(LI a. .^liLL LIBIL-l^.Y ui nHACA,N,Y. 14553 ^^^ :^»oJs Collectior on Southeast .>_'?j ./ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 924 084 657 41 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924084657141 In Compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1998 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION ON CHINA AND THE CHINESE Wot>Mu.ryfy-^^ V/.. i/pl^f't^ Af^/^r A-^V^ SroTn. a. photpyracph Iry ^Marshall Wane, £diniurqh. TO SIAM AND MALAYA THE DUKE OF SUTHERLAND'S YACHT 'SAKS PEUR' BY MRS. FLORENCE CADDY AUTHOE OF ~ ' THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LIKN^US,' ETC., ETC. IN ONE VOLUME. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1889. All rights reserved. PREFACE. A WOKD may be said here as to the origin of this book. The Duke of Sutherland, after a severe ill- ness, had been exiled by his physicians and ordered to winter abroad. ' He had been well-nigh every- where else, and in this case decided to proceed to the far East in his yacht, touching at various places of . interest, and finally to visit Siarn. A geographer and naturalist was required for the ex- pedition, which, as it was to touch fresh woods and pastures new, was a position likely to afford some- thing worthy of record. The position was offered to me, and I accepted it, We went overland to Brindisi, and found the Sans Peur lying there. I found all the novelty and adventure that I had ex- pected, and the results are recorded in the following pages. CONTENTS. CHAPTEE I. Lessepsia 1 The Sans Peur, her Company and Armament — Candia — Port Said — Lady Strangford's Hospital — The Wild-cat Flag — The Suez Canal — Drive through Ismailia — Fishing in Lake Temsah — Steamer aground in the Canal — The Bitter Lake — Donkey-riding at Suez. CHAPTER II. The Red Sea 27 The Wilderness — ^Mount Horeb — Hesperus —Christmas Day — Mas- sowah — Mr. Portal — Drive to General Gend's Camp — The Hababs — The Knight of the Locket — Italian Military Railway — Camp at MonkvLUo — Captain Michelini— Bivouac in the Camp — Ordered to the Front. CHAPTER HI. To THE Far East 57 Aden — Across the Indian Ocean — Portuguese at Marmagoa — The new Railway -line to Bellary — Southern Ghauts — ^The Sea-Serpent — Ceylon — Madras — Journey across India — Festival of the total Eclipse of the Moon — Shipwrecked Sailors — Transformation Scene — Straits of Malacca — Singapore — Tropical Vegetation — Jinrickshas — Ball on board H.M.S. Orion — Luncheon at Government House — ^Tea at a Chinaman's House. viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. A Royal Cremation .... .86 Gulf of Siam— The Menam River— The Venice of the East — ^The Palace of Calm Delights — Preparing for the Cremation — Procession of the Urns of former Kings — Fire-brigade — Great Fire at Bangkok — The Royal Gardens— Classical Temples — Streets of Bangkok — State Dinner-party at the Royal Palace — The King and Queen of Siam. CHAPTER V. High Life in Asia 118 Procession of the bodies of the Princes — Coinage of Siam — Siamese boys educated in England — Temple at Sabratummawan — Image of Buddha — Illuminations in the Premane — Our Reception by the King — Graceful National Customs — The King's Children — Presents —Shrines at the Premane— Noises of the Night — The White Ele- phants—Museum at Bangkok — Siamese Soldiers — Future Siamese Railways — The Emerald and Crystal Buddhas — Playing at Ball. CHAPTER VI. Young Siam 150 Native Art — Police Boat — Prisons — Vessels in the River — Flotilla Company — Habits of the People — Gambling-houses — House-boats — The Cremation Ceremonies — Festivities — High Jinks — Scrambling for Limes and Balls — Fireworks — Lamp and Dragon -dances. CHAPTER Vn. Atuthia 168 Absolute Monarchy — Up the River — Palm and Bamboo — ^The White Ibis — Palace of Bang Pahin — ^Tokay Lizard — ^Rice Cultiva- tion — Arrival of the Golden Needle — Inundation of the Menam — Family Temples — Poll-tax — Ayuthia — Observatory — Picnic in a Mango-orchard — Sight-seeing — Elephant-taming — Siamese Sunday — Prince Doctor's Opinions. CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER VIII. Thirty Years' Progress in Siam . . . 194 Gold-mines and Prospecting — Lawn-tennis Party — Arabian Nights in the Premane — Shopping Excursion in a Gondola — Siamese Musical Instruments — Dinner-party of highly-civilized People — Wat Poh — The Colossal Buddha — Mother-of-pearl Marqueterie — Wat Chang — Wat Sahket — Rival Bauds — Diseases in Siam — Future of Siam — Farewell to Bangkok. CHAPTER IX. Return to the Nineteenth Century . .217 Snakes of Siam and Poisonous Fish — Short Cut in the River — Islands in the Gulf of Siam — Prime Minister of the Sultan of Johore — Naval Manoeuvres at Singapore and Sham Fight — Cathedral and Prison at Singapore. CHAPTER X. The Sultan op Johore 231 Johore Flag — ^The Istana — Chinese Opera — Four-in-hand Drive — Wines — ' A Dream of Fair Women ' — Malay Curry — Brick and Tile Works — Chinese Theatre and Gambling-house — Malacca Canes and Sarongs — ^Malay Garden-party — Cultivation of Crops — Steam Saw-miUs— Johore Forests — ^River Police — The Bag-piper — Farewell Dinner-party. CHAPTER XI. Muar 261 The Duke Invested with the Order of Johore — The Sultan's Yacht — Journey through the Salat Tambran — Mount Ophir — The Sultan's Nephews — Istana at Muar — A Malay Breakfast — Present of a Tiger — The Capitan China— Fishing Villages — Mr. Swan's Adventures — Coronation of the Sultan — Mount Ophir of Sumatra. X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. Ceylon 280 Coloured Fish — Juggler and Jeweller — Colombo — Railway Jour- ney — Ceylon Tea — Peradeniya — The Earthly Paradise — Bamboos — Palms — Figs — The Upas-tree — Kandy — Temple of the Tooth — Library — Cobras — Native Agriculture — ^Buddhist Priests — Excur- sion to Galangoda — Jewelled Dagoba — Wall Paintings — Red Colos- sal Buddha— Smaller Temples — 'Sensation' Rock — Philology — 'A Floating Palace of Delight ' CHAPTER XIII. The Return Voyage 320 Laccadive Islands — Easter Day — Southern Cross — African Coast — Arab Town at Aden — Queen of Sheba's Tanks — Stay at Govern- ment House — Persian Carpets — A Ball — Description of Aden — Pro- ductions and Fauna of Aden — Sharp-nosed Dolphins — Squalls near Suez — Railway Trip to Cairo. CHAPTER XIV. Egypt 337 English Troops at the Citadel — Ostrich-farming — ^Iiluseum of Antiquities — Twirling and Howling Dervishes — ^The Races — ^The Libyan Lake — RaU to Alexandria — ^P. and O. ship Gwalior — ^Mr. Cornish's Pump-works — Sights of Alexandria — ^Feast of Roses. TO SIAM AND MALAYA. CHAPTER I. LESSEPSIA. And mind you tell them a very pretty story, for they are exceedingly fond of stories ; my mother likes them to be very moral and aristocratic, and my father likes them to be merry, so as to make him laugh. The Flying Trunk. Hans Andersen. A YACHT is something like the magic carpet of the Arabian Nights, that can transport its owner where he wishes, or, better still, like Hans Andersen's ' Flying Trunk,' for you pack up and get into it, and it carries you where you wish. It takes its time about it, perhaps. David Copperfield's old lady wondered at the impiety of mariners and others who had the pre- sumption to go ' meandering ' about the world ; for those who do not agree with her, and who have yachts, a yacht is the ideal vehicle for meandering. Life in a large yacht combines the picturesqueness of seafaring with the comforts of the best passen- ger ships. Preamble over, the Duke shakes hands with his officers all round and makes a pleasant speech to the crew. The bagpipes play up during B 2 LESSEPSIA. dessert to welcome his Grace on board ; the crescendo and diminuendo tones have a pretty effect as Aleck walks up and down playing the handsome silver- mounted pipes, their dark blue and green tartan ribbons fluttering in the breeze. It feels homely to me knowing my way about the vessel, to have the same cabin that I had in the Bal- tic, and to see so many faces that I know. Aleck, the piper, says they are all glad to see me. We are thirty- two souls on board : the Duke and the doctor. Lady Clare, a widowed relative of the Duke's family, and myself; Bertha, the Swiss maid, and three stewards ; the captain and first and second mate ; engineers and their crew, five; carpenter, boatswain, and officers' steward, three ; the Italian chef-de-cuisine and his assistants — his myrmidons, as the head-steward calls the marmitons — and the officers' cook, six; and eight seamen. The Duke prefers using the fore-part of the yacht as cleaner and pleasanter, and command- ing the best view; the after-end, being left for the ship's company, gives them commodious quarters. The Sans Peur carries, besides the gig built as a lifeboat, a steam-launch, a cutter, the second gig, and dinghy, a Norwegian cockle-shell called the ladies' boat, and a Berthon collapsible. The saloon looked delightfully comfortable, as we arrived by starlight, with a fire and the table laid for dinner, the lamps with their coloured shades, the book-case attractive with the newest books, and plates and pictures set in the olive plush walls above the dado of carved teak. An ' jEolian ' pianoforte stands in one corner of the saloon. LESSEPSIA. 