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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Seitenzahl: 645
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FROM SEA TO SEA
Rudyard Kipling
KYPROS PRESS
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This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2015 by Rudyard Kipling
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
From Sea to Sea
No. 1: Of Freedom and the Necessity of using her. The Motive and the Scheme that will come to Nothing. A Disquisition upon the Otherness of Things and the Torments of the Damned
No. 2: The River of the Lost Footsteps and the Golden Mystery upon its Banks. Shows how a Man may go to the Shway Dagon Pagoda and see it not and to the Pegu Club and hear too much. A Dissertation on Mixed Drinks
No. 3: The City of Elephants which is governed by the Great God of Idleness, who lives on the Top of a Hill. The History of Three Great Discoveries and the Naughty Children of Iquique
No. 4: Showing how I came to Palmiste Island and the Place of Paul and Virginia, and fell Asleep in a Garden. A Disquisition on the Folly of Sight-seeing
No. 5: Of the Threshold of the Far East and the Dwellers thereon. A Dissertation upon the Use of the British Lion
No. 6: Of the Well-dressed Islanders of Singapur and their Diversions; proving that all Stations are exactly Alike. Shows how One Chicago Jew and an American Child can poison the Purest Mind
No. 7: Shows how I arrived in China and saw entirely through the Great Wall and out upon the Other Side
No. 8: Of Jenny and her Friends. Showing how a Man may go to see Life and meet Death there. Of the Felicity of Life and the Happiness of Corinthian Kate. The Woman and the Cholera
No. 9: Some Talk with a Taipan and a General: proves in what Manner a Sea-Picnic may be a Success
No. 10: Shows how I came to Goblin Market and took a Scunner at it and cursed the Chinese People. Shows further how I initiated all Hong-Kong into our Fraternity
No. 11: Of Japan at Ten Hours’ Sight, containing a Complete Account of the Manners and Customs of its People, a History of its Constitution, Products, Art, and Civilisation, and omitting a Tiffin in a Tea-house with O-Toyo
No. 12: A Further Consideration of Japan. The Inland Sea, and Good Cookery. The Mystery of Passports and Consulates and Certain Other Matters
No. 13: The Japanese Theatre and the Story of the Thunder Cat. Treating also of the Quiet Places and the Dead Man in the Street
No. 14: Explains in what Manner I was taken to Venice in the Rain and climbed into a Devil Fort; a Tin-pot Exhibition and a Bath. Of the Maiden and the Boltless Door, the Cultivator and his Fields, and the Manufacture of Ethnological Theories at Railroad Speed. Ends with Kioto
No. 15: Kioto, and how I fell in Love with the Chief Belle there after I had conferred with Certain China Merchants who trafficked in Tea. Shows further how, in a Great Temple, I broke the Tenth Commandment in Fifty-three Places and bowed down before Kano and a Carpenter. Takes me to Arashima
No. 16: The Party in the Parlour who played Games. A Complete History of All Modern Japanese Art; a Survey of the Past and a Prophecy of the Future, arranged and composed in the Kioto Factories
No. 17: Of the Nature of the Tokaido and Japanese Railway Construction. One Traveller explains the Life of the Sahib-Log, and Another the Origin of Dice. Of the Babies in the Bath-Tub and the Man in D.T.
No. 18: Concerning a Hot-Water Tap, and Some General Conversation
No. 19: The Legend of Nikko Ford and the Story of the Avoidance of Misfortune
No. 20: Shows how I grossly libelled the Japanese Army, and edited a Civil and Military Gazette which is not in the least Trustworthy
No. 21: Shows the Similarity between the Babu and the Japanese. Contains the Earnest Outcry of an Unbeliever. The Explanation of Mr. Smith of California and Elsewhere. Takes me on Board Ship after Due Warning to those who follow
No. 22: Shows how I came to America before My Time and was much shaken in Body and Soul
No. 23: How I got to San Francisco and took Tea with the Natives there
No. 24: Shows how through Folly I assisted at a Murder and was Afraid. The Rule of the Democracy and the Despotism of the Alien
No. 25: Tells how I dropped into Politics and the Tenderer Sentiments. Contains a Moral Treatise on American Maidens and an Ethnological One on the Negro. Ends with a Banquet and a Type-writer.
No. 26: Takes me through Bret Harte’s Country, and to Portland with ‘Old Man California.’ Explains how Two Vagabonds became Homesick through looking at Other People’s Houses.
No. 27: Shows how I caught Salmon in the Clackamas
No. 28: Takes me from Vancouver to the Yellowstone National Park.
No. 29: Shows how Yankee Jim introduced me to Diana of the Crossways on the Banks of the Yellowstone and how a German Jew said I was no True Citizen. Ends with the Celebration of the 4th of July and a Few Lessons therefrom
No. 30: Shows how I entered Mazanderan of the Persians and saw Devils of Every Colour, and some Troopers. Hell and the Old Lady from Chicago. The Captain and the Lieutenant.
No. 31: Ends with the Cañon of the Yellowstone. The Maiden from New Hampshire — Larry —‘Wrap-up-his-Tail’— Tom — The Old Lady from Chicago — and a Few Natural Phenomena — including one Briton
No. 32: Of the American Army and the City of the Saints. The Temple, the Book of Mormon, and the Girl from Dorset. An Oriental Consideration of Polygamy
No. 33: How I met Certain People of Importance between Salt Lake and Omaha
No. 34: Across the Great Divide; and how the Man Gring showed me the Garments of the Ellewomen
No. 35: How I struck Chicago, and how Chicago struck me. Of Religion, Politics, and Pig-sticking, and the Incarnation of the City among Shambles
No. 36: How I found Peace at Musquash on the Monongahela
No. 37: An Interview with Mark Twain
FROM SEA TO SEA
NO. 1: OF FREEDOM AND THE NECESSITY OF USING HER. THE MOTIVE AND THE SCHEME THAT WILL COME TO NOTHING. A DISQUISITION UPON THE OTHERNESS OF THINGS AND THE TORMENTS OF THE DAMNED
When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green,
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen —
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And o’er the world away —
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog its day!
