From Edinburgh to India & Burmah Part 13

The native life spread round three sides of the course, six deep. The horses were mostly small, uncommonly nice-looking beasts, with a good deal of Arab blood. Of course G. and I selected winners and had nothing on; but I have known of others who have met with similar misfortune at meetings nearer home.

Back to the Connemara, through a moving population of native men returning from the races. They mostly wore Delhi caps (like "smoking caps"), long hair in a knot and long light tweed coats, round their thin bare legs, floppy linen shaded from white to rose-red, at the lower edge a bad red and a dirty white; there was red dust in the air, and a hot sunset in front--rather sickening colour. The whole population seems to have had a holiday to see the Sahibs run some fifteen to twenty horses.

They seem rather an unmanly looking crowd. The pink that predominates is what you see in an unfortunate hybrid white and red poppy, an a.n.a.line colour, as unpleasant as that of red ink--Give me back--give me back Bangalore and its colour, our life on the line, a quiet siding beneath the bough, the table laid on the track, and the moon looking down through the branches.

28th December.--There is a thing I cannot understand how the farther we wander from home the more people we meet whom we know or know about, or who know us or our kith and kin. And how do we so often run up against people we met on the s.h.i.+p coming out? You'd have thought India big enough to swallow up a s.h.i.+pload of pa.s.sengers for ever and aye, without their ever meeting again, but even since yesterday we have met quite a number of the pa.s.sengers of the _Egypt_--three regular "pied poudre"

wanderers, as the French called the Scots long ago, and a lady just out, full of interest in everything. She actually wants to see native bazaars and museums! to the horror of her hosts, who have been out here for long and whose thoughts are only of the tented field, and pay, and going home.

... A long trail to s.h.i.+pping people again--former visit resulted only in a protracted interview with a polite native clerk, so the toil had to be done twice! Then to the post office at the docks; borrowed a rusty pen there from another native clerk and did a home letter. What a fine building it is, and what a motley slack lot of people you see there!

Near me a group of half-naked natives were concocting and scratching off a wire between them, others squatted on the floor and beat up their friends black hair for small game. One man made netting attached to the rail round the ticket office, seated of course, another knitted, and everyone chewed betel nut. The walls of this very handsome building were encrusted with dried red expectoration, and scored with splashes of lime from fingers--the lime is chewed with the betel nut. These nasty sort of natives might be improved or got rid of, and say, Burmese introduced.

What is the good of having a country or a forest if you don't breed a good stock, be it either deer or people?

Changed to airier rooms on our second evening here; got everything s.h.i.+fted in pretty short time. We thus lost a pretty view and, the smell of the river, "the Silvery Cooum."

It was warm and damp last night, and many mosquitoes were inside our curtains--didn't feel up to painting much, but took out a sketch book and our hired victoria; the horse jibbed and tied itself and the traces and the victoria into a knot and kicked up a racket generally in the hotel porch, and we got it extracted in time, then it insisted on taking the victoria along the pavement till I was glad G. was not with me--a fool would have stayed in it--I found I needed a shave, and left as it pranced past a barber's shop. The barber, an Italian, spoke six languages; I should think he felt Madras deadly dull.

After the breakdown of my prancing steed--rickshawed from the barber's to the Marina. The Marina is only an empty sweep of sand, and beyond that a strip of blue sea and a pale blue sky and a few fleecy clouds, simple enough material for a picture; but by my faith! could I only have put down the colour of that mid-day glow from the sand, and the feeling of s.p.a.ce, and the two blues, of the sea and sky, and the flick of colour from a sc.r.a.p or two of drapery on sunny brown figures tailing on to the long ropes of a Seine net! Out beyond the surf mere dots in the blue swell, were more figures swimming about the ends of the net splas.h.i.+ng to keep in the fish, and in the edge of the white surf the fishermen's children were sporting--in with a header through the gla.s.sy curve of a wave, and out again on their feet on the sand and away with a scamper.

