Teak at Rangoon.
This Is One of the
Great Sights of the
Orient. The Elephants
Work in the Lumber
Yards Along the
Water-front and Lift
Logs That Weigh
One and One-Half
Tons]
[Illustration: PLATE XL
Palm Avenue, Royal Lakes, Rangoon.
This Characteristic View is From a Pretty Park in
Rangoon. It Shows the Summit of the Pagoda
in the Distance]
INDIA, THE LAND
OF TEMPLES, PALACES
AND MONUMENTS
CALCUTTA, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF ORIENTAL CITIES
Calcutta, the great commercial port of northern India and the former
capital of the Empire, is the most beautiful Oriental city, not even
excepting Hongkong. Its main claim to this distinction is the possession
of the famous Maidan or Esplanade, which runs along the Hoogly river for
nearly two miles and which far surpasses the Luneta of Manila in
picturesqueness. The Maidan is three-quarters of a mile wide at its
beginning and it broadens out to one and one-quarter miles in width at
its lower end. Government House, the residence of the Viceroy, is
opposite the northern end of the Maidan, while at the southern end is
Belvedere, the headquarters of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. With
historic Fort William on one side and most of the large hotels, the big
clubs and the Imperial Museum on the other, the Maidan is really the
center of all civic life. At the southeast end is the race course; not
far away is the fine cathedral. Near by are the beautiful Eden Gardens
(the gift of the sisters of the great Lord Auckland), which are
noteworthy for the Burmese pagoda, transported from Prome and set up
here on the water's edge. It is seldom that a city is laid out on such
magnificent lines as is Calcutta. It reminds one of Washington in its
picturesque boulevards and avenues, all finely shaded with noble mango
trees. And it also has the distinction of green turf even in the heat
of summer, owing to the heavy dews that refresh the grass like showers.
Calcutta is associated in the minds of most readers with the infamous
Black Hole into which one hundred and forty-six wretched white people
were crowded on a hot night of June in 1750 and out of which only
twenty-three emerged alive on the following morning. The Black Hole was
the regimental jail of old Fort William and its site is now marked by a
pavement of black marble and a tablet adjoining the fine postoffice
building, while across the street is an imposing monument to the memory
of the victims, whose names are all enumerated. The hole was twenty-two
by fourteen feet, while it was only eighteen feet in height. These
prisoners who were flung into this little jail were residents of
Calcutta who fell into the hands of the Nawab of Murshedabad. Calcutta
is also famous as the birthplace of Thackeray, a bust of whom ornaments
the art gallery of the Imperial Museum. Scattered about the Maidan are
statues of a dozen men whose deeds have shed luster on English arms or
diplomacy.
Calcutta, as the first city of India that I had seen, impressed me very
strongly, although the native life has been colored somewhat by contact
with British and other Europeans. Here, for the first time, one sees
ninety-nine out of one hundred people in the streets wearing turbans.
Here also the women mingle freely in the streets, wearing long robes
which they wind dexterously about their bodies, leaving the lower legs
and the right arm bare. A few cover the face, but the great majority
leave it exposed. Many are hideously disfigured by large nose rings,
while others have small rings or jewels set in one nostril. Nearly every
woman wears bracelets on arms and wrists, heavy anklets and, in many
cases, massive gold or silver rings on the big toes. In some cases what
look like heavy necklaces are wound several times around the ankles. It
is the custom of the lower and middle classes not to put their savings
in a bank, but to melt down the coin and make it into bracelets or other
ornaments, which are worn by their women. Here in Calcutta also one sees
for the first time hundreds of men and women wearing the marks of their
caste on their foreheads, either painted in red or marked in white with
the ash of cow dung.