AFTER seven years it pleased Necessity, whom we all serve, to turn to me and say: ‘Now you need do Nothing Whatever. You are free to enjoy yourself. I will take the yoke of bondage from your neck for one year. What do you choose to do with my gift?’ And I considered the matter in several lights. At first I held notions of regenerating Society; but it appeared that this would demand more than a year, and perhaps Society would not be grateful after all. Then I would fain enter upon one monumental ‘bust’; but I reflected that this at the outside could endure but three months, while the headache would last for nine. Then came by the person that I most hate — a Globe-trotter. He, sitting in my chair, discussed India with the unbridled arrogance of five weeks on a Cook’s ticket. He was from England and had dropped his manners in the Suez Canal. ‘I assure you,’ said he, ‘that you who live so close to the actual facts of things cannot form dispassionate judgments of their merits. You are too near. Now I—’ he waved his hand modestly and left me to fill the gap.
I considered him, from his new helmet to his deck-shoes, and I perceived that he was but an ordinary man. I thought of India, maligned and silent India, given up to the ill-considered wanderings of such as he — of the land whose people are too busy to reply to the libels upon their fife and manners. It was my destiny to avenge India upon nothing less than three-quarters of the world. The idea necessitated sacrifices — painful sacrifices — for I had to become a Globe-trotter, with a helmet and deck-shoes. In the interests of our little world I would endure these things and more. I would deliver ‘brawling judgments all day long; on all things unashamed.’ I would go toward the rising sun till I reached the heart of the world and once more smelt London asphalt.
The Indian public never gave me a brief. I took it, appointing myself Commissioner in General for Our Own Sweet Selves. Then all the aspects of life changed, as, they say, the appearance of his room grows strange to a dying man when he sees it upon the last morning, and knows that it will confront him no more. I had wilfully stepped aside from the current of our existence, and had no part in any of Our interests. Up-country the peach was beginning to bud, and men said that by cause of the heavy snows in the Hills the hot weather would be a short one. That was nothing to me. The punkahs and their pullers sat together in the verandah, and the public buildings spawned thermantidotes. The Copper-smith sang in the garden and the early wasp hummed low down by the door-handle, and they prophesied of the hot weather to come. These things were no concern of mine. I was dead, and looked upon the old life without interest and without concern.
It was a strange life; I had lived it for seven years or one day, I could not be certain which. All that I knew was that I might watch men going to their offices, while I slept luxuriously; might go out at any hour of the day and sit up to any hour of the night, secure that each morning would bring no toil. I understood with what emotions the freed convict regards the prison he has quitted — insight which had hitherto been denied me; and I further saw how intense is the selfishness of the irresponsible man. Some said that the coming year would be one of scarcity and distress because unseasonable rains were falling. I was grieved. I feared that the Rains might break the railway line to the sea, and so delay my departure. Again, the season would be a sickly one. I fancied that Necessity might repent of her gift and for mere jest wipe me off the face of the earth ere I had seen anything of what lay upon it. There was trouble on the Afghan frontier; perhaps an army-corps would be mobilised, and perhaps many men would die, leaving folk to mourn for them at the hill-stations. My dread was that a Russian man-of-war might intercept the steamer which carried my precious self between Yokohama and San Francisco. Let Armageddon be postponed, I prayed, for my sake, that my personal enjoyments may not be interfered with. War, famine, and pestilence would be so inconvenient to me. And I abased myself before Necessity, the great Goddess, and said ostentatiously: ‘It is naught, it is naught, and you needn’t look at me when I wander about.’ Surely we are only virtuous by compulsion of earning our daily bread.
So I looked upon men with new eyes, and pitied them very much indeed. They worked. They had to. I was an aristocrat. I could call upon them at inconvenient hours and ask them why they worked, and whether they did it often. Then they grunted, and the envy in their eyes was a delight to me. I dared not, however, mock them too pointedly, lest Necessity should drag me back by the collar to take my still warm place by their side. When I had disgusted all who knew me, I fled to Calcutta, which, I was pained to see, still persisted in being a city and transacting commerce after I had formally cursed it one year ago. That curse I now repeat, in the hope that the unsavoury capital will collapse. One must begin to smoke at five in the morning — which is neither night nor day — on coming across the Howrah Bridge, for it is better to get a headache from honest nicotine than to be poisoned by evil smells. And a man, who otherwise was a nice man, though he worked with his hands and his head, asked me why the scandal of the Simla Exodus was allowed to continue. To him I made answer: ‘It is because this sewer is unfit for human habitation. It is because you are all one gigantic mistake — you and your monuments and your merchants and everything about you. I rejoice to think that scores of lakhs of rupees have been spent on public offices at a place called Simla, that scores and scores will be spent on the Delhi-Kalka line, in order that civilised people may go there in comfort. When that line is opened, your big city will be dead and buried and done with, and I hope it will teach you a lesson. Your city will rot, Sir.’ And he said: ‘When people are buried here, they turn into adipocere in five days if the weather is rainy. They saponify, you know.’ I said: ‘Go and saponify, for I hate Calcutta.’ But he took me to the Eden Gardens instead, and begged me for my own sake not to go round the world in this prejudiced spirit. I was unhappy and ill, but he vowed that my spleen was due to my ‘Simla way of looking at things.’