8 The deck-house is lined with sofas ; it has doors on each side and windows nearly all round, so that one can see the views while sitting at work or with a book. .Above the wide, easy staircase that leads down to the saloon a folding table is spread, large enough to dine eight people, or a dozen at a pinch ; the servants stand at the head of the staircase to wait, and the table does not impede their use of this short cut to the pantry, while the dishes are brought hot from the galley to the doors. In fine weather we take our meals in the deck-house in preference to the saloon.. The 13th of December was a fine mild morning. We were all busy unpacking before noon, the hour fixed for sailing. We had our things laid neatly in the numerous cabin drawers, etc., and our trunks Avere carried below to the hold. What changes in the deck-house ! It looks more business-like now than it did in its summer bowery appearance, when every corner was filled with plants and the beams hung with alternate rows of bunches of green and purple grapes from Trentham. Now there are three shining revolvers at the head of each sofa, and below the coloured glass frieze above the windows is another frieze of nine Winchester rifles which fire fifteen charges each without reloading, and a magazine of ammunition in a cupboard handy by with the atlases. All this, with the brass can- ' nons on the deck, is for defence against possible pirates in the China seas. Ofi", with a fair wind, going eleven-and-a-half knots an hour, Italy on the west and the line . of B 2 i LESSEPSIA. the Albanian hills all snowy to the eastward of us. Thermometer 60" at six p.m. We have not found our sea-legs, and the chairs are all lashed to the tables. Our burly ' bos'un ' lays the weight of his body as well as the strength of his arms to the ropes. The Duke laughingly recommends ' this nice little treatise on the rolling of ships,' by W. Froude, written almost exclusively in algebra. Then his Grace, the better to entertain us, calls the captain with his charts and compasses into the deck-house to discuss plans, and we listen, like the Miss Flam- boroughs, each holding an orange while they talk about monsoons, etc. Here I should be^n a fresh chapter on ' Our Privations,' a short one like that famous chapter on the snakes in Ireland. We have no privations on board the Sans Peur. Indeed, we carry two addi- tional seamen in case of sickness among them in the tropics. Calmer next morning, as we are shel- tered by Cephalonia and Zante, ' fior di Levante ' on the port-side. We have fragrant mandarin oranges, with their leaves and flowers to hold and smell, the newest books and magazines to read, and the white cliffs of Zante to gaze upon. The Morea comes into view in the afternoon as we lose sight of Zante. There is a little flat islet near, and beyond it are the Peloponnesian mountains. The islet sub- divides, and behold the Strophades — the storm-vext Strophades, 'haunts of Celseno and her Harpy brood,' which all pictures and descriptions represent as beetling crags and frowning precipices. They are not terrible in reality, nor at all like the pic- LESSEPSIA. 6 tures, though mariners would probably avoid them in bad weather. This is an illusion lost ; never mind, I seek truth, mightier than any fiction. The sea became much less rough as we came under the lee of lofty rugged Crete, with its grey barren rocks, touches of red on its cliffs, and snow- capped summits, reminding us of the Alps, towering above the belts of cloud. A whale is blowing up fountains in the nearer sea, a grand whale, a great beast. The Duke, turning over pages of the ' Light of Asia,' and quoting the millions of Buddhists, says, ' It is the biggest religion going, by a long way,' and he is soon deeply wrapped in Buddha's capti- vating story. The doctor swallows novels by the dozen, bolting them like pills. At sunset a heavenly violet glow suffuses a near pro- montory of Candia, with its snow-crowned peaks all rosy, and blue mists at the base, bringing all manner of fanciful images to lose themselves among the shadows of the cliffs, until to our fancy the lofty island becomes a ghost, its head wrapped in white drapery of snowy peaks, its jagged stony base and rocky pro- montory hard in outline and picturesque in detail ; clouds, like fancies, are spreading their wings over the mysterious blue wall that we know, by faith, to be all flowery valleys and shadowy ravines, with possibly cornfields and vineyards. Now its aspect has become ashy pale, like that of after-death, the craggy foreground is a skeleton, the snowy crest has a greenish hue, quite livid. Moonlight will be a 6 LESSEPSIA. glory to it, or as fame to a dead poet. The sea is purple ' wine-coloured.' Candia has been a beau- tiful companion to us all day, besides being a pro- tection and a shelter. At five o'clock there is a revival on the mountain ; it is less corpse-like, more like a sculptured marble monument, warm from the sculptor's touch, softened and tender, like a fond memory of itself. Now alone in the Mediterranean, equi-distant from Europe, Africa, and Asia, as measured by the captain's compasses, the. Sans Peur rolls on to our chosen destiny. One passing steamer is all the vesselry we have seen since leaving Brindisi. No fear of collisions, any way. The grey solitude is gloomy. The Duke is somewhat hoarse, or worse, to our dismay, but he passes it off lightly. 'What matter,' says his Grace, ' I am not going to sing.' The stewards Herries and Dark Charlie are bring- ing up more warlike implements, 'in case the savages come.' There are six boarding-pikes in a stand at the foot of the staircase leading from the deck-house to the saloon. ' In case those heathens think there is anything worth taking in a vessel of this sort, we'll give them a warm reception,' quoth the valiant Herries ; and he shows us the varieties of pistols, some so excellent ' that they will do their work loaded or unloaded, like the Irish magistrates.' This impresses me ; I feel safer now. Besides the deadly weapons before mentioned, there are several sorts of revolvers in cases 'for LESSEPHIA. 7 occasional use !' the Duke's own firearms, the doc- tor's guns, the steward's rifle, and sundry and various warlike tools below. Will the smell of black leather ever afterwards remind me of these pistol-cases? I read Sir J. Lubbock's book on ' The Pleasures of Life.' It seemed appropriate, and 1 longed for the time when I should begin to make my observations on new countries ; like Glauber, I daresay I shall examine what everyone else has thrown away. Travelling in this way, one sees just the crust of a country, or the cream of a country, whichever way you like to take it. The result is pleasure, but much depends on the people you travel with. The Duke is most pleasant, a truly kindly nature, one forgets he is a Duke. ' Kind hearts are more than coronets, and — ' so forth. We watched the porpoises, some half-a-dozen of them, swimming at the bows of the yacht as if racing us, and now and then leaping out of the water in pairs ; we also saw flying-fish skimming the sea like swallows ; they are not frequently seen in the Mediterranean. The lofty tower of Damietta peeps up in this forenoon of the 17th, and Port Said comes in sight at two p.m. Lappy is eager to go ashore. This is the Duke's large Lapland dog ; he bought him in Stockholm last summer. The view is of along breakwater of concrete blocks, with a skinny Arab in blue leaping about on it, and much shipping in the canal, the silver link between the blue sea and the Red Sea. The yacht has to pay over two hundred pounds toU for passing through the canal; even Monsieur de Lesseps' friends are not 8 LESSEPSIA. exempt from toll. The Royal Yacht Club, however, enjoys the same