Elephanta is also unique in the production of a species of beetle remarkable for variety of colors and ornamentation of body. We had seen numerous specimens of this insect in southern India and at Singapore, some of which were an inch long, but these of Elephanta were not remarkable for size. They were hardly larger than one's little finger nail, but of such brilliancy of color, red, blue, yellow, and pink, as to cause them to resemble precious stones rather than insects. Some were a complete representative of the opal, with all its radiating fire. Some were spotted like butterflies, others like the expanded tail of the peacock, and again some had half circles of alternate colors like the eyes in a pearl oyster. We were told that only upon this island were such specimens to be found. Children gathered them, and filled little wooden boxes with various specimens, which they sold for a trifle. The harbor of Bombay is a spacious and excellent one. The old fortifications have gone mostly to decay, but two floating monitors, the Abyssinia and the Magdala, now form the principal defense of the port. The city, unlike most commercial ports, is not situated on a river, but is one of a cluster of islands connected with the main-land by causeways and railroad viaducts, turning it into a peninsula.
The fish-market is remarkable here for the variety and excellence of the finny tribe offered for sale. The fish-market of Havana has ever been famous for the size, color, and shapes of the specimens it shows upon its broad marble tables, but Bombay rivals the Cuban capital in this respect. Fish forms a large portion of the substantial sustenance of the common people. The fish-women, those who sell the article in the market, are curious, swarthy creatures, covered with bangles on wrists, ankles, arms, ears, and noses. An East Indian woman seems to find vast satisfaction in this style of disfigurement. To see and to eat prawns in their perfection, three or four inches long, one must visit Bombay, where they create handsome bits of scarlet color piled up amid the silver and gold scaled fishes upon the white marble. The fruit-market is equally remarkable for variety and lusciousness. Mandarins, oranges, lemons, mangoes, grapes, bananas, cocoanuts, rose-apples, and vegetables too numerous to mention, load the tempting counters. One of the dealers, a young woman who would have been pretty if not so bedecked, had perforated each side of her nostrils and wore in the holes small gilt buttons,—this in addition to bangles innumerable, and ornaments dragging her ears quite out of shape. Her swarthy brown limbs were covered to above the calf with rings of silver and gilt, and her arms were similarly decked. Part of her bosom was tattooed with blue and red ink. This woman pressed a mango upon us at a trifling cost, but not having been educated up to liking this fruit, it was bestowed upon the first child we met. The Indian mango tastes like turpentine and musk mixed, only more so.
The last scene witnessed at Bombay, as we were waiting on the pier for the steam-launch which was to take us on board the P. and O. steamship Kashgar, was the performance of some street jugglers. We had seen many such exhibitions at Delhi, Agra, Madras, and Benares, but these fellows seemed to be more expert in their tricks, and yet not superior or even equal to many prestidigitateurs whom we have seen in America. The doings of these Indian jugglers are more curious in the stories of travelers than when witnessed upon the spot. The so-often-described trick of making a dwarf mango-tree grow up from the seed before one's eyes to a condition of fruit-bearing, in an incredibly short period of time, is very common with them, but is really the merest sleight-of-hand affair, by no means the best of their performances. A Signor Blitz or Hermann would put the most expert of these Indian jugglers to shame in his own art. The performers on this occasion were particularly expert in swallowing knife blades, and thrusting swords down their throats; but it was difficult to get up much enthusiasm among the idle crowd that gathered upon the pier to watch them, and the few pennies which the performers realized could hardly be remunerative.
We prepared for our departure from India with feelings of regret at not being able longer to study its visible history, and to travel longer within its borders. Nearly a month and a half had passed since we landed in the country of the Hindoo and the Mohammedan, the land of palms and palaces, of pagodas and temples. Its remarkable scenes and monuments will never be forgotten, and with Japan will ever share our warmest interest. There are some memories which, like wine, grow mellow and sweet by time, no distance being able to obliterate them, nor any after-experience to lessen their charm. India has a record running back through thousands of years and remotest dynasties, captivating the fancy with numberless ruins, which, while at attesting the splendor of their prime, form also the only record of their history. The mosaic character of its population, the peculiarities of its animal kingdom, the luxuriance of its vegetation, the dazzling beauty of its birds and flowers, all crowd upon the memory in charming kaleidoscopic combinations. There can be no doubt of the early grandeur and high civilization of India. To the intellectual eminence of her people we owe the germs of science, philosophy, law, and astronomy. Her most perfect of all tongues, the Sanskrit, has been the parent of nearly all others; and now that her lustre has faded away, and her children fallen into a condition of sloth and superstition, still let us do her historic justice; nor should we neglect to heed the lesson she so clearly presents, namely, that nations, like human beings, are subject to the unvarying laws of mutability.
We embarked from Bombay, February 9th, on board the P. and O. steamship Kashgar for Suez, a voyage of three thousand miles across the Sea of Arabia and the Indian Ocean, through the Straits of Babelmandeb and the entire length of the Red Sea. The most southerly point of the voyage took us within fourteen degrees of the equator, and consequently into an extremely warm temperature. As the ship's cabin proved to be almost insupportable on account of the heat, we passed a large portion of the nights, as well as the days, upon deck, making acquaintance with the stars, looking down from their serene and silent spaces, the new moon, and the Southern Cross, all of which were wonderfully bright in the clear, dry atmosphere. As we approach the equatorial region one cannot but admire the increasing and wondrous beauty of the southern skies, where new and striking constellations greet the observer. The Southern Cross, above all other groupings, interests the beholder, and he ceases to wonder at the reverence with which the inhabitants of the low latitudes regard it. As an accurate measurer of time, it is also valued by the mariner in the southern hemisphere, who is nightly called to watch on deck, and who thus becomes familiar with the glowing orbs revealed by the surrounding darkness. As a Christian emblem all southern nations bow before this constellation which is denied to northern eyes.
