SIGHTS AND SCENES IN MADRAS.--THE INDIAN FAMINE.
What Frank and Fred saw and did during their visit to Madras is best
told in their own words.
"After running the gauntlet of the crowd of natives on the beach, and
getting a carriage, we drove to the principal hotel of the city. We
found it a series of houses disconnected from each other, and the rooms
that they gave us were in the building most distant of all from the
dining-room. Peddlers and jugglers followed us to the door, and we had
hard work to keep them out of our rooms till we called a servant, and
told him to drive them away.
[Illustration: WESTERN ENTRANCE OF FORT GEORGE.]
"We rode about Madras, and the first thing we went to see was the fort,
which we reached by crossing a bridge at its western entrance. It covers
a great deal of ground, and was a strong enough place before the
improvements of the last twenty years in artillery. Its full name is
Fort St. George, and it is designed to resist attack both by land and
sea; on the side facing the sea it has a front of 1500 feet, and on the
land side it has a double line of bomb-proof defences built of stone and
covered with earth.
"We were surprised at the quantity of things in the fort. There were
small guns of all the kinds you ever heard of, and some you never did;
there were cannon captured in the various wars with the native princes
and kings, cannon from China and other parts of the Far East, swords,
pistols, muskets, firelocks, flags, wagons, saddles, spears, and a
thousand other things that the auctioneers would say are too numerous to
mention. The fort is large enough for a garrison of 1000 men, and in
time of war it could hold many more. All the European inhabitants of
Madras could be taken inside in case of trouble, but they would be
crowded rather closely when their numbers were added to those of the
garrison.
[Illustration: GOVERNOR'S RESIDENCE, FORT GEORGE.]
"The Governor of the Presidency of Madras lives here, and his house is
inside the fort. It is a great building two stories high, and has wide
verandas, where there is plenty of air without the necessity of sitting
in the sunlight. We saw elephants in the enclosure of the fort, some
with soldiers on their backs, and others with great burdens of freight
that they were employed in bringing inside. As we crossed the bridge we
met an elephant, and a little farther on a camel, while down by the bank
of the canal a couple of hump-backed oxen were looking into the water,
and possibly admiring themselves. We have seen quite a lot of these oxen
and cows to-day, and wherever they were grazing or standing idle under
the trees the crows were perched on their backs, and seemed to be on
good terms with the beasts. The crows here are as impudent as those of
Ceylon, and we are told that we shall find them so all the way through
India.
[Illustration: HUMP-BACKED COW.]
"We went into the English church, which is a pretty building, but does
not contain many objects of interest. The thing that attracted our
attention most was a statue of Bishop Heber, who was formerly Bishop of
Madras, and died at one of the interior cities of this presidency. He is
best known to Americans as the author of the famous missionary hymn
beginning,
"'From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand.'
"The story is that one Sunday he was to deliver a missionary sermon, and
could not find an appropriate hymn to be sung after he had finished
preaching. Half an hour before it was time to go to service he took his
pen and wrote the hymn, which he handed to the leader of the choir as he
entered the church. It was afterward printed, as we now see it, with the
alteration of only three or four words.
"The statue of the bishop represents him standing and looking kindly on
a native convert who sits at his feet. An odd thing about the church is
the array of punkas, or large swinging fans, over the desks and pews;
they are operated by pagan servants, who stand outside during service,
and keep their employers cool while the latter are at their devotions.
[Illustration: MADRAS DHOBIES, OR WASHERMEN.]
"In one part of our ride we passed the place where the _dhobies_, or
washermen, perform their work. As we saw them, we understood how it is
our clothes get so sadly knocked to pieces in this part of the world.
They make your shirts up into a sort of club, and then pound with it on
a rock till the linen is clean. No boiling and no rubbing; nothing but
pounding and rinsing, and sometimes they help things along by folding
some gravel in with the linen. We have had lots of handkerchiefs sent
home with holes in the centre where they had been torn through by the
gravel inside, and many of our socks have been burst open at the toes
and ruined before being washed a third time. Half a dozen visits to the
dhoby generally make the end of a shirt or other under-garment, and
sometimes they will manage to finish it in three or four.