privileges as the Royal Navy ; and their vessels do not pay harbour dues. We anchored near the English barracks, a build- ing we bought from some Dutch people in the late war. Its commanding situation on a tongue of land will make it useful in any future event. Port Said is a busy and important place, full of all sorts and conditions of buildings, from gunboats to dredges, tents, tanks, shore erections, machinery, and poor Lady Strangford's hospital stranded on the sands and going to pieces for want of funds. There is no money to pay the nurses, and, althougb the Sister works for love and the doctors attend gratis, the building, which is roofed with a patent preparation of paper, is not watertight. This kind of roofing has failed here, though a dry climate, the sun being probably too powerful for the fabric, and the wet — for it does rain here sometimes — comes in on the patients' beds. It is a pity that this useful institution should be let drop, as many Englishmen coming home sick recover under the care of the English nurses, whereas they would be sure to die if taken to the Egyptian hos- pitals. Poor Lady Strangford was on her way out with an architect to see to the roofing, when she died suddenly, otherwise her energy would have carried out her plans and collected funds to work them, for which there is now no available capital left, and it causes regret that her effort should have been alto- gether in vain. Boats with picturesque crews are flocking round us ; they have to give place to an English man-of- LESSEPSIA. 9 war's boat bringing a young officer, with side-arms, from the Albacore gunboat to make his bow to the Duke. All officialdom is coming off, health and canal officers, another and another boat hooking on to us, ten boat-loads of officials. Our yellow-haired captain is distracted, but determined not to let them board his ship. Make way for the British flag. The man- of-war's boat elbows its way in, the commander of the Albacore bows himself off, non-official boats crowd the port-side of the Sans Peur. The head-steward, an experienced officer formerly of the P. and 0. ser- vice, has an eye on these. More boats hurrying to the fray for trading purposes. We try to land to get out of the hubbub. Monsieur de Lesseps' steam- launch follows us as we land from the dinghy. M. le Due is offered the use of the Maison Adminis- trative for himself and his party, and steam-launches and whatsoever his Grace desires. Thousand thanks. We have everything we want, but million thanks. ' II n'y a pas de quoi, etc. Mille etceteras.' Compli- ments bandied. Then we land, shouted at admiringly (?) by a tribe of Arab children, dwellers in gipsy tents hard by, and walk through the dirty suburbs, all smelling of Africa, and see our first camel, and grow raptur- ous over sugar-cane and palm-trees. Port Said has become a ragged Oriental town — it might be of any age — not like the new wooden Yankee-looking place I remember. All the various national flags give it what Pierre Loti calls ' un air de Babel en fete.' We returned to the yacht and sat on the bridge till after gunfire enjoying the regular Egyptian sunset. 10 LESSEPSIA. amber flushed with red, like ' a golden vase filled with roses,' being devoured by mosquitoes, while listening to the sweet birds' songs and sounds of all manner of machinery and fanfaronades and cries and talk in all manner of languages, including pigeon English from a heathen Chinee. We hear we are to leave at daylight to-morrow, as the pilot has orders from Mon- sieur de Lesseps to take the Sans Peur through the canal at more than regulation speed, only we must get on before another vessel that will be going at the regulation speed. Weighed anchor at six. We are the first in the canal to-day. Being Sunday, they have hoisted the Duke's private flag, with the wild-cat rampant, which looks like pussy taking her first dancing-lesson, at the mizen, the yacht's burgee at the main-mast. The Duke told us the story of the wild-cat on his flag. When the Danes in old times came invading Sutherland, the wild-cats from the mountains came doAvn and helped the braver Scots to drive them ofi", while the other inhabitants took refuge in their Pictish towers. Lake Menzaleh extends on the starboard horizon, covered with lateen-rigged vessels; the shore crowded with quail and innumerable flamingoes, looking like white towns, or encampments, in their distant flocks. On the port-side there is the appearance of a great lake beyond the strip of sand, with sand hillocks reflected in its waters ; but no, it is a mirage — at least, so declares the pilot, who ought to know. The map seems to show water on both sides, but the pilot and the captain declare it is wrong. By-and- by the silvery line of our course is well-defined LESSEPSIA. 11 between two infinities of mirage and desert sand. 'Murray' says it is a wide expanse of lake and morass rendered gay and brilliant with innumerable flocks of rosy pelicans, scarlet flamingoes, and snow- white spoonbills. All this, and my own eyes, I prefer to believe, pilots and captains notwithstand- ing. It is the metropolis of wild fowl, geese, ducks, herons, and other birds. Kantarah (El Kantara, the bridge) we see at 11.10 a.m., a meeting-place of caravans of pilgrims from Mecca and Jerusalem. ' There's a busy scene,' says the Duke, and so it is ; no pilgrims, however, but strings of camels and navvies in blue gowns and white turbans, all busy at work repairing the steep banks of the canal, especially busy a figure in blue calling 'baksheesh,' whenever he can catch anyone's eye except that of the Egyptian ganger in black holding his parasol over his head. The captain showed us the pith hats bought at Port Said for himself and the ship's com- pany. We all fished out our helmets ; the Duke's is a heavy white military helmet, ours are grey and very unbecoming. We postpone wearing them for the present, though the sun is scorching on the light sand which makes the canal muddy-looking. Our pilot, in his extra care, manoeuvred us aground, and before we got ofi" the Asia, of the Anchor line, took that opportunity to pass us. The banks are in many places defended by camp-shed- ding, and tamarisks are dotted sparsely on the banks, which rise higher as we approach Ismailia, where they are sometimes wattled, and binding plants are encouraged, reeds, tamarisks, and a sort of willow. 12 LESSEPSIA. Many Arabs and camels are employed upon the banks. They are not going to widen the canal, but to increase its depth at the borders, making it thirt}'^ feet deep throughout. Our passage washes the banks a good deal, as we are going at nearly double the regulation speed, seven and a half to eight knots an hour. The pilot pats our skipper complacently on the back, saying, ' We did it cleverly that time, dear boy.' The captain resents it. He has never had his vessel run aground before — and get into the papers — all through an ignorant, incompetent son of a something — I forget what he said — and he does not like it. At three p.m. we see Viceroy Said's old house above us on the right, a mere chalet with an iron verandah, and before us the lakes are opening out. The khedivial avenue from the chdlet to Ismailia has not flourished, but foliage generally is abundant round Ismailia. There are heavy clouds overhead. The Duke tells me ' the evaporation is so great from the Bitter Lakes that there is always a strong current in from the Red Sea caused by nothing but the evaporation.' His Grace is an authority on this canal, having been here so often during and since its construction. He has visited the Panama Canal with Monsieur de Lesseps as well. There are several house-boats here, and seven ' mudhoppers ' for carry- ing oif the mud. We anchored at Ismailia at 3.30, opposite the Khedive's palace, a handsome stone house half- hidden in the fileo woods. The place smells strongly of the sea. Monsieur Thevenet, Chef du Service du LESSEPSIA. 