Round the Wonderful World

Sometimes one thinks of India as one whole country, as England is or France, but that is not true. It is not, and never was. The state held by a native prince may be only the size of a gentleman's country estate, but it may be as large as the United Kingdom. In the old days the rulers of these kingdoms were for ever fighting against each other, and though one of them sometimes got the better of his neighbours for a while, India was never ruled from end to end by one sovereign until it passed into the possession of Great Britain. The nations and races who make up this vast land are as different from each other as the races of Europe; to think of them as being one people would be as foolish as to imagine that you, say, and an Italian, were one people.

The size of India is a thing almost impossible to conceive. In old-fashioned atlases the whole of this mighty land was often given one page to itself, and little England was put on another just the same size, that is to say, they were drawn on quite different scales, a mile in England being given about as much space as forty miles in India! The best way to judge is this – picture India set down on the map of Europe, and you will find it would cover about half of it!

At the other end of the train, the third-class end, what a contrast to His Highness! Here a crowd of natives of all kinds have been crammed into what look like covered-in trucks, and they are squatting on the floor. There is no hardship in that, they prefer it; to sit on chairs is an art only acquired by the Europeanised. There are women here as well as men; look at that handsome creature whose crimson scarf has slipped off her sheeny black hair, showing the gold ring in her nose and the huge decorative ear-rings! She is hugging a tiny boy with one blue bead slung round his neck as a charm, just as it was round the donkey's neck in Egypt, – people are very much alike all the world over! This little chap has silver bangles on his podgy ankles but not a rag of any sort of clothing.

These people are packed so tightly you could hardly get a foot in between them, but they are very happy, because they love travelling. Natives have no idea of time, and when they are going to start on a journey as likely as not they arrive at the station the evening before, sleep rolled round in their garments where they may happen to be, and next day eat a handful of something or other they carry with them, waiting patiently till that marvellous object, the train, condescends to start. Most of these here are munching sweetmeats; they love them as children do, and the sweetmeat-seller never lacks trade. There he is, with a tray on his shoulder! A man with a water-pot stops by the third classes and pours some of the precious fluid into the cups held out to him, and even into one man's hands. You notice that he is careful not to touch either hand or cup. In India there is an extraordinary custom called caste, deep-rooted in the natives. They are all divided into higher and lower castes, according to their birth, and those of a higher caste will not allow those of a lower caste to touch them or prepare their food and drink, for they fancy they would be defiled! Only the lowest castes of all will do dirty work, such as scavenging and carrying away refuse, and you can imagine what difficulties all this leads to. The Brahman, who is the highest caste, will not touch food which has been defiled even by having the shadow of another fall on it, he would throw it away and remain hungry sooner.

As we stroll back to our places we pass various men with marks on their foreheads; these are caste-marks and to those who understand they tell a great deal. Standing beside the second classes we see a short-sighted gentleman in glasses, wearing an alpaca suit; he has with him a lady, who, like himself, is coffee-coloured. She is wearing a full petticoat of brocaded silk, and has a very lovely shawl edged with sequins thrown round her head in place of a hat, but, alas, all this magnificence is spoilt by the pair of tight and obviously most uncomfortable yellow leather European shoes, which she has put on to show how fashionable she is. When she climbs into the carriage she immediately takes them off, putting them on the seat beside her, and shows a pair of bare brown feet without shame. The shoes were only meant for show, and she has endured them to the utmost!

Well, we are off! And as it is dark we can't, unfortunately, see much of the country, which at first is quite pretty. Presently we cross the sea by a long bridge and notice the lights reflected sparkling in the water, and then we begin to climb up into the hills and it quickly grows colder.

While we go along to the restaurant-car for dinner Ramaswamy takes advantage of the stoppage of the train to hasten along, settling his turban as he comes. He must never appear before us without it; we are supposed to think it a fixture on his round cropped head, and also he must not come into a room where we are with his shoes on! Odd how fashion differs! With us men remove the head-covering on entering a room, but would not dream of being so rude as to take off their shoes!