Some matrons sat near me, and the smallest naked kids played round me as I sketched, and two, really pretty girls, the first I've seen in India, with short skirts and their black hair still wringing wet, came up from the sea and looked on. Barring these fisher-people, the miles of beach were empty as could be. What light and heat there was, a crow pa.s.sing cast a darker shadow on the sand than its own sunlit back, and a pale pink convolvulus that grew here and there on the inner sand cast a shadow of deepest purple. The brown naked men, sweating at every pore, pulled the drag rope of the net very slowly up the soft dry sand step by step, their damp, brown muscles sparkling with vivid blue lights. I think this was the best bit of India I had seen so far, and after a stuffy night in town to get into the blaze of light and watch these fellows fis.h.i.+ng on the wide blue ocean from such a southern strand was worth a month on Loch Leven or an hour with a fifty pounder. I think the nets must be over a hundred fathoms; they were being pulled in for two hours after I came, and must have been hauled for hours before that, seven men to each rope! As the ends came near sh.o.r.e, the boys plunged in and joined their seniors, and all looked like a herd of seals gambolling. I saw a father drubbing his boy beyond the surf; the boy had evidently gone out too soon, and got exhausted coming back. It must have relieved the father's feelings, each thump sent the lad under water. As the bag of the net came towards the hard sand the silver fish showed; very few I thought for all the trouble and hands employed; not more than twenty lbs. weight I'd think, all silvery and sky blue and emerald green; bream and sand-launces and silver fish like whitebait and herring, all fresh and s.h.i.+ning from the beautiful sea mint--the colour beyond words--green breakers, white surf, blue swell beyond, and brown figures with red and variously coloured turbans; young and old, all with such deep shadows on the sand, a scene Sarolea, the Spaniard, might make a show of painting. A few outsiders, men with clothes, two policemen and a satellite appeared as the bag came ash.o.r.e. Scenting plunder they sailed down and nailed four of the biggest and best fish--horrid shame, I thought it, these miserable imps in uniform of our Government, to steal from my naked fisher friends. I hope someone in authority will read this and have them tied heel and neck.

... In the afternoon G. and I went again to the Marina; I don't think anything more unfas.h.i.+onable could have been dreamed of. It was again exquisite--all changed to evening colours, and the wide drive along the sh.o.r.e had a few promenaders, and a few carriages were drawn up at the side with ladies and children eating the air. They appeared to be unofficial people, white traders, I'd fancy, the rest Eurasians and a few Europeanised natives. There are pretty drives to the Marina, through park-like roads beautifully bordered with flowering trees, such a pleasing place that I wonder the official cla.s.s does not drive there.

Through the outskirts home; the light fading and forms becoming blurred in the warm evening twilight, past lines of neat little houses, mostly open towards the street, belonging to Eurasians. In one a children's party--pretty children in white, girls with great tails of dark hair--they were pulling crackers and all wore coloured paper hats--next door in a room with chintz covered European furniture and photographs, a pretty girl--just a little dark, played a concertina to an immaculately dressed youth, who twirled the latest thing in straw hats.

