Leaves Gibraltar for Alexandria.—Egypt and Old Friends.—The
Town of Suez.—Embarks for Bombay.—Mocha and its
Coffee.—Aden.—Arrival in Bombay.—Reception by the People.—Trip
to Elephanta.—Ride into the Interior.—Difficulties of the
Journey.—Views of Agra.—Scenes about Delhi.—Starts for the
Himalaya Mountains.
“Where is Gulistan, the Land of Roses?
Not on hills, where Northern winters
Break their spears in icy splinters,
And in shrouded snow the world reposes;
But amid the glow and splendor,
Which the Orient summers lend her,
Blue the heaven above her beauty closes:
There is Gulistan, the Land of Roses.
Northward stand the Persian mountains;
Southward spring the silver fountains,
Which to Hafiz taught his sweetest measures.
Clearly ringing to the singing,
Which the nightingales delight in,
When the Spring, from Oman winging
Unto Shiraz, showers her fragrant treasures
On the land, till valleys brighten.”
—_Taylor._
By far the most interesting and valuable part of Mr. Taylor’s experience
as a traveller was in India, China, and Japan, if we consider only
the welfare of his readers. But so far as its influence upon him was
concerned, its impression was far less marked than that in Europe and
Egypt. At the time he left Gibraltar for Egypt, the lands of India,
China, and Japan were comparatively little known to the reading
communities in America. Even India, which had so long been the idol of
England and the El Dorado for all her adventurous spirits and valorous
soldiers, was a country with which America had but little communication,
and in whose people Americans took but little interest. It was a
neglected field.
Mr. Taylor, in a letter to a friend in Washington, laid much stress
upon the importance to American commerce of an accurate description of
those lands, and hoped to be the instrument by which an interest in such
enterprises might be awakened. It was a laudable, patriotic purpose, and
was most conscientiously carried out by him.
He left Gibraltar on the 28th of November, on a Peninsular and Oriental
steamer, which touched at that port, on its way from Southampton
to Alexandria. He arrived at Alexandria December 8, and sought his
old quarters in the city. He felt like one who returns to his home,
as he walked the streets of the Egyptian city, and relates with
evident satisfaction how pleasant it was to call out to the crowd of
donkey-drivers in their native tongue.
But his visit to Cairo gave him the keenest delight, as there he saw
many familiar faces, and was greeted with many welcoming smiles. He was
especially delighted to meet his faithful dragoman, Achmet, who had been
his companion on his trip to the White Nile, and the happiness of the
Egyptian on seeing his old employer told very impressively the power and
virtue of Mr. Taylor’s character. Men were faithful to him because he had
faith in them. They loved him because he understood and appreciated them.
Even the little donkey-boy on whose animal Mr. Taylor had rode a year
before in one of his reckless canters through the bazaars, remembered him
and offered to let him ride again without pay—an act unheard of by other
travellers there. It could not be otherwise than sweet to travel in any
land where the people were friends and where the wanderer was regarded in
the light of an especially intelligent relative.
At that date there were no railroads in Egypt, although one was
projected, and Mr. Taylor was compelled, in common with the crowd of
other travellers, to ride in a cart, eighty-four miles, through the sandy
desert, to Suez. The latter town was then, according to Mr. Taylor’s
account, a small, dirty, insignificant place. But the writer, who visited
the place after a visit to Japan, China, and India, in 1870, found a very
prosperous town, with excellent hotel accommodations. The bazaar was
large and stocked with an immense quantity of goods from all parts of the
civilized world. It has doubtless grown much since the work was begun on
the Suez Canal, and since the harbor has been dredged and the wharves
constructed.
His stay in Suez was, however, very brief, as the Mediterranean steamer
had arrived much behind time, and consequently all were hurried on board
the little tug, and soon walked the deck of an India steamer.
They were on the Red Sea! Now that its barren, sandy shores, the home
of the pelican and ostrich, have become so familiar to tourists, and
its glaring surface been so often mentioned by correspondents, there is
less romance about a voyage from Suez to Aden than in that comparatively
early day when Mr. Taylor visited the locality. There was the rugged pass
on the west, through which the pillar of fire led the escaping Jews to
the shore, and there was the beach and highlands on the east, up which
they marched dry-shod from the bed of the sea, while the waves rolled
in on the hosts of Pharaoh. There was the hill on which Miriam sang
so exultingly; and beyond, the hot peaks of the Sinaitic Wilderness.
Somewhere in the vicinity of that sea resided the Queen of Sheba; and not
far from its shores were the forgotten mines of ancient Ophir.