When we come back after dinner we find our bedding neatly spread out and looking very inviting. As there is nothing else to do it is not long before we turn in and fall asleep, lulled by the rumbling of the train.

I am deep in dreamland when I am woke unpleasantly by a draught of icy air as the door at the end of the compartment is pushed open, and I realise the train has stopped at a station. The native guard stands in the doorway apologetically fumbling with the key which he has just used in undoing the door. "Mem-sahib coming in," says he hopelessly, and a very disagreeable high-pitched voice makes itself heard behind him. Pushing rudely past come a man and woman so much alike they must be brother and sister; they have both coarse features and clumsy squat figures; they speak English but with a strong Colonial accent of some kind.

"They can't have it all their own way," says Madam viciously. "I'm coming in here, and that's flat."

An overloaded coolie follows, and dumps down masses of rolled-up bedding and trunks into the small space between our bunks and departs.

"This compartment is engaged," I say as politely as I can, conscious that I don't look dignified in shirt-sleeves, but thankful I have only taken off my coat and boots.

"Can't help that," snaps the lady.

"Isn't there any other – " I begin patiently.

"I telling the Mem-sahib," begins the guard plaintively, "that there is one with only – "

"Don't care if there is! Horace, undo that bundle. I'm going to bed at once," and the newcomer proceeds to remove her coat and hat.

The guard hastily lets down the two upper bunks and disappears as the train gets under way again.

Appalled at the idea of how much she may think it necessary to remove, and thankful that you are sleeping peacefully through all the turmoil, I get up and grope for my shoes.

"If you prefer the lower bunk it is at your service," I say, making the best of a bad job and gathering up my coverlets. She deigns to snap out "Thanks!"

"I will go outside until you're ready," I say, retreating to the small platform between the carriages; there is nothing else for it, as there isn't room to turn inside. Just as I leave I add to the man, "Don't wake the boy if you can help it, he has had a hard day."

It is intensely cold outside, and after having smoked two cigarettes I think I may venture in again as I hear no sounds, so I knock, and getting no answer enter. By the dim light I make out the form of the lady in my bunk; but that is surely not the brother in the one opposite? It is! The impudence of it! They have turned you out and made you go into the upper one. As I climb to my own perch, internally wrathful and debating whether I shall not poke the man up and make him restore you to your place, I hear your sleepy voice in a stage whisper —

"He made me come up here." Then deliberately, leaning over and with mischief in your voice, you add: "I suppose when you are fat like that it would be very difficult to climb."

I think you got your own back! I saw the fellow squirm!

Bad as they were at night our fellow-travellers are worse in the daytime. They won't get up until ten o'clock, and we have to stay outside until they do, as there is nowhere to sit down. Ramaswamy brings us chota hazri, consisting of tea and toast and plantains, and we eat it outside. The Englishman in the next compartment looks out presently and invites us in. He laughs when he hears of our adventure. "Brutes!" he says tersely; "people like that should be hanged at sight. The worst is you meet them travelling more often than elsewhere; they have come into some money probably, and are so proud of it they think themselves little gods."

I think he was right, for when we pull up at the station, where we are at last to get rid of our tormentors, I happen to remark to you that I thought some restaurant we had been to in Bombay was rather expensive.

"Did you indeed!" says the lady, taking the remark as if addressed to herself. "'Grace and I dined there and paid double that, and we did not think anything of it."

She then immediately turns, and seeing Ramaswamy standing outside mistakes him for a station-attendant, and orders him to tie up their bedding. He looks to me for orders. I nod to him to do it, and, hat in hand, make a sweeping bow —

"Only too glad if my boy can be of any service to you, Madam."

I think I also got my own back!

CHAPTER XVIII
THE CAPITAL OF INDIA

Delhi!

