NORTHWARD BY RAIL.—OPIUM CULTURE.—ARRIVAL AT BENARES.
From the terminus at Howrah, opposite Calcutta, the railway follows the right or western bank of the Ganges, sometimes quite near the stream, and again miles and miles away from it. As it was night when our friends started, there was little to be seen on the way, and they soon devoted their attention to the problem of sleeping.
RAILWAY TRAVELLING IN INDIA.
The railway-carriages are quite comfortable when not too crowded, and the Doctor and his young companions were fortunate in finding only one passenger in the compartment they occupied. Each of the first-class compartments is arranged with a wide sofa or stuffed bench on each side, and there is a shelf or bunk above it that can be lowered, something after the manner of the upper berth in a Pullman sleeping-car; consequently four persons are nicely accommodated, provided they have plenty of blankets and other coverings to keep them warm. Our friends had sought advice before leaving Calcutta, and each of them bought a rezie, or thick quilt, for use on the railway; these rezies, with their travelling shawls and overcoats, kept them comfortable during the long night that ensued after their departure from the Howrah station, and the boys declared it was the best kind of fun to travel by rail in India.
The company makes no extra charge for the use of these sleeping accommodations, but it does not provide any kind of bedding, and there is no colored porter to attend to the wants of passengers. By the rules posted in the carriage, a compartment is intended for eight persons, and when there happens to be this number of passengers the journey is anything but agreeable, as there is not room for all to lie down. At the end of the compartment is a wash-room with a supply of water, but no towels, soap, or any other toilet requisite. The Pullman car has not yet found its way to India, and there is a vast chance for improvement over the present mode of railway travel.
Nearly every Englishman living in India travels with his servant, and the compartment adjoining that of our friends was occupied by a couple of English residents who, as soon as it was daylight, called their servants from the third-class carriage, where they had been riding, to get ready the chota hazree. By means of an alcohol lamp the coffee was easily made, and the travellers were able to extract as much comfort as possible from the journey. Our friends had not thought it worth their while to be encumbered with servants after their experience of chance attendants in Calcutta, and consequently they waited for their coffee until they reached a station where that article was to be had.
The refreshment system of the East Indian Railway is not at all bad, when we consider the newness of the iron road and the comparatively small number of travellers to patronize it. At convenient distances there are refreshment-rooms, where meals of a fair quality are served at reasonable prices: many of these restaurants are managed by one man, who has a contract with the railway company, and is guaranteed against loss on the condition that his service is satisfactory. Most of these restaurants have hotels attached, so that a traveller may be lodged and fed without leaving the station, in case he arrives late at night and does not find the train he wishes to connect with. On the express-trains the conductor will telegraph ahead to a dining-station and order a dinner, so that the traveller will find it all ready for him on the arrival of the train. Our friends did this on several occasions during their travels in India, and were well pleased with the result.
The boys regretted that they were obliged to travel in the night, on account of missing the view of the country. They wanted to have a peep at Chandernagore, twenty miles or so above Calcutta, which, with Pondicherry, forms the French East Indies, as already stated. Frank consoled himself for the deprivation by reading to Fred the description of the place, which is less than two miles square, and has about 20,000 inhabitants, the most of them Hindoos. He learned further that it was the only profitable possession of the French in India, as the British Government gives it 300 chests of opium every year on the condition that the inhabitants will not cultivate that drug or interfere with the salt monopoly. The chief occupation of the inhabitants is to raise cattle for the Calcutta market, and their town has a very dilapidated appearance.
Frank wanted to look at the fields where opium is raised, but the Doctor told him it was not the season for the cultivation of the plant that produces the famous drug, and he would have seen nothing more than the bare earth if his journey had been in the daytime.
Thereupon followed a talk about opium and its peculiarities, which we will give for the benefit of those interested in the subject.
