Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (ebook reader android txt) 📖

“Yes,” sez Josiah, smilin’ real pleasant, “you’ve happened to hit it jest right, Arvilly.”

“Well,” sez I, “do look and enjoy the beauty that is 228 spread out right before you.” Our good ship made its way into the harbor of Colombo, through a multitude of boats with men of every color and size at their oars and all gesticulating and jabbering in axents as strange to us as Jupiter talk would be. Some of the boats wuz queer lookin’; they are called dugouts, and have outriggers for the crew to set on. They carry fruit and provision to the steamers in the bay, and take passengers to and fro.

Bein’ took by one to terry firmy, we soon made our way through the chatterin’ strange lookin’ crowd of every color and costoom to a tarven where we obtained food and needed rest, and the next mornin’ we sallied out some as we would if we had jest landed on the shores of another planet to explore a new world.

We walked through the streets by big gardens that seemed jest ablaze with color and swoonin’ with perfume. The low white houses wuz banked up with drifts of blossom and verdure as the Jonesville houses wuz with snow drifts on a winter day. Sweet voiced birds in gayest plumage swung and soared aloft instead of the ice-suckles that hung from the eaves of Jonesville houses. And instead of Ury clad in a buffalo coat and striped wool mittens walking with icy whiskers and frost-bitten ears to break the ice in the creek, wuz the gay crowd of men, wimmen and children dressed in all the rich colors of the rainbow, if they wuz dressed at all. Solid purple, yellow, green, burnin’ colors palpitating with light and cheer under the warm breezes and glowin’ sunshine.

Sometimes the children wuz in jest the state that Adam and Eve wuz when they wuz finished off and pronounced good. Sometimes a string and a red rag comprised their toilette, but they all seemed a part of the strange picture, the queer, mysterious, onknown Orient. The gorgeous colorin’ of the men’s apparel struck Josiah to the heart agin; he vowed that he would show Jonesville the way for men to dress if he ever got home agin. Sez he, “I will show Deacon 229 Henzy and Uncle Sime Bentley that a man can wear sunthin’ besides that everlastin’ black or gray.” Sez he:

“I can dress gay with small expense; I can take one of your white woolen sheets and color it with diamond dye a bright red or a green or yeller at a outlay of ten cents per sheet, and one of my bandannas will make a crackin’ good turban. Let me walk into the Jonesville meetin’ house with that gorgeous drapery wropped round me, why I should be the lion of the day.”

“Yes,” sez I, “you would break up the congregation as quick as a real lion would.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Samantha, there is beauty in such a costoom that our sombry coats and pantaloons and vests can’t come nigh to.”

I spoze Ceylon is the most beautiful place in the world, such glow and richness of color, such aboundin’ life in the verdure, in the animal and vegetable kingdom. No wonder so many think it wuz the original Garden of Eden; no shovelin’ snow for Adam or bankin’ up fruits and vegetables for winter’s use. No, he could step out barefoot in the warm velvety grass in December, and pick oranges and gather sweet potatoes and cucumbers, and strawberries if Eve took it into her head she wanted a shortcake pie. And little Cain could cut up cane literally, and every way, in January, and Abel pile flowers and fruit on his altar all the year round. But I wonder which of their descendants built these immense magnificent cities layin’ fur below forests and billows of turf and flowers.

I wonder how they looked and what language they spoke and what their politics wuz. Arvilly thought they must have been temperance folks. Sez she, “Any city that has reservoirs twenty milds long believed in drinkin’ water.” We had took a tower to see one of them dug up cities, and sure enough the water reservoir wuz twenty milds long; jest think from that what the size of the hull city must have been, when their waterin’ trough, as you may say, wuz as 230 long as America’s biggest city. Stately stairways, up which twenty carriages big as our democrat could pass side by side if horses could climb stairs.

A row of tall pillers, ten milds in length, line the roads to some of them cities, and I sez:

“Oh, good land! How I wish I could be a mouse in the wall and see who and what passed over them roads, and why, and when, and where.”

And Josiah sez, “Why don’t you say you wish you wuz a elephant and could look on? your simely would seem sounder.”

And I sez, “Mebby so, for hull rows of carved marble elephants stand along them broad roads; I guess they worshipped ’em.”

And he sez, “I wuz alludin’ to size.”

Robert Strong looked ruther sad as we looked on them ruins buried so deep by the shovel of time. But I sez to him in a low voice:

“There is no danger of the city you’re a-rarin’ up ever bein’ engulfed and lost, for justice and mercy and love shine jest as bright to-day as when the earth was called out of chaos. Love is eternal, immortal, and though worlds reel and skies fall, what is immortal cannot perish.”

He looked real grateful at me; he sets store by me.

Everywhere, as you walk through the streets, you are importuned to buy sunthin’; some of the finest jewels in the world are bought here. The merchants are dretful polite, bowin’ and smilin’, their hair combed back slick and fastened up with shell combs. They wear white, short pantaloons and long frocks of colored silk, open in front over a red waistcoat; sometimes they are bare-footed with rings on their toes; they wear rings in their nose and sometimes two on each ear, at the top and bottom.

Josiah studied their costoom with happy interest, but a deep shade of anxiety darkened his mean as they would 231 spread out their wares before me, and he sez with a axent of tender interest:

“If you knew, Samantha, how much more beautiful you looked to me in your cameo pin you would never think of appearin’ in diamonds and rubies.”

