After a few minutes’ walk we came to the west end of Panjim, where lies a narrow scrap of sea-beach appropriated to “constitutionals.” On our way there we observed that the Goanese, with peculiar good taste, had erected seats wherever a pretty point de vue would be likely to make one stand and wish to sit awhile.
Had we expected a crowded corso, we should have been disappointed; half-a-dozen mancheels, two native officers on horseback, one carriage, and about a dozen promenaders, were moving lazily and listlessly down the lugubrious-looking strand.
Reader, has it ever been your unhappy fate to be cooped up in a wretched place called Pisa? If so, perhaps you recollect a certain drive to the Cascine—a long road, down whose dreary length run two parallel rows of dismal poplars, desolating to the eye, like mutes at a funeral. We mentally compared the Cascine drive and the Panjim corso, and the result of the comparison was, that we wished a very good evening to the Señor, and went home.
“Salvador, what is that terrible noise—are they slaughtering a pig—or murdering a boy?”
“Nothing,” replied Salvador, “nothing whatever—some Christian beating his wife.”
“Is that a common recreation?”
“Very.”
So we found out to our cost. First one gentleman chastised his spouse, then another, and then another. To judge by the ear, the fair ones did not receive the discipline with that patience, submission, and long-suffering which Eastern dames are most apocryphally believed to practise. In fact, if the truth must be told, a prodigious scuffling informed us that the game was being played with similar good will, and nearly equal vigour by both parties. The police at Goa never interfere with these little domesticalities; the residents, we suppose, lose the habit of hearing them, but the stranger finds them disagreeable. Therefore, we should strongly advise all future visitors to select some place of residence where they may escape the martial sounds that accompany such tours de force when displayed by the lords and ladies of the creation. On one occasion we were obliged to change our lodgings for others less exposed to the nuisance. Conceive inhabiting a snug corner of a locality devoted to the conversion of pig into pork!
“Sahib,” exclaimed Salvador, “you had better go to bed, or retire into another room, for I see the Señor Gaetano coming here as fast as his legs can carry him.”