Mr Ross Scott entertained us with a distinguished company to dinner at his hospitable house before we left Lucknow. One English colonel of the party with whom I had a conversation had recently returned from Burmah, and had brought back some fine silk embroidered robes, some china bowls, and caps. The latter were of soft felt, and could be worn either with the edge turned down or up, forming a brim.
The colonel had lived some time in Burmah and had seen service there, having been through the British campaign against the “Dacoits.” He said that the Dacoits were largely composed of men of the disbanded native army (for which I suppose our Government were responsible), and they roamed about the country preying on the people, plundering and sometimes murdering them. The Burmese people, he said, only wanted to be left alone in peace (like most people). He had made many friends among them, as he knew the language and had lived amongst them at that time. On revisiting the country and finding things under British control and administration, he found most of his Burmese native friends in prison. They were there, he said, merely for breaking some official regulation which probably they did not in the least understand. The natives complained to him that the English officials lived aloof from them, and were not friendly and sympathetic as he (the Colonel) had been, and they never got any forwarder.
CHAPTER XII
BENARES
Our next destination was Benares. I had for long had the feeling, from the descriptions one had read and the photographs one had seen of this wonderful place, that it would sum up and centralise, as it were, to the eye the whole life of the Indian people, while it would also be a symbol of their faith to the mind.
It was, therefore, with unusual anticipations that we turned our faces thither, and on the 21st of January took the early morning train from Lucknow to the great focus of Hindu worship on the sacred Ganges. The kind commissioner’s native servant, in scarlet, awaited us at the station with a parting gift and a note of introduction to the Maharajah of Benares.
The train passed through a richer and more fruitful country than usual, but level, plain all the way, reaching Benares Cantonment about two o’clock. We drove to Clark’s hotel, which has a pretty portico full of palms, and a splendid orange creeper, then in full flower, hung over the usual bungalow annexe. The house was quiet, and had a semi-private aspect, more like a country bungalow.
Finding the Maharajah’s palace was some five or six miles off and on the other side of the river, we were advised to leave our letter at the Guest House with our cards. The Guest House was quite near by. Continuing our drive through the bazaar we thought the main street wider than most of the native cities, but the bazaars did not look so busy, and many shops were vacant. Balconies, the roofs of which were supported on arcades of slender columns with Hindu caps, were of a different type to those hitherto seen. In the European quarter there were poorly-designed, would-be Gothic British buildings, and mission churches of the usual bald type. There was a Queen’s Park with the commonplace iron railing and low stone parapet enclosing it, these innovations, as usual, quite spoiling the surroundings of a native city.
The next morning we had a visit from the Maharajah’s private secretary, who invited us to drive in the afternoon to visit the Buddhist topes and sculptures at Sarnath about five miles from Benares. An American lady we had previously met was to be of the party, and she was staying at the Guest House, and at the appointed hour the Maharajah’s carriage, with a coachman in a green and gold turban and scarlet tunic, and two active young Hindus, similarly dressed, acted as running footmen to clear the way, when not at their posts standing at the back of the carriage. We called at the Guest House for our American friend. It was a more palatial building than the one at Gwalior, standing in a small park with outer gates and a drive. The house was in the classic style—a white building with flat roof and columned portico. In the large hall on the ground floor there was a small coloured statuette of the Maharajah on horseback, photographs and portraits upon the walls, including English miniatures of an English officer and his ladies of the early nineteenth century, and some engravings of portraits of Queen Caroline. A stuffed lioness was lying on a side-board.