Although the main streets of Calcutta are distinctly European, a walk of
a few blocks in any direction from the main business section will bring
you into the native or the Chinese quarter, where the streets are
narrow, the houses low between stories and the shops mere holes in the
wall, with only a door for ventilation. In one quarter every store is
kept by a Chinese and here a large amount of manufacturing is done. In
other quarters natives are carrying on all kinds of manufacture, in the
same primitive way that they worked two thousand years ago. The
carpenter uses tools that are very much like those in an American boy's
box of toy tools; the shoemaker does all the work of turning out a
finished shoe from the hide of leather on his wall. Outside these stores
in the street the most common beast of burden is a small bullock of the
size and color of a Jersey cow; These little animals pull enormous
loads, and they are so clever that when they see an electric car
approaching they will start on the run and clear the track.
Many of the houses in the native quarter of Calcutta are built of adobe,
with earthen tiles, which make them bear a strong resemblance to the
adobe dwellings of the Spanish-Californians before the American
occupation. In many cases very little straw is used in this adobe, for
the walls have frequently crumbled away under the heavy rains of winter.
Other houses are built of brick, faced with plaster, which is either
painted or whitewashed.
What impresses any visitor is the squalor and the wretchedness of these
homes of India's poor. The clothing of a whole family is not worth one
American dollar, while about ten cents in our money will feed a family
of four. The houses have no furniture, except a bed of the most
primitive pattern, made of latticed reeds; the smoke from the cooking
fire goes up through the roof or else finds its way out the open door;
seldom are there any windows, all the air coming in at the open door;
the floor of the house is of dirt and on this squat father and mother
and the children, with the family goat. In the small shops work is
carried on seven days in the week until nine or ten o'clock at night,
with an hour for lunch and siesta at midday. The hopelessness of the lot
of the Hindoo (who is bound by rigid caste rules to follow in the
footsteps of his father) can never be appreciated until one has seen him
here in his native land.
For two hours I watched scores of natives taking a wash at the large,
free bathing ghat near the pontoon bridge. On the river front is a
restaurant, and back of this steps lead down to a spacious platform on
the level of the river. A score of men and boys and one woman were
taking a bath in the dirty water, which was thick with mud washed up by
passing steamers. A few of these bathers had rented towels from an
office on the stairs, but the great majority simply rubbed themselves
with their hands and then dried in the sun. All washed their faces in
the dirty water and rinsed their mouths with it. The men took off their
loin clothes and washed these out, then wrapped them about their bodies
and came out dripping water. The lone woman was very fat. She waded into
the water and when she came out her thin robe clung to her massive form
revealing all its curves. She calmly took a seat on the stairs and
proceeded to massage her head.
The most interesting place near Calcutta is the Royal Botanical Gardens,
situated on the opposite side of the river and about six miles from
town. These gardens were laid out in 1786 and they vie with the botanic
gardens at Singapore in the variety of trees and shrubs from all parts
of the tropics. Here is the great banyan tree which covers one thousand
square feet and is one hundred and forty-two years old. At a height of
five and one-half feet from the ground the circumference of the main
trunk is fifty-one feet; the height is eighty-five feet, while it has
five hundred and seventy aerial roots, which have actually taken root in
the ground. The tree at a little distance looks like a small grove.
The Imperial Museum at Calcutta is well worth a couple of hours, for it
contains one of the finest collections of antiquities in the Orient. The
museum is housed in an enormous building facing the Maidan, which has a
frontage of three hundred feet and a depth of two hundred and seventy
feet. In the ethnological gallery are arranged figures of all the native
races of India with their costumes; agricultural implements, fishing and
hunting appliances, models of Indian village life, specimens of ancient
and modern weapons and many other exhibits. Another room that will repay
study is a gallery containing old steel and wood engravings of the great
characters in the mutiny, with busts of Clive, Havelock, Outram and
Nicholson, and with a life-size bust of Thackeray.
BATHING AND BURNING THE DEAD AT BENARES
It is estimated that one million pilgrims visit the sacred city of
Benares every year, and it is these pilgrims that furnish the largest
income which the city receives from any source. Here are the most holy
shrines of Buddhism; here Vishnu and Siva have their strongholds, and
here must come Hindoos from all parts of India to bathe in the sacred
waters of the Ganges and to offer up prayers at the many holy shrines in
the city's temples.