Then to dinner at The Fort to dine with Major B. C.--a tiresome long drive in the dark with a slow horse; at the end of it we crossed a drawbridge over a moat--full of water we could see, from the faint reflection of a white angle of a bastion on the dark surface--rumbled through subterranean arches, white-washed and lamplit, and felt as we came into the square that we had left modern India outside in the darkness and had got back to the old India of the Company days. A pale crescent moon lit up part of a building here and there, old formal Georgian buildings and old-fas.h.i.+oned gun-embrasures and a church like St. Martin in the Fields. One half expected to meet someone in knee breeches and wig, perhaps a Governor, Elihu Yale, or M'Crae, the seaman, Clive, or Hastings coming round some dusky corner or across the moonlit square. There were a few soldiers here and there, taking their rest with grey s.h.i.+rt-sleeves rolled up. We had to mark time a little, as we had started half-an-hour too soon, so I went on to the parapet and looked from the flagstaff east into the night, and heard the Bay of Bengal surf pounding on the sands. I spoke for a little to two soldiers lounging there on the parapet edge; they told me they were Suffolks and felt it warm. What interesting talks one could have had with these men, as a stranger, and with no impending dinner and no white waistcoat. I am not surprised Kipling made some of his best tales about privates; they are of the interesting mean in life, between the rulers and the ruled. These private soldiers, or fishermen and sailors can tell you stories better than any other cla.s.s of men, but you must not show the least sign of gold braid if you would draw them out. I remember one night, I went round the dockyard bars at a northern seaport with a retired naval officer to get first hand information about a trip we planned to Davis Straits for musk oxen--with the artist's modest manner and the suggestion of a drink thrown in, I'd have got any number of yarns from them till "Eleven o'clock, Gentlemen, and the Police outside!" But my friend in mufti was spotted at once; for he marched up to the middle of the bar, looked right and left and snapped out his order; but before he opened his mouth the whaling men were shouldering into little tongue-tied groups--the quarter deck air came in like a draught and took them all slightly aback, and we got never a bit of information.

There was a Canon at dinner, and two engineers and ladies. We talked of India and home, and these kind people's children over seas, and we talked art too. One engineer and his wife were both excellent artists; and we talked of the Burmese and the religion of Buddah, not very loud, of course, considering the company, and, of course, of the "Soul of the People," a book at least three of the party had read and I had just dipped into; and we arranged to go and see the church and the records and plate therein, dating from the Company days, and amongst other interesting things the record of Clive's marriage, with Wellesley's signature as witness appended. The house we dined in is supposed to be that in which Clive twice attempted his own life, and twice his pistol misfired. Then we tore ourselves away, with belated sympathy for our host and his next day's work.

I have mentioned preparations for the Prince in Bangalore; here, too our host had many arrangements to make, to forward the Imperial train north to Mysore after their return from Burmah.

As we leave the house the lamplight from the windows s.h.i.+nes on purple blooms of creepers on the fort wall a few yards from the front door, and over it comes the low boom of the surf and the scent of the sea and flowers--Through the sleeping soldier town, the Syce running in front gives some pa.s.s-word to the sentry as we rattle over the cobbles under the archway and rumble over the drawbridge; and we are out into the dusty darkness again. And so home, to bed and mosquito curtains in the Connemara.

Sleep we would fain have till later than the time of rising for the crows, and sparrows, and hotel servants, but to sleep after sunrise is almost impossible; these abominable hoody crows and sparrows sit on the jalousies and verandah and caw and chirp most harshly. "If I were viceroy," I'd put forth a word to have the whole lot exterminated. It could be done in two seasons, then the harmless, and game birds, would have a chance. It was once done in our country in the reign of James the IV. The tree in which a crow built for three successive years was forfeited to the Crown, and went of course to our Fleet, _Eh Mihi_; We had a proper fleet in those days before the great Union, and proper Commanders--read Pitscottie's description of the s.h.i.+ps, _e.g._ _The Yellow Carvel_, _The Lion_, and _The Great Michael_, the envy of Europe, for which the forests of Fife were depleted, which carried "thirty-five guns and three hundred smaller artillery, culverins, batter-falcons, myands, double-dogs, hagbuts, and three hundred sailors, a hundred and twenty gunners, and one thousand soldiers besides officers"--and of the sea fights with the Portuguese and English. Our coasts were defended then! James IV. could _put 120,000 mounted troops in the field in nine days_, and every able-bodied man learned the use of arms; this was before The Union with our so often successfully invaded neighbour--now, we have left to defend ourselves, one regiment of cavalry!

_P.S._--As this goes to print the Scots Greys follow our kings to England; and we are left with _one mounted soldier_ in our capital, in bronze, in Princes Street: and to add to our glorious portion in this Union, it has lately been tactfully decreed that in future English n.o.bility will take precedence of Scottish n.o.bility IN SCOTLAND! It will be curious to observe what the populace will say to this when they come to hear of it. I wonder if our n.o.bility will take it lying down--and if I may be forgiven, this extra wide digression?

