De suite: you shall pourtray it from our description. Sketch a very long boat, very high behind, and very low before, composed of innumerable bits of wood tied together with coir, or cocoanut rope, fitted up with a dark and musty little cabin, and supplied with two or three long poles intended as masts, which lean forward as if about to sink under the weight of the huge lateen sail. Fill up the outline with a penthouse of cadjans (as the leaves of that eternal cocoanut tree are called) to protect the bit of deck outside the cabin from the rays of a broiling sun. People the square space in the middle of the boat with two nags tethered and tied with halters and heel ropes, which sadly curtail the poor animals’ enjoyment of kicking and biting; and half-a-dozen black “tars” engaged in pounding rice, concocting bilious-looking masses of curry, and keeping up a fire of some unknown wood, whose pungent smoke is certain to find its way through the cabin, and to terminate its wanderings in your eyes and nostrils. Finally, throw in about the same number of black domestics courting a watery death by balancing themselves over the sides of the vessel, or a fever by sleeping in a mummy case of dirty cotton cloth—
And you have a pattimar in your mind’s eye.
Every one that has ever sailed in a pattimar can oblige you with a long list of pleasures peculiar to it. All know how by day your eyes are blinded with glare and heat, and how by night mosquitos, a trifle smaller than jack snipes, assault your defenceless limbs; how the musk rat defiles your property and provender; how the common rat and the cockchafer appear to relish the terminating leather of your fingers and toes; and, finally, how the impolite animal which the transatlantics delicately designate a “chintz,” and its companion, the lesser abomination, do contribute to your general discomfort. Still these are transient evils, at least compared with the permanent satisfaction of having “passed the Medical Board”—a committee of ancient gentlemen who never will think you sufficiently near death to meet your wishes—of having escaped the endless doses of the garrison surgeon, who has probably, for six weeks, been bent upon trying the effects of the whole Materia Medica upon your internal and external man—of enduring the diurnal visitation of desperate duns who threaten the bailiff without remorse; and to crown the climax of your happiness, the delightful prospect of two quiet years, during which you may call life your own, lie in bed half or the whole day if you prefer it, and forget the very existence of such things as pipeclay and parade, the Court Martial and the Commander-in-chief. So if you are human, your heart bounds, and whatever its habits of grumbling may be, your tongue involuntarily owns that it is a joyful moment when you scramble over the side of your pattimar. And now, having convinced you of that fact, we will request you to walk up stairs with us, and sit upon the deck by our side, there to take one parting look at the boasted Bay of Bombay, before we bid adieu to it, with a free translation of the celebrated Frenchman’s good bye, “Canards, canaux, canaille,”—adieu ducks, dingies, drabs, and duns.[1]
Gentlemen tourists, poetical authors, lady prosers, and, generally, all who late in life, visit the “palm tasselled strand of glowing Ind,” as one of our European celebrities describes the country in prose run mad, certainly are gifted with wonderful optics for detecting the Sublime and Beautiful. Now this same bay has at divers and sundry times been subjected to much admiration; and as each succeeding traveller must improve upon his predecessors, the latest authorities have assigned to its charms a rank above the Bay of Naples—a bay which, in our humble opinion, places every other bay in a state of abeyance. At least so we understand Captain Von Orlich—the gentleman who concludes that the Belochees are of Jewish origin, because they divorce their wives. To extract Bombay from the Bay of Naples, proceed thus. Remove Capri, Procida, Ischia, and the other little picturesque localities around them. Secondly, level Vesuvius and the rocky heights of St. Angelo with the ground. Thirdly, convert bright Naples, with its rows of white palazzi, its romantic-looking forts, its beautiful promenade, and charming background into a low, black, dirty port, et voici the magnificent Bombahia.[2] You may, it is true, attempt to get up a little romance about the “fairy caves” of Salsette and Elephanta, the tepid seas, the spicy breeze, and the ancient and classical name of Momba-devi.
But you’ll fail.
Remember all we can see is a glowing vault of ultramarine-colour sky, paved with a glaring expanse of indigo-tinted water, with a few low hills lining the horizon, and a great many merchant ships anchored under the guns of what we said before, and now repeat, looks like a low, black, dirty port.
We know that you are taking a trip with us to the land flowing with rupees and gold mohurs—growing an eternal crop of Nabobs and Nawwábs[3]—showing a perpetual scene of beauty, pleasure and excitement.
But we can’t allow you to hand your rose-coloured specs. over to us. We have long ago superseded our original “greens” by a pair duly mounted with sober French grey glasses, and through these we look out upon the world as cheerily as our ophthalmic optics will permit us to do.
Now the last “nigger,” in a manifest state of full-blown inebriation, has rolled into, and the latest dun, in a fit of diabolical exasperation, has rolled out of, our pattimar. So we will persuade the Tindal, as our Captain is called, to pull up his mud-hook, and apply his crew to the task of inducing the half acre of canvas intended for a sail to assume its proper place. Observe if you please, the Tindal swears by all the skulls of the god Shiva’s necklace, that the wind is foul—the tide don’t serve—his crew is absent—and the water not yet on board.
Of course!