Benares is sacred because here Buddha first made his residence. The
place that he selected was ancient Sarnath, six miles from Benares,
which is now a heap of ruins, in which British government experts are
delving for remains of the great city that was founded six centuries
before the Christian era. At Sarnath Buddha built a great temple and
founded a school from which his disciples spread to all parts of India.
But after 750 A.D. Buddhism disappeared gradually from India, and
Hindooism took its place. The fine temples that now line the Ganges for
three miles were built by Maratha princes in the seventeenth century.
They also built the scores of bathing ghats that now furnish one of the
most picturesque spectacles that the world affords. A ghat in Hindustani
is a stone stairway that leads down to the water, and Benares has a
succession of these magnificent stairways leading down to the Ganges,
overlooked by palaces of many Maharajas and temples built by rulers and
priests. No sight more splendid could be conceived than that of these
domes and minarets flashing in the rays of the early morning sun while
thousands of devout believers crowd the bathing ghats and offer prayers
to Vishnu, after they have bathed in the waters of the Ganges; and
mourning relatives burn the bodies of their dead after these have had
the sacred water poured over their faces.
[Illustration:
Hindoos Bathing in the Ganges at Benares.
This is a View of the Dasaswamedh Ghat, the Most
Popular Bathing Place in the Sacred City. Note
the Holy Men Under the Umbrellas, Who
Take Tribute of All Bathers]
The visitor who wishes to see the pious Hindoos bathe in the Ganges goes
to the river in the early morning soon after the sun has risen. He
descends one of the large ghats and takes a boat, in which he may be
rowed down the river past the bathing ghats and the one ghat where the
dead are burned. The scene is one that will never be forgotten. Against
the clear sky is outlined a succession of domes and spires that mark the
position of a score of sacred shrines, with two slender minarets that
rise from the mosque built by the great Moslem Emperor, Aurunzeb. The
sunlight flashes on these domes and spires and it lights up thousands of
bathing floats and stands that line the muddy banks of the river. The
floats are dotted with hundreds of bathers and the number of these
increases every few minutes. They come by hundreds down the great stone
stairways to their favorite bathing places, where, after a thorough
bath, they may be shaved or massaged or may listen to the expounding of
the Hindoo sacred books by a learned Brahmin sitting in the shade of a
huge umbrella. A characteristic feature of this hillside is the number
of these large umbrellas, each of which marks the place of a priest or a
holy man who has done some marvels of penance that give him a strong
hold on the superstitious natives and induce them to pay him well for
prayers or a sacred talisman.
With my boat moored near the bank and directly opposite the Manikarnika
ghat, the favorite place on the river, I watched the stream of bathers
for nearly an hour. The fanatical devotion that will induce a reasonable
human being to bathe in the waters of the Ganges seems incredible to
anyone from the Western World. The water of the sacred river is here of
the consistency of pea soup. The city's sewer pipes empty into the
Ganges just above the bathing ghats, and the current carries this filth
directly to the place which the Hindoos have selected for their rites.
The water is not only muddy and unclean, but it offends the nose. Yet
Hindoos of good family bathe here side by side with the poverty
stricken. They use the mud of the Ganges in lieu of soap; they scrub
their bodies thoroughly, and then they actually take this foul-smelling
water in their mouths and clean their teeth with it. This creed of
Buddha is a pure democracy, for there is no distinction of class in
bathing. Women bathe by the side of men, although they remain covered
with the gauze-like garments that are a sop to modesty.