CHAPTER XXI

I have had a delightful fis.h.i.+ng day; at an early hour found myself again at the sh.o.r.e, nominally to paint, but in truth because it was hot and stuffy in town, and the thought of the surf and clear air made the beach irresistible. A rickshaw man used his legs to take me to the sands edge; and they were empty as yesterday of all but the few fishermen and their families. The colour effect, however, was not so brilliant, but was pleasant enough--the sky soft grey and the water grey too, but colourful--the heat enough to cook one!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I watched the young idea learning surf rafting--a study fascinating enough for a whole day--a tiny imp with a great pointed log, and the white breakers for playthings. He sat on its stern, his knees and toes on the sand, and held its stem seawards till the inrush of shallow white-laced water was deep enough to float it and take his little anatomy a voyage of a few yards on the sloping outrush, then he jumped off and waited till the surf brought his black s.h.i.+p back. With what quickness he noted the exact moment to run in and catch its stem, and slew it round so that it would broach ash.o.r.e on its side, and how neatly he avoided being caught between it and the sand. The fishermen's boats, or catamarans as they are called here, though they have no resemblance to the Colombo catamaran, are made of four of these pointed logs tied side by side. I suppose this little chap was playing at his future work.

He had made a little collection on the dry sand of two or three sh.e.l.l-fish and beasts that burrow in the sand, and whenever he went to sea, three crows stalked up to these, when he would leave the log and scamper after them, then run back all over dry sand and tumble into the surf again, to come up laughing and wet and s.h.i.+ning like copper--I should say it was nicer than being at school.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Two of his clothless seniors came in, as I sketched, from the deep swell outside the surf, through the breakers slanting-wise. It was a treat to see them paddling their four logs, almost side on to the breaking surf, where our boats could not safely venture; one knelt behind on the thick ends of the two prolonged middle logs, the other amids.h.i.+p--their heads only showed above a breaker, the next moment they were on its crest, the surf foaming over their knees--down again into another hollow, then up, and with a surge the lumber drove its nose on the sand, the stern threw up, and the two nipped into the water at either end; another surge swung the stern round, and shoved the raft broadside on far up the sand, and they were landing their nets--all done as easily as you could pull up a dog-cart and step out! Of course they are not inconvenienced with clothes, and the water and sands are both comfortably warm; the little difficulty must be to jump at the right time and place, so as to avoid being thrown off, and getting rolled under the logs. Bow seemed to hop off in front and to the outside a little, just before she touched, and Stroke a half a second later, but the manoeuvre was too quick for me to follow more than one of the men's actions exactly.

Whilst I watched this extremely rapid landing, my acquaintances of yesterday were pulling at the long ropes from either end of the Seine net, which was extended very far out at sea. When the ends were within fifty yards of the sh.o.r.e the knowing old seniors went tumbling through the surf, and kept swimming and splas.h.i.+ng to frighten the fish from the mouth of the V shape into the bag in the middle; the women folk and children tailed on to the ropes along with the men, joking and laughing, for their men out in the water told them there were lots of fis.h.!.+ You did not need to know Tamil or Telugu to learn this, the delight was so evident--It was evidently to be the catch of the season! The excitement and movement grew splendid as the bag, still a few yards from sh.o.r.e, was throttled in some way under water. First a small outer bag was pulled ash.o.r.e, then a bigger one holding the day's catch, a Scotch cartload of fish--a b.u.mper bag. They were all so pleased and jolly, and were puffing and panting and wet with the last struggle to get the fine-meshed bag through the surf. When it was opened like a great brown purse, there lay the wealth of the Bay of Bengal! in silver and blue and rose and yellow. About half the fish were pure silver, the rest violet, emerald green, pure blue, and some red like mullet, with lemon yellow fins, and the colour of the brown men and the women's faded draperies round the glittering haul was delicious. The wrangling, not Billingsgate at all--milder even than Parliamentary--was loud enough, and continuous. I left them taking away the fish in baskets, and freshly minted money never looked so beautiful. How they divided I couldn't tell; it seemed as if each helped himself or herself as each thought fit.

