The Hooghly, Calcutta.
Page 251.
For the first hundred miles the Hooghley is exceedingly ugly, being merely a succession of mud-banks, the deposit of silt and sand left by the river as it struggles in various channels across the flat plain of the delta; but after passing Diamond Harbour, the signal station, where the arrival and departure of ships to and from Calcutta are telegraphed, the scene changes gradually. Isolated palm-trees are seen at intervals along the banks, succeeded by groves and a few mud huts. We pass barges or budgeroes laden with cargo, rowed by four natives, who step backwards and forwards, keeping time together. We observe occasionally a group of pilgrims forming a picturesque encampment on the banks, come down here for the religious ceremony of bathing.
Not seldom is a dead body seen floating down the stream, with vultures sitting on it and picking at the flesh, for notwithstanding all prohibitions, the Hindu still sometimes puts a corpse in the sacred river.
It was interesting passing here the Indus, a ship employed in the transport of Australian horses for the Indian market, and which we had last seen in dock in Sydney Harbour!
I was sitting quietly writing in my cabin in the middle of the afternoon, when I heard a tremendous scuffle overhead, accompanied by a rush to the stern. Immediately afterwards there was that peculiar rushing of water which indicates that the rudder is being put hard-a-port or starboard, and, running out, I saw all the officer and sailors spinning the wheel round as hard as they could. The severe strain had snapped a link in the chain of the steering gear on the bridge, but, fortunately, that at the stern was in order. Intensely anxious was the moment when we waited to see whether she would answer to her helm in time. Slowly the vessel's head came round, and we floated away from the sandbank on to which she was fast drifting. The sandbanks here are quicksands, and vessels which strand are sucked down and heard of no more!
The afternoon sun shone brightly as we drew near to the sea of masts and rigging that lie at anchor along the wharves, which border the Maidan of Calcutta.
All around us is a scene of the greatest animation. The river banks are lined with ships coaling or undergoing repairs, while others lie in mid-stream, with "flats," or broad boats with shallow bottoms, piled up with merchandise discharging cargo on either side.