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FROM EDINBURGH
TO INDIA AND BURMAH

Ayah and Child.

FROM EDINBURGH TO
INDIA & BURMAH

BY
W. G. BURN MURDOCH

Author of
"From Edinburgh to the Antarctic," "A Procession of the Kings of Scotland," etc.

WITH TWENTY-FOUR FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
FROM PAINTINGS BY THE AUTHOR

LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

Contents

LIST OF COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS

BY
AUTHOR AND "G."

CHAPTER I

Some time ago I wrote a book about a voyage in a whaler to the far south, to a white, silent land where the sun shines all day and night and it is quiet as the grave and beautiful as heaven—when it is not blowing and black as—the other place! A number of people said they liked it, and asked me to write again; therefore these notes and sketches on a Journey to India and Burmah. They may not be so interesting as notes about Antarctic adventure and jolly old Shell Backs and South Spainers on a whaler; but one journal ought at least, to be a contrast to the other. The first, a voyage on a tiny wooden ship with a menu of salt beef, biscuit, and penguin, to unsailed seas and uninhabited ice-bound lands; the other, in a floating hotel, with complicated meals, and crowds of passengers, to a hot land with innumerable inhabitants.

I trust that the sketches I make on the way will help out my notes when they are not quite King's-English, and that the notes will help to explain the sketches if they are not sufficiently academical for the general reader, and moreover, I fondly believe that any journal written in the East in these years of grace 1905-6, must catch a little reflected interest from the historic visit of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales to India and Burmah.

Edinburgh is our point of departure; the date 13th Oct. and the hour 10 P.M. All journeys seem to me to begin in Edinburgh, from the moment my baggage is on the dickey and the word "Waverley" is given to the cabby. On this occasion we have three cabs, and a pile of baggage, for six months clothing for hot and cold places, and sketching, shooting, and fishing things take space. I trundle down to the station in advance with the luggage, and leave G. and her maid to follow, and thus miss the tearful parting with domestics in our marble halls.… Good-bye Auld Reekie, good-bye. Parting with you is not all sorrow; yet before we cross the Old Town I begin to wonder why I leave you to paint abroad; for I am positive your streets are just as picturesque and as dirty and as paintable as any to be found in the world. Perhaps the very fact of our going away intensifies last impressions.… There is a street corner I passed often last year; two girls are gazing up at the glory of colour of dresses and ribbons and laces in electric light, and a workman reads his evening paper beside the window—it is a subject for a Velasquez—all the same I will have a shot at it, and work it up on board ship; it will make an initial letter for this first page of my journal.

Across the Old Town we meet the North Sea mist blowing up The Bridges, fighting high up with the tall arc lights. What variety of colour there is and movement; the lights of the shops flood the lower part of the street and buildings with a warm orange, there are emerald, ruby, and yellow lights in the apothecary's windows, primary colours and complementary, direct and reflected from the wet pavements; the clothes of passing people run from blue-black to brown and dull red against the glow, and there's a girl's scarlet hat and an emerald green signboard—choice of tints and no mistake—we will take the lot for a first illustration, and in London perhaps, we will get another street scene or two, and so on; as we go south and east we will pick up pictures along the road—from Edinburgh to Mandalay with coloured pictures all the way, notes of the outside of things only, no inner meanings guaranteed—the reflections on the shop windows as it were—anyone can see the things inside.

An old friend met us at the station; he had just heard of our exodus and came to wish us good-bye as we used to do in school-days, when we considered a journey to England was rather an event. He spoke of "Tigers;" India and tigers are bracketed in his mind, and I am certain he would get tiger-shooting somehow or other if he were to go East; he looked a little surprised and sad when I affirmed that I went rather to paint and see things than to shoot. Shooting and other sports we can have at home, and after all, is not trying to see things and depict them the most exciting form of sport? I am sure it is as interesting; and that more skill and quickness of hand and eye is required to catch with brush or pen point a flying impression from a cab window or the train than in potting stripes in a jungle.

Look you—this I call sport! To catch this nocturne in the train, the exact tint of the blue-black night, framed in the window of our lamp-lit carriage; or the soft night effect on field and cliff and sea as we pass. No academical pot shot this, for we are swinging south down the east coast past Cockburnspath (Coppath, the natives call it) at sixty miles the hour, so we must be quick to get any part of the night firmly impressed. There is faint moonlight through low clouds (the night for flighting duck), the land blurred, and you can hardly see the farmer's handiwork on the stubbles; there are trees and a homestead massed in shadow, with a lamp-lit window, lemon yellow against the calm lead-coloured sea, and a soft broad band of white shows straight down the coast where the surf tumbles, each breaker catches a touch of silvery moonlight. The foam looks soft as wool, but I know two nights ago, an iron ship was torn to bits on the red rocks it covers.… I must get this down in colour to-morrow in my attic under the tiles of the Coburg. Who knows—some day it may be worth a tiger's skin (with the frame included).… There is the light now on the Farnes, and Holy Island we can dimly make out.

To the right we look to see if the bison at Haggerston are showing their great heads above the low mists on the fields.… The night is cold, there is the first touch of winter in the air. It is time to knock out my pipe and turn in, to dream of India's coral strand, as we roll away south across the level fields of England.

A Glimpse of the North Sea

In London town we arrive very early; an early Sunday morning in autumn in the East of London is not the most delightful time to be there. It is smelly and sordid, and the streets are almost empty of people, but I notice two tall young men in rags, beating up either side of a street, their hands deep in their pockets as if they were cold; they are looking for cigarette ends, I expect, and scraps of food; and we are driving along very comfortably to our hotel and breakfast. An hour or two later we are in the park at church-parade; a little pale sun comes through the smoky air, and a chilly breeze brings the yellow leaves streaming to the ground. There are gorgeous hats on the lines of sparrows nests, and manifold draperies and corduroys and ermines and purple things, with presumably good-looking women inside. We men run to purple ties this year, quite a plucky contrast to our regulation toppers, black coats and sober tweed trousers. And one unto the other says, "Hillo—you here again! Who'd have expected to see you, dear fellow! What sort of bag did you get; good sport, eh?" "Oh, good—good—awfully good! Such a good year all round, you know, and partridges, they say, are splendid; hasn't been such a good season for years; awfully sorry to miss 'em. And when do you go back?—On the Egypt!—Oh, by Jove! won't there be a crowd! Horrid bore, you know—'pon my word everyone is goin' East now; you can't get away from people anywhere! It's the Prince's visit you know; what I mean is, it's such a draw, don't you know."

Monday morning in Regent Street.—Sauntering with St C., looking at the crowd and incubators and buying things we could probably get just as well in Bombay; but Indian ink and colours, and these really important things we dare not leave behind. What a pleasant street it is to saunter in once or twice in a year or so; what a variety of nationalities and pretty faces there are to see. The air is fresh and autumnal, and overhead a northerly breeze blows wisps of white cloud across a bright blue sky, and just floats out the French Tricolours and the Union Jacks with which the street is decorated. The houses on one side are in quite hot sun; the other side of the street is in cold bluey shade, which extends more than half across the road. A cart crawls up the shaded side, leaving a track of yellow sand in its wake; someone is coming, and the crowd waits patiently.… Now mounted police appear in the distant haze and come trotting towards us, and the guards with glittering breastplates are rattling past and away in a breath! Then outriders and a carriage, and a brown face, moustached and bearded, and the Prince goes by, and the crowd cheers—and I pray we may both get a tiger. Then the King passes with Lord Minto, I think. We have come to London for something!

Possibly in the fulness of time we may see kings in our Northern Capital oftener than we do now. We need ceremonies, a little sand on the street occasionally, and a parade or two—ceremonies are the expression of inward feelings; without occasion for the expression of the sentiment of loyalty, the sense must go … the loyalty of a second northern people—going—going—for a little sand and bunting—and—NO OFFER?

There is no chance of ennui in the week in London before a voyage; you have packing, shopping, insuring, and buying tickets and general bustling round—what charming occupations for the contemplative mind! Then you throw in visits to friends, and acquaintances call on you, all in the concentrated week; you breakfast late, lunch heavily, rush off to a hurried dinner somewhere, then rush off to a play or some function or other, supper somewhere else and then home, too late for half a pipe; engagements about clothes, hats, dresses, guns, lunches, dinners, theatres, you have all in your mind, awake and asleep, and as you run about attending to essentials and superfluities, you jostle with the collarless man in the street, and note the hungry look, and reflect how thin is the ice that bears you and how easy it is to go through, just a step, and you are over the neck—collar gone and the crease out of the trousers. A friend of mine went through the other day and no one knew; he lived on brown bread and water for ever so long, but stuck to his evening clothes, and now he sits in the seats of the mighty. What "a Variorem" it all is—tragedy and comedy written in the lines of faces and the cut of clothes. But I confess; what interests me in London more than types or individuals, are the street scenes and figures seen collectively. What pictures there are at every turning, and yet how seldom we see them painted. With the utmost modesty in the world I will have a try in passing at Piccadilly Circus. Is there a street scene so fascinating as that centre for colour and movement?—say on a May night, with people going to the theatres, the sky steely blue and ruddy over the house-tops, the Pavilion and Criterion lights orange and green glinting on the polished road and flickering on the flying hansom wheels—or The Circus in a wet night, a whirlpool of moving lights and shadows and wavering reflections! What a contrast to the quiet effects in some side street; for example this street seen half in moonlight, beneath my window in the Coburg; the only sound the click clack of the busy horse's feet on the wood pavement, as hansoms and carriages flit round from Berkeley Square—there's a levee to night, and their yellow lamps string up Mount Street and divide beneath me into Carlos Place.

… My tailor has sent me such an excellent cardboard box to paint on, so I will use it for this effect in Muzii colours; it will make a drop scene or tail piece to this first chapter of these "Digressions."

Piccadilly Circus, by Night.

CHAPTER II

London to Tilbury.—If I am to write notes about a journey to the Far East, I must not miss out the exciting part between Grosvenor Square and Liverpool Street Station. The excitement comes in as you watch the policeman's hand at the block in the city and wonder if it will stop your journey; down it comes though, and we are in time, and have a minute to spare to rejoice on the platform with our cousin and niece who are going out with us, or rather with whom we home people are going out to India.

There were those on the platform not so happy as we were; an old lady I saw held the hand of a young soldier in pathetic silence, and the smiles on the faces of those left at home were not particularly cheerful, and the grey set expression of men leaving wives and children is hard to forget. A younger lady I saw on the platform smiling, and straight as a soldier, threw herself into her sister's arms as the train moved off in a perfect abandonment of grief, and the wrinkles in the old lady's face as we passed were full of tears—two to one against her seeing the young man, son, or grandson, on this side. But I suppose that is India all over—many partings, a few tears shed, and enough kept back to float a fleet.

Our 'guid brither'[1] and his wife have come in the train with us to Tilbury to see us on board, so we are all very jolly and the sun shines bright on the river and white cumulous clouds, and the brown sails of the barges are swelling with a brisk north-east breeze as they come up on the top of the flood. The "Egypt" lies in mid-stream, and all the passengers of our train go off to it in tenders, along with hundreds of friends who have come to see them off—there is a crowd! Passengers only bring hand baggage with them, the rest went on board yesterday; the embarkation is beautifully managed and orderly, there is an astonishing repression of excitement and show of out of place feeling. To compare this embarkation with that on a foreign liner; I have seen the whole business of taking passengers and luggage on board an Italian liner stopped for minutes by one Egyptian with a tin of milk on the gangway, holding forth on his grievances to the world at large, whilst handsome officers on deck smiled futilely, their white-gloved hands behind their backs. I suppose it is this military precision that gives the P. & O. their name and their passengers a sense of security; but there are people so hard to please that they ask for less pipeclay, less crowded cabins, and better service and more deck space, and these carpers will never be content, so long as they see other lines, such as the Japanese, giving all they clamour for, comfortable bath-rooms, beds, and a laundry at moderate rates.

[1] Brother-in-law.

A touch of militarism that I rather fancy on the P. & O. is the bugle call going round the ship before meals; it is such a jolly cheery sound to awaken to. It comes from far along the ship in the morning, at first faintly in the distance, when you are half-awake trying to account for the faint sound of machinery and the running reflections on your white roof, dimly conscious of the ever delightful feeling that you are sailing south across the widest and most level of all plains. Louder and louder it comes along the alley-way, till outside your cabin door it fairly makes you jump! A jolly, cheery sound it is, almost nothing in the world so stirring excepting the pipes. There's a laughing brazen defiance in it, and gentleness too, as it dies away—most masculine music! What associations it must have for soldiers; even to the man of peace it suggests plate armour, the listed field and battles long ago.… Did you ever hear it in Edinburgh? up in the empty, windy castle esplanade—empty of all but memories—You see no bugler, but the wide grey walls and sky are filled with its golden notes. It echoes for a moment, and then there is quietness, till the noise of the town comes up again. And at night have you heard it? from the Far Side of Princes Street, the ethereal notes between you and the stars, long drawn notes of the last post, from an invisible bugler in the loom of the rock and the rolling clouds.

G. murmurs, "It is abominable—but after all, going to sea is all a matter of endurance." What a difference there is in the point of view—G., I must say, had a hair mattress last night, and it was not properly blanketted and entailed a certain amount of endurance; on the other hand she is extremely fortunate in having such glorious pink roses and beautiful hangings for nicknacks, touching parting gifts from friends, so her cabin already looks fairly homely; and then, on the walls, there is the most perfect round picture, framed in the bright brass of the porthole—a sailing ship hull down on the horizon, her sails shining like gold in the morning sun, on a sea of mother of pearl.… There is just the faintest rise and fall, and the air is full of the steady silky rushing sound; what is there like it, which you hear in fine weather when the sea makes way to let you pass.