"The necessity for frequent change of linen, and the destructive manner
of washing, makes the single item of under-linen a very costly one.
Shirts should be made of the strongest material consistent with comfort,
and not of the fine linen which most Americans are fond of. If you know
anybody who is about starting on a journey around the world by way of
India, tell him to get a dozen of the strongest white shirts he can
before starting--or, if he does not bring them, he should have them made
up in Yokohama or Hong-Kong.
"Madras covers an enormous extent of ground, for the reason that all the
houses stand in large yards, or 'compounds,' as they call them here.
Everybody has a whole army of servants to run his house, and these
servants must be cared for; and they generally manage to have their
families lodged somewhere on the premises, though the master is not
supposed to know it. We met a gentleman to-day who is a bachelor, and
lives with another bachelor, and he said that together they had fifteen
servants. Another gentleman, with his wife and two children, said he had
twenty-six servants in all, and at times he employed as many as thirty.
We would write about this matter in detail, but Doctor Bronson suggests
that we had best wait till we have seen more of East Indian life, and
had a practical experience of existence in a land of castes and curious
customs; so we'll put it off for a while.
[Illustration: A MADRAS BUNGALOW.]
"A house where people live in India is called a bungalow, and a
warehouse is named a godown. Bungalow is a Hindostanee word, and godown
is a corruption of the Malay _gadong_, which means a warehouse. All
through India these words are very generally used by Europeans, to the
exclusion of the English names for the same things. Properly speaking,
a bungalow is a house only one story high, and, owing to the great
exertion required for climbing stairs in these hot countries, you rarely
see a building of more than one story except in the cities.
"We visited two or three bungalows in the resident portion of Madras,
and had an opportunity of looking through them. They had wide verandas,
and the windows were covered with lattices and Venetian blinds to keep
out the heat, while the floor was of brick or cement, for the sake of
the superior coolness of those articles. Coir matting was laid over the
floor to protect the bare feet of the occupants, and there were several
punkas in each room to keep the air in circulation.
[Illustration: A PANKHÂ-WALLAH.]
"We were quite interested in looking at the punkas, and learning how
they work them. There is a certain class of servants, known as
_pankhâ-wallahs_ (punka-fellows), who work these fans, and are hired for
that purpose at about three dollars a month, they boarding themselves.
They stand outside and work the punka by means of a cord passing through
a hole in the wall, so that while you are enjoying the strictest
privacy, you may have the fan in motion above you. You have a punka over
your bed, another over your bath-tub, another at your dressing-bureau,
another over your dining-table, and another above your desk. Your
body-servant calls out to your punkhâ-wallah, and has him shift from one
cord to another as you move about your room, or go from one room to
another. You have the punka in motion all day and all night somewhere,
and for this purpose you must have two men to relieve each other. When
you go to bed a basket of old shoes is placed where you can reach them,
and you are fanned to sleep. If you wake perspiring in the night, and
find the punka motionless, you may know that the pankhâ-wallah is taking
a nap; you throw a shoe in his direction and thus awaken him, and
immediately he resumes his duty.
"The side where the man pulls is the one that gets the air most
vigorously circulated, for the reason that it is brought forward with a
certain force, and goes back by its own weight. The people here call the
one where the man pulls the Bombay side of the punka, and the other the
Bengal side. We asked why it was, and they told us that when the
south-west monsoon blows it comes with its full force from the sea upon
the shores of the Bombay presidency; crossing the country and going over
the mountains to Bengal, it expends its strength and becomes very weak.
Therefore you see how the Bombay and Bengal sides of the punka get their
names.
"They say that a good many inventions have been tried for substituting
machinery for man power in working the punka, but none of them have
succeeded, for the reason that the peculiar pull or impulse that is
needed to put the air in motion can only be given by the human arm.
Machinery works with regularity and a steady pull, and the real need of
the punka is a jerk or extra force while the cord is being drawn,
followed by a complete relaxation of the cord to allow the fan to go
back and get ready to be drawn forward again.
"We went through the bazaars, but did not find them very interesting.