13 Domaine et des Eaux de la Compagnie du Canal de Suez, a catalogue of a title, came off by order of Mon- sieur de Lesseps witli the count's private steam-launch to take us ashore, and he had an open carriage with pretty Arab horses ready at the pier to take us driving round to see everything of interest. First through the avenue of large caroub-trees, by side of which the young palm-groves are planted, and the fileo woods. I did not know this tree ; it is a sort of casuarina, with long beard-like fronds and a feathery sort of flower. It is an Australian tree. I was amazed at the growth of the woods in what I remembered as a sandy desert with a few slips of fruit-trees stuck in it, trying to grow. There are now three thousand inhabitants in Ismailia; sixteen thousand at Port Said. We drove to the end of the Sweet-water Canal, and thence through the long, but here less flourishing, caroub avenue to the chalet we had seen from below, the viUa of Said Pasha, in whose reign the canal was projected. Monsieur de Lesseps brought him up here to this highest ground in the neighbourhood, whence you can see Jebel Ataka, which overhangs Suez, blue in the distance. Monsieur de Lesseps said that some day he would see large vessels float where there was then only desert. The pasha replied, ' I will show my confidence in you by building a house here at this spot, where I shall behold it ;' and this red and buff striped chalet was erected. Said died before the fulfilment of the prophecy. Said's villa has fallen out of repair, but it is still sometimes used as an annexe to a convalescent hos- U LESSEPSIA. pital built near it. Ismailia is much fever-haunted, owing, it is said, to the constant watering of the vegetation. In its early days it seemed made to be the sanatorium of Egypt, with its exhilarating desert breezes. Monsieur Thevenet looked fever-worn and delicate. His children live in France, and he goes home for three months at least every third year. Mr. Roberts of Suez likewise calls Ismailia a feverish place ; he says six out of seven pilots have been laid up in hospital at Ismailia at a time. The fashionable world of Ismailia was out walking or driving on this road, which looks over the lake and the branches of the canal. On returning we passed the Khedive's palace, now seldom occupied, which was constructed for the ceremony of opening the canal, when whole groves and gardens were brought here full-grown from Cairo, only, of course, to die. The road was then made to the chdlet, as Ismail expected to have to lodge some of his guests there. The fetes and all connected therewith cost twelve millions of francs. Monsieur de Lesseps regret- ted this, though it was his triumph ; but Ismail was a big baby in his hands to be coaxed and humoured. It was an advertisement, certainly, but .this kind of work needed none. Monsieur de Lesseps, senior, has not been here for four years. His sons come here occasionally. We passed the now disused Canal de Service, which leads to the quarries where the stone — a bad sort — was dug for use in the constructions. They let in water here at an early period of the works, as of course there was no water-way, and everything LESSEPSIA. 15 had to be brouglit here by camels. In the process of filling the lakes an accident occurred which might have had disastrous consequences, but which, in fact, only expedited the filling. A breakage occurred on the first rush of water from the Red Sea, Avhich threatened to carry away much of the banks, and flood the whole basin into a mere lagoon, useless for navigation. Fortunately, the injury to the banks was comparatively slight, and the central water-way was retained. We passed a ' square,' or public garden, shady and pleasant, with alleys and a large white flower- ing exotic tree in the centre, and still went on through groves and gardens, and the Greek town shaded with plants of eucalyptus, poinsettia, and others, to Monsieur Thevenet's house. There he showed us the machinery of the waterworks, the sweet-water force-pumps, &c. If these stopped. Port Said would starve. We admired his gardens, where he gathered tea-roses for us, and pepper and hibiscus, to show us what they can grow here in the desert even so near Christmas, the yellowing poplars affording, according to Monsieur Thevenet, the only signs of a. difference in the seasons. He showed us a Pharaoh's rat, a wild animal that they have lately caught in the desert, a creature some- thing like a large mongoose, with a long thin tail, very shy and fierce, and, like most desert animals, of the colour of the sands, or the sands where they are shaded by hillocks and the shrubs that are the camels' food. There were ipomeas and a large bougainvillea, 16 LESSEPSIA. -with its beautiful purple-clustered sprays forming a long arbour walk, made all of one spreading plant with quite a timber stem of wonderful size, consider- ing the newness of the planting of Ismailia, as well as jasmines and roses, vines and vegetables, showing how readily the desert can be made to blossom as the rose, and many sorts of what Monsieur Thevenet called ' multipliants,' whose drooping branches take root and spread. We drove on past the railway-station and the little church, through the Arab town, mth its pic- turesque and busy population, its shops, and stalls and large flat baskets of various cereals, mostly ex- posed on the ground, to a small enclosure, where are preserved the sphynxes and other relics which were dug up at Rameses in cutting the sweet-water canal. One sphynx of blue granite is fairly well preserved ; and still better is a group of three seated figures in pink syenite, two of them holding in the clenched left hand the Tau. Q The central figure wears a dififerent hat to t>J to the last degree. It is the apotheosis of bric-a-brac. The entrance to the principal wat appertaining to this giant pagoda is guarded by a row of lions, and two monster figures of armed warders holding clubs. The heads of these huge demon-like guards reach above the tiled roof of the peristyle nearly to the high-pitched central gables of the wat. The four pagodas at the angles are all alike, and are merely simplified reductions of the great central pagoda. The temple is agreeably situated in a grove of tall trees with turf and paved walks. Towards evening a large party of us went in three carriages to Wat Sahk^t, the temple and cremation- ground of the common people. This was a duty we had postponed to this our last day on account of its unpleasant nature. 206 THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SIAM. Sir John Bowring in his ' Siam ' says : ' If the deceased have ordered that his body shall be deliv- ered to vultures and crows, the functionary cuts it up and distributes it to the birds of prey which are always assembled. I have heard Parsees regret in China that they lose the privilege of having their remains carried by winged messengers to all quar- ters of Heaven.' This poetical idea is fallacious, at least as regards Bangkok, for the vultures remain wedded to their position on the pinnacles of the "Wat Sahk^t. Mrs. Leonowens, a good authority in respect of her long residence at the Siamese Court and her knowledge of- the language, says the rite of burning the body after death is held in great vene- ration by the Siamese Buddhists, as they believe that, by this process, its material parts are restored to the higher elements ; whereas burial, or the aban- donment of the body to dogs and vultures, signifies that the body must then return to the earth and pass through countless forms of the lower orders of creation before it can again be fitted for the occupa- tion of a human soul. This is' evolution with a vengeance. Extremes meet. We boast of our advancement and are begin- ning to talk of evolution and cremation ; the Siamese made up their minds about these subjects ages ago. Mr. Cobham went to the chamber of horrors \vhere the bodies are cut up for the vultures. The functionaries were at work, and he counted eighty birds waiting for the ghastly feast. It was enough for me to see at different times Mr. Swan as well as Mr. Cobham come back from this spectacle looking pale and ill. THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SIAM. 207 We went to the large sheds, at this time empty, where the better classes of Siamese are cremated, The lowest cost of the ceremonial is ten shillings. The bodies of those whose families cannot afford this sum, five ticals, are distributed to the crows and vultures. Two tall, slender obelisks are erected near the Wat Sahket in memory of the pure lovers, BM4t, the priest, and Tuptim, ' the pomegranate,' — who suffered death and torture in the last reign for their faith to each other. The inscription on the obelisks runs thus : ' Suns may set and rise again, but the pure and brave BM&t and Tuptim will never more return to this earth.' Mrs. Leonowens, the governess at the Court, says she knew the girl, and had taught her to read and write English. STORY OF BALAT AND TUPTIM. The outline of the tale