Clearing the Sumatra coast, we stretched across to the Bay of Bengal, toward Ceylon, overhauling a number of neutral ships by the way. Among others, we boarded a large English ship, which had a novel lot of passengers on board. She was from Singapore, bound for Jiddah on the Red Sea, and was filled with the faithful followers of Mohammed, on a pilgrimage to Mecca—Jiddah being the nearest seaport to that renowned shrine. My boarding-officer was greeted with great cordiality by these devotees, who exchanged salaams with him, in the most reverential manner, and entered into conversation with him. They wanted to know, they said, about those black giants we had on board the Alabama, and whether we fed them on live Yankees, as they had heard. The boarding-officer, who was a bit of a wag, told them that we had made the experiment, but that the Yankee skippers were so lean and tough, that the giants refused to eat them. Whereupon there was a general grunt, and as near an approach to a smile as a Mohammedan ever makes. They then said that they “had heard that we were in favor of a plurality of wives.” They had heard of Brigham Young and Salt Lake. The officer said, “Yes, we had a few; three or four dozen a piece.” They now insisted upon his smoking with them, and plied him with other questions, to which they received equally satisfactory answers; and when he got up to depart, they crowded around him at the gangway, and salaamed him over the side, more reverentially than ever. I have no doubt that when these passengers arrived at Mecca, and discussed learnedly the American war, half the pilgrims at that revered shrine became good Confederates.
Having doubled the island of Ceylon, and hauled up on the coast of Malabar, we captured on the 14th of January, the Emma Jane, of Bath, Maine, from Bombay, bound to Amherst. Having removed from her such articles of provisions as we required, and transferred her crew to the Alabama, we burned her. She was in ballast, seeking a cargo, and there was, therefore, no claim of neutral property. The master had his wife on board. Being not a great distance from the land, we ran in for the purpose of discharging our prisoners; and descried the Ghaut mountains the next day. Coasting along a short distance to the eastward, we made the small Hindoo-Portuguese town of Anjenga, where we came to anchor at about four P. M. The town lies on the open coast, having a roadstead, but no harbor. We ran in and anchored without a pilot. We were soon surrounded by native boats—large canoes capable of carrying considerable burdens—filled with Portuguese and Hindoos, and a mixture of both. Though the dominion of Portugal, on the Malabar coast, has long since departed, there are many mementos of that once enterprising people still to be found. Her churches and fortifications are still standing, the blood of her people is still left—in most cases mixed—and her language, somewhat corrupted, is still spoken. There was no Englishman at Anjenga—the resident magistrate being a Portuguese. He sent his son off to visit us, and make arrangements for landing our prisoners. Later in the afternoon, I sent a lieutenant to call on him. The boat being delayed until some time in the night, and a firing of musketry being heard, I feared that my lieutenant had gotten into some difficulty with the natives, and dispatched Kell, with an armed boat to his assistance. It proved to be a false alarm. It was a feast day, the magistrate had gone to church,—which caused the delay of the officer—and the firing was a feu de joie.
The next morning we sent the prisoners on shore. They were to proceed by inland navigation—parallel with the coast, through a series of lagoons and canals—to Cochin, a sea-port town about sixty miles distant, where they would find Englishmen and English shipping. I was to provision them, and the Resident Magistrate would send them forward free of expense. The prisoners landed in presence of half the town, who had flocked down to the beach to see the sight. As our boats approached the shore, on which there was quite a surf breaking, a number of native boats came out to receive and land the prisoners. These boats were managed with great dexterity, and passed in and out through the roaring surf, without the least accident. This matter of business accomplished, the natives came off to visit us, in considerable numbers, both men and women. They were a fine, well-formed, rather athletic people, nearly as black as the negro, but with straight hair and prominent features. Very few of them wore any other dress than a cloth about the loins. They were sprightly and chatty, and ran about the decks as pleased as children, inspecting the guns, and other novelties. Some of the young women had very regular and pleasing features. The best description I can give of them is to request the reader to imagine some belle of his acquaintance to be divested of those garments which would be useless to her in Anjenga—latitude 8°—and instead of charming him with the lily and the rose, to be shining in lustrous jet.
Having received on board some fresh provisions for the crew, and gotten rid of our lady and gentlemen visitors, we got under way and stood out to sea, and were still in sight of the Ghaut Mountains when the sun went down. These mountains will be lost to our view to-morrow; but before they disappear, I have a word to say concerning them, and the fertile country of Hindostan, in which they are situated; for nature elaborates here one of her most beautiful and useful of meteorological problems. British India is the most formidable competitor of the Confederate States for the production of cotton, for the supply of the spindles and looms of the world. The problem to which I wish to call the reader’s attention may be stated thus:—The Great Deserts of Central Africa produce the cotton crop of Hindostan. I have before had frequent occasion to speak of the monsoons of the East—those periodical winds that blow for one half of the year from one point of the compass, and then change, and blow the other half of the year from the opposite point. It is these monsoons that work out the problem we have in hand; and it is the Great Deserts alluded to that produce the monsoons.