All this world of ours knows something about the Eden Gardens, which are supposed by the uninitiated of the mofussil to represent the gilded luxury of the metropolis. As a matter of fact they are hideously dull. The inhabitants appear in top-hats and frock-coats, and walk dolorously to and fro under the glare of jerking electric lamps, when they ought to be sitting in their shirt-sleeves round little tables and treating their wives to iced lager beer. My friend — it was a muggy March night — wrapped himself in the prescribed garments and said graciously: ‘You can wear a round hat, but you mustn’t wear deck-shoes; and for goodness’ sake, my dear fellow, don’t smoke on the Red Road — all the people one knows go there.’ Most of the people who were people sat in their carriages, in an atmosphere of hot horse, harness, and panel-lacquer, outside the gardens, and the remnant tramped up and down, by twos and threes, upon squashy green grass, until they were wearied, while a band played at them. ‘And is this all you do?’ I asked. ‘It is,’ said my friend. ‘Isn’t it good enough? We meet every one we know here, and walk with him or her, unless he or she is among the carriages.’
Overhead was a woolly warm sky; underfoot feverish soft grass; and from all quarters the languorous breeze bore faint reminiscences of stale sewage upon its wings. Round the horizon were stacked lines of carriages, and the electric flare bred aches in the strained eyebrow. It was a strange sight and fascinating. The doomed creatures walked up and down without cessation, for when one fled away into the lamp-spangled gloom twenty came to take his place. Slop-hatted members of the mercantile marine, Armenian merchants, Bengal civilians, shop-girls and shop-men, Jews, Parthians, and Mesopotamians, were all there in the tepid heat and the fetid smell.
‘This,’ said my friend, ‘is how we enjoy ourselves. There are the Viceregal liveries. Lady Lansdowne comes here.’ He spoke as though reading to me the Government House list of Paradise. I reflected that these people would continue to walk up and down until they died, drinkless, dusty, sad, and blanched.
In saying this last thing I had made a mistake. Calcutta is no more Anglo-Indian than West Brompton. In common with Bombay, it has achieved a mental attitude several decades in advance of that of the raw and brutal India of fact. An intelligent and responsible financier, discussing the Empire, said: ‘But why do we want so large an army in India? Look at the country all about.’ I think he meant as far as the Circular Road or perhaps Raneegunge. Some of these days, when the voice of the two uncomprehending cities carries to London, and its advice is acted upon, there will be trouble. Till this second journey to Calcutta I was unable to account for the acid tone and limited range of the Presidency journals. I see now that they are ward papers and ought to be treated as such.
In the fulness of time — there was no hurry — imagine that, O you toilers of the land! — I took ship and fled from Calcutta by that which they call the Mutton-Mail, because it takes sheep and correspondence to Rangoon. Half the Punjab was going with us to serve the Queen in the Burma Military Police, and it was grateful to catch once more the raw, rasping up-country speech amid the jabber of Burmese and Bengali.
To Rangoon, then, aboard the Madura, come with me down the Hughli, and try to understand what sort of life is led by the pilots, those strange men who only seem to know the land by watching it from the river.
‘And I fetched up under the North Ridge with six inches o’ water under me, with a sou’west monsoon blowing, an’ me not knowing any more than the dead where in — Paradise — I was taking her,’ says one deep voice.
‘Well, what do you expect?’ says another. ‘They ought not all to be occulting lights. Give me a red with two flashes for outlying danger anyhow. The Hughli’s the worst river in the world. Why, off the Lower Gasper only last year . . .’
‘And look at the way Government treats you!’
The Hughli pilot is human. He may talk Greek in the exercise of his profession, but he can swear at the Government as thoroughly as though he were an Uncovenanted Civilian. His life is a hard one; but he is full of strange stories, and when treated with proper respect may condescend to tell some of them. If he has served on the river for six years as a ‘cub,’ and is neither dead nor decrepit, I believe he can earn as much as fifty rupees by sending two thousand tons of ship and a few hundred souls flying down the reaches at twelve miles an hour. Then he drops over the side with your last love-letters and wanders about the estuary in a tug until he finds another steamer and brings her up. It does not take much to comfort him.
. . . . .
. . . . .
Somewhere in the open sea; some days later. I give it up. I cannot write, and to sleep I am not ashamed. A glorious idleness has taken entire possession of me; Journalism is an imposture; so is Literature; so is Art. All India dropped out of sight yesterday, and the rocking pilot-brig at the Sandheads bore my last message to the prison that I quit. We have reached blue water — crushed sapphire — and a little breeze is bellying the awning. Three flying-fish were sighted this morning; the tea at chotahazri is not nice, but the captain is excellent. Is this budget of news sufficiently exciting, or must I in strict confidence tell you the story of the Professor and the compass? You will hear more about the Professor later, if, indeed, I ever touch pen again. When he was in India he worked about nine hours a day. At noon today he conceived an interest in cyclones and things of that kind — would go to his cabin to get a compass and a meteorological book. He went, but stopped to reflect by the brink of a drink. ‘The compass is in a box,’ said he, drowsily, ‘but the nuisance of it is that to get it I shall have to pull the box out from under my berth. All things considered, I don’t think it’s worth while.’ He loafed on deck, and I think by this time is fast asleep. There was no trace of shame in his voice for his mighty sloth. I would have reproved him, but the words died on my tongue. I was guiltier than he.
‘Professor,’ said I, ‘there is a foolish little paper in Allahabad called the Pioneer. I am supposed to be writing it a letter — a letter with my hands! Did you ever hear of anything so absurd?’
‘I wonder if Angostura bitters really go with whisky,’ said the Professor, toying with the neck of the bottle.
