We captured on board the last prize a batch of Bombay newspapers—large “dailies,” edited with ability, and filled with news from all parts of the world. It is the press, more than anything else, that indicates the growth and prosperity of a country. One only needed to look at the long columns of these immense dailies, filled with advertisements, to realize the fact that Bombay was a bee-hive, containing its three hundred thousand inhabitants. We were, indeed, in the midst of a great empire, of which, in the western world, we read, it is true, but of which we have no just conception until we visit it. The British empire in India, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Malacca, is a creation which does honor to our race and language. I had coasted nearly its whole extent, and everywhere I found evidences of contentment, thrift, and prosperity. A constant stream of British shipping was passing to and fro, developing its immense commerce, and pouring its untold millions into the British exchequer. Powerful and swift steamships bring the home mails to three or four prominent points along the coast, as Aden, Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, and from these points other steamers spread it broadcast over the empire. Railroads are pushed in every direction, there being as many as three thousand miles in operation, and the navigation of the coast districts of Hindostan has been carried, by means of a series of lagoons and canals, from Cape Comorin, hundreds of miles to the northward. These railroads and canals have opened up new fields of industry, and have been of especial service in developing that pet idea of England, the production of cotton.
Up to the breaking out of our war, the cultivation of this valuable staple in India was a mere experiment. It is now an assured success. Those great fields lying between the Ghauts and the Himalayas of which we have been speaking, are being brought into connection with the sea-board, by lines of easy and cheap transportation. They have been found equal to our Southern plantations in the production of the article, and labor is a hundred per cent. cheaper, at least, than with us. Here are all the elements of cheap production. Our Yankee brethren have talked a good deal of what they “conquered” in the war, and have been quarrelling ever since over the fruits of their victory. Here is one of their conquests which no one can doubt—the transfer of the cotton supply of the world, from these Southern States to British India. The time is not far distant when Yankee spindles and looms will be spinning and weaving India cotton for the supply of their own people.
The moral conquest of India, by the British people, is even more remarkable and more admirable than its physical conquest. Since their last Indian war, the whole country, from one end of it to the other, has settled down in the most profound peace. Nor is this the peace of despotism, for in comparison with the extent of territory, and the two hundred millions of people to be governed, the number of troops is ridiculously small. The conquest is one of arts and civilization, and not of arms. The railroad, the canal, the ship, the printing press, and above all, a paternal and beneficent government, have worked out the wonderful problem of the submission of teeming millions to the few. It is the conquest of race and of intellect. The docile Hindoo, not devoid of letters himself, has realized the fact that a superior people has come to settle in his country, to still domestic broils, strip former despots of their ill-gotten and much-abused power, and to rule him with humanity and justice. The torch of civilization has shone in dark places, dispelled many prejudices, and brought to light and broken up many hideous practices. Schools and colleges have sprung up everywhere, and the natural taste of the native population for letters has been cultivated. In the very newspapers which we are reviewing are to be found long dissertations and criticisms, by Hindoo scholars, on various matters of morals, science, and literature.
A government whose foundations are thus laid will be durable. In Australia, New Zealand, and other colonies, where the white population, in the course of a few years, will greatly preponderate over the native, mere adolescence will bring about independence. But India will never become adolescent in this sense. She will remain indefinitely a prosperous ward in chancery—the guardian and the ward living amicably together, and each sharing the prosperity of the other.
On the day after leaving the Malabar coast, we spoke a Portuguese bark, from Rio Janeiro bound to Goa, a short distance to the northward of us. This was the only Portuguese we met in these seas, of which they were, at one period of their history, entire masters. Vasco de Gama had made the seas classic by his adventures, and his countrymen, following in his track, had studded the coast with towns, of which Goa was one of the most ancient and important. As between the Hindoo and the Portuguese, the latter would probably long have maintained his ascendency, but there came along that superior race—that white race which has never submitted to any admixture of its blood—of which we have just been speaking, and nature, with her unvarying laws, had done the rest. The Portuguese gave place to the Englishman, as naturally as the African, and afterward the Hindoo, had given place to the Portuguese.