The shops are small, and the best goods are hidden from sight; at all
events we were not able to see anything of great value, and we had
neither time nor inclination to compel the merchants to display their
wares when we had very little thought of buying anything. We did not
find the streets particularly clean in the native quarter, and a short
stay among them was quite sufficient. There was some very pretty
brass-ware in a few of the shops, and they showed us a lot of handsome
filigree work in silver, which was said to have been made at
Trichinopoly. The latter place is famous for its silver work, and the
result is that a good deal of what is made in other places is sold for
the genuine article.
[Illustration: NATIVE MERCHANT OF MADRAS.]
"There are many natives of Madras engaged in business with Englishmen,
and they have a considerable amount of the import and export trade in
their hands; and nearly every European house has one or more natives
attached to it, somewhat after the manner of the compradores in China
and Japan, as they save the manager a great deal of trouble in dealing
with the inhabitants of the country. These native merchants are said to
be very shrewd in their operations, and anybody who supposes they are
verdant would find out his mistake as soon as he began to bargain with
them.
"The natives of Madras are said to be of darker complexions and smaller
figures than the inhabitants of the country farther north; some of them
are almost as dark as negroes, but their features do not resemble those
of the African in any way. They are very picturesque in their
gay-colored robes and large turbans, and as you see them with their vast
head-coverings you wonder how they can endure so much weight on their
heads in this hot country. The turban, as it is worn here, contains many
yards of muslin, and it is not an easy matter to wrap it so that it will
stay in place. It is doubtful if a European could endure a turban which
prevents the circulation of air around the brain; undoubtedly the best
head-covering for the foreigner is the _sola-topee_, or sun-hat, which
every European wears, and could not be persuaded to get along without;
but you never see one of them on the head of a native unless he has
adopted the entire European dress.
"We have seen a good many Eurasians, or people descended from European
parents on one side and Asiatic on the other. Their position is an
unhappy one, as they will not associate with the natives, and, on the
other hand, they are not allowed to associate with the Europeans.
Despising the one, and despised by the other, they have no recognized
social standing, and no one speaks well of them.
"The saddest thing we have seen is a camp of the victims of the famine.
Every little while in America we read of famines in India, but none of
us know much about them, as the country is far away, and we are not
bound to it by any ties of kindred. The people are so poor and so
heavily taxed that it takes all they can earn to support them in times
of plenty; when the crops fail they have nothing laid by to live upon,
and must starve. This year they have had famines in two parts of India,
one in the Madras presidency and one in Bengal, that of Madras being the
worst. It is said that a million of people have died of starvation in
Madras, and half that number in Bengal. Think of a number as great as
all the inhabitants of New York city perishing of hunger, and then judge
what a calamity it must be!
"A great many persons are inclined to blame the British authorities for
the famines in India, and it is undoubtedly the fact that the high
taxation has much to do with the poverty of the people. On the other
hand, the Government has done a great deal in the way of constructing
irrigation works that will keep the land fertile in times of drought,
and it has built roads so that provisions may be carried from the places
where they are abundant to where they are most needed. The failure of
the rains is the cause of the famines; the south-west monsoon (which
brings the rain) is looked for with great anxiety all over India, and is
considered of so much importance that its arrival is telegraphed to the
newspapers of Europe and America. When you read in the telegraphic
column that the monsoon has burst in the provinces of Central India, you
may know that all fears of famine for the year are over, unless, as
sometimes happens, the rains are so great in quantity that they flood
the fields, and prevent the farmers from performing their work.
"Notwithstanding the poverty of the people, we are told that the
land-tax in India is increased every few years, and in many districts it
is absolutely impossible for the people to pay it. Doctor Bronson says
that thoughtful persons, who have studied the relations between England
and India, say the latter country is fast going to bankruptcy in
consequence of the oppressions that are steadily increasing. The taxes
have grown so great that they are now more than one-eighth of all that
the country produces, and in some parts of India they are one-sixth!
Think of what would happen in America if one-sixth of all the wheat,
corn, cotton, and other products, and a sixth of all that is
manufactured was paid over for taxes. We should be in a state of poverty
quite equal to these people in a short time.