Painted at a sketch to-day of people coming on board the "Egypt" from the tender, no great thing in colour, less in a black and white reproduction, for eye and hand were a little taken up with luggage—a note of lascars in blue dungarees and red turbans—East meeting West—the Indies in mauve and lilac hats and white veils; for shades of purple are all the fashion this year.

I have found a corner in the waist between first and second class, where one can draw or paint without being very much overlooked; you can get under the sky there, elsewhere you can't, and only see the horizon, for our first class deck is under the officers' deck, and the second class is covered with awnings, a very poor arrangement I think for you only get light on your toes. A sailing ship's deck is ever so much nicer, for you have a reasonable bulwark to keep wind and water off your body instead of an open rail. You can look over a bulwark comfortably, your eyes sheltered from the glare off the sea; on these steam-liners it comes slanting up to your eyes under eyebrows and eyelashes—no wonder people take to blue spectacles! In the sailing ship too you can look up and watch the bends of white canvas and the spars-and cordage swinging to and fro across the infinite blue, an endless delight! Here you have a floor and blistered paint a few inches above you, on which you know the officers promenade with the full sweep of the horizon round them and the arc of the sky above. Still another advantage of the sailing ship is, that you are not just one of a crowd, ticketed No. so and so, bedded, fed, and checked off by a numeral; and you can generally count on a barometer, and learn the names of lights and lands you pass; possibly there may even be a thermometer, and certainly a compass. On this "Egypt," barring a small scale Mercator's projection of the world on which the ship's position is marked daily, there is no means of getting the information that can make a sea voyage so infinitely interesting. I would suggest large sized charts showing landmarks, ship's position, and barometrical readings. What is more interesting at sea than the charts of ocean depths, currents, winds, salinity, and temperature! If you go too fast to touch on Plankton, Nekton, and Benthos, at least let the poor first class passengers have a compass, if not a barograph and a thermometer, to eke out conversations on the weather, the day's run, and bridge.

"The Bay"—the Great Bay, calm as a mill pond—there's a jolly sense of rest and peace on board; I suppose everyone knows that feeling who has gone East. For weeks you have been doing things, shopping, packing, keeping appointments, then you get out of the bustle of town, breathe again clear air, and rest, on the level sea, that lovely water cushion, the most soothing of all beds.

Everyone is soporific and very restful. We begin to distinguish individuals amongst the many passengers, but so far no one seems particularly conspicuous. They are rather good-looking as a crowd, and one or two children are like angels—at least we hope so.

It is darker ahead now and to the east, the shadow of the World on Nothing, I suppose! possibly an October breeze coming—low banks of cirri-cumuli above the horizon—clear overhead with streaks of rusty red cloud fine as hair—the evening is cold, here is an attempt at it with a brush. And we had music in the place for music on deck; an Irish lady played the fiddle and played so well with a piano accompaniment to an audience of six—if the Bay keeps quite the audience ought to increase. After the sunset, dinner—what a tedious business it is; the waiting is perfectly planned, but the waiters themselves have to wait ages at the two service hatches, where they get all jammed together, so the time between the courses seems interminable; you almost forget you are at a meal at all. To-night dinner and conversation both hang fire at our end of the table, and I overhear from the other end where my cousin sits interesting scraps about India, which is distinctly annoying; R. is relating some of his experiences there that set his neighbours and my niece and Mrs Deputy-Commissioner all chuckling.

I gather that R. converted a certain Swiss. They lived near each other, a lonely life on the "Black Cotton Soil," whatever that is. R. says it blows about like snow. The Swiss lived in a little corrugated-iron house with some hens, and no books, and he loved books, and hated his house and hens, and the British Empire. R. had a nice bungalow and lots of books, and he lent these to the Swiss, on condition that he would read our newspapers! with the result that the Swiss ceased to believe in British "methods of barbarism," said he admired the Empire, and got quite to like his tin house and the black soil,—even his hens!

It is so quiet in the smoking-room to-night—not even bridge going on yet, which perhaps accounts for the discursiveness of these rambling notes on a quiet Saturday night at sea.

Now comes Sunday. "Come day go day, God send Sunday," as the discontented sailor growls before the mast. The day of the month unknown—I do not think it matters, in such notes as these, dates are rather like ruled lines on sketching paper, only distracting.… We have had such a pleasant time so far, that a Presbyterian lady was quite surprised when at breakfast I told her the day of the week, as she had not heard any clanging and clashing of bells, and as everybody seemed quite cheerful and there were no black clothes, she could not realise it was Sunday. But this afternoon it is not joyful for all! There is a solemn grey sky sweeping over us from Spain, with a grandeur and breadth that one only associates with Spanish skies, and there is a fresh breeze, but warm from the land, and this big tub moves a little, enough to make one realise the Sea is alive, her bosom heaves us along slightly, a delightful motion for some of us, and intensely soothing, but alas! there are empty places at our board. What a penance it is this sea-sickness. In the words of Burns,

"It is a dizziness,
That will not let a body gang
About his business"

at all, at all.… I was a pale-faced student, a week out from Leith to Antwerp, when I first felt this rudeness: we struck a fog-bank off St. Abb's Head to begin with, and a sand-bank off Middlesborough, and listened there to the cocks crowing on shore without seeing a foot ahead for the thickness of the grey, wet mist. We cheered ourselves with bagpipes, and the captain had a case of the very best brandy, the first I think I ever tasted; and he could play some tunes on the practise chanter. "Dinna think bonnie lassie, I'm goin' to leave you," I remember was his best; it is a strathspey tune; I learned it from him. The trouble came when it blew up hard off the Scheldt; but even when coming over the bar, the "romance" of the sea qualified its pains a little. I can feel the cold in my hands to-day of the barrels of the Winchesters at the side of the couch, and to which I clung in my hour of trial, and remembered they had been used in the steamer's very last trip against Real Pirates in the China Seas! And certainly there was the "romance" of the sea in the change from the gale and black night outside the bar, to the quiet morning on the wide river with the cathedral spire, violet against the sunrise, dropping its silvery music "from heaven like dew;" "Madame Angot," was the tune I think, with a note missing here and there.

We saw a number of sea birds to-day, and two at least were skuas, black looking thieves among their white cousins. I saw one try to make a gull disgorge, driving up at it from below, to the gull's loudly-expressed disgust. It is a strange arrangement of nature, and I can't understand why a few gulls don't combine to defend themselves. I am sure each of them must hate to give up the little meal they have earned with so much tiring flight. There were shore birds too; we shipped some as passengers, they were going south like ourselves, but by instinct not by the card. I suppose they were on the road all right, and just needed to rest their wings a little; two large black birds were on the bridge last night, possibly crows, and we have starlings to-day, and I saw some finches of sorts. At least one of these fragile boarders was eaten by the ship's cat—I found its delicate remains, a few tiny feathers and a dainty wing and its poor head.

The land is very faint on the horizon and the breeze is just going down, such as it was; it's a momentary interest at the end of a somewhat dull, grey day to most passengers.

R. and his wife, since one A.M., have had rather a poor time; their cabin is far forward, and so they feel any motion more than we do amidships; what with a little sea-sickness and the anchor chain loose in its pipe, banging against their bunks, they had a disturbed night. We raked out the bo'sun from his afternoon nap, and he and a withered old lascar jammed a hemp fender between the chain and woodwork, so their slumbers ought to be more peaceful; now they are getting a temporary change to a berth amidship, which is unoccupied as far as Marseilles; in it they will hardly feel the motion.

It was really considerate of the captain making a break in a dull, damp Sunday afternoon—the horn went booming, and up we all jumped in the smoking-room with some idea that someone had gone overboard, and up on deck came the lascars grinning, a jolly string of colour, and away forward they trotted and climbed into the forward life-boats from the deck above us. It was very smartly done, but I would like to have seen if their feet could reach the stretchers or their hands the oars; the boats were not swung out, but everything seemed ready. I think my friend the bo'sun must have had an inkling they were needed for he was working about the davits and falls earlier in the afternoon. In the words of the poet, Gilbert,

"It is little I know,
Of the ways of men of the sea,
But I'll eat my hand if I (don't) understand"

this part of their business; practice on a whaler tends to perfection at getting away in the boats, and at getting on board again too, if you are hungry—and faith if it isn't snowing it is fun!

To night the air is damp and warm from the S.E., and we smell Spain—true bill—several of us noticed the aromatic smell. Scents at sea carry great distances. "I know a man" who smelt burning wood or heather, 250 nautical miles from land, and said so and was laughed at; but he laughed last, for two or three days after his vessel beat up to some islands, from which towered a vast column of brown and white smoke from burning peat, and this floated south on a frosty northerly breeze, and the chart showed the smoke was dead to windward at the time he spoke.

CHAPTER III

Monday—a rolling tumbling sea, soft grey and white, and misty-wet decks with shimmering reflections—a day when even a great liner such as this feels a little shut off from the outside world, for the mist comes down on the edge of the horizon and hedges us in. If I ever paint Orpheus or the Sirens, I will use such a grey wet effect. I think of these old navigators in their small vessels, getting the thick and the thin, just as we do to-day in our own sailing craft; getting well dusted at times, with the salt thick on their cheeks and decks. Taking it all round, the sea is rather a minor chord; so that these Burlington House pictures of the Argo and The Heroes, in orange and rose on a wine-red sea are not convincing. When my patron comes home I will humbly suggest Orpheus singing at the stem, a following wind, a great bellying sail behind, and all around wet air and splashing grey sea, the stem ploughing it up silver and white and green, and away aft under the bend of the sail there would be Jason and the steersman, possibly Medea, with the curl out of her hair, and perhaps just a touch of the golden fleece, just a fleck of pale yellow to enliven the minor tints! Round the bows there would be men listening to the song, watching the stem pound into the green hollows—now, I remember! I have seen this—I'd forgotten. But the Orpheus was in faded blue dungarees, and played a fiddle, and leaned against a rusty, red capstan—saw it from the jib-boom of the Mjolna[2]—fishing bonita—looked back, and there they all were, the same to-day as they were in olden days, I expect, men and boys, salt and sun-bitten sea-farers, lolling on the cat-heads and anchors. A joy of the World, that is—from your perch out on the jib-boom to watch a ship with its cloud of white sails surging after you.

[2] Norse for Thors hammer.

The Sirens too would paint in this weather; they look quite dry in pictures, they would look better wet—I'd have them glittering wet and joyous, and a fit carvel built boat and crew, and brown sloping sails, three reefs down, making a fine passage clear on to them, just as the steersman might wish with no bindings or wax in ears at all, but all at the Sirens' service.

St. Vincent light is now in sight—the swell from the south-west, and our course, as far as a passenger may guess, will soon be south by east; so we ought to have a fair roll on soon, and I feel glad our sea-sick friends are mostly asleep. To-morrow we hope to be in early at Gibraltar, then they will have a rest—it will be all smooth sailing. "They say so—and they hope so," as the "Old Horse" Chantie puts it. Is there not a wind, however, called the Mistral, in the Gulf of Lyons, and a Euroclydon further east, mentioned by St Paul?

We passed some rather interesting land scenery this afternoon, before we came to the mouth of the Tagus; you could see houses, comfortably nestled up the sides of the hills. At the foot of the red cliffs there is a line of green water and white bursts of foam—made a pochade of a bit of this coast—a castle perched on blue peaks, a rolling sky and rugged mountains, and nearer, a rolling, leaden-coloured swell.

From the well or waist where I paint, I noticed a rather black, white-man stood and watched me out of the engine room. He looked interested, and I spoke to him later. He said he "did a bit" himself in unmistakeable West Country accent, and he took me to his cabin to show me his art work. Though not very high up in the working part of this show—boiler maker or artificer, I think, he had a very nice cabin. His art work was decorative. He applied various cigar and tobacco labels with gum to Eastern wine jars of unmistakeably Greek design, also Masonic, and P. & O. symbols, with crosses, and rising suns in red and gold; the interspaces of these geometric designs he filled up with blue and gold enamel paint; and the general effect was very bright. It was odd though to see a vase of historic shape done over with such brand new labels. He had done this work for some years in spare time, so he had acquired considerable proficiency.

I would fain be able to describe some of the human interest, on such a vessel as this; there is enough for many novelists to study for many a day. Of each class at home we know individuals, soldiers and civilians, and their women folk, and they are interesting as others or more so; but when you see them like this on board their ship in their numbers, going East to their various duties, the interest becomes quite a big thing. There is the girl going to her future husband in a native regiment, not to return for years, and there is a couple sitting beside us to-night in the smoking-room—a white-haired Colonel and his young protégé, a budding soldier—they talk of mother at home, and cousins and aunts. Then there's The-most-beautiful-girl-in-the-ship, but she is not typical, and I think she goes farther East than India: she has chummed already with the best set-up man on board, so that's as it should be—and what an occasion it is for chumming! I'd like to know what is the average number of engagements made and broken on these P. & O.'s per voyage. R. tells me of one made in his last trip home; I forget on what line. The passengers were eleven young men and one lady, and she favoured one of them, so there were ten disappointed suitors. They found He and She could sing a little, so one of the ten played accompaniments, and the others encouraged the devoted pair to sing tender ditties, which they did and for all they were worth. He sang, "I want you, my Honey," and put his back into it, as R. says, very slangily I think, and the suitors thought they had great subject for much mirth when they retired to the smoking-room—I think it was almost profane.… But it is time for one pipe on deck and a last look at the somewhat uncongenial sea, then to a bed, three or four inches too narrow.

These two ladies here depicted are the sole survivors of their sex this morning at breakfast, for it blows hard outside; but it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, so these two young things, fresh as roses, made each other's acquaintance at the empty table. They have been an hour on deck, and like the movement, and the breakfast; and possibly their irrepressible joyous sense of superiority is flavoured with pity for their sisters lying low and pale. You see, the fiddles are on the table, and even with these you have to hang on to your cup occasionally. The fiddle makes such a comfortable rest for my elbows, so I scribble this on the back of the breakfast menu (no one wants it) without being seen. I remember that neither the position nor the occupation were allowed in the nursery, and I hear of people to-day in quite good society so dead to art that they will not allow you to draw on the table cloth! I sometimes think how many lovely ideas must have been lost by this! It was the Correggio brothers, was it not? who used to draw during meal-time; they were very enthusiastic, but they died—possibly of indigestion!