If you draw a line across the map of India from the north to the south at the greatest length, and another from east to west at the greatest breadth, the two will form a cross of the usual shape, with the cross-bar high up. Just at the point where they intersect stands Delhi, the chief city in India since the King-Emperor's proclamation in 1911. Before that Calcutta was the capital, but Calcutta, like Bombay, is a city of trade, and has practically no historic memories. Delhi is full of the romance of history. In the Mutiny the question as to who should hold it was of the greatest importance, and if the British then had let it slip from their grip, without an effort to retake it, their power in India would have been gone for ever.

Now, on the first morning that we are here, let us drive round and see what we can of this splendid city. First we will go down the Chandni Chauk, the main street which cuts Delhi into two parts. It is immensely wide and lined with trees of a good size. These stand on each side of a broad walk for foot-passengers, which runs down the middle of the street, foreign fashion, and makes a popular promenade. The gay colours of the natives' clothes flash in and out of the shadows of the trees as the people pass along, each on his own errand. On one side are the tram-lines and on the other you can see a fast bullock-cart with pretty little white trotting bullocks as dainty in their own way as antelopes, and as different from the slow yellow ones as carriage-horses are from cart-horses. There are on both sides shops for jewels, for sweetmeats, for the richest and most beautiful silks and ivory, and mingled with them grocers' shops filled with tinned stuffs from England, and others with every kind of modern utensil for a house. Such a mixture! They are all heavily protected against the sun by awnings, for even at this early hour of the morning it is strong. At the end of the street is a tall red sandstone tower with a clock in it. In the distance we see the spire of an English church, and down that opening we catch sight of a Mohammedan mosque. The shop here beside us is a blaze of colour with Eastern carpets hung out like banners; the native owner squats on a thing like a wooden bedstead by his door and chews betel-nut, which makes his tongue and lips a deep red. Next door is a vigorous agency for the sale of sewing-machines! A Hindu religious fanatic, smeared with ashes and with hardly any clothes to cover his lean body, walks ahead with eyes unseeing, and at the same moment a smart motor-car stops beside us and the voice of a high-bred English-woman says, "I will meet you at the Effinghams in an hour," as she waves a greeting to her companions and steps out.

Hullo! There is a band. Round the corner swings a company of Ghurkas, the sturdy little men who helped England to overcome the mutineers. They look very soldier-like in their neat holly-green uniforms, with small round caps set at a jaunty angle on their cropped heads. They are hill tribes from the north, and in appearance not unlike the Japanese. They are all so much of one size you could run a ruler along their heads. Their swinging stride would delight a soldier's heart, for it is like clockwork in its precision. They are born soldiers, brave and easily disciplined, devoted to their officers and without the knowledge of fear. They have faults, of course. The Ghurka is apt to be rather a gay dog; he gets drunk, and the girls he loves are many, but he is of the right stuff, and his officers are proud of him.

I was talking to one of them as we came up the coast on the ship.

"Nothing like them anywhere else in the world," he said. "They take to drill like their mother's milk, they thrive on it and discipline – the slightest fault that might be overlooked elsewhere we punish severely. They like it and live up to it. You could lead a Ghurka regiment anywhere; fighting is their pastime. They have nothing in common with the slothful races of Lower India; they are alert and vigorous and active as cats. The funniest thing is their love for the Highlanders; if a Highland regiment comes up the two meet and mingle as if they were brothers. You'll see a great Highlander in his kilt and feather bonnet arm in arm with one of these little chaps, hobnobbing as if they had known each other all their lives. And the Ghurkas won't have anything to say to the other Indian regiments; they despise them all except the Sikhs – they get on with them all right."

We are lucky, for the Ghurkas are followed by a company of Sikhs, and anything less like the Ghurkas you could hardly imagine. The Sikhs are big men with stern bearded faces, they look like veterans and are a pleasant sight in their scarlet tunics with neat gaitered feet. There were many Sikh regiments belonging to our army in the black days of the Mutiny, and some wavered, but some held firm. Had it not been for the Sikhs things would have gone badly with us.

