A steamship is passing us on its way out to sea, while behind us an American vessel is being towed up to dock. Hulks, budgeroes, steam-tugs, and dingies are threading their way amongst this maze of shipping, and a goodly crowd of the latter are hovering or clinging on to our ship by means of rope and hooks, making a dash at us with the latter as we pass.
These budgeroes with their painted prows and covered stern resemble the gondola of Venice, but instead of the funereal black of the latter, they are painted in bright colours, blue and red and yellow, and steered by means of an oar roughly fastened by reeds to the stern. Generally the steersman is represented by a picturesque figure wrapped in a gay counterpane, or swathed in the graceful folds of muslin, thrown loosely over the shoulders. We pass many factories of sugar, jute, and paper, and some pottery works.
Opposite Garden Reach stands the palace of the ex-King of Oude, with its green jalousies and balconies, and its terrace overhanging the water, guarded at either end by a caged lion and tiger. Long before we approached it, we saw flocks of pigeons, white and speckled, whirling in the air. An attendant standing in the tower with a red flag was waving them home, and at the understood signal they were all circling round and setting on the flat roofs of the palace. It was the former residence of Sir Lawrence Peel, but now the palace and the beautiful suburb is abandoned to the eccentricities of the ex-king with his swarm of followers, who lives here on a yearly pension of 120,000l. granted by our Government.
Facing the palace at Seebpore is Bishop's College, now used as a school for engineers, and the Botanical Gardens here border the river. Passing Chandpal Ghât, the landing-place, "where India welcomes" and speeds away her rulers; "where Governors-General, Commanders-in-Chief, Judges of the High Court, Bishops, all entitled to it, receive the royal salute from Fort William on setting foot in the metropolis," we anchored for the night. The harbour-master refused to take the Japan to her moorings till the morning.
Amid great confusion we embarked ourselves and our luggage in one of the frail and leaking dingies. Colliding and being collided with several times, an unhealthy mist rising and enveloping us from the river, darkness overtaking us, we had a very uncomfortable half-hour's row to the landing-stage.
In the darkness of the half gas-lighted streets, the natives muffled up to the eyes in their long white garments, the bullock-carts, the palanquins, the gharries, all looked so strange and foreign, and the noise and bustle of the streets was oppressive to us after the dead stillness of the steamer.
Of course we went to the Great Eastern Hotel. Alas! there is no choice of hotels for travellers, and the company, having the monopoly, do not exert themselves for the comfort of their visitors. The table-d'hôte was bewildering from the extraordinary number of servants in the room, there being from sixty to 100 guests. The "boys," or personal servants, made one row by standing each behind his master's chair, and the hotel servants another whilst handing the dishes, not counting those who were hurrying in all directions. The noise in the Great Eastern is a perpetual torment, the doors being only protected by curtains, voices and footsteps echo through the bare, marble-paved corridors. Khitmutgârs and Chuprassis creep in noiselessly from behind the curtains, and you look up suddenly to find them there, and to wonder how long they have been standing staring at you. Ayahs and tailors come to offer their services, and bric-à-brac vendors are always pushing their way into the sitting-room.
Thursday, January 8th.—A fine spring morning to greet us for our first day in India,—not too warm, for we are fortunate in being here during one of the only three temperate months of the Indian year.
Calcutta used to be known by the name of "the Ditch," but now it is called the "City of Palaces." I should say that the former name well applies to the native quarters and bazaars, which lie in such close juxtaposition to the handsome buildings and are so unusually narrow, crowded, and dirty. The latter speaks truly of that splendid range of buildings around Dalhousie Square, and that block facing the Maidan, formed by the High Court and Government House.