We are getting into the Straits of Gibraltar—a nice blustery day, the black tramps coming out of the Mediterranean bury their noses deep in foam, and roll up and show all the beauty of steamers' lines! To starboard we get a glimpse of the serrated African mountains above Tangiers and the Atlas Mountains beyond. They are green in spring, but now they are brown. I used to think the African Coast was flat and sandy; I wonder if school boys do so still. It is a pleasant surprise at first sight to find it so like our own mountainous country. Both the African hills and the Spanish hills are veiled at times with passing rain columns that sweep in from the Atlantic.

Here is a little finger-nail jotting of Gibraltar; you see the parts where the masts are—that is the harbour. The Rock or Mountain, 1,200 feet high, is to the south and right; all its side is bristling with guns; to the left of the ships a long spit of land joins the rock to Spain proper. If the cumulous clouds to the north and east, in the direction of Granada, would lift a little we would see the white tops of the Sierra Nevada.

This has been a most splendid day! We have been on Spanish soil—I suppose I may call it Spanish soil though it is held by Britain—have seen fair Spanish women, had sun, wind, rain, wet decks, and dry decks, and the bustle and interest of dropping anchor in Port, with all the movement of tugs and boats and people going and coming to and from shore—the roadstead blustery and fluttering with flags, and everything afloat bobbing and moving, excepting the great grey men-of-war.

We got away in the first shore boat. How it rained—G.'s hat ruined—but anything to be in Spain once more. The launch rolls and umbrellas drip, and we have hundreds of yards along splashing wet pier, G. balancing on timbers and wire cables to keep a little out of the mud—one umbrella for the two. Then a jog up the town in a funny little victoria with yellow oiled canvas curtains, past little gardens with great red flowers on one tree, and trumpet-shaped white flowers hanging on the next, past soldiers in khaki, and turbaned Moors huddled in their draperies. The Moors look so out of place in Europe; they seem to have aimed at being picturesque and have failed, and know it and stick to it. The Spaniards you pass are pure joy to the artist; the women have such nice ivory colouring with the faintest tint of pink, and such eyes, brown and dark, and kind, and such eye-lashes—it's easy colour to paint too in Henner's way, Prussian blue, bitumen and ochre and a breath of rose! Look at the bloom on their hair, blue as the light on raven's wing, and the flour on their faces, hanging thick on their black eyebrows. I think they must have a little of the Indian in them. There's a far-away kinship in the expression of the Ayahs on board and the Spaniards on shore, a queer penetrating look, and kindly. The mens' expressions are also pleasant enough, I think—very quiet—but they have your eye and your measure before you realise, with a glance quick as the glint that a pointer gives you from the corner of his eye as he ranges past.… Here is a jotting of one of the natives, perhaps a little heavy in expression, but fairly typical Spanish face. She is my cousin's cook; he is an R. E. and lives in quite a big house for Gibraltar; you can stand upright in any room and stretch yourself in the drawing-room, which has a balcony; I painted her as she stood in it. My cousin's wife had discharged her, but there was no ill-feeling, so she came to pay a complimentary call, in black lace mantilla and pink blouse. She was called Barbara, and loved a baker over the way, and when she should have been regarding the soup, she was throwing glances to the baker in his shop, so she had to go! "Poor Barbara"—and lucky baker, to receive such cordite glances!

A dainty lady of Saxon type, with face like china, hair fine gold, and eyes of Neapolitan violet, looked over my shoulder whilst I sketched. She is just out, and is enjoying Gibraltar hugely. But I should not have said violet eyes, for one was black as a thunder-cloud; she hunted yesterday and got dragged poor thing, and was bruised all over, but she was going about and hunts again in two or three days.

A Spanish Woman.

CHAPTER IV

Sunday parade of Lascars.

Our first day with a blue sky at sea—my word it is blue, impossibly blue, and the sun is beaming! We have had a quiet night, so everyone is very contented. On our left the Spanish coast is very mountainous, and little cloudlets are throwing shadows over the mountain sides. G. and I study our Spanish grammar; but perhaps "study" is hardly the word, dream over it would be more exact, and wonder at the blueness of the sea and the blue reflected lights on the hurricane deck above us. We have managed to get our chairs into a patch of sun; we rather court its rays just now, by the time we come home again I daresay we will take the shady side of the street. So close are we to the coast that, looking through the glasses, we can see into the glens and make out cottages where we know the people are speaking Spanish; and we plan a voyage through these hills some day; therefore our Spanish exercises. What a country it is both for castles and voyages, and how many ways there are to travel in it. In the train or on horseback, or with mules or a donkey, or a coach and four, as did Theophile Gautier. But not on foot for choice, that would be so undignified as to be barely safe in Spain. We arrange to have mules—for there is such a distinguished and aristocratic appearance about a train of mules, and an air of romance about them and their gay caparisons. We will trek over these mountains, and through the cork woods and brackens in the glens, live on figs and Vino Riojo carried in black skins on our sumpter mules, and camp at night on the dry ground under the brown trunks of the cork trees—another book, mes amis, and pictures, I vow! It will be in the South of Spain, this voyage of ours, amongst the elegant, fiery Andalusians, and we might combine the treking with a little coasting to Cadiz and Malaga, then inland by the Rhonda Valley, where travelling on mules would be almost rapid compared with the train. There are such lovely villages there, embowered in foliage and flowers at the bottom of rocky glens, and such pleasant peasants, with quiet, gentle manners. Just this last word before we lose sight of Spain. Why do women at home not adopt Spanish dancing? I am quite sure it is the secret of the Andalusian's poise and walk.

There is a very distinct swell, and people say it will blow in the Gulf of Lyons, and think they had better have gone overland to Marseilles. We pass the Balearic Isles, and at the distance they much resemble other islands.

Before lunch we saw an extraordinary marine effect. Along the coast the blue sea appeared to be covered with a veil or mist of grass green colour, the green of a duck pond; beyond it the coast was distinct, distant I should say about eighteen miles. We could see upper-top-sails and the peaks of lateen sails beyond the flat bank of green, which seemed to begin a few miles from the shore and spread over the sea's surface several miles west and east. What made me think it was an effect of colour above water, not in it, was that with glasses I could distinctly see the blue backs of the swell coming through it. No one I have met has ever seen the like, but one of the officers was asked what it was, and he said "Water."

In the afternoon we had two interesting shows on board. A bell rang, and a waiter who was bringing us tea turned tail and fled—it was a fire alarm! It was pretty the way every man in the ship's company jumped to fire-stations; hose pipes were down and connected, and pumps manned very quickly, and bar a little talk amongst the lascars, which was immediately stopped, everything was done in silence—bravo, British discipline! All the iron doors were shut and bolted, the inspection followed, and that done, away went everyone, quickly and silently, to boat-stations. All this rehearsal only took about half-an-hour or less, then the tea came.

Another entertainment followed—a dummy dinner. Fifty waiters, all young men, about half white and half Indian, took their posts at the tables up the side of the saloon and down the middle. A tap on a gong and away they all streamed to the entrances to the saloon, to port and starboard service tables at the kitchen, where they pretended to get courses of dinner, and then went and stood at their tables whilst the two pursers and head steward went round the whole of them, patiently asking each separately his duties: "What have you to do?" and each man answered as well as he could, and corrections were made. This inspection took fully an hour, then they went through the coffee, cream, and sugar and tea drill. All this dinner and fire drill is very thorough, I must admit, and the management of a big crowd of people on a ship begins to impress me—but the tea—is horrid!

We are now going north-east towards Marseilles. The sun shines, and it blows a gentle half gale. The sea is blue where it isn't white, and the wind is strong enough to keep us lying steadily over to starboard decks of course all wet, with rainbows at the bow, and bursting spray over all occasionally—people rather subdued, only a small muster at breakfast.

Place aux dames! I forgot to mention that a very beautiful French lady came on board at Gibraltar; she looked like one of Van Beers' pictures as she came down the quay steps in a most exquisite dress, dreamlike petticoats, and open-work stockings on Diana's extremities, and she had a little parasol, and held her skirts high—a Frenchwoman hates mud—and the rain poured, in sheets! She gave a brave farewell to her friends and fiancé, and came on board with an air, notwithstanding the drenching rain. She was beautiful—hair like night, eyes brown, and features most perfectly Greek, and white as marble with a rose reflected on it! A doctor beside me whispered "anæmic," the red-haired ass! She leaves us at Marseilles, and will never travel by sea again. G. befriended her and interpreted for her; she was so helpless and alone in a cabin meant for three, with a pile of boxes miles bigger than the regulation size. With feminine courage she fought sea-sickness, fainted in the barber's chair, but appeared at dinner in another most exquisite toilet, and then—even in the paroxysm of sickness, preserved perfect grace of movement of hand and eye and draperies! What heroic courage! But enough of the tea rose in our bean field; let us get to more material things, and to Marseilles, and the coals rattling down the iron shoot beneath our heads as we try to sleep in air thick with coal dust.

This morning the racket is like nothing else in the world. It is a combination of the babel of the East and West, of Europe and Africa. There are four groups of musicians alongside, harpists, singers and fiddlers, all within the ship's length on the quay, and others in boats alongside.

We have two gangways reaching to the wharf, where are hundreds of porters, ship waiters and stewards bringing vegetables on board, and ships officers and hundreds of newly arrived passengers, all talking more or less over the music, and passing to and fro across the gangways in the sun. The ship feels too full to move in now. The new arrivals look a little pale and tired after their overland journey by Paris, but we weather-worn people with The Bay behind us, enjoy the whole scene with the calm of experienced mariners! Behind the sunlit groups of passengers with their baggage, the dock labourers in the sheds pile grain sacks on to waggons, and strings of stout horses stand resting beside them. On the edge of the quay are flower girls in black, selling big bunches of violets, and a Strong-man in pink tights and sky-blue knickerbockers—a festive piece of colour taken with his two white chairs and bright carpet. He plays with silver balls and does balancing feats with his little girl, and puts his arms round her and strokes her hair after each turn, in a delicate appeal to the sympathies of passengers who lean over the rail and take it all in somewhat sleepily.

… The post has brought me an Orient-Pacific guide-book which I wish I had had coming down channel and along the Portuguese coast. I would recommend it to anyone going this journey. It has a most interesting collection of facts both about sea and land on the route.

… We met the beautiful French lady again last night at the Hotel de Louvre, where everyone meets everyone else up town. I think she is Gascon, and the very opposite of the fair Saxon type we ought to admire at home. You hardly expect a perfectly beautiful woman to talk well, but this perfection could both talk and dress; her personality was not "sunk in her hat." She knew Scottish history, all about the good Lord James, and about Mary Stuart, and what pleased us greatly was that she told us words and hummed the airs of children's songs reputed to have been written by Queen Mary, and which she said are sung to-day by French children. The Hotel de Louvre soon filled, so we got away from the crowd in a victoria and drove along the town to a café for supper, and it was cold and dark too!

The café, Basso and Bregaillon, has a "vue splendide" (in the daytime), so the bill says. What you see at night is a well lit quay with the café lights shining out across the dark water in the dock on to some white steam yachts. After getting rid of a uniformed interpreter, whose one idea was to give us an "Engleesh dinner, very good, very sheep," we made up our own order. Of course bouillabaisse et soupe de poissons was the first item. I am not sure how to eat this, with a spoon or fork—two dishes are set down at once, one with half an inch of saffron-coloured soup, made of, I think, shell-fish, and with great slices of bread in it—certainly a spoon is not very suitable; the other dish has a perfect aquarium of little fish and bits of bigger fish beautifully arranged in a pyramid with similar soup round it—there are bits of red mullet, crab, green fish, and white fish, and all sorts of odds and ends. Why do we not make dishes like this at home? I get just such oddities any time I lift my trammel net, but they are thrown away as "trash." But the French are artists in every line of life, in cooking, in dress, and I believe they put art into the way they heave the coal on board. We feel much inclined to stay here a little and see more of these Southern French. I love their jolly abandon of manner, their kindness and "honesty," and their gasconade. So here's to you Cyrano and Daudet, D'Artagnan and Tartarin, not forgetting M. le Président.

Who do you think sat beside us within arm's length but Réjane! There were only six or seven people in the café and none of them were aware of the presence of their distinguished compatriot till we whispered her name to the waiter, and he whispered it to them and their eyes opened! I came to G.'s side of the table so that I might see the great actress in mufti, and I would have liked to have made a sketch of her as she talked to her companion, but it would have been too obvious—you know the way she speaks, a little out of the corner of her eye and mouth, with hand on hip. She is great! We saw her only a year ago with Coquelin in "La Mantansier."

This is the head of the Serang; I took it when he was not looking. He runs the lascars on board; acts pretty much as bo'sun. This face is brown and beard died rusty red, and he wears a lovely boatswains silver whistle on a silver chain, and has an air of command and the appearance of deepest intelligence.

CHAPTER V

There is a frightful crush on board. It would take years to consider all the faces. Numbers of ladies are going out to join their husbands after having taken their children home in spring. By the afternoon all the new comers look much refreshed; they have washed off the travel stains of that dusty journey across France, have tidied up, eaten, and slept a little, and have perhaps met friends of the road. You hear, "Hillo—hillo—you here again! met in Simla last, didn't we—wasn't it cold last night?" "By Jingo it was—rummy spell of cold—coming over all western Europe so suddenly," and they talk of "Cold weathers," and "Rains," and "Monsoons," and places you think you heard about in school days and have forgotten; and you realise something of what there is ahead to learn.