There is no such place as India; there never was a daily paper called the Pioneer. It was all a weary dream. The only real things in the world are crystal seas, clean-swept decks, soft rugs, warm sunshine, the smell of salt in the air, and fathomless, futile indolence.
NO. 2: THE RIVER OF THE LOST FOOTSTEPS AND THE GOLDEN MYSTERY UPON ITS BANKS. SHOWS HOW A MAN MAY GO TO THE SHWAY DAGON PAGODA AND SEE IT NOT AND TO THE PEGU CLUB AND HEAR TOO MUCH. A DISSERTATION ON MIXED DRINKS
I am a part of all that I have met,
Yet all experience is an arch where through
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
THERE was a river and a bar, a pilot and a great deal of nautical mystery, and the Captain said the journey from Calcutta was ended and that we should be in Rangoon in a few hours. It is not an impressive stream, being low-banked, scrubby, and muddy; but as we gave the staggering rice-boats the go-by, I reflected that I was looking upon the River of the Lost Footsteps — the road that so many, many men of my acquaintance had travelled, never to return, within the past three years. Such an one had gone up to open out Upper Burma, and had himself been opened out by a Burmese dah in the cruel scrub beyond Minhla; such another had gone to rule the land in the Queen’s name, but could not rule a hill stream and was carried down under his horse. One had been shot by his servant; another by a dacoit while he sat at dinner; and a pitifully long list had found in jungle-fever their sole reward for ‘the difficulties and privations inseparably connected with military service,’ as the Bengal Army Regulations put it. I ran over half a score of names — policemen, subalterns, young civilians, employes of big trading firms, and adventurers. They had gone up the river and they had died. At my elbow stood one of the workers in New Burma, going to report himself at Rangoon, and he told tales of interminable chases after evasive dacoits, of marchings and counter-marchings that came to nothing, and of deaths in the wilderness as noble as they were sad.
Then, a golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizona beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple-spire. It stood upon a green knoll, and below it were lines of warehouses, sheds, and mills. Under what new god, thought I, are we irrepressible English sitting now?
‘There’s the old Shway Dagon’ (pronounced Dagone, not like the god in the Scriptures), said my companion. ‘Confound it!’ But it was not a thing to be sworn at. It explained in the first place why we took Rangoon, and in the second why we pushed on to see what more of rich or rare the land held. Up till that sight my uninstructed eyes could not see that the land differed much in appearance from the Sunderbuns, but the golden dome said: ‘This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about.’ ‘It’s a famous old shrine o’ sorts,’ said my companion, ‘and now the Tounghoo-Manadlay line is open, pilgrims are flocking down by the thousand to see it. It lost its big gold top —’thing that they call a ’htee — in an earthquake: that’s why it’s all hidden by bamboo-work for a third of its height. You should see it when it’s all uncovered. They’re regilding it now.’
Why is it that when one views for the first time any of the wonders of the earth a bystander always strikes in with, ‘You should see it, etc.’? Such men given twenty minutes from the tomb at the Day of Judgment, would patronise the naked souls as they hurried up with the glare of Tophet on their faces, and say: ‘You should have seen this when Gabriel first began to blow.’ What the Shway Dagon really is and how many books may have been written upon its history and archaeology is no part of my business. As it stood overlooking everything it seemed to explain all about Burma — why the boys had gone north and died, why the troopers bustled to and fro, and why the steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla lay like black-backed gulls upon the water.
Then we came to a new land, and the first thing that one of the regular residents said was ‘This place isn’t India at all. They ought to have made it a Crown colony.’ Judging the Empire as it ought to be judged, by its most prominent points — videlicet, its smells — he was right; for though there is one stink in Calcutta, another in Bombay, and a third and most pungent one in the Punjab, yet they have a kinship of stinks, whereas Burma smells quite otherwise. It is not exactly what China ought to smell like, but it is not India. ‘What is it?’ I asked; and the man said ‘Napi,’ which is fish pickled when it ought to have been buried long ago. This food, in guide-book language, is inordinately consumed by . . but everybody who has been within downwind range of Rangoon knows what napi means, and those who do not will not understand.
Yes, it was a very new land — a land where the people understood colour — a delightfully lazy land full of pretty girls and very bad cheroots.
The worst of it was that the Anglo-Indian was a foreigner, a creature of no account. He did not know Burman — which was no great loss — and the Madrassi insisted upon addressing him in English. The Madrassi, by the way, is a great institution. He takes the place of the Burman, who will not work, and in a few years returns to his native coast with rings on his fingers and bells on his toes. The consequences are obvious. The Madrassi demands, and receives, enormous wages, and gets to know that he is indispensable. The Burman exists beautifully, while his women-folk marry the Madrassi and the Chinaman, because these support them in affluence. When the Burman wishes to work he gets a Madrassi to do it for him. How he finds the money to pay the Madrassi I was not informed, but all men were agreed in saying that under no circumstances will the Burman exert himself in the paths of honest industry. Now, if a bountiful Providence had clothed you in a purple, green, amber or puce petticoat, had thrown a rose-pink scarf-turban over your head, and had put you in a pleasant damp country where rice grew of itself and fish came up to be caught, putrefied and pickled, would you work? Would you not rather take a cheroot and loaf about the streets seeing what was to be seen? If two-thirds of your girls were grinning, good-humoured little maidens and the remainder positively pretty, would you not spend your time in making love?