Now we are nearing the Lahore Gate and you can see that Delhi is a walled city. The walls run all round for six miles, and are backed up by a twenty-five feet ditch, so that it is a tough city for any army to take. The gate itself is a fine building. When the British troops, who varied at times from 5000 to 10,000 men, set to work to attack this strong city, held by 40,000 to 100,000 natives, many of them trained and disciplined soldiers, taught by the very men against whom they were fighting, it seemed an impossible task. The audacity of it! This gate was one of the hardest of all to break through. Four attacking parties had been sent against the walls, the other three got in, but the one that came here failed. Then the others tried to work their way through, inside the city, to capture this gate. They crept along the narrow lane running inside the wall, but it was commanded everywhere from the heights of the houses by the enemy, who poured down a murderous fire into it. Again and again the reckless men, who determined to take the gate, started off on the deadly errand, again and again they were wiped off, and alas! one of those mortally wounded was General John Nicholson, whose utter disregard of danger and marvellous understanding of the native character had made many of the natives look on him as a god!

Now we are outside and driving up to the ridge. Every British boy and girl has heard of the ridge. It played a great part in the Mutiny. It is a long backbone of hill which runs close up to the city at one end. We will leave our carriage to go slowly along to the far end, where the road winds up, and we ourselves will scramble up at this side till we gain the Mutiny Memorial, a Gothic tower rising in many stages like a church spire. We can mount the steps inside to see the view. It is worth it, for miles and miles of country lie spread before us from this height.

I don't want to go into details of history, but if ever there is a place where history was made it is here. On this ridge for months was camped the British army, including some loyal native regiments, and all the time they never wavered in their determination to retake Delhi, then in the hands of the natives. Our men could not be said to besiege the city, because to besiege means to sit down all round a place and prevent the inhabitants from getting supplies from outside until they are compelled to give in or are too weak to resist the entrance of the besiegers; we never invested Delhi in this way. There were not enough men even to attempt it; the natives could always get supplies into the city, if they wanted, from the river Jumna, which runs past the other side. But the British sat steadily on their heights in grim determination, and never lost the chance of a move. They died in hundreds; remember it was during an Indian summer, and even under the best conditions, with ice and punkahs and shade, the European finds it hard to get through the hot weather. Here there were no conveniences and very few even of what might be considered necessaries. The men suffered from dysentery, fever, wounds, and sunstroke, and yet they carried through their forlorn hope triumphantly, and it was hardly a year later that the Queen of England was proclaimed Sovereign of India.

In that great plain, which stretches far as eye can see on the other side of the ridge, some twenty years later another proclamation was made, and the Queen was further proclaimed under the title of Empress of India; while in 1911 her grandson, King George, himself proclaimed Delhi as the capital of India in place of Calcutta.

Over the screen of trees you can see beautiful Delhi lying within its hoary walls. You can see the towers and steeples and minarets and domes of the city. Now look the other way, along the ridge. That great pillar close to us is very old; it was made by one of the Hindu kings, but it was only put up here ten years after the Mutiny, and is not interesting. That white house farther on is now a hospital; it was once a private house, and in it General Nicholson died. Look on again, much farther, past trees and other houses, and you will see a rounded building with turrets – that is the Flagstaff Tower so fiercely held.

Come down now to rejoin the carriage and we will go back to the city by the Kashmir Gate. Of all the gates this is the one with the most daring story of adventure attached to it.

When the British had resolved to make an assault on the city they detailed four parties, as I said, to attack in four places. One of them was this gate. The other three places had been partially broken in by the guns, and there was a chance for those heroic madmen to get through, but this was entire. The assaulting party had first to break a way in and then get through.

And they did it!

The five told off to make the breach were Lieutenants Home and Salkeld, and Sergeants Carmichael, Burgess, and Smith. Some carried bags of gunpowder, and others, the fire to set them off. It was daylight when they ran towards the gate across a single plank spanning the ditch, so that they had to go one by one in full range of the enemy's fire from the walls. The marvel is that any lived to reach the gate alive. When one fell another leaped forward to carry on his task. The bags were flung down, and those who placed them tumbled back into the ditch, while their comrades set the powder alight and rolled down too. Out of the whole party only Home and Smith survived. The wicket of the gate was burst open by the explosion, and the storming party, also crossing that single plank, made for it, got inside, and beat back the foe, meeting their comrades, who had burst in at other points, inside.