Meantime I watch the lascars taking off the effect of the coaling last night; how blue and sharp the reflections of the sky are on the wet deck and their dark feet. It is my business to paint things, not to write, about them, still, both occupations dissipate the time wonderfully. They are scrubbing down the waist, washing the decks with brushes and squeejees and lashins of blue Mediterranean; they wear dungaree tunics, and trousers of dark blue and faded pale blues, with red cloth round their straw skull-caps, and are all in shadow—that colourful, melting, warm shade you have in the South in the afternoon.

27th Evening.—To what shall I liken this evening on deck? You know a railway carriage on Bank Holiday, and you have heard perhaps of a Newfoundland sealing ship, the crew head and tail and three deep in the bunks, and all about the deck and along the bulwarks for want of room—well, it's worse here, at the price! In the smoking-room there is not an inch to sit on; men lean against the pillars, others against the side of the bar or against each other. A few have got seats for bridge, others sit on sofas round the side, the rest have to stand. There were more passengers when we left Tilbury than allowed any free movement on deck; we made light of that. Now, people are jammed beside each other all the way up the side of the deck that is sheltered from the sweep of the wind, others sit on the rail; those who want to move have to pick a devious and careful course between the lines of chairs. And this is to be to-night, and to-morrow, till we get to India! And it will yet be worse than it is just now, for many passengers from Marseilles are still below, waiting for baths and arranging their crowded cabins.

I have to write letters and sketch on a dining-saloon table amongst waiters clearing dishes. There are four small tables on deck in what I think is called the music room, and they are fully occupied with ladies writing and bridge players, and round them every seat in the room is occupied. It is a crowd of people of the most gentle manners and breeding, or it would be horrible beyond words.

28th.—I suppose there were not more than fifty men in the smoking-room late last night when it became sufficiently empty to allow me to see separate faces. There were civilians, judges, and one or two men of business, but the majority were soldiers of middle age. I confess I am much impressed by the general type and the expression of quiet strength and capability of these men of the Indian Services. They have finely modelled heads on powerful figures, better, I think, than any type of the ancients. Their manners are cheery and kindly, but always in repose the lines show strongly across the brow; faces and lines seem to me to spell D-U-T-Y emphatically. For a nouveau it is difficult to follow their talk, it changes so quickly from the man to his horse, to his seat and powers as cavalry leader or the like, perhaps to his family, his marriage, or his death, and whenever the family interest comes in, there is a note of genuine kindness as if brothers were telling or asking about other brothers and their wives and belongings. They speak rather quickly and cheerily, and then in repose the lines come again, not that they look over-worn; on the contrary they look fit, tremendously and are very abstemious. One speaks near me—"You knew so and so? Good horseman—wasn't he? Curious seat—do you remember the way he rode with his toes out?" "Yes, yes—ha, ha!—it was funny! He led a column with me at Abu Lassin. Very sad his death, poor fellow—never got over the last war—heart always suffered—nice wife." "Yes, yes—gave him pretty bad time though—oughtn't to have married. Where is his boy—Sandhurst? No, he's left—he's coming out next month in a troop ship, I hear." These are the older soldiers, and there are also many young officers, and two judges of the High Courts, one with nimble tongue and expression, the other the reverse. And there are business men with concentrated and perhaps rather narrower expressions than the others—Irish, Scots, and English. As they are all in the same black and white kit in the evening it is easier then to compare the various faces; in the daytime the variety of costume, flannels, and coloured ties and tweeds prevent one doing it so easily; I'd like to make a sketch of each, and superimpose these, and get the average, the type of the thousands who follow this road year after year.

… As usual, these Bayards, in dressing gowns of various cuts and colours, stood outside the bathrooms this morning and waited their turn, and if the atmosphere was not murky with swear words, it was not to the P. & O.'s credit. To most men tub time is the jolliest in the day; here it is one of evil temper, for after you have waited say twenty minutes in a passage for your chance, you get into a little wet steamy place over the engines, with possibly no port and poorly ventilated, and have your tub in a hurry for you know other fellows are waiting outside, and instead of gaily carolling your morning song you feel angry and cuss cusses, not loud, but profound as Tuscarora Deep. "Oh! Mummie, do come and see all the men waiting for their baths," said a little angel this morning, as she pointed at the solemn row of bare-footed men holding on to their towels and sponge-bags and tempers—we actually grinned. Like some others I give up the attempt to get a morning tub, and trust to sneak one in during the day; better to have no bath than to start the day cross—"better to smash your damned clubs than to lose your damned temper," as the golfer in a bunker was overheard muttering as he broke each club across his knee. The ladies, some hundreds, have I think five baths between them, and they wait for these a great part of the day. If you pass their waiting-room you get a glimpse of wonderful morning toilettes of every tint, muslins, laces, a black boy with red turbash bustling about to get the bath ready makes rather a good note of colour.

… Notwithstanding all the above grievance we hadn't such a bad day yesterday; it was calm and not too cold, with a soft pigeon grey sea and sky.… Put in a long day's painting in the corner of the after-well, and overhauling sketches done so far on the road—they are mounting up now, and I feel fortunate in having my apology for existence in such a handy shape as a paint box.

But how dull this log-writing becomes! How on earth can I find an incident to pad up this journal; what is there to write about in a route so monotonously first class! Here is absolutely the most risque exciting story I have heard for days; I must say the lady who told it has such an infectious laugh, that at the time I really thought it was very amusing.

You know the cabins on the P. & O. steamers are all exactly like each other, except the number above each door. So once upon a time she related, a certain lady tripped along to her cabin as she thought, to hurry up her husband for dinner and found him pulling on a shirt; she plumped into a seat, saying, "John, John, you are always too late for dinner, and there's no use trying to struggle into your shirt with the studs fastened?" Whereon the neck stud flew and revealed an astonished face—and it was not "John's." After lunch I told this to my barrister acquaintance; he smiled gently and said he had always thought it such an amusing story.

How I wish I was back at sea again on a whaler, with a swinging hammock, a tow net, and microscope, and opportunities any day to study the fairy beauties in drops of sea water, and with human interest too, so much more varied than on this P. & O. Hotel; there, would be all kinds of men, jolly, devil-may-care fellows, and even disreputable characters, mixed with canny, pawky, canting Scotties, and talk of all the corners of the world; ranting rollicking Balzacian yarns, rich in language, in poetry, and tenderness; any minute in the day amongst such people you might strike a yarn that would bear publication; the picturesque interest of life does not seem to be on the high plains, or low levels, but as it were between wind and water, where plain meets mountain, the poor the rich, between happiness and sorrow, and light and shade; and the fun of painting between one colour and the next. It is all very respectably drab here, and we talk of intellectual and proper things. For an hour to-day—no, two hours I am sure—I laboured at Indian sociology and history and Vedas and things, with the barrister, and I was tired! The barrister knows many books on these subjects, and recommends me to read Sir W. W. Hunter's "History of India" in its abridged form of only 700 pages; I suppose I must!—told my cousin I'd been trying to talk Indian sociology and he shouted: said he knew a man who had lived in India and studied the native life for twenty-eight years, and confessed he knew as little about it at the end as at the beginning; but R. admitted that whenever he had a knotty question of native affairs to settle he always went to this man, and the decision was invariably right. R. has qualified admiration for the Indians honesty. Once, he said, he had to leave his house at a moment's notice, to take home a sick relation, and left all standing, and on coming back months after found every single stick of furniture just as he left it, and not a single article stolen, except one door-mat; his night watchman had taken it with him to another situation, leaving a humble message to the effect that he had got so accustomed to it that he couldn't sleep without it! Their honesty must run in grooves for R. gave a heavy overcoat to one of his men in a cold station, and when he and his servants went to a very hot station, he noticed this man still wearing the thick coat and sweating like anything, so he asked him why he did so, and the man replied that he dared not put it off for a minute or it would be stolen.

We had quite an audience for the fiddles this Saturday—there are two lady violinists now, both very good players—but we had only a short spell of music in the music room on account of a choir practise, for to-morrow; the parson came and took our musicians down to the dining-room to sing over hymns and psalms, verse by verse. I heard the wheeze of the harmonium, and got back to my own chest-lid (sailor term for my own business)—"Every man to his own chest-lid and the cook to the foresheet," is it not a suggestive saying? To every man his prerogative, his chest-lid, and his duties, and the same for the cook and the least bit more! It is now getting passably mild, and we can sit out on deck at night. It was supposed to be hot enough for the punkahs in the saloon; one is hung over the length of each of the five tables, to port and starboard, and there are others the whole length of the table that runs up the middle of the saloon. I have long wished to see a punkah, now I wish I may never see another! On this ship they are narrow velvet rugs hung on edge from horizontal bars, this is swung by two ropes from the roof, and they are all guyed together with cords, so that one pull, from a lascar outside the cabin, sets them all into violent commotion. They hit your face when you stand, and sitting, their lowest edge stirs up your hair. These velvet rugs have white cotton covers on them now that they are being used, so the general effect at dinner-time is of a huge laundry in a gale, with beautiful laundresses in low dresses sitting at table under a world of wildly flapping linen; with the lamps lit, and our black coats for a foil, the colours are really extremely pretty, though the discomfort is great. Men and women are all getting a little brown with the sea air, and the ladies have a little of the blush of spring now, instead of the pallor of winter with which they came on board.

Egypt in sight, and this morning we tubbed in the water of the river that floated Moses, and that has been bathed in and drunk since by such a number of people we know, or have read about. Sea and Nile are meeting in blue, and green, and brownish stripes, blending to a general absinthe colour as we get closer to the flat delta; little level rows of cloud throw purple shadows across the crisp small waves, and over the horizon there's a flight of white lateen sails.

What a bustle there is on board to-day; people running up and down stairs with letters hurriedly finished, addressed and stamped to the children at home. No use writing to the man who waits out there, for we carry the mail. It is touching, the wife looking forward and back at the same time—the bull must pass—and the young girl too, leaving the old life for the new married life in a new country; it must take courage.

My notes at Port Said seem to have disappeared, possibly I did not write any. I remember that there was so much to see in the morning; and the change of colour in the water, the absinthe colour of the Nile with pale blue reflections winding in currents in distinct streams into the sea, would, with the blue ocean, need very subtile painting. I remember the fearful jabber, which I suppose has gone on and always will, since Port Said was invented. I got a glimpse of Lesseps's statue at lunch through the port-hole; he points with right hand twice life size up the harbour with a heroic expression, and seems to say to the steamers that come in from the sea, "Higher up there S.V.P.—try a little higher up." We watched the often described black men coaling in black dust, singing and working, the sun's rays making shafts of light stream through the clouds of black coal dust; and the same pandemonium at night in the flare of lights, when the scene is generally admitted to be like the nether regions.

I know we went ashore somehow or other, and that we could hardly see for the shouting and yelling! We felt fortunate in having a Mrs Deputy-Commissioner for a companion, for she was bubbling over with humour and anecdote. She and G. promptly began shopping, and certainly succeeded in getting two rather becoming topees, flatter and prettier than any I have yet seen—you might call them Romney topees; one may appear in sketches further on. I sketched of course—always keep "screeb, screeb, screebling all day long," as an irate German lady once put it to me, "screebled" a café scene; on the left you see a native, who calls himself Jock Furgusson, trying to pass off a "Genuine Egyptian Scarab" to a tourist. Jock Furgusson is infinitely more wonderful and artistic to me than the pyramids, for he can imitate accents so as to make you gasp; he spots anyone's nationality instantaneously—before you have opened your lips he knows your county! I believe he can distinguish between the English of a Lowland Scot and a Highlander, which is more than 'Punch' does after all these years of practice. "Ah'm, Jock Furgusson frae Auchtermurrchty and Achterlony, longest maun in the forty twa," he begins—but somebody help me—I've forgotten how he goes on, a long rigmarole in broadest Doric; the words and intonation so perfect, you can so little believe your eyes that you are landed with a scarab or a string of beads before you have recovered, and he is off to another passenger, clippin' 'is g's and r's and puttin' in h's to some Englishmen.

The inhabitants of Port Said, we are told, represent the scourings of the Levant; too bad for Cairo, and black-balled for Hell. All the same G. and I went ashore by ourselves after dinner, rather proud of our courage, for several passengers said it wasn't safe. It used not to be safe, I know, but I asked the Chief-Engineer what he thought, and he took his right hand in his left, all but the very tip of the little finger which he measured off with his left thumb nail, and said, "a black maun's heart's no as big as that." So we went ashore and had no adventures at all, but sat in a balcony and listened to pretty good music, and noted the few drowsy figures in the side streets, the glow of lamp or brazier on their heavy draperies, contrasting with the starlight and the deep velvety shadows—moth-like colouring, and intense repose, after the glittering, howling day.

A Café, Port Said

Looking back over these notes, and the Orient and Pacific Guide Book, and the Acts of the Apostles, I observe that I have made no note about Corsica and Sardinia, Lipari Islands, and Stromboli, or of the Straits of Messina and Etna—have barely mentioned Crete! In the Lipari Islands we saw lights ashore, and down the Straits of Messina; and Stromboli we discovered easily enough by the glow of hot red up in the sky, and a sloping line of red that went glittering downwards. It was too dark to distinguish anything more.

We saw Crete, enough to swear by, the white top of Mount Ida, and realized where Fair Haven and Phenice and Clauda must lie, and that we were actually in the seas where the Apostle Paul was caught in the Euroclydon. By the way what is a Euroclydon; is it a Levanter?

Was there ever a voyage so vividly described, in more concentrated and pithy words? In eight verses you have a complete dramatic account of a tragedy at sea, from a passenger's point of view. It would be curious and interesting to learn what the owner thought, and said, when the prisoner suggested that he, and his sailing master, and the Centurion, were all wrong in a question of navigation; and how it came about that shortly after this difference of opinion the prisoner was master of the commissariat, and how, after heavy weather and fasting fourteen days on a rocky coast, 276 souls were saved on bits of wreckage without the loss of one life! The Board of Trade and Life Saving Societies might enquire into this, and report.

