Following the Equator by Mark Twain (mobile ebook reader TXT) đź“–
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CHAPTER LVII.
India the Most Extraordinary Country on Earth—Nothing Forgotten—The Land of Wonders—Annual Statistics Everywhere about Violence—Tiger vs. Man—A Handsome Fight—Annual Man Killing and Tiger Killing—Other Animals—Snakes—Insurance and Snake Tables—The Cobra Bite—Muzaffurpore—Dinapore—A Train that Stopped for Gossip—Six Hours for Thirty-five Miles—A Rupee to the Engineer—Ninety Miles an Hour—Again to Benares, the Piety Hive—To Lucknow
The Great Mutiny—The Massacre in Cawnpore—Terrible Scenes in Lucknow—The Residency—The Siege
A Visit to the Residency—Cawnpore—The Adjutant Bird and the Hindoo Corpse—The Taj Mahal—The True Conception—The Ice Storm—True Gems—Syrian Fountains—An Exaggerated Niagara
To Lahore—The Governor’s Elephant—Taking a Ride—No Danger from Collision—Rawal Pindi—Back to Delhi—An Orientalized Englishman—Monkeys and the Paint-pot—Monkey Crying over my Note-book—Arrival at Jeypore—In Rajputana—Watching Servants—The Jeypore Hotel—Our Old and New Satan—Satan as a Liar—The Museum—A Street Show—Blocks of Houses—A Religious Procession
Methods in American Deaf and Dumb Asylums—Methods in the Public Schools—A Letter from a Youth in Punjab—Highly Educated Service—A Damage to the Country—A Little Book from Calcutta—Writing Poor English—Embarrassed by a Beggar Girl—A Specimen Letter—An Application for Employment—A Calcutta School Examination—Two Samples of Literature
Sail from Calcutta to Madras—Thence to Ceylon—Thence for Mauritius—The Indian Ocean—Our Captain’s Peculiarity—The Scot Has one too—The Flying-fish that Went Hunting in the Field—Fined for Smuggling—Lots of Pets on Board—The Color of the Sea—The Most Important Member of Nature’s Family—The Captain’s Story of Cold Weather—Omissions in the Ship’s Library—Washing Decks—Pyjamas on Deck—The Cat’s Toilet—No Interest in the Bulletin—Perfect Rest—The Milky Way and the Magellan Clouds—Mauritius—Port Louis—A Hot Country—Under French Control—A Variety of People and Complexions—Train to Curepipe—A Wonderful Office-holder—The Wooden Peg Ornament—The Prominent Historical Event of Mauritius—“Paul and Virginia”—One of Virginia’s Wedding Gifts—Heaven Copied after Mauritius—Early History of Mauritius—Quarantines—Population of all Kinds—What the World Consists of—Where Russia and Germany are—A Picture of Milan Cathedral—Newspapers—The Language—Best Sugar in the World—Literature of Mauritius
Port Louis—Matches no Good—Good Roads—Death Notices—Why European Nations Rob Each Other—What Immigrants to Mauritius Do—Population—Labor Wages—The Camaron—The Palmiste and other Eatables—Monkeys—The Cyclone of 1892—Mauritius a Sunday Landscape
The Steamer “Arundel Castle”—Poor Beds in Ships—The Beds in Noah’s Ark—Getting a Rest in Europe—Ship in Sight—Mozambique Channel—The Engineer and the Band—Thackeray’s “Madagascar”—Africanders Going Home—Singing on the After Deck—An Out-of-Place Story—Dynamite Explosion in Johannesburg—Entering Delagoa Bay—Ashore—A Hot Winter—Small Town—No Sights—No Carriages—Working Women—Barnum’s Purchase of Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Jumbo, and the Nelson Monument—Arrival at Durban
Royal Hotel Durban—Bells that Did not Ring—Early Inquiries for Comforts—Change of Temperature after Sunset—Rickhaws—The Hotel Chameleon—Natives not out after the Bell—Preponderance of Blacks in Natal—Hair Fashions in Natal—Zulus for Police—A Drive round the Berea—The Cactus and other Trees—Religion a Vital Matter—Peculiar Views about Babies—Zulu Kings—A Trappist Monastery—Transvaal Politics—Reasons why the Trouble came About
Jameson over the Border—His Defeat and Capture—Sent to England for Trial—Arrest of Citizens by the Boers—Commuted Sentences—Final Release of all but Two—Interesting Days for a Stranger—Hard to Understand Either Side—What the Reformers Expected to Accomplish—How They Proposed to Do it—Testimonies a Year Later—A “Woman’s Part”—The Truth of the South African Situation—“Jameson’s Ride”—A Poem
Jameson’s Raid—The Reform Committee’s Difficult Task—Possible Plans—Advice that Jameson Ought to Have—The War of 1881 and its Lessons—Statistics of Losses of the Combatants—Jameson’s Battles—Losses on Both Sides—The Military Errors—How the Warfare Should Have Been Carried on to Be Successful
Judicious Mr. Rhodes—What South Africa Consists of—Johannesburg—The Gold Mines—The Heaven of American Engineers—What the Author Knows about Mining—Description of the Boer—What Should be Expected of Him—What Was A Dizzy Jump for Rhodes—Taxes—Rhodesian Method of Reducing Native Population—Journeying in Cape Colony—The Cars—The Country—The Weather—Tamed Blacks—Familiar Figures in King William’s Town—Boer Dress—Boer Country Life—Sleeping Accommodations—The Reformers in Boer Prison—Torturing a Black Prisoner
An Absorbing Novelty—The Kimberley Diamond Mines—Discovery of Diamonds—The Wronged Stranger—Where the Gems Are—A Judicious Change of Boundary—Modern Machinery and Appliances—Thrilling Excitement in Finding a Diamond—Testing a Diamond—Fences—Deep Mining by Natives in the Compound—Stealing—Reward for the Biggest Diamond—A Fortune in Wine—The Great Diamond—Office of the De Beer Co.—Sorting the Gems—Cape Town—The Most Imposing Man in British Provinces—Various Reasons for his Supremacy—How He Makes Friends
Table Rock—Table Bay—The Castle—Government and Parliament—The Club—Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality—Dr. John Barry and his Doings—On the Ship Norman—Madeira—Arrived in Southampton
CHAPTER I.
