In the great hall on the ground floor the first thing that catches the visitor’s eye is the text inscribed aloft on the entablature in large carved characters—“There is no religion higher than truth.”
On the walls of this hall, also, are carved in stone another series of symbols, treated as a series of panels in relief, and among these it was interesting to find Mr Holman Hunt’s well-known picture “The Light of the World,” reproduced in relief by a native sculptor. In a recess in the opposite wall was a life-size seated portrait of Madame Blavatsky in marble. It was intended to place a statue of Colonel Alcott standing beside her, Mr Besant told me. His loss will be a severe one for the Society.
We drove back by way of the Triplicane or Mohammedan quarter—the native bazaar, a brilliant scene of colour and movement. On the way we passed several “Toddy Tappers,” as they are called, at work on the palm and stems. These are natives who extract a sort of spirit from the palm, and who, clad only in white turbans and waist-cloths, climb the tall, smooth columnar stems of the cocoa palm, by a curious method—a sort of loop of cane which encircles the upper part of the body, and hooks round the tree stem. This they shift in jerks as they climb, using their legs and feet in the usual way as a grip on the stem. We noticed the small, gourd-like bottles attached to some of the trees, which are placed so as to catch the juice from incisions made in the bark. The spirit made from this juice is sold in the bazaars.
MADRAS—A JIN-RICKSHAW MADE FOR TWO
The jin-rickshaw is much in use in Madras as a means of locomotion, and some of them will even carry two people at once, though this seems heavy for one boy. The native boys who draw them are, however, active enough and but little encumbered with clothes, and are always eager for custom. Mount Road is the main thoroughfare in the European quarter, and here all the principal shops and stores are situated. These as buildings were mostly pretentious and tasteless. St George’s cathedral was a semi-classic church with a pointed spire. The Post Office had red-tiled gabled spires of a more or less Swiss type, with iron crestings, and arcaded balconies on each story. One sees relics of eighteenth century semi-classic taste in some of the older houses with plastered walls yellow and white-washed. The vast gardens which broke the continuity of the buildings, and often isolated them, and the pleasant avenue-like character of the main roads, always lined with shady trees, made up for many architectural short-comings, and again suggested spacious ideas for a garden city.
At the head of Mount Road was the Munro statue where other roads diverged—a bronze statue by Chantry of a gentleman in a cloak pointing—probably to indicate his line of policy, though, more literally, he might be taken to be showing the stranger what a long way he was from Madras. The electric trams are no doubt useful as the distances are enormous and dusty, walking being impossible for Europeans, as they would soon be covered with a powdering of fine red dust.
We paid a visit one evening to the Botanic Gardens where we saw the Victoria Regia (which is usually associated with the inside of a hothouse at Kew) growing in the open on a lake. There were beautiful palms here and many varieties of trees. One we noted was covered with white blossoms which looked and smelled like orange or lemon flowers, and had green fruit of an egg shape, hanging from its branches.
Madras we found too oppressive and inervating to stay long, and so on February 8th we departed for Tanjore, rising at 4.30 A.M. to catch an early train, and were only able to snatch a hasty hazri, and get into a belated carriage and drive through the gloom of the early morning—or rather by the dim light of the waning moon to the station for the 5.45 train South.
Our compartment was shared at different stages of the journey by British officers. A Babu with a quantity of baggage, and three German Mission people—a gentleman and two ladies with still more baggage, who filled it pretty well up to Tanjore.