CHAPTER VI

The Canal.—If I had not seen Mr Talbot Kelly's book on Egypt I could hardly have believed it possible that the delicate schemes of colour we see in the desert as we pass through the canal could be painted and reproduced in colour in a book. He has got the very bloom of the desert, and the beauty of Egypt without its ugliness; the heat and sparkle and brightness in his pictures are so vivid one can almost breathe the exhilarating desert air—and smell the Bazaars! But Egypt is ugly a pin's prick beneath its beauty. It is so old and covered with bones and decayed ideas. The Nile is associated with Moses, and it is long it is true, but it is also very narrow and shallow, and its banks are monotonous to a degree; a mile or so of green crop on either side, then stones, sand, bits of crockery, human bones and rags, then desert sand—a cross between a cemetery and a kitchen garden. The ruins are awfully ugly! "Think of their age!" people say, and you look at the exquisite spirals of shells in the lime stones with which these heaps are made! But the saddest thing in Egypt is the fine art debased in the temples, in these ponderous monuments of their officialism; for here and there in them you see exquisite bits of low relief carving, that a Greek would have been proud of, hidden away in interminable hieroglyphic histories spread indiscriminately over grotesque pillars and vast walls, as regardlessly of decorative effect as advertisements in a newspaper's columns. The open desert is the best of Egypt, and this thread of blue canal strung with lakes through its sand is very pretty and interesting all the way. We come to a swing bridge. It is open and our modern hotel and modern people slowly steam right through the middle of a Biblical caravan of Arabs on camels; some have crossed into the Egyptian side, the remainder are waiting on the Arabian side, their camels are feeding on the grey-green bushes. The passengers just give them a glance and go on with their books. Have we not seen it all long ago in nursery books on Sundays. But, in the nursery in our Sunday books we did not see or feel the glitter and heat of the day, some of which, children to-day can get in Mr Kelly's book.

I dared not sketch the desert scenes; it was in too high a key for me, but I made so bold as to do this sketch of a scene on deck at night: an effect I have not heard described, though it must be familiar to those who go this road. I am sorry it is not reproduced here in colour.

The searchlight on the bow plays on the sandbanks and desert beyond, and makes the land like a snow-field, and the slow movement of the white light intensifies the darkness and silence of the desert. In contrast to the cold blue light and snow-white sand, is the group of figures on deck in bright dresses, dancing. It made quite an evident subject. The figure leaning on the rail is not ill. It is only a little Japanese maid thinking of home perhaps.

Suez was a few lights in the darkness over the glow of our pipes, then bed, and in the morning we were sailing down the top, west branch, of the Red Sea, otherwise the Gulf of Suez, with a fresh north wind behind us.

It is extremely charming and refreshing, as I've already remarked, to look out of a port in the morning and see the glittering, tumbling, blue sea alongside. On this occasion the blue is capped with many soft white horses chasing south, and the serrated barren hills of Egypt are slipping away north. They are coloured various tints of pale, faded leather, light buff, and light red, and the sun glares brilliantly over all, "drying up the blue Red Sea at the rate of twenty three feet per year," this from the Orient-Pacific Guide; you can yourself almost fancy you hear the sea fizzling with the heat. The Arabian shore is almost the same as the Egyptian, with a larger margin of swelling stretches of sand between the sea and the foot of the hills.

"Gaunt and dreary run the mountains,
With black gorges up the land
Up to where the lonely desert
Spreads her burning, dreary sand."

There are occasions when circumstances make it really a pleasure to be an artist, to-day for example; the air is so full of colour, the sea deepest turquoise, with emerald showing when the crests burst white and mix with the blue, and there is a glint of reddish colour reflected from the Arabian sand, and the shadows in the clefts in the sand-hills to the north are as blue as the sea. I was trying to put this down when my friend from the West Country, who helps the engines, told me he had got me one of these exquisite classic earthenware vases from Port Said, which he decorates with cigar labels and blue and gold enamel. I had a chat with him in his rather nice cabin—made a study of the flagon, i.e. drew its cork. It was full of deep purple Italian wine, like Lacrima Christie or Episcopio Rosso; the wine was good enough, but its deep rose colour with the bright blue reflected on it through the port was splendid. He didn't like it himself, said "it drew his mouth," and he gave me both the bottle and the wine as a present because of our love for Dalriada, and I have to give him a "wee bit sketch" for his cabin.

I will smuggle the jar under our table—G. and I both like Italian wine—and we will use it as a water bottle afterwards, for we have only one decanter at our table amongst eleven thirsty people.

It was just such dark red wine as this, I suppose, that Ulysses and his friends in these seas took in skinfuls to wash down venison, an excellent menu I must say, but it would have been more seamanlike if they had slept off the effects on board, instead of lying out all night on the beach; then, when Morning the rosy-fingered turned up, they'd have been quicker getting under way, and would have got home sooner in the end. How much superior were the Fingalian heroes; they would sail and fight all day and pass round the uisquebaugh in the evening at the feast of shells, and never get fuddled and never feared anything under water or above land, and were beholden to neither Gods nor men.

But I did once know a descendant of theirs, in their own country who was overcome by red wine. "It was perfectly excusable," he said, for he had never tasted it before—or since! He was a fine, tall man called Callum Bhouie, from his yellow hair when he was a youth; he was old when I knew him—six feet two and thin as a rake and strong, with the face of Wellington and an eye like a hawk. He and his friend were going home to his croft from their occupations one morning early, round the little Carsaig Bay opposite Jura, where he had a still up a little burn there, and they fell in with a cask on the sand and there was red wine in it, port or Burgundy, I do not know. Callum said he knew all about it and it was but weak stuff, so they took bowls and saucers and drank the weak stuff more and more. I think it must have been port; and they lay where they were on the sand and slept till the morning after. When dawn, the rosy-fingered, found them she must have thought them quite Hellenic; and the minister followed later, and I would not think it right to repeat what he thought it right to say. The sands and the bay and the burn are there to-day, and, as they say in the old tales, if Callum were not dead he would be alive to prove the truth of the story. The still I've never seen, but Callum I knew, and his croft; alas the roof of it fell in a few years ago; and it was the last inhabited house of a Carsaig clachan. You see the land is "improved" now, for sheep, and it's all in one big farm instead of small crofts, and little greasy, black-faced sheep climb the loose stone walls and nibble the green grass short as a carpet where Callum and his wife lived so long.

May I go on to the end of Callum's story; though it is rather a far cry from this hot Red Sea to the cool Sound of Jura?

He and his wife were to be taken to the poor house in winter, and on the long drive across Kintyre they were told that they would be separated, and there was then and there such a crying and fighting on the road that they were both driven back to the croft—and I was not surprised, for where Callum Bhouie was fighting there would not be a stronger man of his age. So they lived on in the but-and-ben, with the lonely, tall ash standing over it, and the view of Jura, the sweetest I know, in front, and he died very old indeed, and his wife followed him in two or three days, so they were not separated even by death for long.

… Now to my log rolling. It has already been explained by travellers of repute that the Red Sea does not take its name from its colour; this statement, I believe, is now generally accepted as being something more than the mere "traveller's tale." It is not, however, so generally known that this Sea is peculiarly blue, so blue, in fact, that were you to dip a white dress into it it would come out blue, or at least it looks as if it would. It reminds me of a splendid blue silk with filmy white lace spread over it. Against this the figures on the shady side of the ship look very pretty; ladies and children and menkind all in such various bright, summery colours, lying in long chairs or grouped round green card tables. "The Ladies' Gulf," it should be called now. That used to be the name for the sea off the N. W. of Africa where you pick up the North East trades as you sail south. Times have changed and sea routes, so the name should be passed east to this Gulf of Suez, where ladies and parasols look at their best and the appearance of a man in oilskins would be positively alarming.

The Indian judge with the Italian name and myself, are, as far as I can see, the only passengers who are not engaged doing something. Perhaps the judge's Italian name and my Vino Tinto respectively account for our contemplative attitudes. He has pulled his chair well forward to be out of the crowd, and makes a perfect picture of happy repose; he wears a dark blue yachting suit, and his hands are deep in his pockets. His face is ruddy, and his eyes are blue and seem to sparkle with the pleasure of watching the tumbling blue seas, and the bursting white and green crests. Just now a rope grummet, thrown by an elderly youth at a tub, rolled under his legs, and the judge handed it back most politely, and resumed contemplation. In two minutes another quoit clattered under his chair, this he likewise returned very politely; at the third, however, he sighed and gave up his study of the blue and sauntered aft to the smoking-room—such is life on a P. & O.

The above picture is intended to represent ladies in afternoon dress, the colours of the intermediate tints of the rainbow—expressions celestial. It is the witching hour before changing from one costume to the other, after afternoon tea and just before dressing for dinner. To the right you may observe an Ayah spoiling some young Britons.[3] You see in the background a golden sunset on a wine red sea, and our lady artist, a pupil from Juliens; she is gazing out at the departing glory.… After sundown the decks are empty, for the people are below dressing and at dinner; towards nightfall they become alive again with ladies in evening dresses with delicate scarves and laces, promenading to and fro—a difficult thing to do in such a crowd. One moment they are dark shadowy forms against the southern night sky, then they are all aglow in the lights from the music-room windows and the ports of the deck cabins.

[3]

Make it Anglo Saxons, if you like!

"The-most-beautiful-lady-in-the-ship," in dark muslin, and the stalwart-man stand near us to-night; they are in half-light, leaning against the rail, looking out into the darkness. I wished Whistler might have seen them; he alone could have caught the soft night colours—the black so velvety and colourful, blurred into the dark blue of the night sky, with never the suggestion of an outline, and just one touch of subdued warm colour on the bend of her neck. Sometimes her scarf floats lightly across his sleeve and rests, and floats away again. I suppose they talk of—the weather, and repeat themselves in the dear old set terms. That is why nature is more interesting than man, it never repeats itself or displays an effect for more than a minute. Five men out of any six on board, I believe, would make a fair copy of the conversation of these two, but only one man who has lived in our times could have made a fist at that effect of faint lamp-light and fainter moonlight on the black of the coat against the deep blue-black of the star spangled southern sky. Only the "Master" could have got the delicacy and movement of the faintly sea-green veil that sometimes lifts on the warm breeze and floats an instant across the sky and the broadcloth; he would have got the innermost delicacy of colour form purely and simply, without an inch, of conventional paint or catch-penny sentiment.

CHAPTER VII

I believe this is the 5th. These 'chits' help one to remember dates; they are little cards presented you when you order soda water or wine, or are solicited for subscriptions to sports or sweepstakes. They have the date marked on them, and you add your name, and number of berth, and away goes your steward to the bar or wine man, and you get what you ordered; it may be ages afterwards, when you have almost forgotten what it was you ordered, but punctually at the end of the week, you get them in a bundle and pay up. "I find," to quote Carlyle again, "I have a considerable feeling of astonishment at the unexpected size of the bundles. It's a most excellent system, and if there wasn't such a crowd it would work out all right here."

It is uncomfortably warm now and damp. Last night we on the main deck had to sleep with ports closed, so we had to live with very little air; I do not know what the temperature was, not having a thermometer with us, as we are almost amidship and near the engine, it must have been considerable.

… The Red Sea does not grow in my affections; as we go south there is too much of the sensation of being slowly stewed. At Babel Mandeb I believe the temperature of the sea rises to 100° F.

The islands we pass on the shore to the east, distant about fifteen miles as I write, are interesting enough. I suppose the inhabitants are somewhat irresponsible, and were we to land there in the boats unarmed, might find us full occupation for the rest of our lives as slaves in the interior. There was a ship wrecked on this coast some years ago, and her boat's crew landed, and were either killed or are up country slaving. R. tells me the wife of one of them lives beside his people in Fife, which makes us feel almost in touch with the sandy shore. What an anomaly—a modern steamship packed with western civilisation reeling off twenty knots an hour—past a desert land of lawless nomadic Arab tribes.

As we get south nearer Aden the sand spits tail out south and slope off inland like wide glaciers, through which appear dark coloured rocky islets.

… We had rather bad luck yesterday and to-day; the iron wind catcher put out at our port to make a draught caught a sea, and threw it all over our cabin. G.'s maid had just opened my overland trunk to give the contents an airing, and now my collars are pulp and rose pink from the lining of the collar box, so I must call on the barber who runs a shop on board. We had the carpet taken up and our clothes hung up to dry, but they won't, for the air is so hot and damp—with the least exertion you steam! Imagine the joy of having to dress for dinner in such cramped space and heat—you drop a stud and a year of your life in finding it! I think most people realise that their feelings under these circumstances cannot be exactly described in decorous language, so they set their teeth in grim silence; and after all there is something laughable about all the trouble—we needn't go in for white shirts and black coats and trousers in the tropics unless we like. Everyone feels them horribly uncomfortable and unsuitable, but no one dares to be so utterly radical as come to dinner in anything else. If a flannel shirt and shorts were the fashion, if only for the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, how many valued lives would be prolonged. The penance in India is not so bad; there your Boy hunts your stud whilst you sit and cool.

A number of passengers sleep on deck now; I suppose three and four in a cabin is intolerable. They have their mattresses brought up on deck by their cabin steward, and he chalks their number on the deck at their feet; you can thus sleep in a strong wet draught under the officers' deck. There is a great deal of pleasure in sleeping in the open, but you should have nothing but stars overhead and a shelter to windward, if it is only a swelling in the ground or a sod or two. The ladies have a part of the deck reserved, and the floor of the music room round the well that opens into the dining-saloon below. Their part of the deck is defended at night by a zereba of deck chairs, piled three or four feet high; it suggests privacy!

We had our port open last night again—my fault—and just as G. came to my end of the cabin to tell me the waves were getting near the port, in one came! So we spent the small hot hours rearranging things, shut the port and slept the sleep of the weary, and awakened more dead than alive from too little air and too much water.

