BANGALORE
There was a knocking and a calling "What ho--within there!" and I got up
in the grey dawn and found my cousins outside our carriage, looking
rather chilled. A native stationmaster had promised to wire to them for
me, to tell them we would finish our eight hours sleep at the Bangalore
siding. But here they were and had received no wire! Therefore, put not
your faith in native stationmasters.
Our hosts have a lovely bungalow, I use the adjective advisedly and in
its fullest sense as applied to the beauties of domestic architecture
and surroundings. The white Doric pillars that support the semi-circular
verandah are tall and well-proportioned, and support a pleasantly
pitched tile roof. The tiles are of many weather-worn tints; above these
are high trees with white stems and exquisitely delicate foliage,
through which you see patches of blue sky. Down some of the pillars hang
creepers, one is heavy with dark green leaves and deep orange flowers,
another is covered with trumpet-shaped flowers of fleshy white; and a
tall tree close to the verandah is covered with creeper that forms a
perfect cascade of dark green leaves and mauve flowers.
The appearance of the bungalow, the lightness of the sunny air, and our
kind welcome made us feel anything but way-worn travellers. Still; the
above circumstances seemed uncommonly conducive to sleep on our first
day at Bangalore.
[Illustration: An Indian Tank.]
What splendid rooms we have. Our bedrooms and dressing-rooms would make
a chapel. And the style of construction is in charming taste--great
simple spaces of distempered wall and matted floor and timbered ceiling,
the structural features showing wherever they may be sightly, with
breadth of spaces such as you see in Spanish houses; the furnishings
simple, everything necessary, and little besides, a pleasant sense of
room for growth.
Bangalore as a city is not at all compactly built together. The
compounds round bungalows are really parks, and the roads are so wide
and long that it takes hours to call on the nearest neighbour. R. had
been stationed here some time, but his wife is a new arrival, so we
found her engaged in making a round of first calls--the newcomer calls
on the residents in India--seventeen in one day was her record I
believe--possibly a Bangalore record--it would have killed any man.
We drove round the tanks and pretty avenues and parks after lunch, and
through the native town. It positively takes one's breath away with its
crowds of picturesque scenes--pictures every yard in the mile!
Fortunately for us our host and hostess are as fond as we are of looking
at things and trying to remember them, and delight in showing us places
they have remarked for their picturesque interest. Of one of these
characteristic tanks I have made a jotting in colour. Soft foliaged
trees along a road on the top of a green enbankment were reflected in
the calm water; at its edge, on stone steps and amongst the reeds,
little copper-coloured women in rich colours stooped and washed brightly
coloured clothes. The surface of the water was speckled with wild duck,
which splashed and swam about making silvery ripples break into the warm
reflection, and a faint smoke from the village softened the whole
effect. White draped figures passed to and fro on the bund under the
trees, sometimes aglow with rays that shot between the tree trunks, or
again silhouetted violet against golden light--for "white is never
white," as the drawing-master has it.
We were a very happy party of four at dinner, with many pleasant
subjects to discuss--the journey out, and our friends on the _Egypt_,
and the various people "we knew to speak to;" then we had to retail the
most recent gossip from Dharwar, in which place R. was quartered for
some years, and he told us old amusing stories about that station and
its doings. Then there were questions of dress to be discussed by the
Memsahibs, and we men had problems from home to solve--as to rearing of
fish and game, and what we had done, and what we would like to do! and
besides, what was serious, we had plans for future movements to make.
There are so many sights to see here, and in front of us, and so many,
it appears, we ought to have stopped to see between Bombay and here;
however we realise that unless American born we can only assimilate what
an American would consider to be a very little in a very long time, so
we are going along slowly. We should properly go to see the Cauvery
Falls,[14] the water of which drives the dynamos there for the Kolar
gold fields, sending the current that equals 11,000 horse power
ninety-three miles by wire to Kolar, and fifty-seven to this place, to
light the streets. Four hundred feet the water falls, in pipes, and
drives the turbines; so in this, the dry season, there is little water
to be seen. I can almost fancy I see this, and I may read about the
engineering at home!
[14] See graphic description Cauvery Falls Power Station, Kolar Gold
Fields, in "Vision of India:" by Sidney Low (Smith, Elder & Co.).
