Calcutta, the great commercial port of northern India and the former capital of the Empire, is the most beautiful Oriental city, not even excepting Hongkong. Its main claim to this distinction is the possession of the famous Maidan or Esplanade, which runs along the Hoogly river for nearly two miles and which far surpasses the Luneta of Manila in picturesqueness. The Maidan is three-quarters of a mile wide at its beginning and it broadens out to one and one-quarter miles in width at its lower end. Government House, the residence of the Viceroy, is opposite the northern end of the Maidan, while at the southern end is Belvedere, the headquarters of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. With historic Fort William on one side and most of the large hotels, the big clubs and the Imperial Museum on the other, the Maidan is really the center of all civic life. At the southeast end is the race course; not far away is the fine cathedral. Near by are the beautiful Eden Gardens (the gift of the sisters of the great Lord Auckland), which are noteworthy for the Burmese pagoda, transported from Prome and set up here on the water's edge. It is seldom that a city is laid out on such magnificent lines as is Calcutta. It reminds one of Washington in its picturesque boulevards and avenues, all finely shaded with noble mango trees. And it also has the distinction of green turf even in the heat of summer, owing to the heavy dews that refresh the grass like showers.
Calcutta is associated in the minds of most readers with the infamous Black Hole into which one hundred and forty-six wretched white people were crowded on a hot night of June in 1750 and out of which only twenty-three emerged alive on the following morning. The Black Hole was the regimental jail of old Fort William and its site is now marked by a pavement of black marble and a tablet adjoining the fine postoffice building, while across the street is an imposing monument to the memory of the victims, whose names are all enumerated. The hole was twenty-two by fourteen feet, while it was only eighteen feet in height. These prisoners who were flung into this little jail were residents of Calcutta who fell into the hands of the Nawab of Murshedabad. Calcutta is also famous as the birthplace of Thackeray, a bust of whom ornaments the art gallery of the Imperial Museum. Scattered about the Maidan are statues of a dozen men whose deeds have shed luster on English arms or diplomacy.
Calcutta, as the first city of India that I had seen, impressed me very strongly, although the native life has been colored somewhat by contact with British and other Europeans. Here, for the first time, one sees ninety-nine out of one hundred people in the streets wearing turbans. Here also the women mingle freely in the streets, wearing long robes which they wind dexterously about their bodies, leaving the lower legs and the right arm bare. A few cover the face, but the great majority leave it exposed. Many are hideously disfigured by large nose rings, while others have small rings or jewels set in one nostril. Nearly every woman wears bracelets on arms and wrists, heavy anklets and, in many cases, massive gold or silver rings on the big toes. In some cases what look like heavy necklaces are wound several times around the ankles. It is the custom of the lower and middle classes not to put their savings in a bank, but to melt down the coin and make it into bracelets or other ornaments, which are worn by their women. Here in Calcutta also one sees for the first time hundreds of men and women wearing the marks of their caste on their foreheads, either painted in red or marked in white with the ash of cow dung.
Although the main streets of Calcutta are distinctly European, a walk of a few blocks in any direction from the main business section will bring you into the native or the Chinese quarter, where the streets are narrow, the houses low between stories and the shops mere holes in the wall, with only a door for ventilation. In one quarter every store is kept by a Chinese and here a large amount of manufacturing is done. In other quarters natives are carrying on all kinds of manufacture, in the same primitive way that they worked two thousand years ago. The carpenter uses tools that are very much like those in an American boy's box of toy tools; the shoemaker does all the work of turning out a finished shoe from the hide of leather on his wall. Outside these stores in the street the most common beast of burden is a small bullock of the size and color of a Jersey cow; These little animals pull enormous loads, and they are so clever that when they see an electric car approaching they will start on the run and clear the track.
Many of the houses in the native quarter of Calcutta are built of adobe, with earthen tiles, which make them bear a strong resemblance to the adobe dwellings of the Spanish-Californians before the American occupation. In many cases very little straw is used in this adobe, for the walls have frequently crumbled away under the heavy rains of winter. Other houses are built of brick, faced with plaster, which is either painted or whitewashed.
What impresses any visitor is the squalor and the wretchedness of these homes of India's poor. The clothing of a whole family is not worth one American dollar, while about ten cents in our money will feed a family of four. The houses have no furniture, except a bed of the most primitive pattern, made of latticed reeds; the smoke from the cooking fire goes up through the roof or else finds its way out the open door; seldom are there any windows, all the air coming in at the open door; the floor of the house is of dirt and on this squat father and mother and the children, with the family goat. In the small shops work is carried on seven days in the week until nine or ten o'clock at night, with an hour for lunch and siesta at midday. The hopelessness of the lot of the Hindoo (who is bound by rigid caste rules to follow in the footsteps of his father) can never be appreciated until one has seen him here in his native land.
For two hours I watched scores of natives taking a wash at the large, free bathing ghat near the pontoon bridge. On the river front is a restaurant, and back of this steps lead down to a spacious platform on the level of the river. A score of men and boys and one woman were taking a bath in the dirty water, which was thick with mud washed up by passing steamers. A few of these bathers had rented towels from an office on the stairs, but the great majority simply rubbed themselves with their hands and then dried in the sun. All washed their faces in the dirty water and rinsed their mouths with it. The men took off their loin clothes and washed these out, then wrapped them about their bodies and came out dripping water. The lone woman was very fat. She waded into the water and when she came out her thin robe clung to her massive form revealing all its curves. She calmly took a seat on the stairs and proceeded to massage her head.
The most interesting place near Calcutta is the Royal Botanical Gardens, situated on the opposite side of the river and about six miles from town. These gardens were laid out in 1786 and they vie with the botanic gardens at Singapore in the variety of trees and shrubs from all parts of the tropics. Here is the great banyan tree which covers one thousand square feet and is one hundred and forty-two years old. At a height of five and one-half feet from the ground the circumference of the main trunk is fifty-one feet; the height is eighty-five feet, while it has five hundred and seventy aerial roots, which have actually taken root in the ground. The tree at a little distance looks like a small grove.
The Imperial Museum at Calcutta is well worth a couple of hours, for it contains one of the finest collections of antiquities in the Orient. The museum is housed in an enormous building facing the Maidan, which has a frontage of three hundred feet and a depth of two hundred and seventy feet. In the ethnological gallery are arranged figures of all the native races of India with their costumes; agricultural implements, fishing and hunting appliances, models of Indian village life, specimens of ancient and modern weapons and many other exhibits. Another room that will repay study is a gallery containing old steel and wood engravings of the great characters in the mutiny, with busts of Clive, Havelock, Outram and Nicholson, and with a life-size bust of Thackeray.