The Burman does both these things, and the Englishman, who after all worked himself to Burma, says hard things about him. Personally I love the Burman with the blind favouritism born of first impression. When I die I will be a Burman, with twenty yards of real King’s silk, that has been made in Mandalay, about my body, and a succession of cigarettes between my lips. I will wave the cigarette to emphasise my conversation, which shall be full of jest and repartee, and I will always walk about with a pretty almond-coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. She shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when I walk: for these are the customs of India. She shall look all the world between the eyes, in honesty and good fellowship, and I will teach her not to defile her pretty mouth with chopped tobacco in a cabbage leaf, but to inhale good cigarettes of Egypt’s best brand.
Seriously, the Burmese girls are very pretty, and when I saw them I understood much that I had heard about — about our army in Flanders let us say.
Providence really helps those who do not help themselves. I went up a street, name unknown, attracted by the colour that was so wantonly flashed down its length. There is colour in Rajputana and in Southern India, and you can find a whole paletteful of raw tints at any down-country durbar; but the Burmese way of colouring is different. With the women the scarf, petticoat, and jacket are of three lively hues, and with the men putso and head-wrap are gorgeous. Thus you get your colours dashed down in dots against a background of dark timber houses set in green foliage. There are no canons of Art anywhere, and every scheme of colouring depends on the power of the sun above. That is why men in a London fog do still believe in pale greens and sad reds. Give me lilac, pink, vermilion, lapis lazuli, and blistering blood red under fierce sunlight that mellows and modifies all. I had just made this discovery and was noting that the people treated their cattle kindly, when the driver of an absurd little hired carriage built to the scale of a fat Burma pony, volunteered to take me for a drive, and we drove in the direction of the English quarter of the town where the sahibs live in dainty little houses made out of the sides of cigar boxes. They looked as if they could be kicked in at a blow and (trust a Globe-trotter for evolving a theory at a minute’s notice!) it is to avoid this fate that they are built for the most part on legs. The houses are not cantonment-bred in any way — nor does the uneven ground and dusty reddish roads fit in with any part of the Indian Empire except, it may be, Ootacamund.
The pony wandered into a garden studded with lovely little lakes which, again, were studded with islands, and there were sahibs in flannels in the boats. Outside the park were pleasant little monasteries full of clean-shaved gentlemen in gold amber robes learning to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil by chatting furiously amongst themselves, and at every corner stood the three little maids from school, almost exactly as they had been dismissed from the side scenes of the Savoy after the Mikado was over: and the strange part of it all was that every one laughed — laughed, so it seemed, at the sky above them because it was blue, at the sun because it was sinking, and at each other because they had nothing better to do. A small fat child laughed loudest of all, in spite of the fact that it was smoking a cheroot that ought to have made it deathly sick. The pagoda was always close at hand — as brilliant a mystery as when first sighted far down the river; but it changed its shape as we came nearer, and showed in the middle of a nest of hundreds of smaller pagodas. There appeared suddenly two colossal tigers (after the Burmese canons) in plaster on a hillside, and they were the guardians of Burma’s greatest pagoda. Round them rustled a great crowd of happy people in pretty dresses, and the feet of all were turned towards a great stoneway that ran from between the tigers even to the brow of the mound. But the nature of the stairs was peculiar. They were covered in for the most part by a tunnel, or it may have been a walled-in colonnade, for there were heavily gilt wooden pillars visible in the gloom. The afternoon was drawing on as I came to this strange place and saw that I should have to climb up a long, low hill of stairs to get to the pagoda.
Once or twice in my life I have seen a Globe-trotter literally gasping with jealous emotion because India was so much larger and more lovely than he had ever dreamed, and because he had only set aside three months to explore it in. My own sojourn in Rangoon was countable by hours, so I may be forgiven when I pranced with impatience at the bottom of the staircase because I could not at once secure a full, complete, and accurate idea of everything that was to be seen. The meaning of the guardian tigers, the inwardness of the main pagoda, and the countless little ones, was hidden from me. I could not understand why the pretty girls with cheroots sold little sticks and coloured candles to be used before the image of Buddha. Everything was incomprehensible to me, and there was none to explain. All that I could gather was that in a few days the great golden ’htee that has been defaced by the earthquake would be hoisted into position with feasting and song, and that half Upper Burma was coming down to see the show.
I went forward between the two great beasts, across a whitewashed court, till I came to a flatheaded arch guarded by the lame, the blind, the leper, and the deformed. These plucked at my clothes as I passed, and moaned and whined: but the stream that disappeared up the gentle slope of the stairway took no notice of them. And I stepped into the semidarkness of a long, long corridor flanked by booths, and floored with stones worn very smooth by human feet.
At the far end of the roofed corridor there was a breadth of evening sky, and at this point rose a second and much steeper flight of stairs, leading directly to the Shwedagon (this, by the way, is its real spelling). Down this staircase fell, from gloom to deeper gloom, a cascade of colour. At this point I stayed, because there was a beautiful archway of Burmese build, and adorned with a Chinese inscription, directly in front of me, and I conceived foolishly that I should find nothing more pleasant to look at if I went farther. Also, I wished to understand how such a people could produce the dacoit of the newspaper, and I knew that a great deal of promiscuous knowledge comes to him who sits down by the wayside. Then I saw a Face — which explained a good deal. The chin, jowl, lips, and neck were modelled faithfully on the lines of the worst of the Roman Empresses — the lolloping, walloping women that Swinburne sings about, and that we sometimes see pictures of. Above this gross perfection of form came the Mongoloid nose, narrow forehead, and flaring pig’s eyes. I stared intently, and the man stared back again, with admirable insolence, that puckered one corner of his mouth. Then he swaggered forward, and I was richer by a new face and a little knowledge. ‘I must make further inquiries at the Club,’ said I, ‘but that man seems to be of the proper dacoit type. He could crucify on occasion.’