But Mr. Taylor felt now that a patriotic duty rested upon him, and
avoiding the delicious flights of fancy which pleased him so much in
Europe, he devoted himself to the practical things which might be of
advantage to his ambitious countrymen. So he told about the sailors
who were employed on the steamer, where Hindoos did all the drudgery
and Chinamen prepared the food, under the direction of Europeans. He
described the character of the passengers, telling where each came from
and where they were going. How he ascertained these facts is an enigma;
but they were important to commercial people who would compete with
the established lines, and who would like to know whom to employ and
who would be their patrons. There were physicians, soldiers, officers,
merchants, and health-seekers, from each of whom Mr. Taylor managed to
gain much information. He did not wait, like the fashionable tourist
of this day, until he arrived at his destination, trusting to luck for
information and accommodation. He closely studied the country before he
arrived there, and frequently astonished his guides and native companions
by showing a much more accurate and extensive knowledge of their country
than they possessed who had lived there all their lives.
He mentioned the hot red hills and the furnace-like surface of the sea,
saying that one part of the Red Sea was the hottest part of the earth’s
surface. But he appears to have suffered less than he had in the desert,
and was quite happy with his biscuit and claret, and lost no time with
useless fans.
He saw Mocha from the deck of the steamer, and immediately set about
ascertaining what advantages that port and town offered to commerce.
Without leaving the deck he found persons who knew all about Arabia and
its products; so he sits down and writes a letter about coffee and its
culture in and about Mocha. He was such a devoted lover of coffee that
it may have been a peculiarly interesting topic to him. At all events,
he wrote so intelligently that an old schoolmate, who was engaged in
foreign trade, acted profitably on Mr. Taylor’s hints and started a son
in the coffee-trade at Baltimore. Mr. Taylor stated in his letter that
fifteen thousand tons of coffee were exported annually from Mocha, it
being raised in the interior and brought to Mocha on camels. He said that
foreign vessels could best load at Aden, the English stronghold on the
south-west coast of Arabia, to which port the native coasting vessels
carried nearly all the exports of Mocha and of the other small ports
along the Red Sea. He also gave the information that equally good coffee
could be obtained on the Abyssinian coast, and at a smaller price.
He entered the port of Aden in the night, and was startled to look out on
the port in the morning and see such jagged masses of black rock shooting
up from the sand one thousand five hundred feet. It is another Gibraltar,
and shrewdly has England held by diplomacy what she obtained by such a
show of force. But the heat from the sand and barren rocks is so intense
that the quivers of a heated atmosphere are always visible, and very
injurious to the eyes. At the time of Mr. Taylor’s visit, the town and
the harbor were wretched and dangerous; but in 1870 the writer found a
neat village, with good hotels, and a spacious wharf. Mr. Taylor saw the
advantages of the port and predicted its growth. He mentioned the form,
features, and dispositions of the Arabians; and told what interest the
Parsees and Hindoos took in the local trade. He mentioned the articles of
commerce to be found there, and gave the prices.
There is not to be found in his letters to the “Tribune,” nor in his
book, “India, China, and Japan,” any mention of his sensations when
he saw, as he did at Aden, a fire-worshipper (Parsee) for the first
time. Being a poet by nature, and an admirer of Moore, he must have
been fascinated by the actual presence of a Gheber with whom he could
converse, and with whom he could change English money into the coin of
the country. How “Lalla Rookh” comes to the tongue’s end when we look a
fire-worshipper in the face and recognize the picture Moore had given of
him!
At Aden Mr. Taylor witnessed an incident which, to one so broadly
charitable and Christian, must have been most revolting. One of the
workmen, who had been loading the steamer with coal, was asleep in the
hold when the vessel started, and the officers finding him aboard after
they had put to sea, forced the poor native overboard and left him to
float ashore with the tide or perish in the waves. He whose land was the
world, whose brethren were all mankind, whose friends were the humblest
heathen as well as the titled official, looked back at the dark speck on
the waves, and tears filled his eyes.
From Aden, the steamer entered upon its trip across the Indian Ocean,
which was true to its reputation, and was placid and peaceful as an
inland lake. But the slow steamer took nine days to sail from Suez
to Bombay; and by the time Mr. Taylor was brought into view of the
mountains where Brahma and Vishnu had so long been worshipped, he had
become acquainted with nearly all the Hindoo sailors, and could secure
unusual attendance from the waiters by addressing them in the Hindustanee
language. He had learned the names of the principal streets of Bombay,
the names of the richest merchants, and the kind of fare to be expected
at the hotels. So naturally did he fall into the ways of the people
that the boatmen who took him ashore at Bombay mistook him for an old
resident and carried him ashore for one rupee, while charging the other
passengers three. He seated himself, or rather stretched himself, into a
palanquin carried by four men,—one at each end of a long pole,—and like a
native rode through the streets of Bombay on the necks of servants. But
he did not enjoy that kind of conveyance; he had too much sympathy with
the human race to impose his weight on the necks of human beings without
misgiving, and he afterwards refused to be carried about in that way when
mules were to be had.