runs thus : The fair and artless Tuptim, not yet sixteen, was pounding pottery for the decoration of Wat Chang, when, perceiving she attracted the notice of the king, she sank down and hid her face among the vases and fragments of earthenware. The king did no more just then than inquire her name and parentage. Later she was sent for to the palace and was given a betel- box made like a pomegranate (after her name Tup- tim) of gold inlaid with rubies, that shut and opened with a spring. But still she hid herself from the king, as she was in love and had been betrothed to a priest called BMdt. One day she was lost alto- gether, escaping the Amazons on guard at the 208 THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SIAM. harem. She escaped in the dress of a young priest to the temple where B414t was serving, having shaved her hair and eyebrows so that her lover did not know her. She was discovered and brought to trial before the women-judges, her feet and hands heavily fettered. But the child's voice was firm and unflinching. The priest lover was recognised from his name written in English concealed in her girdle, and he was taken and condemned to torture. Tuptim pleaded for him that she alone was guilty, that he knew nothing of her escape, that he did not even know her. ^^"Gn^MrSjJ^iQnofflfins interceding for her with the king, Tuptim was reprieved from death and con- demned to work in the rice-mill, but he again changed his mind and had them both executed ; she declaring to the last, ' All the guilt was mine, I knew that I was a woman and he did not.' Bdldt and Tuptim suffered death by fire publicly outside the cemetery and the moat enclosing the Wah Sahket. One day the king said to Mrs. Leonowens, ' I have much sorrow for Tuptim, for I now believe she was inno- cent. I had a dream that I saw Tuptim and Bdl&t floating together in a great wide space, and she bent down and touched me on the shoulder, saying, " We were pure and guiltless on earth, and look, we are happy now." ' Thence we ascended the easy, though somewhat ruinous, stairs of brick and stone, winding up out- side the old and picturesque tower close by, that commands a view of the whole of Bangkok set in its greenery. The Menam is invisible, or nearly THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SIAM. 209 SO, for the roofs of its bordering houses, but the broader canals, with their fragile fairy bridges, make a pleasing feature in the centre of the soft, strange landscape fading off in distance, its crowded details imperceptibly melting into the ocean-like blue of the richly-wooded level country. From this tower you seem to be midway in the air, looking down upon a city of trees. The Premane and its dazzling palaces filled up one quarter of the view from aloft. To-morrow their place will be empty ; to-morrow also Bangkok will know us no more. The sun was setting red over the softly purpling grey distances, lights were beginning to glimmer in the dense groves of plantain and palm, as we sat long on the weed-grown wall of the tower, gathering the calotropis* and many tufted flowers of sorts we never knew before, and shall most likely never see again. The satisfied vultures had wheeled aloft, and returned to their dismal eyrie on the Towers of Death. Here, in this solemn evening hour, we, too, though not akin to these hospitable dusky people in race or thought, felt we could join in the Buddhist evening hymn : ' O Thou, who art Thyself the light. Boundless, in knowledge, beautiful as day, Irradiate my heart, my life, my sight, Nor ever let me from Thy presence stray 1' We wound up with a drive round the now nearly dismantled Premane. It was difiicult to believe that this scene of wreck, the skeleton of festivities, Avas the once dazzling temple and garden of wildest, strangest, and most extravagant pleasure. " Note B, Appendix. P 210 THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SIAM. The Siamese bandsmen, who had not removed their quaint but charming instruments, came again this evening to give us a concert of farewell. They struck up their wild rivers of melody as we came into the great vestibule, dressed for dinner, and then carried their instruments into the galleries of the inner court of the palace, to play to us also during dinner. We and our numerous Siamese visitors made quite a festival of this parting ban- quet. They placed on the table bowls of the long lemon-leaved green flowers, which, in their lan- guage of flowers, mean tears of absence ; we also wore the sweet, night-scented blossoms and lemon- like leaves. The musicians echoed our sentiment, as they played a north-country air of Lao, the birth-place of many of them ; for the Laosians are i-eally the most musical of the Siamese race. The band played a love-song of their Lao land with a vocal obligate accompaniment between the verses ; reversing our way of singing the verses and playing the symphony, they play the tune, and sing the sym- phonies. The voice — though they were very proud of their singer — was too much of a cat-howl to be musical; but the music itself is wild, melodious, and very pleasing. The ' Lament of the Heart ' — which they played especially for us — is a favourite Laosian air. Perhaps still more pleasing to me was the ' Dream of a Day in Paradise ' ; its rippling and rustling sounds recalled the soft green forests of Ayuthia watered by its four rivers. ♦ Gone are they, but I have them in my souL' 'The music of the Siamese Peguans and Laos THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SIAM. 211 differs from that of most Indian nations in being plaj'ed upon different keys, a feature which charac- terises the pathetic music of certain Europeans, and in particular the Scottish and Welsh nations.' * When they played the ' Sailors' Hornpipe,' in compliment to the Duke as a yachtsman, we all tapped an obligato accompaniment with the hafts of our knives, and sang ' Jack Robinson.' All English are mad, doubtless thought the silent, blandly-smiling, heathen Chinees, as they waited at table, puzzled by the unusual frenzy — and at our laughter, as the band gave, with great spirit, the grand chain-figure of the original ' Lancers.' We had a rival band, for Aleck played the pipes ; and then it transpired that one of the bandsmen knew how to play the pipes too ; so Aleck let him try, and we shouted with laughter, as we saw the Siamese piper walking up and down the gallery out- side, imitating Aleck's Highland swagger to the life, and the playing itself was not half bad for an unaccustomed hand. There is apparently no more difference between the Lao pipes and those Aleck uses than there is between the Highland and the Northumbrian pipes. The Greeks and Romans we know from sculpture had bag-pipes precisely like those of the High- landers. Very probably the instrument descended south-eastward as well as north-westward, from a common hill-centre in Asia's highlands, a water- shed of music. The Siamese are proud of their descent from certain hill-tribes of Thibet, called * Leonowens. p 2 212 THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SIAM. the 'Free.' Mr. Clerevaulx Fenwick, in his re- marks on 'Bag-pipes and Pipe-music,' disputes Pennant's view of the pipes having been introduced into Britain by the Romans, by the fact of the use of these instruments having been almost ex- clusively confined to the northern part of our island. ' One of the Canterbury pilgrims was a bag-piper. ' The use of the bag-pipes, however, in the south of England is, and appears always to have been, extremely rare.' Pickering thinks the Siamese are of Malay origin I — most Europeans regard them as mainly Mon- V., golian^(Mrs. Leonowens thinks more probably they belong to the Indo-European family) According to the researches of the late King of Siam, out of twelve thousand eight hundred Siamese words more than five thousand were found to be Sanskrit, or to have their roots in that language. There is great family likeness between the Siamese and the photographs of the Thibet and Sikkim people in the India Museum. They are not at all like the Bhotans, or other upper Indian tribes. I took one of the Thibetan photographs for a portrait of our chamberlain. The royal family are not so much like the Thibetan type, and they are small-made — but then, something like our own royal family, the kings are always obliged to marry their cousins. The Siamese language has a soft musical sound like Italian, but they find little difficulty in