viscount began.

  "We do not," interposed the captain. "At first those were very interesting;but we have seen enough of them."

  "I supposed so," added Lord Tremlyn. "I have ordered carriages, and to-daywe will take a general view of the city."

  This plan was agreeable to the party, and it was carried out. From thehotel they proceeded to the river. There was a crowd of shipping at anchor,and at the landing-stages and jetties. Among them Louis was the first todiscover the Guardian-Mother. She was in the middle of the river, off FortWilliam. Half a mile below her they saw the Blanche. At the request of thecommander, the carriages went down to the fort, where the passengers allalighted, and gathered together on the shore. The gentlemen cheered, andthe ladies waved their handkerchiefs.

  "I see that Mr. Boulong has painted the ship, and she looks as taut andsnug as a man-of-war," said the commander, who was evidently glad to seehis vessel.

  "They are lowering the boats," added Louis; and in a few minutes the bargeand first cutter came up to the shore.

  There was a general handshaking with the first officer, in command, and theboys extended this courtesy to all the crews of the boats, going on boardof them for a few minutes. It was a happy meeting; but it could not be longcontinued, and the carriages drove off again.

  As he was about to take his place in the landau, Mr. Boulong informed thecommander that he had received a visit from Captain Mazagan. He wanted tosee Captain Ringgold, but did not state his business. The first officercould not tell whether the visitor knew the Blanche was in the river, forhe had not mentioned her. With the statement that the party would go onboard in two or three days, they parted, and the boats returned to theship. The commander had something to think of now; but he came to theconclusion that the reprobate was not aware of the presence of the Blancheor her owner.

  The carriages followed the shore road till they came to the upper end ofthe city, and then turned into the first of the long streets with severalnames in different parts, which extends entirely through the town. Near theesplanade they found the finest shops, and the ladies went into some ofthem to see the goods. Then they struck the Circular Road, and droveentirely around the city.

  "This reminds me of Moscow, in some parts, where palaces and shanties areside by side in the same street," said Captain Ringgold. "There does notseem to be any aristocratic section, unless that by the esplanade is such."

  They saw plenty of mosques, temples, and churches, some of the latter veryfine. They believed they had taken in the whole city. After dinner LordTremlyn invited them to an excursion on board of a steam-yacht the nextday, the use of which was tendered to him by a high official.