At Bombay, he was received with the same good-will and hospitality as he
had found in other lands. Parsees, Hindoos, English, and Arabians vied
with each other in giving him kindly attentions; the people were pagan
in religion, but Christian in generosity and charity. It broadens one’s
ideas of theology to be thrown into communion with so many different
nations with as many different gods. But its tendency is to confirm,
rather than to unsettle, the belief in the Christian doctrines. At all
events, such was Mr. Taylor’s experience; and such has been the effect
upon others.
He found the common people very servile, and lacking in spirit, and
attributed it to the long despotism. But in them he found faithful
friends, and learned to respect them. They were nearly all pagans when
he was there, and worshipped their huge red idols with a sincerity and
self-sacrifice worthy of the highest profession. In order to learn
something of India in those remote ages beyond the testimony of history,
and even back of the age of tradition, he visited the old temple on
the island of Elephanta, about seven miles from Bombay. The massive
structure, in partial ruin, so wonderfully wrought and massively
constructed, made a deep impression upon his mind. Far, far back in the
uncounted ages, the foundations were laid by men who were not low in
the scale of civilization, if an idea of the beautiful and the ability
to embody it in forms of stone be a test of enlightenment; it stands
to-day, defying time, as it has defied earthquakes and cannon-shot. Into
the fathomless future will it pass, an immovable monument of the skill
and art of man in the childhood of human experience. In the statuary
Mr. Taylor found a strange resemblance to the three ages of art; the
statue of Brahma representing the style of the Egyptian, Vishnu being
represented in a form and carving of the Greek style, while Siva was cut
from the stone in such a shape as to remind him of the Mephistopheles of
the German school of sculpture.
His keen scrutiny also developed the theory that the pillars were rough
copies of the poppy-stem and the lotus-leaf. The latter was the emblem
of sanctity in the days of Brahma. Mr. Taylor’s suggestion has been
attractively enlarged upon and illustrated within a few years by writers
for English literary and art periodicals.
No excursion from Bombay exceeds that to Elephanta in romantic
attractions; for there are not only extensive ruins of greater and lesser
temples, but the landscape, wherein the greenest islands dot the sheen
of a gorgeous bay, is bright with most beautiful flowers and bright
leaves, and the air is permeated with the odor of roses and cassia.
Soon Elephanta will be a “summer resort,” and Taylor’s description and
reflections will be sold by newsboys as a guide-book.
At Bombay he visited the large mercantile establishments and investigated
the prospects of trade; saw the people in their homes, at meals, prayers,
marriages, and funerals, and studied the work of the carpenters in that
celebrated shipyard where was constructed the man-of-war wherein the
Star-Spangled Banner was written. He knew all about the city as it was
when he saw it, and as it had been from its Portuguese beginning; and
yet he remained but a single week. Who was the simpleton that circulated
an unauthorized statement that Mr. Taylor travelled far and saw little?
In fact, he knew more of the needs and enterprise of Bombay than many old
residents.
In his haste to see as much of India as possible, and yet arrive in China
in season to join Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan, he determined
to ride in one of the mail carts of India a distance of nearly four
hundred miles. His new friends advised him not to attempt the journey,
and entertained him with the deeds of assassins and robbers along the
route, and the results of the fatiguing ride of seven days and nights in
a two-wheeled vehicle without springs or mattresses. But his mind was
made up to go, and go he would. So, regardless of warnings and advice,
he started into the interior in a cart with a driver and the “Royal
Mail.” The traveller who now lounges in the luxuriant carriages of the
railway trains between Bombay and Calcutta, can have no idea of the
trials of such a journey as Mr. Taylor undertook. Then, there were no
railroads, no regular stages, even; nothing but lumbering carts drawn by
oxen and decrepit old horses. But he endured the fatigue with his usual
fortitude and good fortune, while his already remarkable experience
among hospitable people was repeated there in a most praiseworthy style.
Friends, friends, everywhere! Men divided their meals and beds with
him. People with whom he could converse by signs only, gave him food and
pressed themselves into his service, and would take no pay. In one place
a soldier sat up all night to give the weary traveller his bed. Surely,
the essence of human kindness and charity is not confined to Christian
lands!
Through jungles, where there was not a single path; along highways,
crowded with innumerable carts; riding in wildernesses, where water was
scarce, and food not to be found; in every kind of vehicle known to the
primitive people, from a horse chaise to a bullock-cart; surrounded by
miasmatic marshes, and the lairs of tigers, he hurried on toward Delhi.