learn- ing our harsher English, as it has far greater similarities of pronunciation with Siamese than has either French or German. THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN 8IAM. 21i} The Siamese hymn and ' Rule Britannia ' were played, and ' God Save the Queen,' all standing, concluded the concert. The Duke is Conservative and very loyal. For a Palace of Calm Delights they gave us a pretty fair orgy. The chamberlain, Phya Bamreubhakdi, regrets that the fortnight's ceremonies have prevented his giving the Duke a great entertainment ; but it is not the custom to give feasts during the festivities of the cremation. After excbanges of cards and invitations to visit in England and Siam, we gathered all our small luggage to take down with us in numerous carriages and boats to the yacbt, which had been sent by daylight some distance down the river to avoid the difficulty of steering by night through the maze of shipping in the Menam. We were accompanied to the Sans Peur by the chamberlain and his son. Prince Doctor, Mr. Michell, and Mr. Solomon, the inspector of police, as well as some other Englisb gentlemen. In the moonlight row down the river, the fantastic spires gleaming bright upon us, forgetting the earthy flavours of Bangkok, we sentimentalised as we felt its balmy air for the last time. ' Ta, ta, by-bye,' we called as we passed Sir Andrew Clarke's yacht, where it seemed they had all gone to bed. We got on board about eleven o'clock, and soon Sir Andrew with a party of gentlemen came alongside in a steam-launch and came on board for farewell. Siam is different from anything else in the world. Providence has placed two large seas between us 2 Li THIRTY SEARS' PROGRESS IN SIAM. and those far eastern countries ; they can never become hackneyed to us. Much of their art work- ntianship and general civilization has filtered to them from the west through China. Siam's customs have so altered since Bowring's book was published in 1857 that this work seems almost to treat of an- other country. When my husband was in Siam also thirty years ago he made copious notes of the condition of the people and aspect of the country. From his MS. journal, which I carried with me, I was able to see in how many ways the Siamese had made progress under their present king, and to judge whether the advance is solid or frothy. As regards those outward signs of advancement : telegraphs, electric lighting, cheap postage, newspapers, &c., they are not so very far behind us, after all ; for it is only in the present reign that we have had these advantages ourselves. It is true the foreign post from Bangkok is as yet casual : Mr. Mich ell used to say of our letters, ' Oh, put them in, post them, I daresay they'll go.' The Bangkok Times, now deep in its third volume, is a bi-weekly institution. The Siam Directory, one might say, has taken a leaf out of our society papers when it chronicles in its notable events as a notable day, that on which Lady Robinson held a reception in 1878. Thirty years, and indeed thirty months, ago there was no hotel in Bangkok ; thirty years since there was not a single hospital in this city of half-a- million of souls for the reception of patients native or European : though at that date they practised vac- THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IiV SIAM. 215 cination, even in the remoter parts of the countrj'. Now there is more than one good hospital. Amongst the Europeans located on shore the most fatal disease is dysentery ; it is usually intract- able unless change of air is resorted to. Smallpox used to be one of the most fatal diseases with natives : vaccination is now deemed protective. The natives suffer much from asthma, even the little children ; but Europeans are not similarly afflicted. Siamese of all ages smoke tobacco and chew betel- nut ; this latter habit causes the gums to recede and the teeth to drop out, usually between forty and fifty years of age. Toothache is rare, and the ex- traction of one by the forceps or key is an event in a family. In Siam there are many Europeans of long residence in good health, and the natives frequently attain a good old age. Ulcers are treated by the native empirics with a sort of chalk plaster ; but they do not appear to be so frequent as with the Burmese, nor do ulcers afflict horses as in Bur- mah. Intermittent fevers are easily treated in Europeans, but the natives suffer much. The jungle or bilious remittent fever is sometimes fatal to Europeans, terminating in coma, but no black vomit. Where there is a phthisical tendency, the climate is said to be beneficial ; but if the disease is developed it runs its course quickly. At the changes of the monsoons are the most sickly periods. Children after seven days of age die much of lock- jaw; itis supposed to be caused by constipation and the smoke from the perfumed wood-fires to which mother and child are subjected according to Siamese custom. 216 THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SIAM. Rice with fish is the staple diet of the native population, to which they add yams, sweet potatoes, coco-nuts, bananas, and the fruits of the season. In what Gibbon calls ' the gigantic ignorance of the ancients ' is pretty much the mental condition of the bulk of the population ; though perhaps it is not much greater than ours in relation to them. The upper classes are doing all they can to diminish this ignorance by European education, from which young Siam goes back to benightenment. Polygamy is the rock royalty in Siam will split upon, and aristocracy too ; not only because it is so degrading and so sensual, but because it is ex- pensive to the nation, which finds itself called on to maintain vast families of useless people, to provide them with a costly living, and a still more expensive cremation. The Siamese have always liked and admired, the English, and now, by our acquisition of the whole of Burmah, a troublesome natural enemy to them has been replaced by a friendly power. This is, of course, greatly to their advantage ; only their timid- ity makes them fear that we may some day care to conquer and annex Siam as suddenly as we did Burmah. This it is not our interest to do ; the onlycircumstanceof this kindat present conjecturable would be that of our having to prevent France from taking the initiative, and placing a formidable French barrier between India and the far eastern world. ' The anchor's weighed — farewell — remember me,' said Prince Doctor, and waved his Siamese lily-hand. 217 CHAPTER TX. RBTUKN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Some isle With the sea's silence on it — Some unsuspected isle in the far seas. Pippa Passes. Chapter on snakes. There are plenty of snakes in Siam. Not only are the'poisonons land-snakes very numerous, but Captain Chune, a native officer of tlie Siamese Royal Navy, gave my husband such a list of the poisonous water-snakes and fishes as to make it appear as risky for a ship's company to go fishing as for them to bathe -without the protec- tion of a sail in waters abounding in sharks. The black snake, which was yesterday seen on the sur- face of the water, is called by the Siamese Ochitung ; the signifies a snake, and chi-tung means the tail of a pendant. The length of this black snake is about one foot. Its bite is very poisonous, and the Siamese treatment of the wound is a matter of the most secret empiricism. It is generally fatal in eight hours, and the patient seldom survives beyond a day. Another snake seen in these waters is between 218 RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. two and three feet long, of a white colour with black spots. Its movements are slow in the water. The Siamese name for it is 0-sanim-lung, meaning snake, sanim-lung is like coral, for the creature, in juxtaposition to the coral reef, is not easily distin- guishable. The bite of this snake is very poison- ous, and it appears to kill by coma within six hours, no reaction at any time exhibiting itself from the period of the bite to that of dissolution. These snakes are in great plenty at the mouth of Siamese rivers, or most numerous where the salt and fresh waters meet. Another species of snake is found in the fresh waters of Siam, called Opra (expressing fish-snake), or 0-wung-chang, a name derived from their like- ness to an elephant's trunk. Their movements are slow, and, excepting being white under the belly, are the colour of the elephant's proboscis. Their bite is poisonous, but not