On the succeeding page will be found a diagram, which will assist us in the conception of this beautiful operation of nature. It consists of an outline sketch of so much of Asia and the Indian Ocean as are material to our purpose. The Great Deserts, the Himalayas and the Ghauts, are marked on the sketch. Let the dotted line at the bottom of the sketch represent the equator, and the arrows the direction of the winds. Hindostan being in the northern tropic, the north-east monsoon or trade-wind, represented by the arrow A, would prevail there all the year round, but for the local causes of which I am about to speak. The reader will observe that this wind, coming from a high northern latitude, passes almost entirely over land before it reaches Hindostan. It is, therefore, a dry wind. It is rendered even more dry, by its passage over the Himalaya range of mountains which wring from it what little moisture it may have evaporated from the lakes and rivers over which it has passed. When it reaches the extensive plains between the Himalayas and Ghauts, which are the great cotton region of Hindostan, it has not a drop of water with which to nourish vegetation; and if it were to prevail all the year round, those plains would speedily become parched and waste deserts.
Let us see, now, how this catastrophe is avoided. When the sun is in the southern hemisphere, that is, during the winter season, the north-east monsoon prevails in Hindostan. When he is in the northern hemisphere, the south-west monsoon, which is the rainy monsoon, or crop monsoon, prevails. This change of monsoons is produced as follows: Soon after the sun crosses the equator into the northern hemisphere, he begins to pour down his fierce rays upon Hindostan, and, passing farther and farther to the north, in the latter part of April, or the beginning of May, he is nearly perpendicularly over the Great Deserts marked in the sketch. These deserts are interminable wastes of sand, in which there is not so much as a blade of grass to be found. They absorb heat very rapidly, and in a short time become like so many fiery furnaces. The air above them rarefies and ascends, a comparative vacuum of great extent is formed, and a great change begins now to take place in the atmospheric phenomena. This vacuum being in the rear of the arrow A, or the north-east monsoon blowing over Hindostan, first slackens the force of this wind—drawing it back, as it were. It becomes weaker and weaker, as the furnaces become hotter and hotter. Calms ensue, and after a long struggle, the wind is finally turned back, and the south-west monsoon has set in.
If the reader will cast his eye on the series of arrows, B, C, D, E, and F, he will see how this gradual change is effected. I say gradual, for it is not effected per saltum, but occupies several weeks. The arrow F represents the south-east trade-wind, blowing toward the equator. As this wind nears the equator, it begins to feel the influence of the deserts spoken of. The calm which I have described as beginning at the arrow A, is gradually extended to the equator. As the south-east wind approaches that great circle, it finds nothing to oppose its passage. Pretty soon, it not only finds nothing to oppose its passage, but something to invite it over; for the calm begins now to give place to an indraught toward the Great Deserts. The south-east wind, thus encouraged, changes its course, first to the north, and then to the north-east, and blows stronger and stronger as the season advances, and the heat accumulates over the deserts; until at last the south-east trade-wind of the southern hemisphere has become the south-west monsoon of the northern hemisphere! This monsoon prevails from about the 1st of May to the 1st of November, when the sun has again passed into the southern hemisphere, and withdrawn his heat from the great deserts. The normal condition of things being thus restored, the vanquished north-east trade-wind regains its courage, and, chasing back the south-west monsoon, resumes its sway.
If the reader will again cast his eye upon the sketch, he will see that the south-west winds which are now blowing over Hindostan, instead of being dry winds, must be heavily laden with moisture. They have had a clean sweep from the tropic of Capricorn, with no land intervening between them and the coast of Hindostan. They have followed the sun in his course, and under the influence of his perpendicular rays have lapped up the waters like a thirsty wolf. The evaporation in these seas is enormous. It has been stated, on the authority of the Secretary of the Geographical Society of Bombay, that it has been found in the Bay of Bengal to exceed an inch daily. From having too little water during the winter months in Hindostan, we are now, in the summer months, in danger of having too much. The young cotton crop will be drowned out. What is to prevent it? Here we have another beautiful provision at hand. The reader has observed the Ghaut Mountains stretching along parallel with the west coast of Hindostan. These mountains protect the plains from inundation. They have, therefore, equally important functions to perform with the deserts. The south-west monsoon blows square across these mountains. As the heavily laden wind begins to ascend the first slopes, it commences to deposit its moisture. Incessant rains set in, and immense quantities of water fall before the winds have passed the mountains. The precipitation has been known to be as great as twelve or thirteen inches in a single day! The winds, thus deprived of their excess of water are now in a proper condition to fertilize, without drowning the immense plains that lie between the Ghauts and the Himalayas—which, as before remarked, is the cotton region of India. It is thus that the Great Deserts of Central Asia produce the cotton crop of Hindostan. To the ignorant Tartar who ventures across the margins of these deserts, all seems dreary, desolate, and death-like, and he is at a loss to conceive for what purpose they were created. Clothe these deserts with verdure, and intersperse them with rivers and mountains, and forthwith the fertile plains of Hindostan would become a great desert, and its two hundred millions of inhabitants perish.