The Manikarnika ghat is the most picturesque of all these bathing places
along the Ganges, as the long flight of stone steps is in good
preservation and the background of temples and palaces satisfies the
eye. The river front for thirty feet is densely crowded with bathers who
stand on small floats or go into the shallow water. With a Western crowd
so dense as this there would be infringments of individual rights that
would lead to quarrels and fights, but the Hindoo is slow to anger, and,
like the Japanese, he has great courtesy for his fellows. Hundreds
bathed at the ghat while I watched them and no trouble ensued. Nothing
could be more striking, nothing more Oriental than the picture of scores
of bathers, in bright-hued garments, moving up and down these long
flights of massive steps. In the background were a half-dozen temples,
the most noteworthy of which is the red-domed temple of the Rajah of
Amethi, whose beautiful palace overlooks this scene. Near the water is a
curious leaning temple, whose foundations were evidently unsettled by
the severe earthquake which destroyed several temples farther down the
river.
The busiest men on these bathing ghats are the Hindoo priests, who reap
a harvest from the hundreds of pilgrims who visit the ghats during the
day. These priests cannot be escaped by the poorest Hindoo. They levy
toll from every one who descends these long flights of stairs. One
fellow I watched as he sat under his great umbrella. He had his sacred
books spread before him, but he was given no leisure for reading them,
as a constant stream of clients passed before him. Some of these were
regular daily visitors from Benares, who pay a certain rate every week
or every month, according to their financial standing. Others were
pilgrims who, in their enthusiasm over the sacred Ganges (which they had
traveled hundreds of miles to bathe in), were not careful in regard to
their fees. Others were mourning relatives who applied for prayers for
the corpse which they had brought to the waterside, and still others
demanded hurried prayers for the dying, whose last breath would be drawn
by the bank of the sacred river. Incidentally the priests sold charms
and amulets guaranteed to bring good fortune. Most of the payments were
in copper pice, four of which make one of our cents, but many of these
priests had great heaps of this coin in front of them, showing that
though India may be suffering from a bad harvest the faker may always
feed on the fat of the land.
The spectacle, however, which stamps Benares upon the memory is the
burning of the dead at a ghat by the Ganges. This ghat is reserved
exclusively for the cremation of Hindoo dead. No Mussulman can use it.
It was about eight o'clock in the morning when my boat reached this
burning ghat. Already one body had been placed on a funeral pyre of
wood. The guide said this body was that of a poor man who had no
relatives or friends, as the place where the relatives sit until the
cremation is complete was empty. Soon, however, two men came rushing
down the stone steps with a corpse strapped to a bamboo stretcher. The
body was that of a woman, dressed in red garments, which signified that
she was a married woman. Unmarried women are arrayed in yellow and other
colors, while men must be content with white. The stretcher-bearers
placed their burden with its feet in the Ganges and then went in search
of wood which is purchased from a dealer. Soon they had a supply, which
they piled up in the form of a bier, and on this they placed the woman's
corpse. Then one of the men, who, the guide said, was the dead woman's
husband, with tears streaming from his eyes, bore some of the water of
the Ganges to the bier, exposed the face of the dead and poured the
sacred water upon her mouth and her eyes. Then while his companion piled
wood above the body the husband sought the low-caste Hindoos who sell
fire for burning the body. He soon returned with several large bundles
of coarse straw, one of which was smoking. Seven times the husband
passed around the bier with the smoking straw before he applied the
flame to the wood. The fire licked greedily at the wood, and soon the
flames had reached the body. Then the husband and his friend repaired to
a stand near by, from which they watched the cremation.
Meanwhile two other bodies had been rushed down to the water's edge. One
was evidently that of a wealthy woman, dressed in yellow silk and borne
by two richly garbed attendants. The other was that of an old man,
attended by his son. The latter was very speedy in securing wood and in
building a funeral pyre. Soon the old man's corpse was stretched on the
bier and the son was applying the torch. He was a good-looking young
fellow, dressed in the clean, white garments of mourning and freshly
shaved for the funeral ceremonies. While he was burning the body of his
father another corpse of a man was rushed down to the river's edge and
placed upon a bier. This body was fearfully emaciated, and when the two
attendants raised it in its white shroud, one arm that hung down limp
was not larger than that of a healthy five-year-old boy, while the legs
were mere skin and bones. It was an ugly sight to see the Ganges water
poured over the face of this corpse, which was set in a ghastly grin
with wide-open eyes. The man had evidently died while he was being
hurried to the burning ghat, as the Hindoos believe that it is evil for
one to die in the house. Hence most of the corpses have staring eyes, as
they breathed their last on the way to the river.