I must note the afternoon of this delightful day, though noting these "first impressions" of India seems rather a big order; for each day seems so full of delightfully new experience, and fascinating sights, that I am sure you see in one day here--at least a _nouveau_ does--more interesting things than one could in a week in Europe.

... Our civil servant friend, who paints like Sam Bough, asked us to see his bungalow on the Adyar River, also to look at sketches. We drove three miles on a broad road under banyan trees and palms with patches of corn and native huts, and an occasional bright dress and bra.s.s bowl of a woman showing between the dark stems, and pulled up at half-a-dozen bungalows by mistake, and left cards at others, to the owners of which we had introductions, and after a considerable hunt turned up at the bungalow we aimed at. Here were open views, in front the Adyar River and the many-arched Elphinston Bridge, and palm groves, and down the river to the left, the sand bar across its mouth, and to the right views of the river's many windings in palm groves. Such a place, with the feeling of the sea being within reach, would make me, I think, tolerate living in Madras for a little. We had a great causerie over pictures of home scenes, and of many places in India. Then we got into a double-scull Thames boat and slipped away down towards the bar with wind and current--extremely delightful, I thought it, getting into such a well-appointed boat on such a pretty piece of river. As we sailed fish played round us; some, like bream or silvery perch, skipped out of the water in a series of leaps like miniature penguins! The wind fell and we rowed, down to the sand spit and heard the surf on the other side and got out and felt that we were at last actually on "India's Coral Strand." There were pretty delicately coloured sh.e.l.ls, and here and there a pale pink convolvulus growing low, with grey-green leaves. The river just managed to cut its way through the sand-bar into the surf; beyond it, three or four miles to the north, we could see the two spires in Madras above the palms, St Thome's and St Mary's in the Fort; to the south-west, the sand and palms and the line of surf stretched in perspective till they faded together on the horizon.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

As the sun got low the sky became gorgeous red--what tropical colour there was--the hard sand flushed and paled, yellow to brown in a long waving ribband at the edge of the receeding wave, then turned lavender laced with dull foam, as the first of the following breakers came running up, wetting the sand again to renew the golden glow. The outer sea and the horizon were purple and the white of the surf seemed almost green against the orange and red of the sky. Our friends told me they often came to this beach; and as they are artists, that is not to be wondered at: and I suppose some Madras people occasionally come down the river from the boat club a mile or two above, to picnic. I saw two men in flannels and two ladies--very fair ladies they were too--in the flattering twilight; when a white dress turns the colour of a violet sh.e.l.l, and muslins die like a dream into the soft colours of the sand, and pale faces flush with the golden glow of the setting sun. We lost no pity on those exiles and their wandering on this foreign strand. A native or two pa.s.sed; nice and easy it is for them getting along the coast to Madras! They just walked up the river a few yards and walked in, swam across and down stream, waded out on the far side, and never as much as shook themselves.

We shoved off again when the sky was positively burning with colour, hoisted our sail, and with a light sea breeze went up river towards the darkening groves of palms, guiding ourselves by the afterglow and the glint of a new moon, and lights from the few bungalows on sh.o.r.e.

As we sail we plan to return some day and do up one of these old Arabian Night bungalows. They look almost palatial with their terraces and flight of steps from the river and white pillars showing in the pale moonlight with dark palms and trees over them. They at the same time suggest something of Venice, and of the Far East. They would need repair, but rents are low.

