A voyage to India is a prolonged pleasure excursion. Day after day your ship steams through unruffled seas and under unclouded skies. The mercury ranges from 75° to 85°. Thick canvas stretched over the deck protects us from the sun’s fierce rays, and in these shortest days his course is quickly run. July, August, and September are the months when the Red Sea, which is like a chimney between two deserts, becomes almost intolerable. Late in the afternoon of our fourth day out, we pass certain islands which rear their sharp, barren tusks above the waters, and the sun sinks behind verdureless mountains some two thousand feet high. At an early hour the next morning we pass the Straits of Babel Mandeb, and reach Aden at eleven o’clock. This Gibraltar of the Arabian Seas is owned by the English, and, in the extinct crater of a volcano, has sprung up a flourishing town of thirty thousand inhabitants. Rain comes here only once in three years, when it descends copiously during the greater part of September. This precious downfall is caught in wells excavated out of the solid rock; and this, together with what is manufactured from sea water, supplies the inhabitants during the dry season at the rate of six shillings for one hundred gallons.
As our steamer stopped in the roadstead off Aden we discerned small boats coming toward us, and numerous black heads bobbing up and down in the clear, green waters. These boats contained African boys, of the Somali tribe, from eight to fifteen years of age, who, perfectly naked, except a strip of cloth about the loins, climbed up like squirrels on our ship, shouting continually, in good English, “Have a dive, sir? have a dive? have a dive?” As soon as a bit of silver was thrown into the water half-a-dozen of them would plunge for it and, after a moment’s disappearance of the black heads, up they would come again, one of them having in his mouth the coveted coin. The water seemed to be as natural an element to these boys as though they were the descendants of Undine. When neither diving nor swimming they would tread the aqueous fluid in such a way as almost to sit on the waves. One poor little fellow had had one leg bitten off by a shark, close up to the thigh, but he hopped about as merrily as any of them and performed as marvelous aquatic feats. During the five hours we remained in port our ship’s deck was filled with traders, who had brought for sale white and gray ostrich feathers, pieces of amber with imprisoned insects, photographs of Aden, grass cloth from Madagascar, and Turkish embroideries. They began by asking most exorbitant prices, and when you offered about half what they asked, such sad, reproachful glances as they cast upon you! Eventually they would accept fair terms rather than lose the trade. Throughout India, Europeans, in dealing with natives, have found by long experience that the real worth of their merchandise is about one-third of the asking price. It was interesting to see the various nationalities as they gathered on our ship’s deck: there were Parsee and Mohammedan merchants from Bombay, Jewish traders with their close-shaven heads and long cork-screw curls hanging in front of their ears, and the merry Somali boys, with their woolly heads and gleaming white teeth, and bronze figures so slightly covered.
After leaving Aden we turned from the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean, and for six days our course was due east. At sunrise on the seventh morning the coast of India was visible, and at nine o’clock our ship dropped anchor in the harbor of Bombay. “Fair haven” is the meaning of Bombay, and, built on an island, or chain of islands, it encloses a splendid harbor of forty square miles. To the north and east are numerous islands, and on the mainland there are hills from one thousand to two thousand feet high, while the handsome government buildings are seen on the west, prominent among them being the lofty and well-proportioned tower of the University.
The drive to our hotel, although it was two miles distant, seemed but a step, such were the strange sights on which we looked with wide-eyed amazement. Here were men wearing all their clothes on their heads, immense turbans of white or red cotton, and a loin cloth, while all the rest of the body was innocent of covering. On their foreheads were lines of yellow and red paint, which indicated their religious sect, while the single dot of paint between the eyebrows proclaimed the fact that the man had been to the temple and received purification for the day. Children, as naked as the cherubs in Italian art, wore, instead of the cherubic wings, silver bands about the ankles, and women, with scanty drapery, were adorned with bracelets; necklaces, and the hideous nose rings. The Parsees in their white garments and towering hats made a pleasant contrast with the scantily-clothed natives, while the yellow-turbaned Sepoy in policeman’s uniform, and the European, with his topee hat and inevitable white umbrella, made still another variety. It is possible to visit India and come away without seeing anything more of native life than can be observed in the streets. English life in the presidential cities is precisely the same as in London or Edinburgh, but when it was understood that the Chautauquans desired chiefly to study the manners and customs of the people of the land, ample opportunities offered to visit government and mission schools, native Christian churches, and those desolate apartments called zenanas, where, after marriage, Hindu and Mohammedan ladies are immured.