deadly. The Siamese treat it with a poultice made of pounded wild garlic. There is a poisonous fish named in Siamese 0-how-pra-shon. 0-how means a poisonous snake, and pra-shon is the name of a fish which it resembles, which is of good quality, and extensively salted in Siam for exportation. This poisonous fish is not easily recognised amongst others. Its movements are slow ; its bite causes instant insensibility. One Siamese, bitten in the trunk, died in an hour ; an- other, bitten in the ankle, died in two hours. It is of great consequence to the Siamese, an amphibious people, to know the habits of these creatures infest: ing their waters, in order to avoid their haunts. RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 219 Even the youngest children are skilful in the man- agement of their light boats, and infants learn to swim before they are well out of their mothers' arms. Steamers drawing but little water take the short cut through a small channel named Mung-nakawn- keon-kong, which cuts off a long bend in the river to within five hundred yards of Paklat. This pas- sage is about twenty-five yards wide, and the vessels kiss the bushes in the intricate navigation. Ships' boats must here use paddles, as is the native cus- tom ; the oars take too much room. The bamboo houses are built on piles, as elsewhere, though the clayey banks of the stream are somewhat high. The house of the governor of the district is passed on the left going down. This is substantially built of wood on huge piles of teak ; some neat carving de- corates the windows, the roof is covered with red tiles. The channel is crossed by two wooden bridges, the centre-piece shifting to allow the steamers' fun- nels to pass through. There are some pretty wats also on the left bank, whose white pagodas and minor buildings display much symmetry and beauty. Among the bamboos and palm-trees, the bread-fruit, and dark polished bushy foliage of the mangosteen, are numerous stacks of sappan-wood Caesalinnia sappan ; many pheasants and rooks in coveys are seen in this district, although it is highly populous, abounding in children in prodigious numbers — Buddhist children do not throw stones at birds. Back to Paknam again ; this place used to be called the sanatorium of Bangkok, but now the king 220 RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. and the great people go to Chantabon and other sea-side places lower down the Gulf of Siam. We met with a smooth sea after passing the bar, and found it pleasanter sailing down in sight of the chain of islands, named Kohsichand, than the way we came in by the stake-nets in the entrance to the rivers Menam and Mekong. It was a lazy time for all of us, and we were glad of the repose. Mr. Swan came up, looking like a plaster cast, in a suit of spotless white, with old silver ticals for buttons. He flung himself down on the deck in the attitude of the Dying Gladiator. He calls himself a whited sepulchre. ' How can the lif§ of the party be a sepulchre?' Mr. Cobham asks. We call him the 'White Swan.' Mr. Swan lives up to his name, and is always doing things grace- fully. He was just now lamenting the difficulty of getting away gracefully from parties in Singa- pore : ' if your gharrie-driver has gone to sleep, and has to be roused with a stick.' The globe lapsed lazily by us. In the sky was a curious eiFect of blue and white rays from the sinking sun, like a wheel with spokes of .solid white on the blue atmosphere, both colours extending nearly to the disk. We saw this atmospheric phenomenon once, on a later occasion, but less distinctly. In the sea what I thought were cur- rent lines — like we see on the Devonshire coast — look, as we pass through them, just like mud, mixed with dark-brown scraps, seemingly of sea- weed. The sailors, by the mouth of the ' bos'un,' RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 221 say that it is spawn. The voyage down to Singapore was a four days' rest from moonlight to moonlight. Delicious dreamy days ! The sailors, jolly at the thought of going home to sweethearts, wives, and children, sing songs on the after-deck of an evening. We hear now ' Among the flowers and roses with Emalee 1 roamed.' Then comes the description of her person : ' Her faiiy teeth and golden 'air ; her eyes were like the little stars.' This elegant female ' came out of Yorkshire ; her name is Emalee.' I, too, was happy in the idea of returning to my family. On the third day, we had scenery of unsuspected islands in the China Sea, one of them rugged, lofty, wooded, and of respectable size; but all beau- tiful, as touched by the pearly hues of sunset, as we ' see ebb the crimson wave that drifts the sun away.' The Siamese represent these islanders as harmless, though usually armed with krises, spears, and pistols on approaching a stranger ! Bullocks and turtles are abundant on these islands, which are densely jungle-clothed. It was the Siamese ambassadors returning to Bangkok, on board H.M.S. Pylades, in 1858, who gave this information to my husband; for our people on the Sans Peur knew nothing about these islands. A good run of two hundred and sixty-two miles on the fourth day brought us, at lunch- time, in sight of a zebra-striped lighthouse, and countless islets, bluest of the blue — a zone of sapphires. There are any number of passages among that reef of islands, which looks, as we approach them, like one long coast, as they stretch down right away 222 RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. to Borneo. Pretty scenery, and a great pagoda of a ship, with royals set, five tiers of sails, all white, looking so different from the vessels we have been lately seeing. We anchored about five p.m. at Singapore. We are come in the nick of time, as there is to be a sham-fight this evening between the squad- ron and the fort. We are in a good position for seeing it. How English the whole place looks after Siam ! the Indian and Malay boats count for no- thing now. Officials approach. 'This is, indeed, a great moment,' says the Duke, as the Prime Minister of the Sultan of Johore is announced, looking for all the world like a neat English groom. He brought a letter and a message. The Sultan is in Singapore, and hopes soon to hear that his Grace is able to come to Johore. Does he include the ladies in his invitation ? ' Oh ! yes, indeed. His Highness 's heart will be full of pleasure, if the ladies will favour him by a visit.' ' Is there a Sultana?' we ask of Mr. Swan. ' Just now he has only three wives.' (Ah ! that 'just now.') 'But he is building a new harem — a fine place.' ' That's hopeful.' That hopeful might bear several interpretations. We turn the palpitating subject. Firing has begun ; there is also a large jungle- fire in the distance, like a crimson sunset, which more than divides our attention with the cannon- RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 223 ade and the flashes, the lilac-tinted electric-light, and the manoeuvres, which are veiled in mystery and coloured smoke. ' Mystery of mysteries, faint- ly flashing Heroine,' we remark, as H.M.S. Heroine puts her boats in motion for the purpose of — what ? Never of capturing the Sans Peur ! She seems 'going for' us. No; the boarding-boats are lost in the dim distance of smoke. A semi-circle of lights marks the town of Singa- pore ; on the darker semi-circle of the horizon are the squadron of eleven ships-of-war, and the forts with the electric-light playing all round in blinding rays, and the red moon above the dying jungle-fire. We learnt more of the meaning of the manoeuvres later, and this is what was represented before us in a grand set-piece of nautical theatricals. A SHAM NIGHT-ATTACK ON SINGAPORE HARBOUR; A NAVAIi ROMANCE. The naval attack was made by five vessels of the^China Squadron on the eastern entrance to the New Harbour, with the object of testing the effi- ciency [of the defences which have been constructed at that point, and also that of the submarine mines which were supposed to have been laid. The defence was entrusted to the Royal Artillery, with a battery of quick-firing guns, the Royal Engineers, about four companies of the 2nd Bat- talion South Lancashire Regiment, and six steam- launches acting as guard-boats. The whole of the details in connection with the operations had previ- ously been carefully arranged by the naval and 22i RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. militarj'^ authorities in conjunction, under a general Idea which