on either side. At last Calcutta is in sight. Tall factory chimneys and domed public buildings pronounce it a city of size and importance. The last two miles of the journey are made through a flotilla of shipping, a bewildering medley of sailing vessels and steamers, flying the flags of all the maritime nations of the earth—all but the Stars and Stripes of Uncle Sam.
Bombay, on the other side of India, and immediately on the sea, would make a better capital than Calcutta. But the malodorous city of the Hooghly will probably ever be the seat of Britain's rule.
While the names of Warren Hastings and Clive dominate the printed page dealing with modern India, Calcutta fairly throbs with recollections of Job Charnock, the audacious Englishman who raised the red flag of Britain just two hundred and seventeen years ago over a collection of mud hovels and straw huts on the site of what to-day is the capital of the Indian Empire.
Charnock, perhaps the founder of England's rule in the East, was the agent of the old East Indian Company. Having been granted permission by the Mogul rulers to establish a post on the Hooghly convenient for trading purposes, he chose a spot having the advantage of a generous shade tree. The spot and neighborhood now is Calcutta, the chief city of India, with over a million inhabitants. A Hindu village in the vicinity of the place where Charnock established his trading post was called Khali-ghat—these words, corrupted by use, have come to mean "Calcutta." The quaint pioneer obviously had no realization of the part he was playing in empire-making, and Great Britain has never made adequate acknowledgment of the gratitude clearly this man's due. Calcutta residents delight to recount Charnock's exploits, and they take visitors to St. John's churchyard to view the substantial monument beneath which rest his bones. The inscription states that he died January 10, 1693.
A single story proves Charnock's independence of character. He went with his ordinary guard of soldiers to witness the burning of the body of a Hindu grandee, whose wife was reputed more than passing fair. It was known that the rite of the suttee was to be performed—the widow was to sacrifice herself upon the blazing pyre of the deceased, in keeping with Hindu custom. Charnock was so impressed by the young widow's charms that he ordered his soldiers to rescue her and by force take her to his home. They were speedily married, had several children and lived happily for many years. Instead of converting her to Christianity, she made him a proselyte to paganism, and the only shred of Christianity thereafter remarkable in him was the burying of her decently when she was removed by death; but Charnock is said to have observed in true pagan manner each anniversary of her demise, even to making animal sacrifices before the image of the goddess Khali.
GENERAL POST-OFFICE, CALCUTTA
Calcutta has improved greatly since Kipling
wrote of it as the "City of Dreadful Night"; but it is yet a place of striking contrasts, of official splendor and native squalor, of garish palaces abutting in rear allies upon filthy hovels. The good is extremely good—that is for the British official; the bad is worse than awful—and that is for the native.