On his way he made a short stop at Agra and Futtehpoor-Sikra, where stand
some of the mightiest and most costly temples which have been reared
since the beginning of the Christian era. It well repays years of work
and economy to wander among the palaces, mosques, and mausoleums of those
great cities. No palace in all the world can be found to equal that of
Akbar, the great Mogul, at Agra. When Mr. Taylor visited the city, nearly
all the rubbish, made by wars and sieges, had been cleared away, and the
scarred walls and marred mosaics had been restored, so that he stood
under mighty domes, amid all the splendor of the East. No one can imagine
its beauty and grandeur, unless he has seen it. Such lofty arches!
such masses of pure white marble! such a profusion of pearl, jasper,
cornelian, agate, and many stones of greater beauty and value! Such
exquisite carvings, such lovely mosaics, such labyrinths of inwrought
balustrades and porticos! Such tombs, so rich, so beautiful, so great,
that the tomb of Napoleon in Paris is lost in comparison!
Mr. Taylor was delighted beyond measure by a visit to the tomb of the
Empress Noor-Jehan, wife of the Shah Jehan. Moore uses her romantic
history in his “Lalla Rookh,” for verily she was “The Light of the
Harem.” Shah Jehan, “Selim,” erected that marvellously beautiful
building, with its lofty dome, and slender minarets, its inlaid jewels
wherein the walls are made to hold a copy, in Arabic, of the whole Koran.
Beautiful as Eastern songs represent Noor-Jehan to be, the tomb in which
she lies must surpass her in whiteness and delicacy of outline. Never,
in harem of Cashmere, nor in garden of Mogul, were there more delicious
odors than those which still fill the air about her tomb. No brighter,
more various, or more odorous flowers bloomed in Mahomet’s Paradise,
than now bewilder the visitor to that hallowed spot. It was fortunate
for Mr. Taylor that he had seen the boasted palaces and temples of
Europe and Western Asia, before he visited that enchanted spot. Dreams
of Aladdin became literal there. In towers, arches, domes, colonnades,
ceilings of pearl and precious stones, pillars wrought with the skilful
jeweller’s art, inlaid floors in which no crease appears, in diamond-like
foundations, and in the unity of its unbroken sculptures, the temples
of Agra and of its suburbs, excel those of Venice and Florence, as the
exquisite and angelic echoes in the dome of Queen Noor’s tomb excel, in
length and sweetness, those of the Baptistry at Pisa.
From Agra, he rode over the wide highway, one hundred and fifteen
miles, to Delhi, the former capital of the Moguls, and which, at that
time, boasted the presence, in his palace, of Akbar II. There he was
treated with the same hospitality as he had been in other cities, and
kind-hearted residents guided him about the streets of the modern city,
and accompanied him to the magnificent ruins in various quarters of the
plain whereon stood the old city. Pile on pile of massive columns lay in
ragged majesty about him, and bewildered his senses with their unnumbered
towers. Ruins, ruins, ruins, as far as the eye can trace the broken
plain. Palaces, fortresses, temples, mosques, harems, tombs, obelisks,
and massive battlements lie hurled together in undistinguished profusion,
while here and there the porch of some lofty building, or some imposing
arch, still breaks the line of the horizon. One pillar stands in the
plain, whose summit is two hundred and forty feet above the ground. Near
this gigantic shaft are the ruins of the palace of Aladdin. But the stone
that cumber the plain, and the stable platform, once the floor, do not
suggest the palace of diamonds, emeralds, pearls, gold, and ivory of
which we have read; and the beholder is tempted to believe that there
was a mistake of location, and that Agra instead of Delhi, was the place
after all. But Mr. Taylor, whose time was limited, could not linger
long, nor hope to solve all the riddles which such an inexhaustible
antiquarian museum suggested, and after visiting Hindoo temples, adorned
with fascinating carvings and unintelligible inscriptions, and tombs
covering the remains of known and unknown monarchs, he hastened back to
the modern city, with its wide Boulevard, and made preparations to visit
the Himalaya Mountains.
He left that interesting city with great regret, for, to the poet, it
suggested a very attractive place for fanciful dreams, and peaceful
moralizing. Moore incorporated in his poem a Persian inscription, which
was shown Mr. Taylor in the palace of Akbar II.: “If there be an Elysium
on earth, it is here, it is here.” And it might have been such an Elysium
but for the dilapidated, dirty condition of the palace, in which the
motto was seen, which did not harmonize with the sentiment, and may have
robbed the whole palace of its poetical attractions.