Yesterday the ship went on fire. It started on the woodwork of the companion way, where there was a place for stationery; there was a mighty mess of water and smell of smoke and a panel or two burned, and no great damage done, as far as I can hear. I am surprised we don't go on fire every day with so many smokers chucking cigarette ends overboard. The wind-catchers sticking out of the ports of course catch these, and they blow into the berths. Yesterday, however, to prevent this, two or three buckets with sand in them were put down on deck in which cigarette ends are to be buried and pipes knocked out, so there's a chance for us all yet!

This morning I made a water-colour for my engineer friend, as a return for the wine vase he gave me. I thought he'd like a sketch of a Highland burn in spate—thought it would be cooling. How it came about I cannot explain, but I did him a recollection of a burn within five to seven miles, by sea, of his birthplace in Jura! I'd put him down as coming from the Clyde.

The biggest event for me in this day's reckoning was the discovery that the distinguished judge I observed contemplating the blue waves for some minutes, was an artist before he took to Law! You might have knocked me down with a feather—five years in Lauren's studio in Paris, and three pictures on the line the year he was called to the bar and two of them sold! We had a great talk about art and all the rest of it. He and Jacomb Hood and others were fellow students, and he and Jacomb Hood and this writer, and various artists and newspaper men are to meet at his board in Calcutta and have a right good Bohemian evening as in days of yore.

Is it not curiously sanguine this belief, to which I've seen quite old men clinging—that you can repeat a good time. It is possible we will have a good evening, and talk lots of shop, for we all know far more about it now, than we did then; but it was what we did not know, that gave the charm to student days.

We talk art and technique pretty hard, but I can't quite get over the shock—an artist—become a judge—A Quartier Latin Art Student—a Judge of the High Court—with a fixed income, and on his way to Calcutta, perhaps to hang folk!

We had sports to-day and a sing-song in the evening. The sports were very amusing; the bolster fight on a spar doesn't sound interesting, but it was; it got quite exciting towards the end as the wiry cavalry colonel, hero of many a stricken field, knocked out all comers, young or old. Egg and spoon races and threading needles were a little stupid, but what tableaux the groups of fair women made, with the bright dresses and complexions, and the jolly brown young men, all in the soft light that was filtering through the awning and blazing up from under its edge from the sea.

Sunday—at Aden—loafed all morning—vowed I'd not paint—bustle and movement too great—painted hard in afternoon—horribly difficult—too many people—ladies skirt in palette—man's hoof in water tin—chucked it.

Aden, and Fan-sellers

This is verbatim from my log and expresses a very little of one's feelings; everyone is so jolly and polite too, you just have to stop, or go on and show temper. Two or three of the passengers tried to paint effects, each formed a centre of a group of people, who looked over their shoulders, the onlookers one after another remarking with ingratiating smiles, "You don't mind my looking, do you?" Why on earth do people look over the shoulders of persons painting, when they would never dream of looking over the shoulder of any one writing? Notwithstanding the crowd and polite requests to be "allowed to look," and the untenable effort required to give soft answers, I did manage to make a sketch or two at Aden—one of stony hills and government houses in the background, and in the front green water and the vendors of fans and beads, and curious brown, naked, active fellows in sharp stemmed light coloured boats, which they could row! Some of them had turbans, pink or lemon yellow, or white skull caps, and there were also Egyptian officials and soldiers in white uniform and red turbash, in white launches that raced about through the green water, cutting a great dash of white with their bows; there was colour enough, and movement and sun galore.

I suppose these "ragged rocks and flinty spires" are the rocks that inspired the Pipe-Major with the cheery farewell to "The Barren Rocks of Aden"—here they are the rocks you see from Aden—everyone knows the tune.

7th October.—The lady artist and I compared sketches. We both worship Whistler, and various writers we agree about, but I fear we are only in sympathy so far. I gathered from her to-night that I ought to study native character in India, for our countrymen in India had no picturesqueness, no art about them, and to associate with them one had better be at home. I felt saddened and went on deck and saw the people she called "Anglo-Indians" (more than two-thirds Scots, Irish, Cornish, and Welsh, with a negligible fraction of possible Angles) all lying like dead men in rows, with no side or show about them as they lay; some in contorted positions, with here and there a powerful limb or well rounded northern head showing in the half dark. Rulers of the Indian Empire, by Odin! or Jove! damp and hot, and in the dark, in a strong draught, without a pick of gold lace, prostrate, sweating uncomfortably, sleeping; and travelling as their innumerable predecessors have ever travelled, from the North to rule the South.

They may be inartistic, but they look mighty touching, pathetic, and wonderful, not only the individual whose legs you step over but that almighty race combine—whatever you call it[4]—which he represents.… Ladies were stealing to their lairs in the zereba on deck, and in the music room; they look quite Eastern, all muffled up in tea gowns and gauzy draperies. The music room has only recently been reserved for them at night; a mere man who had camped there with wife and child did not know of the change; and Mrs Deputy-Commissioner told us they were all lying out there in the dark when the man entered in pyjamas and had stepped over a dozen prostrate forms when Mrs D.-C. said incisively, "We are all ladies here," and he murmured "Good Lord," and his retreat was rapid—what a scare he had!

[4]

British or English.

Only one more day's dull reckoning and we will be ashore. I expect everyone is getting rather sick of the crowded life. A fancy dress ball pulled through last night. Most ingenious dresses were made up, and prizes were given to the best. All those in fancy dress formed up and walked past the judges in single file. There were pretty much the usual stock costumes, and nothing original amongst the ladies. The very black-eyed belle with red cheeks wore a mantilla of course, and gripped a fan and had a camellia in her hair, and was called Andalusian, but her walk and expression were "made in England"—a Spanish girl's expression and walk can't be got up in a day or two. The-most-beautiful-lady-in-the-ship was—upon my word, I don't know what her dress was called, something of the "Incroyable" period; whatever it was called, she carried it well and could walk, the rest merely toddled. She is Australian, still, I'd have given her First Prize. The lady who did get it, was really very pretty, and dressed as a white Watteau or Dresden shepherdess. Amongst the men "The British Tourist" was perfection—answered all requirements, and suggested the tourist of old and the tourist of to-day; he had check trousers, chop whiskers, a sun hat, umbrella, blue spectacles, and the dash of red Bædeker for colour. Then an Assistant-Commissioner, an Irishman, was splendidly got up. I'd noticed he had been out of sight a good deal lately—he had been sewing his own clothes, and they were really well made! "An Eastern Potentate" he called himself, or a Khedive, and ran to riot in a jumble of orders and jewellery and gold chains. Trousers and jacket were pale cinnamon with scarlet facings and a red turbash, and how well the clothes fitted! clever Mr B.; he knows so much about many subjects, and can sew! He and my Judge acquaintance were arguing last night. The Judge is a Cornishman. When you get a highly educated Cornishman and an Irishman together, however long they have been in England, and they begin to talk, it's worth while sitting out. B. explained in soft and winning words to the Judge that his life was a giddy round of society, long leave, and high pay, whilst he in the far North led a lonely life of continuous hard work and no pay to speak of; and the Judge, with equal if not greater fluency, described B.'s up-country life as perpetual leave on full pay, a long delightful picnic, and so on and so forth. My sympathy went with the Judge; I think his life is the least pleasant, but one had to allow for his greater rapidity of speech and practice in courts before juries, besides his art studies in Paris. Later R. joined; he is an advocate in Calcutta and hails from the Hebrides. Then came a Welsh Major, a gunner. That made a party of an Irishman, two Scots (one of them anglicised), a Welsh, and a Cornishman, and they discussed everything under the sun except the Celtic Renaissance: for they spend their days on the confines of the Empire, and the brain takes time to make the tail wag.

CHAPTER VIII

Bombay.—I've travelled these three weeks with people who have lived in India, and I have been brought up on Indian books and Indian home letters, and in one way and another have picked up an idea of what the people and the features of nature are like, but I have received only a very faint idea of its real light and colour. I thought Egypt had given me a fair idea of what India might be, but nothing in Egypt can touch what I've seen in these two half days.

Our first view of Bombay from where we lay at anchor a mile off shore was very disappointing. All there is to see is a low shore and a monotonous line of trees and houses; the air was warm and damp and hazy, and the smoke from two or three tall chimneys hung in thin wreaths over land and water. In our immediate neighbourhood steamers were coaling, and their dust did not add any beauty to the picture, and the actual landing is not very interesting; you get off the ship to the wharf in a big launch, a slow process but quietly and well-managed, and on shore have a little trouble about your luggage, even though it may be in the hands of an agent. I'd two or three cab voyages, "gharry," I should have said, before I got the best part of ours to the Taj Hotel. There a friend had booked us our rooms before we sailed, and on the morning of our arrival had very thoughtfully secured them with lock and key, so that no unscrupulous Occidental could play on Oriental weakness and bag them before our arrival.

The journeys in the gharry were not entirely successful, and I didn't get all our baggage till next day, but they presented me with one astounding series of beautiful pictures, so that my head fairly reeled with the continuous effort to grasp the way of things and their forms and colours, things in the street, themselves perhaps of no great interest but for the intense colourful light.—There is a water carrier; the sun shines blue on the back of his brown bare legs and back, and blazes like electric sparks on the pairs of brass water pots he carries slung across his shoulders. He is jogging along fast, his "shoulder knot a-creaking," and the water that splashes on to the hot dust intensifies the feeling of heat and light. Then you catch the flash of silver rings in the dust on a woman's toes as she strides along, and have the unfamiliar pleasure of seeing the human form, God's image in brown, and note the rounded limbs and bust, and the movement of hip and swinging arm through white draperies, which the sun makes a golden transparency. What thousands of figures, and all in different costumes or bare skin.

Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales arrived the day before we did, so the air vibrates with the salutes from guns, and is full of heat and curdling smoke, and colour. "The Prince" is distinctly in the air, and we feel glad in consequence that we have arrived in time to have seen the town at its brightest: from morning to night there is one scene after another of continually shifting figures and colours, perfectly fascinating to us new comers.

… Guns again from the war ships, aimed right at our windows! Everything jingles, the air is quivering with the sound and light. The ships in the bay are ablaze with flags, and the sides of the Apollo Bundar (the landing place of the Prince) are a mass of decorations and flags. Below our windows in the shadow of our hotel on the embankment, the crowd of natives in their best behaviour and best clothes move to and fro making holiday, watching the ships and any ceremony that may come off in their neighbourhood, for like our own natives they love a tamasha. They wear flimsy clothes of varied colours, lemon-yellow and pale rose, white and pale green, and the Southern light softens all these by making each reflect a little on to the other.

… There they go again! banging away—good thing there's no glass in our hotel windows! You can hardly see the shipping now, the smoke hangs low on the turquoise blue of the bay, and you can just see the yellow gleam of the flash and feel the concussion and the roar that follows.

Interjectory this journal must be, even my sketches are running into meaningless strokes with so many subjects following one on the top of the other. In the pauses that follow the passing of troops and gun-firing, the crowds in the streets below our hotel watch snake charmers, jugglers, and monkey trainers who play up to us at our balconies.

What a delight!—there they are, all the figures we knew as dusty coloured models as children, now all alive and moving and real. The snake charmer, a north countryman, I think, sits on his heels on the road and grins up at us and chatters softly and continuously, holding up his hands full of emerald green slow moving snakes; a crowd of holiday townspeople stand round him at a little distance and watch closely. He stows the green snakes away into a basket, and his hands are as lithe as his snakes but quicker, then pipes to nasty cobras, the colour of the dusty road; they raise their heads and blow out their hoods and sway to and fro as he plays. Then the mongoose man shows how his beast eats a snake's head—no trick about this! And always between the turns of the performances the performers look up and show their white teeth and talk softly to us, but we can't hear what they say the windows are so high up. Then bang go the guns again, and we shut our blinds and try to read of the show of the day, the opening of Princes Street, when the Prince drove through "millions of happy and prettily dressed subjects." As we read there comes a knock and a message with an invitation card to see the Prince open a museum, and we read on; another knock comes just as I'd begun to draw the Prince as we saw him last night in a swirl of dust, outriders, and cavalry, blurred in night and dust and heat—it is another card! To meet their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales to-night at Government House! Surely this is the veritable land of the tales of the Arabian Nights! It comes as a shock to live all your life in your own country and never to see the shadow of Royalty, then suddenly to be asked twice in one day to view them as they pass—I am quite overcome—It will be a novel experience, and won't it be warm! It means top hat, frock coat and an extra high collar for the afternoon, and in the evening a hard, hot, stiff shirt and black hot clothes, and a crush and the thermometer at pucca hot-weather temperature, and damp at that, but who cares, if we actually see Royalty—twice in one day!

I am determined not to go out to-day, not on any account. I will sit in this tower room of this palace and write and draw, and will shut these jalousies that open west and south and north-east, and offer distracting views, and I will contemplate the distempered walls in the shade till I have recalled all I saw yesterday. If I go to the window, or outside, there will be too many new things to see. I maintain that for one day of new sights, a day is needed to arrange them in the tablets of memory.… But is it possible I saw all these things in one day! From a tiny wedding in the Kirk in the morning to the Royal Reception at Government House at night; from dawn till late night one splendid line of pictures of Oriental and Occidental pageantry, of which I have heard and read of so much and realised so little compared with reality.

