The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor

by Russell H. Conwell

He saw Mocha from the deck of the steamer, and immediately set about ascertaining what advantages that port and town offered to commerce. Without leaving the deck he found persons who knew all about Arabia and its products; so he sits down and writes a letter about coffee and its culture in and about Mocha. He was such a devoted lover of coffee that it may have been a peculiarly interesting topic to him. At all events, he wrote so intelligently that an old schoolmate, who was engaged in foreign trade, acted profitably on Mr. Taylor’s hints and started a son in the coffee-trade at Baltimore. Mr. Taylor stated in his letter that fifteen thousand tons of coffee were exported annually from Mocha, it being raised in the interior and brought to Mocha on camels. He said that foreign vessels could best load at Aden, the English stronghold on the south-west coast of Arabia, to which port the native coasting vessels carried nearly all the exports of Mocha and of the other small ports along the Red Sea. He also gave the information that equally good coffee could be obtained on the Abyssinian coast, and at a smaller price.

He entered the port of Aden in the night, and was startled to look out on the port in the morning and see such jagged masses of black rock shooting up from the sand one thousand five hundred feet. It is another Gibraltar, and shrewdly has England held by diplomacy what she obtained by such a show of force. But the heat from the sand and barren rocks is so intense that the quivers of a heated atmosphere are always visible, and very injurious to the eyes. At the time of Mr. Taylor’s visit, the town and the harbor were wretched and dangerous; but in 1870 the writer found a neat village, with good hotels, and a spacious wharf. Mr. Taylor saw the advantages of the port and predicted its growth. He mentioned the form, features, and dispositions of the Arabians; and told what interest the Parsees and Hindoos took in the local trade. He mentioned the articles of commerce to be found there, and gave the prices.

There is not to be found in his letters to the “Tribune,” nor in his book, “India, China, and Japan,” any mention of his sensations when he saw, as he did at Aden, a fire-worshipper (Parsee) for the first time. Being a poet by nature, and an admirer of Moore, he must have been fascinated by the actual presence of a Gheber with whom he could converse, and with whom he could change English money into the coin of the country. How “Lalla Rookh” comes to the tongue’s end when we look a fire-worshipper in the face and recognize the picture Moore had given of him!

At Aden Mr. Taylor witnessed an incident which, to one so broadly charitable and Christian, must have been most revolting. One of the workmen, who had been loading the steamer with coal, was asleep in the hold when the vessel started, and the officers finding him aboard after they had put to sea, forced the poor native overboard and left him to float ashore with the tide or perish in the waves. He whose land was the world, whose brethren were all mankind, whose friends were the humblest heathen as well as the titled official, looked back at the dark speck on the waves, and tears filled his eyes.

From Aden, the steamer entered upon its trip across the Indian Ocean, which was true to its reputation, and was placid and peaceful as an inland lake. But the slow steamer took nine days to sail from Suez to Bombay; and by the time Mr. Taylor was brought into view of the mountains where Brahma and Vishnu had so long been worshipped, he had become acquainted with nearly all the Hindoo sailors, and could secure unusual attendance from the waiters by addressing them in the Hindustanee language. He had learned the names of the principal streets of Bombay, the names of the richest merchants, and the kind of fare to be expected at the hotels. So naturally did he fall into the ways of the people that the boatmen who took him ashore at Bombay mistook him for an old resident and carried him ashore for one rupee, while charging the other passengers three. He seated himself, or rather stretched himself, into a palanquin carried by four men,—one at each end of a long pole,—and like a native rode through the streets of Bombay on the necks of servants. But he did not enjoy that kind of conveyance; he had too much sympathy with the human race to impose his weight on the necks of human beings without misgiving, and he afterwards refused to be carried about in that way when mules were to be had.

At Bombay, he was received with the same good-will and hospitality as he had found in other lands. Parsees, Hindoos, English, and Arabians vied with each other in giving him kindly attentions; the people were pagan in religion, but Christian in generosity and charity. It broadens one’s ideas of theology to be thrown into communion with so many different nations with as many different gods. But its tendency is to confirm, rather than to unsettle, the belief in the Christian doctrines. At all events, such was Mr. Taylor’s experience; and such has been the effect upon others.

He found the common people very servile, and lacking in spirit, and attributed it to the long despotism. But in them he found faithful friends, and learned to respect them. They were nearly all pagans when he was there, and worshipped their huge red idols with a sincerity and self-sacrifice worthy of the highest profession. In order to learn something of India in those remote ages beyond the testimony of history, and even back of the age of tradition, he visited the old temple on the island of Elephanta, about seven miles from Bombay. The massive structure, in partial ruin, so wonderfully wrought and massively constructed, made a deep impression upon his mind. Far, far back in the uncounted ages, the foundations were laid by men who were not low in the scale of civilization, if an idea of the beautiful and the ability to embody it in forms of stone be a test of enlightenment; it stands to-day, defying time, as it has defied earthquakes and cannon-shot. Into the fathomless future will it pass, an immovable monument of the skill and art of man in the childhood of human experience. In the statuary Mr. Taylor found a strange resemblance to the three ages of art; the statue of Brahma representing the style of the Egyptian, Vishnu being represented in a form and carving of the Greek style, while Siva was cut from the stone in such a shape as to remind him of the Mephistopheles of the German school of sculpture.

His keen scrutiny also developed the theory that the pillars were rough copies of the poppy-stem and the lotus-leaf. The latter was the emblem of sanctity in the days of Brahma. Mr. Taylor’s suggestion has been attractively enlarged upon and illustrated within a few years by writers for English literary and art periodicals.

No excursion from Bombay exceeds that to Elephanta in romantic attractions; for there are not only extensive ruins of greater and lesser temples, but the landscape, wherein the greenest islands dot the sheen of a gorgeous bay, is bright with most beautiful flowers and bright leaves, and the air is permeated with the odor of roses and cassia. Soon Elephanta will be a “summer resort,” and Taylor’s description and reflections will be sold by newsboys as a guide-book.