The tale of "how Horatius kept the bridge" pales before this amazing pluck.

We must get out and look at the gate where this actually happened not sixty years ago.

There are two wide arches in the shattered wall, and the coping above is half gone; it remains unrestored just as it was that day. On a slab is an inscription telling of this noble deed when men died for their country without hesitation.

Close by is the cemetery where General Nicholson is buried. You can see his statue in the city raised high on a pedestal. He stands with bared head and drawn sword. But Nicholson's is not the only name immortalised by the Mutiny – there are the two brothers, John and Henry Lawrence, Outram and Havelock, Hodson, Sir Colin Campbell, and many another name which is a household word in England. These men, in those days of fierce fighting and desperate stress, made history and wrote themselves in its pages by deeds that still cause every British boy's heart to ring within him. We have passed through the Kashmir Gate, and here, on one side of the street, is a battered bit of arcade, another Mutiny memorial. In the early days, just at the first outbreak, when no one realised what was going to happen, the mutineers marched on Delhi. This bit of wall was part of the powder magazine, then in charge of nine men. They defended it against a swarming army of Sepoys, as the native soldiers were called, and when they found that they could not hold it in spite of their desperate defence, they calmly blew up the powder magazine, and themselves with it, to prevent its falling into the hands of the mutineers and being used against their kinsmen. The most incredible part of the whole story is that three of those who blew up the magazine actually escaped with their lives!

We are now approaching the fort and palace, the kernel of the city, which it is best to see after the ridge.

It is a fine building that faces us, with an ornamental arcade running along the upper part. We pass in on foot under the gateway and see another, a Hall of Public Audience, with red sandstone pillars. Inside is a great throne of white marble, inlaid with mosaic work, where the old kings of Delhi used to sit and listen to their ministers. The last of this line was still living in the palace when the Mutiny broke out. He was a poor specimen, given up to indulgence and sloth; but the British had left him the state of royalty and all his wealth until the rising made it impossible any more. His sons and grandson, who, when the Mutiny broke out, themselves actually murdered and tortured helpless English women and children, and watched their agonies as "sport," were rightly shot out of hand, and the old king became a prisoner.

Coming out of this hall our eyes are caught by a gleam of something lustrously white against a sky which is now burning blue. This is another Hall of Audience, the Diwan-i-Khas, more beautiful than the first. It is of white marble, which, in this clear atmosphere, remains white, and it is richly ornamented with gilt. It is in the form of a square cloister or arcade, with a little dome at each corner, and if we stand inside and look out between the white pillars to see the lawns and the trees in the old palace gardens, we shall find it difficult to realise that this place of beauty and peace was ever a scene of fierce revolt. The rest of the palace is now used partly as a barracks.

When the British, having beaten their way through the narrow streets, and swept them clear of the foe, arrived here on that fateful day, the 14th September 1857, they found the palace deserted, except for a stray sentry, holding his position with sublime courage. The rest had fled, – thousands flying from hundreds, – and well they might, for the British troops were wrought up by the cruelties of the Sepoys to a sublime and just fury that made them seem like avenging angels. It is said in one place that the sternness of the expression of the Sikhs' faces made the wretched Sepoys fly without a shot being fired. The palace area is full of beautiful buildings, and we shall see many more specimens of this kind of Oriental architecture when we visit the mosques in the town this afternoon.

So much is there to see, indeed, that it is not until the next day we can ride out for a sight beyond the walls.

Pull up your horse and look ahead. Do you see that huge column rising skyward from the plain? It is called the Kutab Minar and is two hundred and forty feet high. As we get under it and gaze up at it it seems to tower into the very sky. It is forty-seven feet across the base and narrows to the top, it is fluted all the way down, and has frills in stone around it here and there – truly a curious sight! There are three hundred and seventy-nine steps to climb to the top; do you want to try them? If so, I will wait here and hold your horse. You shake your head. Wise boy!