We started the day with a wedding of a lady we knew on board, to a young Scottish officer, the day after her arrival. We directed our "boy" to tell our driver to go to the Free Church. But apparently neither of these benighted heathens could distinguish between the "Free" and the "Wee Free," or the "U. P." or the "Established" and took us to the English Church. We had such a hunt for the particular branch of the Church of Scotland. It was quite a small kirk, and our numbers were in proportion. We arrived a little hot and angry at being so misled, but the best man, a brother officer of the bridegroom, had not turned up, so we waited a little and chatted and joked a little, and felt in our hearts we would wish to see the bride and bridegroom's friends and relations about them. The best man came soon, and the bridegroom's colonel, and made an audience of four, not counting the minister; and the somewhat lonely pair stood before him, with the punkah above them, and the sun streamed through latticed windows and a modest bit of stained glass, and they were joined for better and no worse I am sure. Then the minister opened a little paste board box someone had sent from home, and out came a little rice, and we four got a little each and threw it very carefully, two or three grains at a time so as not to miss. The bride had a dainty sprig of white heather in a brooch of a lion's collar bone, and was dressed in white and had a very becoming rose from home, and the sea, on her cheeks. As we prayed I made a sketch of them for her sister at home. Then they and the witnesses signed their names, and where their hands and wrists touched the vestry table there was a tiny puddle, and yet this is what they call "cold weather" here!

We met the bride and bridegroom later at lunch, and we drank to each other's health in pegs of lemon squash after the latest fashion East of Suez.

"It was a wee, wee waddin'
In a far, far toon,"

and it's far awayness from friends and relatives and their own country was rather pathetic, even though the pair looked so handsome and happy.

We drove back more leisurely and marvelled at the innumerable lovely groups in streets and by-ways, the flicker of light through banyan trees on white-robed figures, the little carts with big wooden wheels and small oxen and sharp big shadows, and we stopped to watch a splendid group of men washing clothes, a dozen or more naked brown statues against a white low wall, water splashing over them and round them, flecks of sun and shadows coming through the leaves—I suppose these were natives from the north as they had good legs. I must try and put that down this afternoon if I can, and bring in the hedge of convolvulus with lilac blooms behind and the hoody crows dancing round; then past lines of pretty horses and tents and officers and ladies at lunch. At our lunch at the Taj we bade good-bye to five friends, R. and D. for Bangalore, Mrs D. C. for the north, and our newly-married pair for Baroda. So G. and I and Mr and Mrs H. remain out of our table on board ship; the H.'s stay for a time at the Taj and tell us so much about Bombay, its people, and their ways, that a guide book would feel very dry reading.

By the afternoon we have received I think five invitations on yellow cards to various royal functions! Now indeed we are in the marvellous East, in the land to which Scot and Irish should travel to see their prince or king. So you, my dear friends, artists and professional men, who have chosen to live as I have done, in or near the capital of your native land, and whose most thrilling pageant in the whole year is the line of our worthy bailies and the provost in hired coaches going up the High Street to open a meeting of ministers, if you would experience the feeling that stirred the blood of your ancestors so hotly, the feeling of personal loyalty to prince or king, the sense that is becoming as dormant as the muscles behind our ears, all you have to do is to leave your native shores and your professional duties, and home ties, and travel to some outlying part of the Empire; say to Bombay—there and back will cost you about £200 by P. & O., but you will realise then that the old nerves may still vibrate. You, my friends, who can't afford this luxury, you must just stay at home and be as loyal as you can under the circumstances, and try not to think of our departed glories, and Home Rule, or Separation—and you can read, about these yellow tickets to royal shows and such far off things, in traveller's tales.

The first of these functions was the laying of the foundation of a museum of science and art; it sounds prosaic, but it was a pageant of pageantry and pucca tomasha too; the greater part, I daresay, just the ordinary gorgeousness of this country, fevered with stirring loyalty. The ceremony was in the centre of an open space of grass, surrounded by town buildings of half Oriental and half Western design, and blocks of private flats, each flat with a deep verandah and all bedecked with flags, and gay figures on the roofs and in the verandahs. In the centre of the grass were shears with a stone hanging from them on block and tackle. To our left was a raised dais with red and yellow striped tent roof supported on pillars topped with spears and flags and the three golden feathers of the Prince of Wales. In front of the circle of chairs opposite this and to our right sat the Indian princes; they had rather handsome brown faces and fat figures, and wore coats of delicate silks and satins, patent leather shoes and loose socks, big silver bangles and anklets; their turbans and swords sparkled with jewels, and the air in their neighbourhood was laden with the scents of Araby.

Behind us sat the Parsees and their women-folk, soberly clad in European dress; they are intelligent looking people with pleasant cheery manners, I would like to see more of them. Their fire-worship interests me, for it was till lately our own religion, and I even to-day know of an old lady in an out-of-the-way corner of our West Highlands who, till quite recently, went through various genuflexions every morning—old forms of fire-worship—as the sun rose; and in the Outer Isles we have still many remains of our fore-fathers' worship woven into the untruthful jingling rhymes of the monks.[5]

[5] See "Carmina Gadelica, the Treasure House, Hymns and Incantations of Highlands and Islands," collected by Alexander Carmichael, 1900, and there also the pre-Christian game and fishing laws of Alba.

Through the pillars of the Shamiana we could see lines of white helmets of troops, and beyond them the crowds of natives in bright dresses, banked against the houses and in groups in the trees, a kaleidoscope of colour. Past this came a whirl of Indian cavalry with glittering sabres, and the Prince and Princess came on to the dais—more brightly dressed than they were in Oxford Street three weeks ago, the Prince in a white naval uniform with a little gold and a white helmet, an uncommonly becoming dress though so simple; the Princess in the palest pink with a suggestion of darker pink showing through, and a deep rose between hat and hair. A tubby native in frock coat and brown face and little pink turban held a mushroom golden umbrella near the Prince and Princess, not over them, it really was not needed for there were clouds, and the light was just pleasant. The Prince then "laid" the stone—that is, some natives slackened the tackle, and it came down all square—and he and the Princess talked to the Personages in attendance and various City Dignitaries. First, I should have said, the Prince read a speech which seemed to me to cover the ground admirably. I forget what he said now, but you could hear every word. He had notes, but I think he spoke by heart. I made a careful picture of it all; red decorations, green grass, Prince and Princess, and the golden umbrella, but it is gone, lost—gone where pins go, I suppose.

You should have heard the people cheering, and seen the running to and fro of crowds to catch a glimpse of the great Raj as he drove away! In a minute the great place was all on the move, Rajahs getting into their carriages and dashing off with their guards riding before and behind, and smaller Rajahs with seedier carriages and only bare-footed footmen jumping up behind.

Everyone was happy and interested, and what a bustle and movement there was! The banging of the guns on the men-of-war began again as the motley, fascinatingly interesting crowd, cavalry outriders, Sikhs, Parsees, Gourkas, Hindoos, and Mussulmen, sped away down to the Apollo Bundar to see the Prince go off to the flagship. H. and I went with the tide, a jolly cheery medley of coloured races, waddling, trotting, running, the whole crowd cut in two by the Royal Scots marching through them, their pipers playing the "Glendaruil Highlanders." Sandies and Donalds and natives of India, but all subjects of the great Raj: and all got down together to the Bundar to see the Royal embarkation. Next we met G. and Mrs H. driving as fast as possible through the crowd to still another function, at the Town Hall, where the British Princess met the women of all India in their splendour, and woman's world met woman's world for the world's good. I'd fain have seen the tall, fair, Saxon surrounded by devoted Eastern subjects! All I did see was some of the preparations—red cloth being laid in acres up to a stately Parthenon—but from various accounts I have heard from ladies who were present, this must have been one of the most extraordinary and gorgeous functions the world has ever seen.

The Princess, in robes and creations that chilled words, walked ankle-deep in white flower petals and golden clippings, pearls rained, and on all sides were grouped the most beautiful Eastern ladies in most exquisite silks of every tint of the rainbow, with diamonds, pearls, and emeralds and trailing draperies, skirts, and soft veils, and silken trousers; sweet scents and sounds there were too, in this Oriental dream of heaven, and everything showed to the utmost advantage in the mellow trembling light that fell from two thousand five hundred candles, and one hundred and ninety-nine glittering and bejewelled candelabra. And in the middle, there was a golden throne of bejewelled peacocks, and punkahs and umbrellas of gold and rose—a dream of beauty—and not one man in the whole show!

The Apollo Bundar, as everyone who has been in India knows, is a projecting part of the esplanade below the Taj Hotel. Here Royalties are in the habit of landing and embarking. On the centre has been built something in the nature of a triumphal arch with eastern arches and minarets at its four corners with golden domes. It is all white, and between it and the pavilion at the landing stairs a great awning, or Shamiana is stretched, of broad red and white striped cloth. Everywhere are waving flags from golden spears, and little palms and shrubs in green tubs are arranged on either side of the Shamiana; and the effect is quite pretty; but considering the historic importance of the occasion and the natural suitability of the surroundings for a Royal landing, the conception and arrangement of spectacular effect was astoundingly poor—and it must be admitted it is a mistake to hide the principal actors at the most telling point of a momentous event with bunting and shrubs in pots, or both! The actual landing, the stepping on shore, should have been pictorial and visible to the thousands of spectators. Instead of this, the Royal personages, the moment they stepped ashore, were conducted into this tent, to listen to written speeches! What an occasion for a great spectacular effect lost for ever!

When we got down to the Bundar the Sikh cavalry had dismounted and stood at their horses' heads; their dark blue and dark rose uniforms and turbans made a foil to the brilliant dresses of the crowd.

After witnessing the departure of the Prince, we sat a breathing space on the lawn at the Yacht Club and watched the day fading, "Evening falling, shadows rising," and the ladies dresses growing faint in colour, as the background of the Bay and the white men-of-war became less distinct; the golden evening light crept up the lateen sails in front of us and left them all grey, and the moon rose beyond the Bay, and the club lamps were lit, and the guns began to play—vivid flashes of flame; and a roar round the fleet, straight in our faces, and again far over to Elephanta, yellow flashes in the violet twilight, and the Prince came ashore.

The cavalry and their lances at once follow his carriage; they are silhouetted against the last of gold in the west, flicker across the lamps of the Bundar, and rattle away into the shadows of the streets. There is the noise of many horses feet and harness, and the last of the guns from the fleet. Then the night is quiet again and hot as ever, and there's nothing left of the glare and noise of the day, only the glowing lamps on some of the buildings, and the subdued hum of the talk of the moving thousands, and the whispering sound of their bare feet in the dust. The Eastern crowd is distinctly impressed and very much compressed; they will now spend the rest of the evening gazing at the Bombay public buildings that are being lit all over with little oil lamps.

And this was but a small part of the day for us, the best was to come in the damp, hot night.

CHAPTER IX

Dined at our hostlerie; in every direction vistas of uniforms, ladies' dresses, maharajahs, rajahs, turbans, and jewels, the marble pillars and the arches of blue night over the bay for background.

Then we got away in a bustle of hundreds of other carriages and gharries, all bound for Government House. We started a little late; you may have observed that with ladies you are apt to be late for social functions, but rarely miss a train! H. and I drove ahead with soothing cigars, and the ladies came close behind.

On our left we passed the R.H. Artillery Camp, rows of tents frosted with moonlight against the southern sea, some had lamps glowing inside; and further on we passed their lines of picketted horses, with silent native syces squatted on the sand at their feet.

… The dust hangs heavily from the gharries in front of us as we drive north round the Back Bay, which we are told is very beautiful, and like the Bay of Naples in the daytime; what we see on this warm night is a smooth, dark sea, which gives an infrequent soft surge on the shore, a few boats lie up on the moonlit sand and figures lie asleep in their shadows, and others sit round little fires. Dark palm stems and banyan trees are between us and the sea, and to our right are fern-clad rocks and trees in night green shade, rising steeply to where we can distinguish white walls and lights of villas of the wealthy Bombay natives.

We pass the Parsis' Towers of Silence, where vultures entomb the dead, and inhale for a long part of the road the smoke of burning wood and Hindoos—an outrageous experience. The road rises gradually and gets narrower as we leave the shore, and the procession of carriages goes slower. On either side are low white walls and villas and heavy foliage. Coloured lamps are hung in every direction, and their mellow lights blend pleasantly with the moonlight and shadows, and shine through the flags that hang without movement, and light up ropes of flowers and ribands with gold inscriptions of welcome, that stretch from tree to tree across the road. You read on them in golden letters, "Tell papa how happy we are under British Rule," and on the walls, sitting or lying at length, and in the trees are bronze-coloured natives in white clothes, or in the buff, silently watching the procession of carriages, and they do look as contented as can be; and so would we be too, if we had to get into their evening undress instead of hard shirts and broad cloth on such a damp, hot night. It is November and ought to be cool, but this year everyone says it is just October as regards temperature and moisture, and October, they say, is the beastliest month in the twelve. The drive of four or five miles takes over an hour, and looking south we see the lights shining across the bay from where we started. We climb slowly up Malabar Hill in the dusky shade of the heavy foliage and come to a stop amongst crowds of other carriages opposite Government House.

I'd like to stop and paint this scene, it would suit the stage—the marquee on the right, pale moonlight on its ridge, and warm light and colour showing through its entrance as ladies go in to put off their cloaks; its guy ropes are fast to branches and air roots of a banyan tree; and to the left there is another graceful tree, with wandering branches, hung with many red and yellow paper lamps, the branches like copper in the light and in shadow black against the dark blue sky. In front is part of Government House, dim white with trellis work and creepers round a classic verandah, and lamplight coming through the open jalousies. Leading up to the verandah are wide steps in shadow; and on these, a light catching now and then on a jewel or scabbard, are groups of Indian Princes. Beside us on the lawn are people in all kinds of dresses, soldiers in uniform and the gold dull in the shadows, ladies in fairy-coloured ball dresses, and Parsi men in frock-coats and shiny black hats, their women in most delicate veils over European dresses. The figures move quietly and speak softly, and the air is full of the rattle of crickets or cicadas and a pleasant scent of night flowers, and cheroot smoke, with a whiff of old ocean.