Passing through the chain of islands which extends parallel with the Malabar coast for some distance, we stretched across the Arabian Sea in the direction of the east coast of Africa. We were now in the height of the season of the north-east monsoon, which was a fair wind for us, and the weather was as delightful as I have ever experienced it in any part of the globe—not even excepting our own Gulf of Mexico, and coasts of Alabama, and Florida, in the summer season. For twelve successive days, we did not have occasion to lower a studding sail, day or night! We had a constant series of clear skies, and gentle breezes. The nights were serene, and transparent, and the sunsets were magnificent beyond description. The trade wind is, par excellence, the wind of beautiful sunsets. Bright, gauzy clouds, float along lazily before it, and sometimes the most charming cumuli are piled up on the western horizon while the sun is going down. Stately cathedrals, with their domes and spires complete, may be traced by the eye of fancy, and the most gorgeous of golden, violet, orange, purple, green, and other hues, light up now a colonnade, now a dome, and now a spire of the aërial edifice. And then came on the twilight, with its gray and purple blended, and with the twilight, the sounds of merriment on board the Alabama—for we had found a successor for Michael Mahoney, the Irish fiddler, and the usual evening dances were being held. We had been now some time at sea, since leaving Singapore; the “jail had been delivered,” the proper punishments administered, and Jack, having forgotten both his offences, and their punishment, had again become a “good boy,” and was as full of fun as ever.
We had some fine fishing while passing through the Arabian Sea. The dolphin came around us in schools, and a number of them were struck with the “grains,” and caught with lines—the bait being a piece of red flannel rag. And some of the seamen resorted to an ingenious device for entrapping the flying fish by night. A net being spread, with out-riggers, under the bow of the ship, and a light being held just above it, the fish, as they would rise in coveys—being flushed from time to time by the noise of the ship through the water—would rush at the light, and striking against the bow of the ship, tumble into the net beneath. Bartelli, on several mornings, spread my breakfast-table with them.
On the 29th of January, we observed in latitude 2° 43′ north, and longitude 51° east; and on the following evening passed through a remarkable patch of the sea. At about eight P. M., there being no moon, but the sky being clear, and the stars shining brightly, we suddenly passed from the deep blue water in which we had been sailing, into a patch of water so white that it startled me; so much did it appear like a shoal. To look over the ship’s side, one would have sworn that she was in no more than five or six fathoms of water. The officer of the deck became evidently alarmed, and reported the fact to me, though I myself had observed it. There was no shoal laid down, within several hundred miles of our position, on the chart, and yet here was so manifestly one, that I shortened sail—we were running seven or eight knots per hour at the time, with a fresh breeze—hove the ship to, and got a cast of the deep-sea lead. The line ran out, and out, until a hundred fathoms had been taken by the lead, and still we found no bottom. We now checked the line, and hauling in the lead, made sail again. My fears thus quieted, I observed the phenomenon more at leisure. The patch was extensive. We were several hours in running through it. Around the horizon there was a subdued glare, or flush, as though there were a distant illumination going on, whilst overhead there was a lurid, dark sky, in which the stars paled. The whole face of nature seemed changed, and with but little stretch of the imagination, the Alabama might have been conceived to be a phantom ship, lighted up by the sickly and unearthly glare of a phantom sea, and gliding on under the pale stars one knew not whither.
Upon drawing a bucket of this water, it appeared to be full of minute luminous particles; the particles being instinct with life, and darting, and playing about in every direction; but upon a deck-lantern being brought, and held over the bucket, the little animals would all disappear, and nothing but a bucket full of grayish water would be left. Here was an area of twenty miles square, in which Nature, who delights in life, was holding one of her starlight revels, with her myriads upon myriads of living creatures, each rejoicing in the life given it by its Creator, and dying almost as soon as born. The sun would rise on the morrow, over a sea as blue as usual, with only some motes in the pelluced waters glinting back his rays; and this twenty miles square of life would be no longer distinguishable from the surrounding waters.
We crossed the equator on the 30th of January. The winds had now become light, and frequent calms ensued, though the bright weather continued. On the 9th of February we made the Comoro islands, that lie not a great way from the coast of Africa, and, getting up steam, ran in, and anchored at Johanna. This island is the most frequented of the group; ships bound to and from the East Indies, by the way of the Mozambique channel, frequently stopping here for refreshments. All these islands are volcanic in origin. They are of small extent, rise abruptly out of the sea, with deep water around them, and are mountainous. They are not claimed by any European nation; nor do any of the chiefs on the neighboring coast of Africa attempt to exercise jurisdiction over them. They are inhabited by a mixed race of Arabs, Africans, and East Indians, and each has its separate government, which is always a government of force, and is frequently overthrown by revolutions. Johanna, at the time we visited it, was under the rule of an Arab, who styled himself, the “Sultan Abdallah.” From the circumstance that English ships frequently stop here, most of the inhabitants who live on the sea-coast speak a little English, and we were surprised, when we anchored, to find ourselves quite well known. The name of our ship was familiar to the dusky inhabitants, and they were evidently much delighted at our arrival. The “Sultan” did not come on board—he was busy, he said, putting up a sugar-mill—but he sent his Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Commander-in-Chief of his Army to see me; and with these, Galt, my paymaster, had no difficulty in contracting for the regular supply of bullocks and vegetables, to be sent off to us during our stay.