For the sake of my home readers I must now say a word or two on the
effect produced upon the mind of a stranger on his approach to Calcutta
from the Sandheads.
As we run up the Bay of Bengal and approach the dangerous Sandheads, the
beautiful deep blue of the ocean suddenly disappears. It turns into a
pale green. The sea, even in calm weather, rolls over soundings in long
swells. The hue of the water is varied by different depths, and in
passing over the edge of soundings, it is curious to observe how
distinctly the form of the sands may be traced by the different shades
of green in the water above and beyond them. In the lower part of the
bay, the crisp foam of the dark sea at night is instinct with phosphoric
lustre. The ship seems to make her way through galaxies of little ocean
stars. We lose sight of this poetical phenomenon as we approach the
mouth of the Hooghly. But the passengers, towards the termination of
their voyage, become less observant of the changeful aspect of the sea.
Though amused occasionally by flights of sea-gulls, immense shoals of
porpoises, apparently tumbling or rolling head over tail against the
wind, and the small sprat-like fishes that sometimes play and glitter on
the surface, the stranger grows impatient to catch a glimpse of an
Indian jungle; and even the swampy tiger-haunted Saugor Island is
greeted with that degree of interest which novelty usually inspires.
At first the land is but little above the level of the water. It rises
gradually as we pass up further from the sea. As we come still nearer to
Calcutta, the soil on shore seems to improve in richness and the trees
to increase in size. The little clusters of nest-like villages snugly
sheltered in foliage--the groups of dark figures in white garments--the
cattle wandering over the open plain--the emerald-colored fields of
rice--the rich groves of mangoe trees--the vast and magnificent banyans,
with straight roots dropping from their highest branches, (hundreds of
these branch-dropped roots being fixed into the earth and forming "a
pillared shade"),--the tall, slim palms of different characters and with
crowns of different forms, feathery or fan-like,--the many-stemmed and
long, sharp-leaved bamboos, whose thin pliant branches swing gracefully
under the weight of the lightest bird,--the beautifully rounded and
bright green peepuls, with their burnished leaves glittering in the
sunshine, and trembling at the zephyr's softest touch with a pleasant
rustling sound, suggestive of images of coolness and repose,--form a
striking and singularly interesting scene (or rather succession of
scenes) after the monotony of a long voyage during which nothing has
been visible but sea and sky.
But it is not until he arrives at a bend of the river called _Garden
Reach_, where the City of Palaces first opens on the view, that the
stranger has a full sense of the value of our possessions in the East.
The princely mansions on our right;--(residences of English gentry),
with their rich gardens and smooth slopes verdant to the water's
edge,--the large and rich Botanic Garden and the Gothic edifice of Bishop's
College on our left--and in front, as we advance a little further, the
countless masts of vessels of all sizes and characters, and from almost
every clime,--Fort William, with its grassy ramparts and white
barracks,--the Government House, a magnificent edifice in spite of many
imperfections,--the substantial looking Town Hall--the Supreme Court
House--the broad and ever verdant plain (or _madaun_) in front--and the
noble lines of buildings along the Esplanade and Chowringhee Road,--the
new Cathedral almost at the extremity of the plain, and half-hidden
amidst the trees,--the suburban groves and buildings of Kidderpore
beyond, their outlines softened by the haze of distance, like scenes
contemplated through colored glass--the high-sterned budgerows and small
trim bauleahs along the edge of the river,--the neatly-painted
palanquins and other vehicles of all sorts and sizes,--the variously-hued
and variously-clad people of all conditions; the fair European, the
black and nearly naked Cooly, the clean-robed and lighter-skinned native
Baboo, the Oriental nobleman with his jewelled turban and kincob vest,
and costly necklace and twisted cummerbund, on a horse fantastically
caparisoned, and followed in barbaric state by a train of attendants
with long, golden-handled punkahs, peacock feather chowries, and golden
chattahs and silver sticks,--present altogether a scene that is
calculated to at once delight and bewilder the traveller, to whom all
the strange objects before him have something of the enchantment and
confusion of an Arabian Night's dream. When he recovers from his
surprise, the first emotion in the breast of an Englishman is a feeling
of national pride. He exults in the recognition of so many glorious
indications of the power of a small and remote nation that has founded a
splendid empire in so strange and vast a land.
When the first impression begins to fade, and he takes a closer view of
the great metropolis of India--and observes what miserable straw huts
are intermingled with magnificent palaces--how much Oriental filth and
squalor and idleness and superstition and poverty and ignorance are
associated with savage splendour, and are brought into immediate and
most incongruous contact with Saxon energy and enterprize and taste and
skill and love of order, and the amazing intelligence of the West in
this nineteenth century--and when familiarity breeds something like
contempt for many things that originally excited a vague and pleasing
wonder--the English traveller in the East is apt to dwell too
exclusively on the worst side of the picture, and to become insensible
to the real interest, and blind to the actual beauty of much of the
scene around him. Extravagant astonishment and admiration, under the
influence of novelty, a strong re-action, and a subsequent feeling of
unreasonable disappointment, seem, in some degree, natural to all men;
but in no other part of the world, and under no other circumstances, is
this peculiarity of our condition more conspicuously displayed than in
the case of Englishmen in India. John Bull, who is always a grumbler
even on his own shores, is sure to become a still more inveterate
grumbler in other countries, and perhaps the climate of Bengal,
producing lassitude and low spirits, and a yearning for their native
land, of which they are so justly proud, contribute to make our
countrymen in the East even more than usually unsusceptible of
pleasurable emotions until at last they turn away in positive disgust
from the scenes and objects which remind them that they are in a state
of exile.
"There is nothing," says Hamlet, "either good or bad, but thinking makes
it so." At every change of the mind's colored optics the scene before it
changes also. I have sometimes contemplated the vast metropolis of
England--or rather _of the world_--multitudinous and mighty LONDON--with
the pride and hope and exultation, not of a patriot only, but of a
cosmopolite--a man. Its grand national structures that seem built for
eternity--its noble institutions, charitable, and learned, and
scientific, and artistical--the genius and science and bravery and moral
excellence within its countless walls--have overwhelmed me with a sense
of its glory and majesty and power. But in a less admiring mood, I have
quite reversed the picture. Perhaps the following sonnet may seem to
indicate that the writer while composing it, must have worn his colored
spectacles.