We wait and chat outside with acquaintances, and some ladies practise curtseys whilst the natives are being received—the coloured man first, the white man and his womenfolk when they may! Then we all go up the steps and into the brilliant interior, which is Georgian in style, and light and prettily coloured. It is distinctly a sensation, to come from semi-darkness into full light and such an extraordinary variety of people and colour and costumes. The figures in the half light outside were interesting, in the full blaze of hundreds of candles from many chandeliers the effect is just as brilliant as anything one could imagine. The strong colours of the natives' turbans, silk coats, sashes, and jewels enrich the scene, and their copper colour helps to set off the splendid beauty of our women with their dazzling skins and delicately coloured dresses. Positively these princes were inches deep in emeralds, diamonds, and pearls.

Then comes the tableau of the evening, the Prince and Princess walking with aides-de-camp through their Eastern and Western subjects, with an introduction made here and there. The Prince walks in front and the Princess a few steps behind. She seems very pleased and interested, and still, I think, looks under her eye lest she should fail to recognise some one she would wish to notice, and the Prince's expression is so pleasant, quiet, and possessed in repose, and with a very ingratiating smile. He stops and speaks to right and left, to one of our officers, or a native prince. One, a tall grizzled old fellow with gorgeous turban and the eye and air of a hunter, bends very low over the offered hand, and talks a moment, possibly tells how he shot with the King when he was Prince, and how there are tigers and devoted subjects waiting in the north in his state all at the service of the son of the Great White Raj, and as the Prince goes past, the old man follows him with a very kindly expression. I must say that these people's jewels interest me more than their expressions; but this one man's face was exceptional, and he was lean! You see the thing above these people, that is the punkah; when it waggles about it makes a cold draught and you get hot with annoyance.

Waiting for Carriages after Reception at Government House, Bombay

Immediately the Prince passed, the crowd pressed towards a side room for champagne and iced drinks, the native Princes gallantly leading the charge. At the start we were all pretty level, but we Britons made a bad finish, and the native waiters and champagne were somewhat exhausted when we came in, but for what we did receive we are truly thankful, for it was sorely needed.

How we got home again now seems like a dream. I have just a vague recollection of hours and hours in the warm dusk, and crowds of people in evening dress waiting till their carriages came up. Perhaps the arrangements could not have been better? Some of us dozed, some smoked Government House cheroots, which were good, and the time passed. All conversation gradually stopped, and you only heard the number of the gharry or carriage shouted out with a rich brogue and sometimes a little stifled joke and a "Chelo!" which seems to stand for "All right," "Go ahead," "Look sharp," or "Go on and be damned to you," according to intonation and person addressed. I do not quite understand how it took such hours to get everyone away, and I do not understand how we ever managed to get up that vast square staircase up the enormous central tower of the Taj Hotel, for G. was deadly tired, so of course the lift wasn't working—it looked so big and grey, and silent in the cold light of morning.

Then to sleep, and tired dreams of the whole day and evening; I dreamt I was in a Government House and the guests had gone and I met a dream Prince and a dream of an A.D.C. in exquisite uniform who said, "quai hai," and in an instant there were dream drinks, and cheroots such as one used to be able to get long ago, and we planned ways to remedy abuses, and the greatest was the abuse of the Royal Academical privileges; and at such length we went into this, that this morning I wrote out the whole indictment and it covered six of these pages, and so it is too long to insert here. And our remedy as it was in a dream was at once effective—sculpture and painting became as free and as strong an influence in our national life in Britain as literature is at this moment—then came a frightful explosion! and I awoke, and the sun was blazing out of a blue sky through the open windows—then it came again, a terrific bang! and the jalousies rattled and the whole of the Taj Hotel shook for the war ships were saluting The Prince of Wales, and he and his aides-de-camp and all the officials in his train had been up for hours, "doing their best to serve their country and their King," whilst we private people slumbered.

But whither have I strayed in this discourse? Am I not rather wandering from the point, as the cook remarked to the eel, telling dreams instead of making notes on a cold weather tour as I proposed; so I will stop here, and tell what, by travel and conference, I have observed about Royal functions.

The day has passed to the accompaniment of "God bless the Prince of Wales," and gun firing, and "God save the King," on brass bands, and more gun firing. Somehow or other "God save the King" in India, where you are surrounded by millions of black people, sounds a good deal more impressive than it does at home—perhaps there's more of the feeling of God save us all out here.

I find it impossible to remember nearly all I have seen and heard in one of these bustling days; I should think that even a resident, long familiar with all these everyday common sights that are so new and interesting to us, could barely remember the ceremonies of one day in connection with the Royal Visit.

I remember a dock was opened to-day, and we were favoured with tickets which gave us an admirable view. Again there were shears, at the bottom of a place like a Greek theatre, very large shears this time, and a stone suspended from them. The Prince and Princess came down a wide flight of steps to a platform with two thrones on it. Behind them at the top of the steps were splendid Ionic pillars and a pediment swagged with great wreaths of green. The Prince was followed by officers and ladies and leading Bombay citizens mixed with only a few Indian princes. Sir Walter Hughes of the Harbour Trust presented a magnificent piece of silver in the shape of a barque of the time of Charles II., with high stem and forecastle and billowy sails, guns, ports, standing rigging, and running gear complete, including waves and mermaids, and all made in the School of Art here to Mr Burns' instructions. We sat opposite, in half circles of white uniforms and gay parasols and dresses and dreams of hats. Behind us and all around and outside the enclosure were thousands of natives in thousands of colours. There were speeches, of course, and the Prince touched a button and the stone descended into the bowels of the earth and made the beginning of the new dock.

Then everyone got their carriages, gharries, bicycles, pony carts, dog carts or whatever they came in, as best they could, and we all went trotting, cantering, jambing, galloping, go-as-you-please down the central thoroughfare between high houses of semi-European design, with verandahs and balconies full of natives. The crowds on the pavement stood four or five deep all the way, and hung in bunches on the trees, some in gay dresses, others naked, brown and glistening against the dusty fig trees, stems, and branches. You saw all types and colours, one or two seedy Europeans amongst them, and Eurasians of all degrees of colour, one, a beautiful girl of about twelve I saw for a second as we passed; she had curling yellow hair and white skin, might have sat for one of Millais pictures, and she looked out from the black people with very wide blue eyes, at the passing life of her fathers. Most of us made for the Yacht Club for tea on the lawn; for the Prince, it had been said, was to visit it informally, so all the seats and tables on the lawn were booked days before!

It was rather pretty there; I should not wonder that Watteau never actually saw anything so beautiful. There were, such elegant ladies and costumes, and such an exquisite background, the low wall and the soft colour of the water beyond; the colour calm water takes when you look to the East and the sun is setting behind you, the colour of a fish's silver. And the lawn itself was fresh green; trees stood over the far end of the Club House, and under these the band played. When the lights began to glow along the sea wall and in the Club, and under the trees to light the music, the Prince and the Princess, with Lady Ampthill and Lord Lamington, came and walked up and down and spoke to people, and all the ladies stood up from their tea tables as they passed, and I tell you it was good; such soft glowing evening colours and gracious figures, such groups there were to paint—my apologies for the hasty attempt herewith. The Prince you may discover in grey frock-coat speaking to the Bandmaster of the 10th Hussars, the Princess and Lady Ampthill near.

I've worked at Saturday's pictures and Sunday's and written my journal, and seen Royal sights all day till now, and opus terrat and it is late and hot, and the mosquitos tune up—the beast that is least eating the beast that is biggest; the beast that is biggest to sleep if it may.

CHAPTER X

… Went this morning with Krishnaswami of Madras—Krishna is my "Boy," and is aged about forty—to Army and Navy Stores for clothes. The thinnest I could get at home feel very thick and hot here in this hot November. I'd also to get photograph films, and guitar strings, and blankets for the Boy against the cold weather—just now the mere thought of a blanket grills one's mind—also to book shops to get books about India, which I am pretty sure never to have time to read. In my innocence tried to get my return tickets on P. & O. changed to another line, and signally failed to do so. Then drew a little and loafed a good deal on the Bundar watching the lateen-rigged boats. These boats take passengers to Elephanta or go off to the ships in the Bay with cargoes of brightly coloured fruits. The scene always reminds me of that beautiful painting by Tiepolo of the landing of Queen Elizabeth in our National Gallery—I daresay one or two Edinburgh people may know it. The boats are about twenty feet long with narrow beam. Figures in rich colours sit under the little awnings spread over the stern; the sailors are naked and brown, and pole the boats to their moorings with long, glistening bamboos, which they drive into the bottom and make fast at stem and stern. It is pleasant to watch the play of muscle, and attitudes, and the flicker of the reflected blue sky on their brown perspiring backs as they swarm up the sloping yards and cotton sails to brail up. No need for anatomy here, or at home for that matter; if an artist can't remember the reflected blue on warm damp flesh, he does not better matters by telling us what he has learned of the machinery inside—that is, of course, where Michael Angelo did not quite pull it off.

As I sat on the parapet a beautiful emerald fish some four feet long came sailing beneath my feet in the yellowish water; a little boy shouted with glee, and a brown naked boatman tried to gaff it, then a brilliant butterfly, velvet black and blue, fluttered through the little fleet; and with the colours of the draperies, of peaceful but piratical looking men, the lateen sails, and sunlight and heat, it all felt "truly Oriental." To bring in a touch of the West, one of the "Renown's" white and green launches with brass funnels rushed up and emptied a perfect cargo of young Eastern princes in white muslins, and pink, orange, and green turbans with floating tails to them. They clambered up the stone slip with their bear leader and got into carriages with uniformed drivers, six or more into each carriage quite easily; the basket trick seems nothing to me now—they were such slips of lads—but what colour!

At lunch we talked with Miss M. She gave us the latest ship news about our late fellow passengers—the mutual interest has not quite evaporated yet—gave us news of the ladies who had come out to be married. She had asked one of these as they came off the ship into the tender what it was she carried so carefully, and the reply was, "My wedding cake," and of a poor man, she told us, who came on at Marseilles bringing out his fiancee's trousseau, and who found on his arrival here, he had utterly lost it! What would the latter end of that man be; would she forgive? Could she forget? It was said that another lady, finding the natives were in the habit of going about without clothes, booked a return passage by the next ship.

Here is a jotting at this same landing place of the Prince and Princess going off to the Guard Ship, but I am so sorry it is not reproduced in colour. They were to have gone to the Caves of Elephanta across the bay, but had not time. They apparently go on and on, without any "eight hour" pause, through the procession of engagements—it must be dreadfully fatiguing.

You see three Eurasians in foreground of the sketch, one of them with almost white hair and white skin, and freckles and blue eyes, he might be Irish or York shire. The two younger boys are, I think, his brothers—they have taken more after their mother. All three are nervous and excited watching for the Prince. They are neatly dressed in thin clothes, through which their slightly angular figures show, and have nervous movements of hand to mouth, and quick gentle voices, slightly staccato, what is called "chee chee," I believe.

Beyond the boys you see a Parsi woman looking round. They are conspicuous people in Bombay by their look of intense harmlessness. The men are very tidy and wear what they probably would describe as European clothes, trousers and long cutaway coats and white turndown collars. Some have grey pot hats, with a round moulding instead of a brim, but their ordinary hat is something like a mitre in black lacquer, and it does suggest heat! They all have very brainy-looking heads from the youth upwards, and wear glasses over eyes that have no quickness—as if they could count but couldn't see—and they constantly move their long, weakly hands in somewhat purposeless angular fashion; the women with similar movements frequently pat their front hair which is plastered down off their foreheads, and shade their eyes with their hands at a right angle to their wrists.

I suppose they and the Bengalis are the backbone of Indian mercantile business. Yet in "India," by Sir Thomas Holdich, I read that out of the population of 287,000,000 the Parsis do not number even one-tenth of a million. It seems to me that we have the Parsi woman's type at home in some of our old families, as we have remains of their Zoroastrian fire-worship. I've seen one or two really beautiful and highly cultured, but the average is just a little high-shouldered and floppy, and their noses answer too closely to Gainsborough's description of Mrs Siddons'. Mrs Siddons is just the Parsi type glorified.

We went to the ladies gymkana to-day more for the sake of the drive, I think, than for anything else—with the utmost deference to ladies, they can be seen at home—a few people played Badminton by lamplight; it was dusky, damp, and warm, and heavy matting hung round the courts. Outside an orange sunset shone through palm stems, and flying foxes as big as fox terriers passed moth-like within arms length. From the height we were on we looked down over the Back Bay, and far below in the twilight we could make out the lights from a few boats on the sand, and fishermen's lamps flickered across the mud flats, and from far out in the west a light kept flashing from an island that was the haunt of pirates the other day. Two more lights we saw were glowing to the south-east in Bombay itself—one, the light of the native fair, and a slight glow from the remains of the Bombay and Baroda Railway Offices, a great domed building that burned up last night after the illuminations. It was madness to cover public buildings with open oil lamps and leave them to be looked after by natives—this huge Taj hotel, dry as tinder outside, a complexity of dry wooden jalousies and balconies, was covered with these lights and floating flags—how it didn't go off like a squib was a miracle. I saw one flag gently float into a lamp, burn up and fall in flaming shreds and no one was the wiser or the worse. The faintest breath of air one way or the other and the other flags would have caught fire, and in a second it would have run everywhere.

… After the Ladies Club, pegs and billiards inside the Yacht Club, the Bombay ladies outside on the green lawn at tea, gossip, hats, local affairs, and Imperialism, and beyond them the ships of the fleet picked out with electric lights along the lines of their hulls and up masts and funnels like children's slate drawings.

It was interesting to come from the street and the crowds of Parsis and natives all so slenderly built and watch the British youth in shirt sleeves and thin tweeds playing billiards—they were not above the average physique of their class, mostly young fellows who had already been through campaigns—and you noted the muscles showing through their thin clothes and compared them with native figures, and it did not seem surprising that one of them could keep in order quite a number of such wisps as the billiard markers for example. But up north they say the natives are stronger and bigger than here.

Every now and then a boy passed round bags of chalk on hot water enamelled plates to dry the players' hands and cues, which gives one an idea of the damp heat of Bombay.