Richard had always such ready, sparkling wit, and it was never offensive nor hurtful. One day, as we were on board a ship, going to a rather uncivilized place, a Catholic Archbishop, and a Bishop with a Catholic party, stepped on board. My husband whispered, "Introduce me." I did so, and they became very friendly, and sat down to chat. The Archbishop was a very clever man, but no match for Richard. My husband began to chaff, and said, "My wife is the Jesuit of the family." "What a capital thing for you!" answered the Archbishop. Presently some apes were jumping about the rigging, so the Archbishop looked up and said playfully, "Well, Captain Burton, there are some of your ancestors." Richard was delighted; he pulled his moustache quietly, looking very amused and a little shy and apologetic, and said with that cool drawl of his, "Well, my lord, I at least have made a little progress, but—what about your lordship, who is descended from the angels?" The Archbishop roared; he was delighted with the retort, and treasures it up as a good story till this day.[1]
At nine at night we reached Vingorla; the coast is very bad and dangerous, and in the monsoon all but impossible. Vessels are often wrecked, so steamers never go near, but put boats off. We disembarked a Sister Marie (fille de la Croix), a young German nun, bound for some desolate spot where they are forming a convent for educating children, nursing the sick, and reclaiming the savage. This young, interesting-looking girl of about twenty had to make her own way up country; these are the true "Soldiers of Christ," and our hearts yearned to her as she calmly and smilingly bid us good-bye, and went over the ship's side.
Arrived opposite Goa, we were cast adrift in the open sea, as is usual, on account of an unbuoyed and doubtful shoal, and we had eight miles to row before we could reach Goa. You may imagine what that means in a storm. The mail agents must do this, monsoon weather as well, once a fortnight all the year through, and the return ships are in the dead of the night, besides living in a fœtid hole, where they get none of the comforts of life, and never see a soul.
The Portuguese manage to make every place look like Lisbon; actually the features of the country grow the same. There is the same abrupt entrance to the sea between mountainous cliffs, up a broad winding river or sea arm, with wooded rising banks, with the same white town perched on its banks, a perfect Santos in Brazil, which is 24º south of the Equator. We rowed a mile and a half of open sea, five miles of bay, and one and a half of winding river, to a little stone pier landing at Panjim (New Goa).
All Portuguese India is only a strip of about seventy miles long, and very narrow, which they would do much better to sell to the British Government; for of all the God-forgotten, deserted holes, a thousand years behind the rest of the creation, I have never seen anything to equal Goa, and I pitied from my heart the charming, kindly, gentle, hospitable people who have to live there. I have lived in sandy deserts, in primeval forests; I have suffered hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fatigue, privation, and danger, and thought it charming; but I hated the sort of life at Goa. It is dead, and there is nothing to reward one; only we were here for a purpose.
There are three Goas, full of history and romance. There is the Inquisition to study, and there is the tomb of St. Francis Xavier.
No. 1 is the old Hindú Goa, now called San Lourenço, about six miles from Panjim (New Goa), upon the winding river, and two miles to the southward of Old Goa, or Goa Velha. It is only marked by a salt plain, and two hills with a church upon each, and a bit upon the plain. It is pretty healthy, and no one knows why it was deserted. Old Goa, or Goa Velha, is that of St. Francis Xavier; it is nine and a half kilometres from Panjim, by a good road along the winding river—a most picturesque locality, full of history, Catholic tradition, and the scene of the infamous Inquisition. It was deserted on account of malaria and fever for New Goa (called Panjim), where we landed, and where the few personages who are obliged to be there vegetate, except with an occasional change to Cazalem, the six cottages on the open beach of the bay corresponding to our Barra at Santos.
In Panjim are the barest necessaries of life; there is no inn, no travellers' bungalow, no tents, and you must sleep in your filthy open boat and have fever. Kind-hearted Samaritans (Mr. and Mrs. Major) gave us their only small spare room and spare single bed. I had, luckily, one of those large straw Pondicherry reclining chairs and a rug, so we took the bed in turns, night about, the other in the chair. It is the worst climate we were ever in, and we know pretty bad ones. The thirst was agonizing. All the drinks were hot (no ice); the more you drank the more you wanted. The depression was fearful, and never a breath of air even at night. The blazing sun poured into our little room all day, and baked it quite red-hot for the night. I used to look upon the people who lived there as miracles—a truly purgatorial preparation for death.