An afternoon’s excursion to the Elephanta Caves gives us an idea of the rock temples of the Hindus. These famous caves are on an island in Bombay harbor and are all hollowed by laborious excavation out of trap rock. The largest one is about one hundred and thirty feet deep and equally wide, and rests on huge pillars twenty feet high. Bas-reliefs, staring passively from the rocky walls, represent Siva in various forms, with his wife, Parvati. Facing the entrance of the temple is a colossal trimurti, representing the Hindu trinity, Brahma, the creator, in the center, Vishnu, the preserver, on the left, Siva, the destroyer, on the right. Glimpses of the outer world, with its tropical luxuriance of vegetation, bathed in the ruddy light of the sinking sun, made a most striking contrast to the mysteriousness and gloom of this heathen temple, to which, in the days when worship was celebrated there, the costliest offerings were brought.
Horrible as the Hindu custom of cremation is to our ideas, the Parsee fashion of leaving the dead to be devoured by vultures, is a thousand times more repulsive. The Parsees are descendants of the ancient Persians, who sought refuge in India from religious persecution some thousand years ago. They are not only fire-worshipers, but they desire to maintain the purity of all the elements. Their “towers of silence” are circular white stone structures, perfectly plain outside, but the ghastly thing about them is the fringe of vultures sitting around the edge with their heads pointing inward. The bodies of the dead are placed, quite naked, in grooves within the enclosure; hundreds of vultures swoop down from the neighboring trees whenever a body is thus exposed, and in an incredibly short time the satiated birds move away with slow, heavy flight, having left nothing behind but a skeleton! After the skeleton has become perfectly dry in the sun and wind, the carriers of the dead, a separate and peculiar class who are not permitted to mix in social intercourse with other Parsees, gloved and with tongs remove the bones from the grooves and cast them into a central well, where rich and poor must literally meet in death.
Eight days in Bombay and we are off for Poona. The first-class railway carriages in India are wider and longer than those in England, with a small bath room attached, and are so arranged as to be easily converted into comfortable sleeping-coaches, but you are expected to furnish your own bedding. Poona, the capital of the Mahrattis, signifies “the holy city,” and is the stronghold of Brahminism. It is situated in a wide-stretching, treeless plain, surrounded with hills. Here are the government English schools, the Sanscrit College and the military headquarters for Western India. A quiet Sunday here in a delightful Scotch manse, twenty-four hours in Ahmednagar, where we are received most hospitably by Americans of the Mahratti mission, and on we go to Agra, to which point the Taj Mahal is drawing us like a magnet.
Approaching Agra in the freshness of the morning, an exclamation of delighted surprise from one of the quartette drew the rest of us to the window, and there, about a mile distant across a level country, rose that miracle of loveliness in white marble, the Taj Mahal. We saw it reflected in the Jumna as we crossed the railway bridge, two or three graceful palm trees intervening, and then the grim walls of the extensive fort became visible as we glided into the city. The Taj was built less than two hundred and fifty years ago by the Mogul emperor, Shah Jehan, as a tomb for his favorite wife, Moomtaj a Mahal. It is thought that he purposed rearing a similar tomb for himself on the opposite side of the river, and having the two mausoleums connected by a bridge, but this stupendous project was never executed, and Shah Jehan lies by the side of his beloved wife, whose best known name, from her surpassing beauty, was Noor Jehan, the “Light of the World.” The Taj is situated in a quadrangle measuring eighteen hundred by one thousand feet, enclosed with red sandstone walls, turrets at the angles and a gateway on each side. The colossal gateway itself is a grand object, with its lofty arches of red stone, through which one sees as in a frame the avenue of black cypresses leading up to the dazzling monument. Most attractive gardens stretch away on either side, where are walks, seats and umbrageous trees, and one is at liberty to wander over the soft turf and examine the roses which grow here, under the skilful care of an English florist, with unsurpassable prodigality of bloom and fragrance. The Taj, toward which all this loveliness is but the outer court yard, stands on a superb terrace of white marble 313 feet square, and at each angle rises a slender minaret. From the center of the building, which is an irregular octagon, springs the marble dome, slightly bulbous in shape, 70 feet in diameter, and rising to a height of 120 feet. The dome is surmounted by a gilt crescent 260 feet from the ground level. At each of the four corners