"Opium is raised from the plant we call the poppy," said the Doctor; "it was known as far back as the third century of our era, and before that time extracts of the poppy were in use for medicinal purposes. It is made in Asia Minor, China, Persia, Egypt, and India, the latter producing more than all the other countries together. Experiments at its cultivation have been made in Australia, Africa, Europe, and the United States; but none have been successful, as the best qualities of the drug are to be found only in the Asiatic opiums. Next to the Indian opium comes that of Asia Minor, commonly known as Turkey or Smyrna opium, and some authorities consider it equal if not superior to that from Hindostan."
One of the boys asked if it was raised all over India, or only in a small portion of the country.
"The poppy grows in various sections of the country," was the reply, "but the greater part is cultivated in the valley of the Ganges, in a belt of country 600 miles long by 200 in width. About 600,000 acres are devoted to it altogether, and in some years nearly 700,000. Many of the opium farms belong to the Government, and the cultivation is under its direct management, while others are run on private account, and a heavy tax is imposed upon all the opium produced.
"The English justify their wars to compel the Chinese Government to admit opium as an article of commerce, on the ground that a market for the drug was necessary for the existence of the British Government in India. China was the only market, and therefore the Chinese must not be allowed to prohibit the drug that was killing many thousands of their people every year, and making beggars and maniacs of many other thousands. England makes a poison, and her commercial interests will suffer if any possible market is closed to that poison; a weak nation objects to killing its subjects in order that English commerce may prosper, and immediately England makes war on that nation. 'You may choose your way of death,' England said to the Chinese—'perish at the muzzles of British cannon and rifles, or perish by admitting our opium. We are strong and you are weak, and we intend to secure the prosperity of British commerce, whatever it may cost you in the lives of your people.'
"The net revenue from opium is about £10,000,000, or $50,000,000, annually. This money is raised on 100,000 chests, weighing 160 pounds each, and the tax on the article is considerably more than the cost of production. There has been much criticism among enlightened Englishmen of the means by which England raises her revenues in India. The total revenue from all sources is £50,000,000, or $250,000,000, in round figures, of which opium pays £10,000,000, salt £6,000,000, and land £20,000,000, while the rest comes from customs, excise, and stamp duties. You observe that opium pays a fifth of the entire revenue, and it is the struggle for this fifth of the revenue that has involved England in disgraceful ware. The land tax of £20,000,000 is a heavy burden on the population, and the salt tax falls on the poorer classes, to whom that article is a greater necessity than to the rich.
COOLIES GOING TO THE POPPY-FIELDS.
"We will drop the political bearings of opium, and look at the way the drug is made. The plants grow broadcast in the fields, and the laborers thin them out just as cotton-plants are thinned in America. When they are of the proper age the capsule or bulb is gashed with a knife having several parallel blades; this work must be done very skilfully, so as to prevent the knife going through the skin of the capsule, which would cause the total loss of the juice. The cutting is done in the afternoon; the next morning the juice that has exuded is scraped off with an iron spoon and collected into an earthen jar, and the operation is repeated five or six times in succession at intervals of two or three days.
SHOP OF AN OPIUM MERCHANT.
"The juice when collected is like thick cream; a dark liquid called pasewa is drained from it and carefully kept, while the more solid mass settles to the bottom of the jar, and is slowly dried in the shade. When it has reached the consistency of freshly-kneaded dough it is formed into balls, and thickly covered on the outside with a mass composed of pasewa and the leaves and stalks of the poppy plant, which have been dried and pounded to powder. These balls or cakes are about six inches in diameter, and weigh a little less than five pounds; they are dried in the sun, and afterward in the shade, till the outside is like a thick crust of bread, when they are packed in the chests, and are ready for market."
COOLIES COOKING.
Soon after daylight our friends looked out on the landscape through which the train was moving. They saw a flat country, with villages of mud-huts scattered here and there, and with broad fields, where men were at work clearing the ground for the next season's crop. The Doctor said they were in the midst of the opium country, and the fields around them would be waving with poppies a few months later. In some places the villages were close to the track of the railway, and as it was near the hour of breakfast a good many of the natives were engaged in cooking their morning meal. The apparatus they used was exceedingly simple, as it comprised an earthen pot, in which a tiny fire was kindled, and a shallow pan for steaming the rice, which is the universal article of food. The low price of labor in India can be readily understood when we bear in mind the simple process of cooking, and the monotony of the bill of fare. From the beginning to the end of the year the only food of the native is boiled or steamed rice, and it is a remarkable fact that he never wearies of it.