There are other buildings around, parts of a mosque, and inside is an iron pillar said to be one of the oldest things in India. The Kutab Minar is supposed to have been built about the reign of our King John, though there are some who put it further back; the pillar is considerably older than that, but it cannot compare in antiquity with many things we have seen in Egypt. After the Hindu kings came a line of Moghul or Mohammedan kings who swept the others away; of these the old king of Delhi, living at the time of the Mutiny, was the last, and it is supposed that it was at the beginning of the rule of the Moghul kings that the Kutab Minar was erected.

Notice that brown-faced, scantily clad boy, who keeps beckoning and shouting "Sahib." We follow him as he leads us to a well, and almost before we realise what he is doing he goes down head first, a drop of at least eighty feet, into the black water below. There is a tradition that the water of this well cannot drown anyone. At anyrate it hasn't rid the world of this rascal, for here he comes shaking the water off his oily body and grinning. He has earned his bakshish!

As we are in Delhi for several days more we can go at our leisure through the bazaars, which really are well worth seeing. We choose a late afternoon, when there is no hurry and we can watch the people in their daily life and get a glimpse into the real India.

The streets are narrow, mere passages mostly, and lined by the open-air stalls or wooden sheds which are what the native understands by shops. A marvellous array of slippers greets us first, for all of one trade tend to congregate together, a curious custom and one which you would think was not very good for trade, though convenient to the customer. There are slippers of all colours from scarlet to brown; you would never have thought they could be so decorative. They hang in bunches, festoons, and chains. Every man here wears slippers when he puts anything at all on his feet. Boots would be of no use to him, for he has so often to shuffle off his foot-gear in a hurry. Modern streets, with their stones and liability to nails and broken glass and other sharp things, has led to the native taking to strong soled slippers when he walks about his business.

There is a sizzling and a delicious smell from the next shop, and peeping in we see a huddled form crouched over a pot placed on a few red embers; it might be a witch stirring potions and muttering incantations. But it is only a native looking after a pan full of Indian corn popping out in the most fluffy and tempting way. I have often popped it on a shovel over the school fire. A native soldier, who is passing, stops and bargains for a handful, and carries it off, eating it as he goes; when he has had enough he will stow the rest in his turban, which serves as his pocket, his private trunk, and play-box all in one. This is the food he best thrives on, so his wants are easily supplied. A tailor sitting cross-legged on his board attracts us next; he is a good-looking old man with a grey beard and kindly eyes blinking behind horn spectacles. His garments are of the dark red colour seen sometimes in certain parts of the country when the earth is ploughed. His turban is a mighty erection of green arranged with much dignity. You would think it hot and heavy to carry all those yards of stuff on your head, but the habit has probably arisen to protect the head from sunstroke.

"He is a dhurzi, Sahib," says Ramaswamy, who has followed us to interpret if we want. "He making all clothes for mem-sahibs. Very clever man and not asking too much money."

Yes, a dhurzi will come and sit outside on a verandah and work by the day and copy any garment you give him; sewing is a man's job here, and not a woman's.

Then we see a sweetmeat shop with a crowd outside and a cloud of flies bearing them company. While we look, many of the flies crawl slowly over the sticky, syrupy stuff which has just come from the pan, and get their legs entangled in it, but it doesn't seem to hinder the sale, which goes on cheerfully. There are sweets in rings and coils and fantastic shapes. A child gets a large pink slab for two pice, and ten pice go to the penny, that is to say, the anna, so it is not dear. The buyer tucks the sticky stuff up in the corner of her garment and ties it carefully into a knot before starting homeward.

Standing a little aloof from the crowd and looking at them disdainfully is a small boy with a twisted cord slung across his left shoulder. "He be Brahman, Sahib," says Ramaswamy timidly. "Very proud and not eating anything dirty peoples touch, just having had cord." Standing where he is, so as not to approach nearer to the lad, he asks a few questions, which are answered curtly and proudly, with a glance thrown across at us as much as if to say they wouldn't have been answered at all except for our presence.