is a light marble cupola. Around all the arches of the portals and the windows, around the cornice and the domes, on the walls and in the passages are inlaid chapters of the Koran, the graceful, flowing Arabic characters being formed of black marble. The real tombs of Shah Jehan and his wife are in a spacious vaulted chamber immediately below the one containing the sarcophagi, and this is reached by a sloping passage. Everything is exquisitely finished here, and all the materials are genuine, but the elaborateness of detail is in the grand hall above, which is a lofty rotunda lighted both from above and below by screens of marble perforated to a depth of two inches in most elegant lace-like patterns. Around this chamber is a wainscoting of sculptured tablets representing in bas-relief flowers, special prominence being given to the lotus and the lily. The octagonal marble screen, six feet high, which surrounds the sarcophagi is open tracery of most intricate design. The sarcophagi themselves are of the purest marble, inlaid with a mosaic, resembling the Florentine, in vines and flowers. Thirty bits of cornelian form the petals of a single flower, and the other stones most used in this rich ornamentation, which is lavishly employed over the exterior as well as the interior of the building, are bloodstone, agate, lapis-lazuli, turquoise, coral, chalcedony, amethyst, and other stones which have no name in our language. The dome contains an echo more remarkable than that of the Baptistery at Pisa, and even to ordinary conversation it sends down a shower of musical sounds like sweet bells jangled. During the five hours we spent here a constant crowd of natives had been coming and going. Toward sunset the Europeans began to assemble. We looked down on the gay scene from the great arch of the gateway. Green parrots with harsh scream darted in and out of the leafy branches; the familiar gray squirrel ran noiselessly up and down the tree trunks; the scent of innumerable blossoms filled the air; the Taj reflected the golden glory of the sunset, and after the sun had gone its color changed to a light blue, and as the brief twilight faded and the moon came out it looked like a pearl. The chattering crowd left one by one, until we were comparatively alone. We walked around the mausoleum and stepped inside the arch of one of the mosques. A flock of frightened doves flew out with whirring wings. Symmetry, purity, and perfection, such as are rarely seen in man’s work in all this round world were before us. Directly above the gilt crescent of the dome hung the full moon, over whose face light clouds were passing. As we watched the sky and the movement of the clouds, the dome itself seemed to float like an airy bubble.
In greatest contrast to this magnificent mausoleum is the simple sodded grave of that faithful daughter of Shah Jehan, who shared her father’s captivity, and who desired this inscription to be placed on her stone: “Let no rich canopy cover my grave. This grass is the best covering for the last resting-place of the poor in spirit.” This we turned aside to see as we drove the eleven miles out of Delhi to visit the Kutab Minar, which is perhaps, after the Taj, the most celebrated piece of architecture in India. It is a fluted column, 240 feet high, and supposed to be, not a Mohammedan, but a Hindu building, dating from the twelfth century. It is built in a series of five stories. The first three are of fine red sandstone, on which are horizontal bands of passages from the Koran carved in boldest relief, and these are harmonious in architecture, but the last two stories are of white marble, with a plain surface, and seem like a patch. The great mosque of Delhi is called the Jumma Musjid, or Friday Mosque. The arrangement is the same in all Mohammedan temples large and small. A quadrangle open to the sky, a fountain flowing into a square, shallow tank, in the center, for the ablutions of the faithful, a colonnade on three sides with open arches, and on the west, facing Mecca, stands a building surmounted with domes, open in front, and destitute of everything approaching a symbol. Pure monotheism is here—the worship of the invisible deity. In the midst of this revolting polytheism of the Hindus one hears with no little satisfaction the muezzin’s call from the minaret, “God is great. God is one. There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.”
One may travel day after day in India without meeting Europeans, but crowds of natives fill the third and fourth-class carriages, in which the rates are very low. India is in advance of America in one respect. On every train there is always one carriage provided for ladies who are traveling alone, called the “Ladies’ Reserved,” as is the custom in England and on the Continent. Here only, where we pride ourselves on our railway conveniences, do we have the odious fashion of herding together promiscuously in sleeping coaches, which may be endurable if one has an escort, but is most disagreeable when a lady is unattended.