No solemnity marks this cremation by the river's edge. The relatives who
bring down the body haggle over the price of the wood and try to cheapen
the sum demanded by the low-caste man for fire for the burning. The
greed of the priest who performs the last rite and who prepares the
relatives for the cremation is an unlovely sight. All about the burning
ghat where the poor dead are being reduced to ashes hundreds are bathing
or washing their clothes. The spectacle that so profoundly impresses a
stranger is to them so common as to excite no interest.
LUCKNOW AND CAWNPORE, CITIES OF THE MUTINY
Lucknow and Cawnpore are the two cities of India that are most closely
associated in the minds of most readers with the great mutiny. The one
recalls the most heroic defense in the history of any country; the other
recalls the most piteous tragedy in the long record of suffering and
death scored against the Sepoys. The British government in both of these
cities has raised memorials to the men who gave their lives in defending
them and, though the art is inferior in both, the story is so full of
genuine courage, loyalty, devotion and self-sacrifice that it will
always find eager readers. So the pilgrims to these shrines of the
mutiny cannot fail to be touched by the relics of the men and women who
showed heroism of the highest order. When one goes through the rooms in
the ruined Residency at Lucknow he feels again the thrill with which he
first read of the splendid defense made by Sir Henry Lawrence and of the
Scotch girl who declared she heard the pipes of the Campbells a day
before they actually broke on the ears of the beleaguered garrison. And
when one stands in front of the site of the old well at Cawnpore, into
which the bleeding bodies of the butchered women and children of the
garrison were thrown, the tears come to his eyes over the terrible fate
of these poor victims of the cruelty of Nana Sahib. The sight of these
Indian cities also makes one appreciate more fully the tremendous odds
against which this mere handful of English men and women contended.
Lucknow is the fifth city in size in the Indian Empire. It is reached by
a six hours' ride from Benares which is interesting, as the railroad
runs through a good farming country, in which many of the original trees
have been left. Lucknow at the outbreak of the mutiny was fortunate in
the possession of one of the ablest army commanders in the Indian
service. Sir Henry Lawrence, when he saw that mutiny was imminent,
gathered a large supply of stores and ammunition in the Residency at
Lucknow. When the siege began Lawrence found himself in a well-fortified
place, with large supplies. About one thousand refugees were in the
Residency and the safety of these people was due largely to the massive
walls of the building and to the skill and courage with which the
defense was handled. In reading the story of this siege of five months,
from June to November, it seems incredible that a small garrison could
withstand so constant a bombardment of heavy guns and so harassing a
fire of small arms; but when you go through the Residency the reason is
obvious. Here are the ruins of a building erected by an old Arab chief
during the Mohammedan rule in Lucknow. The walls are from three to five
feet in thickness, of a kind of flat, red brick like the modern tile.
When laid up well in good mortar such walls are as solid as though built
of stone. What added to the safety of the building was the great
underground apartments, built originally for summer quarters for the old
Moslem's harem, but used during the siege as a retreat for the women and
children. So well protected were these rooms that only one shell ever
penetrated them and this shot did no damage. The building reveals
traces of the heavy fire to which it was subjected, but in no case were
the walls broken down.
The story of the siege of Lucknow has been told by poets and prose
writers for over a half century, but the theme is still full of
interest. Tennyson dealt with it in a ballad that is full of fire, each
verse ending with the spirited refrain:
And ever upon the topmost roof the banner of England blew.