I sez, “I guess I won’t buy any nose-rings, Josiah, my nose is pretty big anyway.”

“Yes,” he interrupted me eagerly, “they wouldn’t be becomin’, Samantha, and be in the way eatin’ sweet corn on the ear and such.”

There are lots of men carryin’ round serpents, and I sez to Josiah, “Who under the sun would want to buy a snake unless they wuz crazy?”

“Yes,” said Josiah, “Eve made a big mistake listenin’ to that serpent; there probable wuzn’t but one then, and that’s the way they have jest overrun the garden, her payin’ attention and listenin’ to it. Females can’t seem to look ahead.”

And I sez, “Why didn’t Adam do as you always do, Josiah, ketch up a stick and put an end to it?” I always holler to Josiah if I see a snake and he makes way with it.

But such talk is onprofitable. But Josiah hadn’t a doubt but this was the Garden of Eden and talked fluent about it.

One odd thing here in Ceylon is that foxes have wings and can fly. Josiah wanted to get one the worse way; he said that he would willin’ly carry it home in his arms for the sake of havin’ it fly round over Jonesville, and sez he, “They are so smart, Samantha, they will git drunk jest as naterally as men do, they would feel to home in America.” And they say they do steal palm wine out of bowls set to ketch it by the natives and are found under the trees too drunk to git home, not havin’ wives or children willin’ to lead ’em home, I spoze, or accomidatin’ policemen.

But I sez, “Don’t you try to git the animals in America to drinkin’, Josiah Allen.” Sez I, “I should be mortified to death to see the old mair or Snip staggerin’ round as men 232 do, lookin’ maudlin and silly; I should despise the idee of lowerin’ the animals down to that state.”

“Well, well, I don’t spoze I can git one of these foxes anyway, though I might,” sez he dreamily, “git one real drunk and carry it.” But I guess he’ll gin it up.

The jungles all round us wuz, I spoze, filled with wild animals. Elephants, tigers and serpents, big and little, besides monkeys and more harmless ones. The snake charmers did dretful strange things with ’em, but I didn’t look on. I always said that if snakes would let me alone, I would let them alone. But they brought all sorts of things to sell: embroideries of all kinds, carved ivory, tortoise shell and all kinds of jewels. Paris and London gits some of their finest jewels here.

Men and wimmen are all bejewelled from head to foot, children up to ten years of age are almost always naked, but wearin’ bracelets, anklets and silver belts round their little brown bodies, sometimes with bells attached. Some of the poorer natives chew beetle nuts which make their teeth look some like an old tobacco chewer’s. They eat in common out of a large bowl and I spoze they don’t use napkins or finger bowls. But unlike the poor in our frozen winter cities, as Arvilly said, there is little danger of their starving; warm they will be from year’s end to year’s end, and the bread tree and cocoanut palm supply food, and the traveller’s palm supplies a cool, delicious drink. There is one palm tree here––the talipot––that blooms when about forty years old with a loud noise and immegiately dies. Arvilly said that they made her think of some political candidates.

Dorothy and Robert Strong and Miss Meechim wanted to go to Kandy, the capital of Ceylon, only seventy milds away, to see the tooth of Boodha. Miss Meechim said she wanted to weep over it. She is kinder romantic in spots, and Josiah hearn her and said, soty vosey, to me, “You won’t ketch me weepin’ over any tooth unless it is achin’ like the Old Harry.”

But I kinder wanted to see the tooth. I had hearn Thomas J. read a good deal about Prince Siddartha, Lord Buddha, and how he wuz “right gentle, though so wise, princely of mean, yet softly mannered, modest, deferent and tender hearted, though of fearless blood,” and how he renounced throne and wealth and love for his people, to “seek deliverance and the unknown light.”

I had always pictured him as looking more beautiful than any other mortal man, but of this more anon.

Josiah and Arvilly concluded to go too; it wuz only a four hours’ ride. We passed coffee plantations, immense gardens and forests full of ebony trees, the strange banion tree that seems to walk off all round itself and plant its great feet solidly in the earth, and then step off agin, makin’ a hull forest of itself, and satin wood trees, and India rubber, bamboo, balsam, bread fruit, pepper and cinchony or quinine bushes, tea and rice plantations. Our road led up the mountain side and anon the city of Kandy could be seen sot down in a sort of a valley on the mountain. We had our dinner at the Queen’s Hotel, and from there sallied out to see the sights. Not fur from the hotel wuz a artificial lake three milds round, built by some king. His very name is forgotten, whilst the water of this little lake he dug out splashes up on the shore jest as fresh as ever. All round the lake is a beautiful driveway, where all sorts of vehicles wuz seen. Big barouches full of English people, down to a little two-wheeled cart drawed by one ox. Crowds of people, jewels, bright color, anon a poor woman carrying her baby astride her hip, men, wimmen, children, a brilliant, movin’ panorama.

The tooth of Buddha is kep’ in a temple called Maligawa, or Temple of the Tooth, and I laid out to have a considerable number of emotions as I stood before it. But imagine a tooth bigger than a hull tooth brush! What kind of a mouth must Lord Buddha have had if that wuz a sample of his teeth? Why, his mouth, at the least calculation, must have been as big as a ten-quart pan! Where wuz the beauty and 234 charm of that countenance––that mouth that had spoke such wise words?

I don’t believe it wuz his tooth. I hain’t no idee it wuz. No human bein’ ever had a mouth big