It gets darker and we have difficulty in picking up marks--first the rock on our right from which we go dead across stream, to the high palm just visible against the night sky; then up stream a bit, and across to avoid shoals. We row, for the wind has fallen away. Every now and then our blades touch gravel, and twice we go right aground and have to shove off. Fish jump round us; two come in forward, pretty little silvery fellows with a potent smell of herring, one big fellow surges nearly ash.o.r.e. As the boat-house and club lights appear we go hard and fast on to a bank, and a native wayfarer fording the river in the dark, whom we mistake for a Club servant expecting us, is ordered to shove us off, which he does and goes on his way without a word--"the gentle Hindoo" again.

The Club boat-house is a perfect treat! By the lamplight I am sure I saw a score of double sculls, sixes, and possibly eights, and skiffs and punts--all sorts of river boats, and as far as I could see, all in order; the men who have both such a Club and boat-house are to be envied. The Club-house was a dream of white Georgian architecture, veiled in moonlight amongst great trees and palms. There were high silvery white pillars (Madras is famous for its marble white stucco) and terraces and wide steps and yellow light coming from tall open jalousies under verandahs. Winding paths led up to it, and along one of these we followed a native, who swung a lamp near the ground in case of snakes.

In the Club were rooms for dining, reading, and dancing, all in the same perfect Georgian style.

I would have liked to stay, to see the dance that was going to begin, but it was late, and we were in flannels, and were three miles from home. The ball-room was entirely to my taste, an oval, with white pillars round it reflected in a light-coloured polished floor, overhead a domed roof with chrystal chandeliers, and smaller crystal lights round the sides.

On the road home we met motors, dog-carts, and men and ladies going to the dance; the motor dust here is twenty times thicker than at home; for half-a-mile after you pa.s.s a motor you see nothing--can't open your eyes in fact--then came a series of Rembrandts, in wayside lamplit stalls, and home to mosquitoes and late dinner.

31st December, Sunday.--Spent forenoon writing letters and working up sketches, and to make all smooth went to two churches and two temples in the afternoon; a fairly good ending to the year. The first temple, a pile of architecture of debased wedding-cake style, thick with innumerable elastic-legged, goggled-eyed, beastly, indecent Hindoo divinities. Thence to a Roman Catholic church in St Thome, the old Portuguese quarter--very pretty and simple in appearance. The half near the altar full of veiled European nuns in white and buff dresses. Nearer the door, where we sat, were native women and children, mostly in red, a few of them with antique European black bonnets and clothes; and in their withered old faces you could imagine a strain of the early Portuguese settlers. The altar was, as usual, in colours to suit the simple mind; the Madonna in blue and white and gold with a sweet expression of youth and maternity, her cheeks were like china, and she dandled the sweetest little red-haired baby in a nest of gold rays, all against a rocky background. How telling the fair Viking type of baby must be to these little black-eyed, wondering wors.h.i.+ppers, far more fascinating and wonderful, I am sure, than their miraculous six-armed G.o.ds. There were real roses too, such numbers of them, and altogether a good deal of somewhat gim-crack effect, but the whole appealed to me, for at least the idea of material beauty was recognised, and for a minute I forgot all the ugliness (= Evil) that our churches have caused, and the good (= Beauty) they have destroyed, and bowed and crossed myself like my neighbours. Then we drove to another church near the sea, St Thomes. The bones of St Thomas of the New Testament are said to be buried here. We only looked into it; it was finely built, and inside at the moment was almost as empty as a Protestant church on a week-day.

There was but one devotee, a black woman, confessing to a half-black man. We shuddered and escaped, and drove a few yards and saw "The seas that mourn, in flowing purple of their Lord forlorn,"--the wide long stretch north and south of white sand, and the log surf rafts, and the dark fishermen going up and down on the blue swell--and didn't we draw a breath of relief of G.o.d's pure air.

