INDIA IMPRESSIONS
CHAPTER I
THE VOYAGE
A visit to India and the East had long been a cherished but somewhat vague dream with us. It seemed a far cry, and to make a break of a few months in the midst of the occupations of a busy life is always a difficult matter. The impossible, however, became in course of time possible, and even practicable. Inquiries as to ways and means had the effect of clearing our path; and having the will, the way was soon discovered.
“Only sixteen days to Bombay!” our Indian friends in London told us, and they were always urging us to go and see their wonderful country for ourselves. Mr Romesh Dutt and Dr Mulich had been visitors at our house. The former had presented his interesting translation of the “Ramayana,” illustrated by Miss Hardy, to my wife. Besides these we had from time to time made the acquaintance of several native gentlemen in London who were reading for the Indian Bar. They came and went, but all were earnest in their hope that we should visit India, and I think that they had discovered our sympathies were with those of their countrymen in their aspirations to participate in the administration of the affairs of their own country.
The decisive step of booking our passage was at last taken in the summer of 1906, and the 19th day of November following saw us en route for Marseilles, where we committed ourselves to the care of the Messageries Maritime, and embarked on the S.S. “La Nera” in due course, putting to sea on Wednesday, the 21st November.
It was a lovely bright afternoon as we left the port, the southern sunshine flooding everything in golden light. It is a wonderful moment when the ship casts off. The great liner, which had seemed a part of the land itself while the stream of passengers passed up the gangways, and their baggage after them, begins to throb with life and movement—to tremble, as it were, with expectation of departure. As a swimmer about to take the water casts off all impedimenta, so the ship casts off her cables and all that links her to the shore, and glides off into the great blue deep, breasting the waves of the vast open sea. Incredibly fast as the engines beat the solid land fades away. The domes and towers and chimneys silhouetted against the bright sky, the people on the quays, the ships riding at anchor, the tossing harbour buoys, the small sailing craft flitting about, all are rolled by as on the canvas of a moving diorama, as the steamer clears the port, and all detail becomes merged and lost under the bold main outlines of the rocky coast, or the dim shapes of the distant mountains.
As the long shining wake increases astern and the coast recedes, those nautical camp-followers the gulls, which have pursued the ship from the harbour, begin to diminish their numbers, though they wing a long way out to sea, attracted by the crumbs which occasionally fall from the region of the cook’s galley.
LONDON TO PORT SAID, A HIEROGLYPHIC OF OUR VOYAGE