Then a brown baby came by in its mother’s arms and laughed, wherefore I much desired to shake hands with it, and grinned to that effect. The mother held out the tiny soft pud and laughed, and the baby laughed, and we all laughed together, because that seemed to be the custom of the country, and returned down the now dark corridor where the lamps of the stall-keepers were twinkling and scores of people were helping us to laugh. They must be a mild mannered nation, the Burmese, for they leave little three-year-olds in charge of a whole wilderness of clay dolls or a menagerie of jointed tigers.
I had not actually entered the Shwedagon, but I felt just as happy as though I had.
In the Pegu Club I found a friend — a Punjabi — upon whose broad bosom I threw myself and demanded food and entertainment. He had not long since received a visit from the Commissioner of Peshawar, of all places in the world, and was not to be upset by sudden arrivals. But he had come down in the world hideously. Years ago in the Black North he used to speak the vernacular as it should be spoken, and was one of Us.
‘Daniel, how many socks master got?’
The unfinished peg fell from my fist. ‘Good Heavens!’ said I, ‘is it possible that you — you — speak that disgusting pidgin-talk to your nauker? It’s enough to make one cry. You’re no better than a Bombaywallah.’
‘I’m a Madrassi,’ said he calmly. ‘We all talk English to our boys here. Isn’t it beautiful? Now come along to the Gymkhana and then we’ll dine here. Daniel, master’s hat and stick get.’
There must be a few hundred men who are fairly behind the scenes of the Burma War — one of the least known and appreciated of any of our little affairs. The Pegu Club seemed to be full of men on their way up or down, and the conversation was but an echo of the murmur of conquest far away to the north.
‘See that man over there? He was cut over the head the other day at Zoungloung-goo. Awfully tough man. That chap next him has been on the dacoit-hunt for about a year. He broke up Boh Mango’s gang: caught the Boh in a paddy field, y’ know. The other man’s going home on sick leave — got a lump of iron somewhere in his system. Try our mutton: I assure you the Club is the only place in Rangoon where you get mutton. Look here, you must not speak vernacular to our boys. Hi, boy! get master some more ice. They’re all Bombay men or Madrassis. Up at the front there are some Burman servants: but a real Burman will never work. He prefers being a simple little daku.’
‘How much?’
‘Dear little dacoit. We call ’em dakus for short-sort o’ pet name. That’s the butter-fish. I forgot you didn’t get much fish up-country. Yes, I s’pose Rangoon has its advantages. You pay like a Prince. Take an ordinary married establishment. Little furnished house — one hundred and fifty rupees. Servants’ wages two twenty or two fifty. That’s four hundred at once. My dear fellow, a sweeper won’t take less than twelve or sixteen rupees a month here, and even then he’ll work for other houses. It’s worse than Quetta. Any man who comes to Lower Burma in the hope of living on his pay is a fool.’
Voice from lower end of table. ‘Dee fool. It’s different in Upper Burma, where you get command and travelling allowances.’
Another voice in the middle of a conversation. ‘They never got that story into the papers, but I can tell you we weren’t quite as quick in rushing the fort as they made believe. You see Boh Gwee had us in a regular trap, and by the time we had closed the line our men were being peppered front and rear. That jungle-fighting is the deuce and all. More ice please.’
Then they told me of the death of an old school-fellow under the ramp of the Minhla redoubt — does any one remember the affair at Minhla that opened the third Burmese ball?
‘I was close to him,’ said a voice. ‘He died in A.’s arms, I fancy, but I’m not quite sure. Anyhow, I know he died easily. He was a good fellow.’
‘Thank you,’ said I, ‘and now I think I’ll go’; and I went out into the steamy night, my head ringing with stories of battle, murder, and sudden death. I had reached the fringe of the veil that hides Upper Burma, and I would have given much to have gone up the river and seen a score of old friends, now jungle-worn men of war. All that night I dreamed of interminable staircases down which swept thousands of pretty girls, so brilliantly robed that my eyes ached at the sight. There was a great golden bell at the top of the stairs, and at the bottom, his face turned to the sky, lay poor old D—— dead at Minhla, and a host of unshaven ragamuffins in khaki were keeping guard aver him.
NO. 3: THE CITY OF ELEPHANTS WHICH IS GOVERNED BY THE GREAT GOD OF IDLENESS, WHO LIVES ON THE TOP OF A HILL. THE HISTORY OF THREE GREAT DISCOVERIES AND THE NAUGHTY CHILDREN OF IQUIQUE
I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
I said, ‘O Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well.’
SO much for making definite programmes of travel beforehand. In my first letter I told you that I would go from Rangoon to Penang direct. Now we are lying off Moulmein in a new steamer which does not seem to run anywhere in particular. Why she should go to Moulmein is a mystery; but as every soul on the ship is a loafer like myself, no one is discontented. Imagine a shipload of people to whom time is no object, who have no desires beyond three meals a day and no emotions save those raised by the casual cockroach.
Moulmein is situated up the mouth of a river which ought to flow through South America, and all manner of dissolute native craft appear to make the place their home. Ugly cargo-steamers that the initiated call ‘Geordie tramps’ grunt and bellow at the beautiful hills all round, and the pot-bellied British India liners wallow down the reaches. Visitors are rare in Moulmein — so rare that few but cargo-boats think it worth their while to come off from the shore.
Strictly in confidence I will tell you that Moulmein is not a city of this earth at all. Sindbad the Sailor visited it, if you recollect, on that memorable voyage when he discovered the burial-ground of the elephants.