A man may have no bad habits and have worse.
—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris, where we had been living a year or two.
We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is out of place in a dictionary.
We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon and British Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke at the seaboard, where we were obliged to wait awhile for our ship. She had been getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked and repaired.
We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent, which had lasted forty days.
We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and sparkling summer sea; an enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all on board; it certainly was to me, after the distressful dustings and smokings and swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a three-weeks holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole Pacific Ocean in front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and be comfortable. The city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart of her smoke-cloud, and getting ready to vanish and now we closed the field-glasses and sat down on our steamer chairs contented and at peace. But they went to wreck and ruin under us and brought us to shame before all the passengers. They had been furnished by the largest furniture-dealing house in Victoria, and were worth a couple of farthings a dozen, though they had cost us the price of honest chairs. In the Pacific and Indian Oceans one must still bring his own deck-chair on board or go without, just as in the old forgotten Atlantic times—those Dark Ages of sea travel.
Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary sea-going fare—plenty of good food furnished by the Deity and cooked by the devil. The discipline observable on board was perhaps as good as it is anywhere in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The ship was not very well arranged for tropical service; but that is nothing, for this is the rule for ships which ply in the tropics. She had an over-supply of cockroaches, but this is also the rule with ships doing business in the summer seas—at least such as have been long in service. Our young captain was a very handsome man, tall and perfectly formed, the very figure to show up a smart uniform’s finest effects. He was a man of the best intentions and was polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft and grace and finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened to be in seem for the moment a drawing room. He avoided the smoking room. He had no vices. He did not smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff; he did not swear, or use slang or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or make puns, or tell anecdotes, or laugh intemperately, or raise his voice above the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good form. When he gave an order, his manner modified it into a request. After dinner he and his officers joined the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies’ saloon, and shared in the singing and piano playing, and helped turn the music. He had a sweet and sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and effect. After the music he played whist there, always with the same partner and opponents, until the ladies’ bedtime. The electric lights burned there as late as the ladies and their friends might desire; but they were not allowed to burn in the smoking-room after eleven. There were many laws on the ship’s statute book of course; but so far as I could see, this and one other were the only ones that were rigidly enforced. The captain explained that he enforced this one because his own cabin adjoined the smoking-room, and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick. I did not see how our smoke could reach him, for the smoking-room and his cabin were on the upper deck, targets for all the winds that blew; and besides there was no crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort in the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even imaginary smoke can convey damage.
The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moral and verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of place in his rude and autocratic vocation. It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.
He was going home under a cloud. The passengers knew about his trouble, and were sorry for him. Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and difficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest fires, he had had the ill-luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks. A matter like this would rank merely as an error with you and me; it ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship companies. The captain had been tried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver, and its verdict had acquitted him of blame. But that was insufficient comfort. A sterner court would examine the case in Sydney—the Court of Directors, the lords of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of years. This was his first voyage as captain.
The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and they entered into the general amusements and helped the passengers pass the time. Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but pleasure excursions for all hands. Our purser was a young Scotchman who was equipped with a grit that was remarkable. He was an invalid, and looked it, as far as his body was concerned, but illness could not subdue his spirit. He was full of life, and had a gay and capable tongue. To all appearances he was a sick man without being aware of it, for he did not talk about his ailments, and his bearing and conduct were those of a person in robust health; yet he was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly sieges of pain in his heart. These lasted many hours, and while the attack continued he could neither sit nor lie. In one instance he stood on his feet twenty-four hours fighting for his life with these sharp agonies, and yet was as full of life and cheer and activity the next day as if nothing had happened.
The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting and felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not able to let the whisky bottle alone. He was of a rich and powerful family, and could have had a distinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if he could have conquered his appetite for drink; but he could not do it, so his great equipment of talent was of no use to him. He had often taken the pledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of what that sort of unwisdom can
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