The Falls of Gairsoppa, it is decided in our evening confab, we must
see, and we smoke various cheroots over them. So far we go in train, I
understand, towards the coast and the wild west, then we get into tongas
and creep down and under jungle day after day, an immensity of trees
towering above till the wholesome light of the sky is shut out and you
breathe in the damp depths of the primeval jungle, and see huge
mosquitoes and diminutive aboriginal men with bows and arrows hiding
from you like the beasts in the field that perish. So you travel day in
day out, spending nights in Dak bungalows with nothing to eat but tins.
I said, "It seems a damned long, dark, boggy, dangerous road," and D.
was shocked, till I reminded her I was only quoting Tony Lumpkin. The
explanation being doubtfully accepted, D. expatiated on the delight of
coming out of the gloom to find all the stir and movement and light in
the great opening where there was 829 feet of water tumbling into a
cauldron full twenty fathoms deep, blue sky overhead, foam everywhere,
rainbows, and more falls below, and glittering wet rocks and waving
foliage all round. A hard place to fish, I thought. And believe I will
just fancy I see this place too; it sounds rather a "circumbendibus" for
us this journey.
And why leave Bangalore at all? Why fatigue ourselves seeing more places
and sights than these we have near us? We feel inclined to pitch our
tents here for a prolonged stay, the light is so brilliant and air sunny
and refreshing, and there are subjects for pictures on all sides of all
kinds; of village life, people, beasts and foliage--such exquisite Corot
foliage--and reflections in reedy pools.
As I write, within a stone throw of my dressing-room, there appears a
queenly figure, draped in crimson edged with gold, from the shadows of
the trees. She stands in full sun, beside grey boulders under green
foliage; cattle finely bred, like deer, feed on either side of her, and
the sapling stems draw shadows on their fawn and white hides, and across
the withered, short, dry grass. She belongs to R.'s establishment, I
suppose--wife of a Sweeper perhaps, but at this distance she might be a
Grecian goddess for she is too far off to distinguish features. The
golden brown of her face and the blue-black of the hair under the
crimson and gold in full afternoon sun are splendid against the depths
of green shadow. Her contemplative attitude suggests at once repose and
calm expectancy.
[Illustration]
This afternoon I made another jotting of a woman herding a cow in a dell
at the side of the road shaded from the rays of the afternoon sun. Her
dress was metallic-blue, in folds as severely classical as those of a
Muse of Herculaneum, and it was edged with lines of pale gold. On her
brown arms were silver bangles, and a band of dull rose round the short
sleeves of the bodice. She led a white cow and its calf, and they
browsed on the leaves of oleander; the pink geranium coloured flowers
and grey-green leaves harmonised with the white skins of her beasts.
The black touch in the picture was her smooth black hair and painted
eyebrows.
Here follows a pen scribble in my journal of what happens in this
household once a week I understand. Before dinner mine host and hostess
give some signal and the servants line up on the verandah and their
wages are paid. Such a lot of ground is covered and so very quickly. R.
knows apparently all about each servant, how many children this man has,
and whether they are married or single, and what he owes the
money-lender, what part of the country he comes from, etc., etc. Mrs B.
checks off everything paid out. So from bridge making and railway
contracts in the early morning to annas and pice for servants in the
evening has been R.'s day's work; half-an-hour at this minor business
and we are free for dinner, host and hostess, at any rate, conscious of
a day's work done.
[Illustration]
We were enjoying our cheroots to-night in the warm dusk in the verandah,
when there was a shout that there was a thief in the house--we jumped!
R. into one entrance, I into another, and we scurried round the big,
dark drawing-room trying to catch him; someone passed me and I "held him
low"--it was R. and I felt small! The thief had got out between us, and
had jumped a pretty high balcony, and we followed with a View Haloo or
something to that effect in Tamil from R. I never saw the thief, but R.
said he disappeared under a road bridge which led to a donga and jungle
and native huts. He dodged a neighbour's butler who was brought out by
the shouts, and got away. He had only just got into the house, for there
were only some small silver things taken. It was like a scene from a
comic opera when we got back, as our host and hostess with old fashioned
lamps went along their line of white-robed servants. These were all
dying to speak at once, but had each to wait his turn and give his
account of how the thief had come in, how he was seen, and what he was
doing when the alarm was given.
With this veracious account of an inglorious adventure I will draw
another day's journal to its close, and if the reader is not asleep, we
will now proceed to consider the subject of snipe shooting.