CHAPTER IX.

CALCUTTA, ITS BUILDINGS, TRADE, AND LIFE.

THE comparative cleanliness of the masses in India strikes me very forcibly. They are far superior in this respect to the inhabitants of Southern Europe, and their villages contrast most advantageously with those in Egypt and Syria. You find them performing their ablutions, with remarkable delicacy and propriety too, at every pond and brook; and, excepting at Benares, we have seen or smelt very little to offend.

The station-master at Siliguri told me that the fame of our large party-the only family one which ever travelled for pleasure in India-had for weeks preceded us, and that a native magistrate who had heard of, but had not believed in our numbers, had ridden eight miles to verify the report with his own eyes.

The great difficulty which all employers of European labour on railways, tea plantations, in mills, and elsewhere, have to contend against

INDIAN LUXURIES.

107

is the frequency with which even their most skilled and best servants get drunk. Perhaps

they do it to drown care, or from weakness, or disappointment; but the fact remains, and it is a serious drawback to national progress. I find myself often thinking that, after all, India is a kind of banishment. No doubt salaries and wages are high; it may be, in a good many Certainly, people there can

instances, too high.

drive their carriages and enjoy many luxuries which could not be afforded at home; and we have met not a few cheerful souls who declare that life here is much preferable to life in England; but the general impression is the other way. Many little things make it stronger in my mind every week, and I feel less inclined than ever to think that Europeans of all classes employed in India, either in the public or private service, ought to be grudged their little luxuries.

Just after day-dawn we reached the Ganges, two-and-a-half miles broad, very shallow at the present season, and crossed it in the tidy, American-looking steamer, Vampire. What a

multitude of birds we saw that forenoonvultures, kites, herons, cranes, kingfishers, minas, pheasants, pigeons, bee-eaters, and countless others, the names of which I do not know, of varied and beautiful plumage, frequenting land and water. On many fields red capsicums were spread out to dry in the sun. In this part of Bengal you do not find that abject poverty which is so noticeable in other provinces of India. The houses of the poor are better, and they themselves seem better fed and clothed.

Between 12 and I we were in the Sealdah station, and this time went to the Great Eastern Hotel, a noisy, roughish place, but the best in Calcutta, where we remained for three days, preparatory to taking possession of 12, Elysium Row, which a fellow-passenger from England, Mr. Mackinnon, of the great shipping firm of Mackinnon, Mackenzie and Co., had with remarkable kindness placed at our disposal, for the celebration of a certain romantic marriage.

What a remarkable place this Calcutta is! The crowds, blocks, ox-carts, running coolies, dust and heat, in the busiest portion of it, over

INDIAN COMmerce.

109

power me. I observe in the weekly shipping list in the Indian Daily News for 22nd Jan., that there are no fewer than twenty-two large ocean-going steamers and seventy-eight sailingships from foreign ports lying in the river. Few people know that £30,000,000 sterling worth of goods are annually exported from Great Britain to India; that of the annual £75,000,000 worth of cotton goods exported £21,000,000 worth go to India, and that its foreign trade now amounts to very nearly £125,000,000.

We spent Saturday afternoon with Mr. Heriot, son of the late respected Sheriff of Forfarshire, who manages Howrah Jute Mills, on the other side of the river; and were glad to hear from him, and from Mr. Thom, of the Barnagore Works, where 5,000 people are employed, that there is no Sunday-work in any of these mills; and that, taking relays and other things into consideration, the people do not labour more than ten-and-a-half hours a day.

I was glad to hear the Rev. Mr. Gillan, of the Established Church of Scotland, preach in Union Chapel on Sunday morning.

On Monday morning I went with Mr. Payne, of the London Missionary Society, to see the idol-worship at Kalighat—the landing-place of Kali, from which Calcutta derives its name. It is now a suburb, situated on a branch of the Hooghly more sacred than the river itself, contains the holiest shrine in Bengal, and is as dirty as it is holy. There I found hundreds of poor bleating kids, with their legs cruelly tied together, which they first immerse in the sacred stream and then sacrifice before a hideous image of Kali, which was exposed for my inspection at the request of Mr. Payne, who is much beloved, notwithstanding his constant preaching of Christianity, by these poor people, and has so much influence with them that he induced a priest for one rupee to give me his upper garment, on which are written all the names of the Hindoo divinities. There also I beheld abominations, which cannot be recorded, confirmatory of the worst accounts given of iniquitous idolatry.

My next visit was to a very different place, not far off from the first, where 700 young men