As the steamer came up the river we were aware of first one elephant and then another hard at work in timber-yards that faced the shore. A few narrow-minded folk with binoculars said that there were mahouts upon their backs, but this was never clearly proven. I prefer to believe in what I saw — a sleepy town, just one house thick, scattered along a lovely stream and inhabited by slow, solemn elephants, building stockades for their own diversion. There was a strong scent of freshly sawn teak in the air — we could not see any elephants sawing — and occasionally the warm stillness was broken by the crash of the log. When the elephants had got an appetite for luncheon they loafed off in couples to their club, and did not take the trouble to give us greeting and the latest mail papers; at which we were much disappointed, but took heart when we saw upon a hill a large white pagoda surrounded by scores of little pagodas. ‘This,’ we said with one voice, ‘is the place to make an excursion to,’ and then shuddered at our own profanity, for above all things we did not wish to behave like mere vulgar tourists.
The ticca-gharries at Moulmein are three sizes smaller than those of Rangoon, for the ponies are no bigger than decent sheep. Their drovers trot them uphill and down, and as the gharri is extremely narrow and the roads are anything but good, the exercise is refreshing. Here again all the drivers are Madrassis.
I should better remember what that pagoda was like had I not fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with a Burmese girl at the foot of the first flight of steps. Only the fact of the steamer starting next noon prevented me from staying at Moulmein forever and owning a pair of elephants. These are so common that they wander about the streets, and, I make no doubt, could be obtained for a piece of sugar-cane.
Leaving this far too lovely maiden, I went up the steps only a few yards, and, turning me round, looked upon a view of water, island, broad river, fair grazing ground, and belted wood that made me rejoice that I was alive. The hillside below me and above me was ablaze with pagodas — from a gorgeous golden and vermilion beauty to a delicate grey stone one just completed in honour of an eminent priest lately deceased at Mandalay. Far above my head there was a faint tinkle, as of golden bells, and a talking of the breezes in the tops of the toddy-palms. Wherefore I climbed higher and higher up the steps till I reached a place of great peace, dotted with Burmese images, spotlessly clean. Here women now and again paid reverence. They bowed their heads and their lips moved, because they were praying. I had an umbrella — a black one — in my hand, deck-shoes upon my feet, and a helmet upon my head. I did not pray — I swore at myself for being a Globetrotter, and wished that I had enough Burmese to explain to these ladies that I was sorry and would have taken off my hat but for the sun. A Globetrotter is a brute. I had the grace to blush as I tramped round the pagoda. That will be remembered to me for righteousness. But I stared horribly — at a gold and red side-temple with a beautifully gilt image of Buddha in it — at the grim figures in the niches at the base of the main pagoda — at the little palms that grew out of the cracks in the tiled paving of the court — at the big palms above, and at the low-hung bronze bells that stood at each corner for the women to smite with staghorns. Upon one bell rang this amazing triplet in English — evidently the composition of the caster, who completed his work — and now, let us hope, has reached Nibban — thirty-five years ago:—
He who destroyed this Bell
They must be in the great Hel
And unable to coming out.
I respect a man who is not able to spell Hell properly. It shows that he has been brought up in an amiable creed. You who come to Moulmein treat this bell with respect, and refrain from playing with it, for that hurts the feelings of the worshippers.
In the base of the pagoda were four rooms, lined as to three sides with colossal plaster figures, before each of whom burned one solitary dip whose rays fought with the flood of evening sunshine that came through the windows, and the room was filled with a pale yellow light — unearthly to stand in. Occasionally a woman crept in to one of these rooms to pray, but nearly all the company stayed in the courtyard; but those that faced the figures prayed more zealously than the others, so I judged that their troubles were the greater. Of the actual cult I knew less than nothing; for the neatly bound English books that we read make no mention of pointing red-tipped straws at a golden image, or of the banging of bells after the custom of worshippers in a Hindu temple. It must be a genial one, however. To begin with, it is quiet and carried on among the fairest possible surroundings that ever landscape offered.
In this particular case, the massive white pagoda shot into the blue from the west of a walled hill that commanded four separate and desirable views as you looked either at the steamer in the river below, the polished silver reaches to the left, the woods to the right, or the roofs of Moulmein to the landward. Between each pause of the rustling of dresses and the low-toned talk of the women fell, from far above, the tinkle of innumerable metal leaves which were stirred by the breeze as they hung from the ’htee of the pagoda. A golden image winked in the sun; the painted ones stared straight in front of them over the heads of the worshippers, and somewhere below a mallet and a plane were lazily helping to build yet another pagoda in honour of the Lord of the Earth.
Sitting in meditation while the Professor went round with a sacrilegious camera, to the vast terror of the Burmese youth, I made two notable discoveries and nearly went to sleep over them. The first was that the Lord of the Earth is Idleness — thick slab idleness with a little religion stirred in to keep it sweet, and the second was that the shape of the pagoda came originally from a bulging toddy-palm trunk. There was one between me and the far-off sky-line, and it exactly duplicated the outlines of a small grey stone building.
Yet a third discovery, and a much more important one, came to me later on. A dirty little imp of a boy ran by clothed more or less in a beautifully worked silk putso, the like of which I had in vain attempted to secure at Rangoon. A bystander told me that such an article would cost one hundred and ten rupees — exactly ten rupees in excess of the price demanded at Rangoon, when I had been discourteous to a pretty Burmese girl with diamonds in her ears, and had treated her as though she were a Delhi boxwallah.
‘Professor,’ said I, when the camera spidered round the corner, ‘there is something wrong with this people. They won’t work, they aren’t all dacoits, and their babies run about with hundred-rupee putsoes on them, while their parents speak the truth. How in the world do they get a living?’
‘They exist beautifully,’ said the Professor; ‘and I only brought half a dozen plates with me. I shall come again in the morning with some more. Did you ever dream of a place like this?’