"In the camp that we visited we saw some poor wretches who were just
able to crawl, and some that had been brought in on stretchers, because
they were too weak to stand. There was hardly any flesh on their bones,
their cheeks were sunken and hollow, and their eyes seemed to be half
forced from their sockets. They lay on the ground--some under the tents,
and some in the open air--and many of them were so far gone that they
had not strength to feed themselves. They did not appear to complain,
and one of the officers in charge of the camp told us that they were
exceedingly patient, and rarely caused any trouble. Poor creatures! they
were too weak to do so, however much they might have had the
inclination.
"These people had been brought to Madras from the famine districts, and
we were told that similar camps were scattered along the line of the
railway wherever the crops had failed. It had been found easier to feed
them in camps than to distribute food to them in their villages, as
there was a great deal of loss by theft, and in other ways, in making
the distribution. The natives seem to have very little regard for each
other, and, if half that has been told us is true, it is an eternal
disgrace to this people. Large sums of money were raised in England for
the sufferers by the famine, and the British Government made a heavy
contribution for the same purpose. With this money rice was bought in
Rangoon and shipped to Madras, and from there it was sent by rail to the
famine districts. The boatmen at Madras demanded exorbitant prices for
landing it, and two or three times they struck for extra pay because
they knew that the Government was anxious to get the rice forward as
rapidly as it could. They tore open the sacks and stole a large share of
what they took on shore, and when they had done so they did not take the
trouble to sew the sacks again, but let the rice spill on the ground.
The carters who took it to the railway-station continued the theft, and
in some instances fully ten or fifteen per cent. of the rice was lost
between the ship and the railway-station, and there were cases where the
loss was more than thirty per cent.
"Well, that's enough about this unpleasant subject. We'll turn to
something else.
[Illustration: A MADRAS PALKEE.]
"For the first time in our lives we have seen people riding in
palanquins, or palkees, as they call them here. The vehicle is a box
about seven feet long and four wide, and it has lattice sides to allow
the air to circulate. The bottom is covered with a neat mat, and the
passenger who is to ride in it must lie down and place his head on a
pillow with which the palkee is provided, while he puts his hat on a
shelf above his feet. We have not yet tried a palkee ride, and when we
do we'll be able to tell more about it. In a general way it looks like a
very uncomfortable thing to ride in, and you can see very little from
the windows on account of your position. There is a pole at each end,
which is braced by iron rods, so that it can sustain the weight of the
box and a person inside. Four men are required to carry it; and at night
there are one or more torch-bearers, whose duty it is to light the way
and frighten off any wild animals that come near. These fellows are not
very brave; and at the first indication of danger they run away, and are
followed by the bearers, who drop the box on the ground and leave the
inmate to take care of himself.
"The people of Madras have tried hard to make a harbor, so as to avoid
the terrible surf that breaks on the coast, but all their efforts have
not amounted to much. They began to make a harbor, some years ago, by
running a couple of breakwaters out from the shore; but somehow, as fast
as they built them, the sea made a protest by 'silting,' or filling up
the enclosed space with sand. Next they built an iron pier running out
beyond the breakers: it stands on piles, and has a lot of cranes along
its sides for hoisting goods out of the large flat-boats, or lighters,
that are used here. But the pier cost a great deal of money, and they
have been obliged to make so high a toll for using it that it is almost
abandoned when the weather is at all suitable for passing through the
surf.
"We came back to the steamer by this pier, and paid a toll of about ten
cents each for using it. Our boat was at the foot of some long stairs,
and it bobbed up and down about three or four feet each time, and very
rapidly. We had to watch our chances and jump when it rose. Two of us
got in all right, but the third did not jump soon enough by a couple of
seconds, and when he struck the bottom of the boat he went sprawling on
the brushwood and in the water that splashed up through it; but we
escaped without a wetting, and that is more than everybody does.
"The captain of the steamer says, when the sea is so rough that they
cannot pass the surf, and the boat dances too much at the foot of the
stairs, people are landed by means of the cranes that they use for
hoisting goods. The boat goes in under the crane, and a bucket is
lowered down and allowed to rest on the boat's bottom; then the
passenger gets into the tub, sits down and clings to the handles, and
when all is ready the men on the dock hoist away. It is rather trying to
a nervous person; but at any rate it is better than being half or wholly
drowned in the surf."