Bishop F——, of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Massachusetts, was a passenger on board the Kashgar, bound to Egypt, and on Sunday, February 11th, after the captain had read the usual services, he was invited to address the passengers; this he did in an eloquent and impressive discourse. It was a calm, beautiful Sabbath, a sweet tranquillity enshrouding everything. The ship glided over the gently throbbing breast of the Arabian Sea with scarcely perceptible motion; and when night came, the stillness yet unbroken, save by the pulsation of the great motive power hidden in the dark hull of the Kashgar, the bishop delivered a lecture on astronomy. He stood on the quarter-deck, bare-headed, his snow-white hair crowning a brow radiant with intellect, while the attentive passengers were seated around, and over his head glowed the wondrous orbs of which he discoursed. Naturally eloquent, the speaker seemed inspired by the peculiar surroundings, as he pointed out and dilated upon the glorious constellations and planets blazing in the blue vault above us. He explained the immensity of these individual worlds, the harmonious system which science shows to exist in their several spheres, the almost incalculable distance between them, as related to each other and as it regarded this earth. The sun, the moon, and the rotation of the globe, all were learnedly expatiated upon, and yet in language so eloquent and simple as to inform the least intelligent of his listeners. Finally, in his peroration, in touchingly beautiful language, he ascribed the power, the glory, and the harmony of all to that Almighty Being who is the Parent of our race.
The good ship held steadily on her southwest course, day after day, lightly fanned by the northeast monsoon towards the mouth of the Red Sea. Our time was passed in reading aloud to each other, and in rehearsing the experience of the last six months. We were very dreamy, very idle, but it was sacred idleness, full of pleasant thoughts, and half-waking visions induced by tropical languor, full of gratitude for life and being amid such tranquillity, and beneath skies so glowing with beauty and loveliness. At the end of the sixth day we cast anchor at the island, or rather peninsula, of Aden, a rocky, isolated spot held by English troops, to command the entrance to the Red Sea,—very properly called the Gibraltar of the Indian Ocean. Like that famous promontory it was originally little more than a barren rock,—pumice-stone and lava,—which has been improved into a picturesque and habitable place, bristling with one hundred British cannon of heavy calibre. It is a spot much dreaded by sailors, the straits being half closed by sunken rocks, besides which the shore is considered the most unhealthy yet selected by civilized man as a residence.
The town of Aden lies some distance from the shore where the landing is made, in the very centre of an extinct volcano, the sides of which have fallen in and form its foundation, affording, as may reasonably be supposed, an opportunity for yet another calamity like that which so lately visited Ischia, and which swallowed up Casamicciola. As we passed in from the open sea to the harbor of Aden, the tall masts of a steamship, wrecked here very lately, were still visible above the long, heavy swell of the ocean. The name of these straits, Babelmandeb, given to them by the Arabs, signifies the "Gate of Tears," because of the number of vessels which have been wrecked in an attempt to pass through them; and the title is no less applicable to our time than when they were first named. There is a saying among seamen, that for six months of the year no vessel under canvas can enter the Red Sea, and, for the other six months, no sailing vessel can get out. This refers to the regularity with which the winds blow here, for six months together. Aden lies within the rainless zone, so that its inhabitants see no rain-fall sometimes for two or three years together, depending for their water on wells, tanks, and condensers. The remains of an ancient and magnificent system of reservoirs, antedating the Christian era, and hewn out of the solid rock, have been discovered, whereby the early inhabitants were accustomed to lay in a supply of the aqueous fluid when it did rain, which would last them for a long period of months. Following out the original idea, these stone reservoirs have been thoroughly repaired, and the present inhabitants now lay up water in large quantities when the welcome rain visits them.
As we lay at anchor just off the shore at Aden, the ship was surrounded by a score of small boats, dugout canoes, in which were boys as black as Nubians, with shining white teeth and curly heads, watching us with bright, expressive eyes. Such heads of hair we never chanced to meet with before. Evidently dyed red by some means, the hair is twisted into vertical curls of oddest appearance. The little fellows, each in his own canoe, varied in age from ten to fifteen years. By eloquent gestures and the use of a few English words, they begged the passengers on board the Kashgar to throw small coin into the sea, for which they would dive in water that was at least seven fathoms deep, that is, say forty feet. The instant a piece of money was thrown, every canoe was emptied, and twenty human beings disappeared from sight like a flash. Down, down go the divers to the very bottom, and there struggle together for the trifle, some one of the throng being sure to rise to the surface with the coin displayed between his teeth. They struggle, wrestle, and fight beneath the surface, and when the water is clear can be seen, like the amphibious creatures which these shore-born tribes really are; nothing but otters and seals could be keener sighted or more expert in the water.
Quite a number of natives came on board the ship with curiosities to sell, such as choice shells, toys, leopard skins, and ostrich feathers. There are plenty of these birds running wild but a little way inland, and some are kept in domestic confinement on account of the feathers which they yield; but the tame birds do not develop such fine plumage as do the wild ones. The ladies purchased choice specimens of these elegant ornaments at prices ridiculously low compared with the charge for such in Europe or America. The men who sold these feathers differed from the other natives, and were evidently Syrian Jews, queer looking fellows, small in stature, dark as Arabs, and with their hair dressed in cork-screw curls. These small traders commenced by demanding guineas for their feathers, and ended by taking shillings. Notwithstanding the barren aspect of the surrounding country, Aden manages to do something in the way of exports. Coffee is produced, not far inland, as well as honey, wax, and gums, with some spices, which are shipped to Europe.