‘No,’ said I. ‘It’s perfect, and for the life of me I can’t quite see where the precise charm lies.’
‘In its Beastly Laziness,’ said the Professor, as he packed the camera, and we went away, regretfully, haunted by the voices of many wind-blown bells.
Not ten minutes from the pagoda we saw a real British bandstand, a shanty labelled ‘Municipal Office,’ a collection of P.W.D. bungalows that in vain strove to blast the landscape, and a Madras band. I had never seen Madrassi troops before. They seem to dress just like Tommies, and have an air of much culture and refinement. It is said that they read English books and know all about their rights and privileges. For further details apply to the Pegu Club, second table from the top on the right-hand side as you enter.
In an evil hour I attempted to revive the drooping trade of Moulmein, and to this end bound a native of the place to come on board the steamer next morn with a collection of Burmese silks. It was only a five minutes’ pull, and he could have sat in the stern all the while. Morning came, but not the man. Not a boat of watermelons, pink fleshy watermelons, neared the ship. We might have been in quarantine. As we slipped down the river on our way to Penang, I saw the elephants playing with the teak logs as solemnly and as mysteriously as ever. They were the chief inhabitants, and, for aught I know, the rulers of the place. Their lethargy had corrupted the town, and when the Professor wished to photograph them, I believe they went away in scorn.
We are now running down to Penang with the thermometer 87° in the cabins, and anything you please on deck. We have exhausted all our literature, drunk two hundred lemon squashes, played forty different games of cards (Patience mostly), organised a lottery on the run (had it been a thousand rupees instead of ten I should not have won it), and slept seventeen hours out of the twenty-four. It is perfectly impossible to write, but you may be morally the better for the story of the Bad People of Iquique which, ‘as you have not before heard, I will now proceed to relate.’ It has just been told me by a German orchid-hunter, fresh from nearly losing his head in the Lushai hills, who has been over most of the world.
Iquique is somewhere in South America — at the back of or beyond Brazil — and once upon a time there came to it a tribe of Aborigines from out of the woods, so innocent that they wore nothing at all — absolutely nothing at all. They had a grievance, but no garments, and the former they came to lay before His Excellency, the Governor of Iquique. But the news of their coming and their exceeding nakedness had gone before them, and good Spanish ladies of the town agreed that the heathen should first of all be clothed. So they organised a sewing-bee, and the result, which was mainly aprons, was served out to the Bad People with hints as to its use. Nothing could have been better. They appeared in their aprons before the Governor and all the ladies of Iquique, ranged on the steps of the cathedral, only to find that the Governor could not grant their demands. And do you know what these children of nature did? In the twinkling of an eye they had off those aprons, slung them round their necks, and were dancing naked as the dawn before the scandalised ladies of Iquique, who fled with their fans before their eyes into the sanctuary of the cathedral. And when the steps were deserted the Bad People withdrew, shouting and leaping, their aprons still round their necks, for good cloth is valuable property. They encamped near the town, knowing their own power. ’Twas impossible to send the military against them, and equally impossible that the Senoritas should be exposed to the chance of being shocked whenever they went abroad. No one knew at what hour the Bad People would sweep through the streets. Their demands were therefore granted and Iquique had rest. Nuda est veritas et prevalebit.
‘But,’ said I, ‘what is there so awful in a naked Indian — or two hundred naked Indians for that matter?’
‘My friend,’ said the German, ‘dey vas Indians of Sout’ America. I dell you dey do not demselves shtrip vell.’
I put my hand on my mouth and went away.
NO. 4: SHOWING HOW I CAME TO PALMISTE ISLAND AND THE PLACE OF PAUL AND VIRGINIA, AND FELL ASLEEP IN A GARDEN. A DISQUISITION ON THE FOLLY OF SIGHT-SEEING
Some for the glories of this world, and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s paradise to come;
Ah, take the cash, and let the credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum.
THERE is something very wrong in the Anglo-Saxon character. Hardly had the Africa dropped anchor in Penang Straits when two of our fellow-passengers were smitten with madness because they heard that another steamer was even then starting for Singapur. If they went by it they would gain several days. Heaven knows why time should have been so precious to them. The news sent them flying into their cabins, and packing their trunks as though their salvation depended upon it. Then they tumbled over the side and were rowed away in a sampan, hot, but happy. They were on a pleasure-trip, and they had gained perhaps three days. That was their pleasure,.
Do you recollect Besant’s description of Palmiste Island in My Little Girl and So They Were Married? Penang is Palmiste Island. I found this out from the ship, looking at the wooded hills that dominate the town, and at the regiments of palm trees three miles away that marked the coast of Wellesley Province. The air was soft and heavy with laziness, and at the ship’s side were boat-loads of much-jewelled Madrassis — even those to whom Besant has alluded. A squall swept across the water and blotted out the rows of low, red-tiled houses that made up Penang, and the shadows of night followed the storm.
I put my twelve-inch rule in my pocket to measure all the world by, and nearly wept with emotion when on landing at the jetty I fell against a Sikh — a beautiful bearded Sikh, with white leggings and a rifle. As is cold water in a thirsty land so is a face from the old country. My friend had come from Jandiala in the Umritsar district. Did I know Jandiala? Did I not? I began to tell all the news I could recollect about crops and armies and the movements of big men in the far, far North, while the Sikh beamed. He belonged to the military police, and it was a good service, but of course it was far from the old country. There was no hard work, and the Chinamen gave but little trouble. They had fights among themselves, but ‘they do not care to give us any impudence;’ and the big man swaggered off with the long roll and swing of a whole Pioneer regiment, while I cheered myself with the thought that India — the India I pretend to hold in hatred — was not so far off, after all.