A little after seven o'clock the train stopped at Mokameh station, and the conductor or guard came to tell the strangers that they would find breakfast there if they wished it, and could have a more substantial meal at Dinapoor, three hours farther on. Accordingly they took their chota hazree at Mokameh, "just to hold themselves together," as the Doctor expressed it, and when they reached Dinapoor they had good appetites, that quickened their steps to the table.
SCENE ON THE RIVER.
Occasionally the course of the railway took them near the Ganges, and at some of the points where they reached it the river was full of animation. Boats were moving on the water or tied up to the banks, and in the latter case the boatmen were gathered in picturesque groups along the shore. Some surrounded the cooking-pots, and others were assembled in front of the little shops where rice for their use was retailed. All were lightly dressed, and it was evident to the boys that the outlay of a Ganges boatman for clothing was not very heavy.
BOATMEN ASHORE.
The boats were of a pattern different from any the boys had yet seen. They were sharp at the ends, rising out of the water at an angle of forty-five degrees, and the most of them had the bow and stern exactly alike. A house of woven palm-leaves and with a thatched roof was built over the centre of each boat, partly for protection to the cargo and partly as a sleeping-place for the crew in bad weather. The sails were of coarse cloth or matting, and when a boat was in motion the ends of the cords that controlled the position of the sail were held by a man who sat near the steersman. Some of the boats had railings around the roof, to keep the men from falling overboard, while others were without that protection. It is dangerous to fall into the river, as the crocodiles are numerous, and have a fondness for breakfasting on a slightly-dressed Hindoo.
COOKING BREAKFAST.
As they passed the town of Arrah the Doctor called the attention of the boys to a wonderful defence that was made by a few Europeans and fifty Sikh soldiers during the Mutiny of 1857. As the rebels advanced, the party, numbering less than sixty, took refuge in a storehouse, and for a week they successfully defended themselves against more than 3000 sepoys, who were armed with muskets and two small cannon. A steady fire was kept up night and day, and it is a remarkable fact that not a man of the defending party was killed, and only one seriously wounded. At the end of the week the rebels were driven away by a column of troops from Calcutta. Near this town the river has changed its course; it formerly flowed in front of Arrah, but is now twelve miles away from it.
While they were riding along in the train the boys proposed, with the approval of Doctor Bronson, to write a history of India. "We will not make a long one," said Frank, "but enough to let those who read our letters know something about the country and what it has been."
"Yes," responded Fred, "and we'll divide the work, as we did in the case of Marco Polo and of Cochin-China."
"An excellent plan," the Doctor suggested: "one of you may tell about India under its native rulers, and the other can write of the conquest by England and the sepoy rebellion. You will thus avoid conflicting with each other's accounts."
Then the youths held a consultation, and agreed upon the division of labor. We shall see by-and-by what was the result.
About three o'clock in the afternoon the train halted at a station called Mogul Serai, where our friends were to change carriages for Benares. A branch line seven miles in length runs from Mogul Serai to the bank of the river opposite Benares, so that in less than half an hour from the time of leaving the through train Doctor Bronson and the youths were in front of the Holy City. The East Indian Railway Company constructed its line with as few curves as possible; and instead of bending it in order to serve the principal cities in the valley of the Ganges, it connects them, where necessary, by branches. Thus there is a branch from the main line to Benares, another to Agra, another to Delhi, and another to Moorshedabad. Doctor Bronson was told by one of the officials of the company that the plan had worked to their entire satisfaction, and they were confident it had materially reduced the expenses of management and the running of the trains.
The Doctor had telegraphed to the principal hotel of Benares to have a carriage at the station, and, as soon as the train stopped, the runner of the house sought them out and presented a card from his employer. The baggage was soon arranged, and in a few minutes the boys were on the bank of the Ganges, and looking at the curious line of temples and bathing-steps that form the water-front of Benares.