There was a log craft at the surf edge, with a kid playing beside it, his reflection perfect in the long backwash. His father talked in a strange tongue to me, and I looked at the swell and considered, and saw black men out beyond the surf, and none of them apparently drowned, or in fear of sharks, so I left shoes and socks with G. and our coachman to look after her, and the syce to look after the carriage, and tucked up trousers and away we went together, my heart in my mouth! What joy--bang into and over the first breaker. I'd nearly to stand upright to keep my waist dry, and down and up again--the movement quick and exhilarating; over two other breakers and we were away on the open rollers, and able to look round to the distant sh.o.r.e, where G. sat with my sketch-book and a gallery of brown figures. We paddled along to another craft out at sea that had pulled up its net. Two men were in it, and we made fast to it till they cleared the fish out of the net, and we took them in a matting bag on to our raft, where the water washed over them, and we took them ash.o.r.e. It was curious to see how neatly and ably these men could haul a net and clear it of fish on four submerged logs--they could move about, stand and walk from one end of the logs to the other with freedom. With the net on board the logs were almost entirely submerged. Running ash.o.r.e is the most sporting part of the procedure; we paddled along slanting towards the beach, waiting for the ninth wave to pa.s.s, then went straight for the sand for all we were worth, and got in in great style; I must say I nearly lost my balance landing, there were so many natives wading out to bear a hand that my eye wandered--but what a craft for the purpose! I vow no boat I ever saw of the size could come on to hard sand with such a surf behind and not break and throw you out. It is really a sport with a capital S, though, as far as I can hear, white people don't go in for it, perhaps because it is said--on what authority I do not know--that the sharks prefer white people to the natives! The natives who swim in the surf apparently are not touched by them, yet you see no Europeans bathing on what I should think would be a delightful sh.o.r.e for bathing once you had got accustomed to diving through the surf. If I go surf-logging again I will take a change of trousers--Got on shoes, the natives standing three deep to see the Sahib get sand off his feet, extremely curious but quite polite. The rupee I gave my man pleased him very much, and the others all wanted to take me out again, or at least to have a rupee too. They were a nicer, bolder-looking lot of men than those in the town by a very long chalk.

We then went to another temple that was also worth seeing. There is a tank near it that would be beautiful, but for a monumentally ugly iron railing that has recently been put round it. It is distinctly British--who on earth did it? We were fortunate, for just before coming to the tank and temple, a christening party of Hindoos in their best clothes, with yellow flowers in black hair, and priests with long chanters and tom-toms playing, came out of some houses as we were pa.s.sing. In a loosely formed procession they proceeded very slowly to the temple, the princ.i.p.als in a closed brougham in the middle. It was just like one of Tadema's pictures on the move--barring the brougham!

The players led the way in white, with the dark wood chanters mounted with silver bells and mouthpieces, and made music with a little of the tw.a.n.g of our pipe chanter, but without the continuity and lift or crisp grace-notes. Young girls, with their faces tinted yellow with saffron, followed in dull red dresses. Behind the procession were cla.s.sical-looking houses, and over these appeared palms and banyan trees; but in the middle was the prosaic old Waler, and the hired brougham, which was very distressing, for otherwise the subject was evidently "artistic," and combined just the proportions of sentiment and positive colour, which would have insured for its faithful depiction, a warm reception at any of our Royal Academical Exhibitions--the man in the street could see that!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Then home by the wide Marina, and the promenading Eurasians, and well-to-do traders in carriages. The official people _must_ all be at the Club and Gymkhana, or at Church. For choice I like the beach in the morning, the wide sweep of ocean, the full sun on the endless sandy sh.o.r.es, and the solitude.

This is a jotting, reduced by reproduction, of a native fis.h.i.+ng in the surf--all that I have "creeled" to-day.

... By Jove--it's ten minutes to the New Year--time to think of our friends and relations, who will be sitting down to lunch and thinking of us; and toasting us for a certainty. So, in the words of the song, of which these are all I know--

"Here's another kind love, Here's another kind love, Here's a health to everybody."

But first we must toast "Relations and Friends," and then "The Memory of the Dead and the Health of the Living," which being done, properly and in order, we may go to the window to hear the bells of St Giles and the cheering at the Cross.... Ah! but it is too far.