Transcriber’s Note: The map is clickable for a larger version.
MAP
OF THE
South Eastern
& Western
COAST of INDIA
GOA,
AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS;
OR,
SIX MONTHS OF SICK LEAVE.
CHAPTER I.
THE VOYAGE.
What a glad moment it is, to be sure, when the sick and seedy, the tired and testy invalid from pestiferous Scinde or pestilential Guzerat, “leaves all behind him” and scrambles over the sides of his Pattimar.
His what?
Ah! we forget. The gondola and barque are household words in your English ears, the budgerow is beginning to own an old familiar sound, but you are right—the “Pattimar” requires a definition. Will you be satisfied with a pure landsman’s description of the article in question. We have lost our edition of “The Ship,” and to own humbling truth, though we have spent many a weary month on the world of waters, we never could master the intricacies of blocks and braces, skylights and deadlights, starboards and larboards. But if we are to believe the general voice of the amphibious race, we terrestrial animals never fail to mangle the science of seamanship most barbarously. So we will not expose ourselves by pretension to the animadversions of any small nautical critic, but boldly talk of going “up-stairs” instead of “on deck,” and unblushingly allude to the “behind” for the “aft” and the “front” instead of the “fore” of our conveyance.
But the Pattimar—