gives a hard pull on one's imagination. The Onon ironclad has been worsted in an engage- ment with a hostile squadron outside, and has taken refuge in New Harbour disabled ; the squadron engages the guns of the harbour defensive works and attempts to force the eastern entrance to the harbour. The Orion is to be considered disabled, — we, knowing the great ironclad, and having seen her monster guns when we were at the ball on board on our previous visit to Singapore, found it difficult to realise this part of the Idea; but it is interesting to know how the gallant ship we had known in festivity is expected or intended to behave herself in adversity. She is so disabled as to be unable to co-operate in the defence beyond sending a few officers and men to assist in working the guard- boats. The western entrance to the harbour is supposed to be blocked. The infantry garrisons at Forts Blakan-Mati and Serapong will be supposed to consist of one company each. This is the programme ; now for the action. Fort Teregah fired the first shot at 6.211, p.m., at the Aiidacious, which was then supposed to be (and perhaps really was) at two thousand, five hundred yards distance. Fort Palmer's guns next made themselves heard, fire being opened from them at 6.22. This fort engaged the Constance. Fort Bla- kan-Mati at 6.24 engaged the Heroine, and from this time the firing from the three forts was pretty regular. The Constance replied to Fort Palmer at 6.26. About this time, though it had become rather RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 225 dark, it was observed that the Heroine was lowering her boats, presumably for the purpose of attempt- ing to countermine the entrance. We should not have guessed this without being told ; indeed, we thought we should have to use our boarding-pikes in the stand below to repel boarders. At 6.27 the Alacrity brought her machine guns into action, engaging the quick-firing guns at Malay Spit; her fire was returned at 6. 28 J. The Audacious, at 6.43, opened fire with her machine-guns from her tops, engaging the quick-firing guns at Berala. About this time, and almost simultaneously, the electric light was shown from Fort Teregah and the Heroine ; the latter playing it on Blakan-Mati, and the former sweeping the channel to prevent the squadron's boats creeping in unobserved. The light from Teregah was now brought to bear on the Audacious, and she could be seen most distinctly. Advantage was taken of this to send a few shots at her. The Alacrity now brought her powerful light into use, and throwing the beam on Fort Palmer, after having carefully scanned the Sans Peur, she kept it fixed on the fort during nearly the whole of the remaining operations. They were supposed to be in considerable dread of the Sans Peur, as a strong privateer, not knowing which side she would be likely to take in the action. The spectacle now afforded was really magnificent : the various forts engaging the different vessels with both machine and heavy guns, the forts replying, the electric light playing from the numerous ships and Fort Teregah; the guard-boats steaming about at the entrance like Q 226 RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. sharks eager for their prey — all went to make up a sight such as Singapore has never before witnessed ; such indeed as has never before been seen in any other port in the East — so I am told, and I believe it. In imagination I was already preparing lint for the wounded. About seven p.m., the firing was very heavy when a message was received by the commandant at Teregah from the guard-boats, ' Enemy lowering boats.' The engagement now altered its character and became a boat-duel. The attacking boats continued to ad- vance down the channel, being hotly engaged with the flotilla of guard-boats, well handled by Lieu- tenant Shuckburgh — the guard-boats darting in amongst the others in an extremely plucky manner ; the progress of the boats could be noted from the track of smoke emitted from the musketry fire. It was one of the prettiest sights of the evening to see the boats creeping along in darkness, when suddenly the whole would be illuminated by the beam of the electric light being thrown upon them. It was noticeable that the different vessels and boats showed up most distinctly, their white colour being apparently unsuitable for night operations. At 8.30 the admiral sent up from the flagship the pre-con- certed signal, viz., three rockets and a blue light, that the operations were concluded. It was a fine thing for us to be in the midst of it all, enjoying the glory of war without its horrors ; the cries of the wounded only were missing, and these we were able to imagine as easily as the rest of the romantic suppositions, especially when Dark RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 227 Charlie began to satisfy his soul by entering on the practice of a wheezy cornopean which has recently been discovered in the dark torture-chambers of the hold. While the inevitable coaling was going on, we went to the Raffles Hotel to lunch and read the papers, and learn what the world had been doing during our sojourn in the obscurity of Siam. We read just enough to keep abreast of the world, and then went off to do our shopping ; passing with more interest than before the image of an elephant, erected in memory of the King of Siam's visit ; the first time a Siamese monarch had ever left his own dominions. King Chulalonkorn went also to Ceylon and Calcutta, and all the chief sacred places of India. The large town of Singapore appears so flourish- ing and enlightened, so advanced and well-governed, that, after seeing the quaint and crowded city of Bangkok, we feel as if we had come out of the theatre into the plain light of day. Bangkok seems to belong completely to another world, where other ideas reign exclusively, where buildings and pro- cessions are of showy trumpery instead of being solid or of good quality, and yet are in the highest degree fascinating; a city made to live in water- colours, not warranted otherwise to last. We were glad to get away from the heavy atmosphere of Siam, which is all one pot-pourri, into the fresher air of Singapore ; but we were glad to have seen Bangkok all the same. It feels cooler here, though we are four days' sail nearer the equator, and though the thermometer stands at 85" in the coolest part of the q2 228 RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. day. After some shopping we took gharries, small hearse-like cabs with jalousies, for the long drive to the Peninsular and Oriental wharf, where the Sans Peur, well scrubbed and scoured after the coaling, had now been moved out into mid-stream of the channel between the green island shores, a pleasant situation for a rest, as we were to stay here all Sunday and proceed on Monday morning to Johore. The deck-house table was strewn with cards, fresh newspapers and letters, and a large basket of flowers for the ladies, with no card attached. 'How does one thank unknown benefactors?' asks the Duke. ' We shall have a serenade under our ports to-night.' ' Ice, Charlie, look sharp, my boy,' says our stout steward to the darkie lad, and iced cider and seltzer- water appear as foaming cup. The boat-loads of shells came round the yacht again. These look so beautiful all wetted and in the sunshine. Rose, the boatswain, bargained with the black men very cleverly for us, and we brought on board an immense quantity of lovely shells. The Duke was for buying a boat-load as it stood, but we preferred selecting from all the boats, which caused a great and amusing excitement, and much panto- mimic imploring among the black fellows, as Rose laid down the law to them, and perhaps, after all, only overpaid them three times over. We were mutually pleased with our bargains. The greatest trouble was in washing and packing the fragile shells after we had admired them sufficiently. RETURN TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 229 We are lying in a pleasant strait of blue sea, bordered by foliaged islands, with shipping beyond and round the headland. This anchorage is more like a reach of the rivers at Dartmouth or Falmouth than an eastern place. Truly this is another world from Bangkok ; such sweet and quiet rest for Sunday, shaded by the double awnings, hearing no sounds but the murmur of the water, a distant cock crowing at intervals, and the hum of voices in boats paddling past. A black boatman alongside in Sun- day best of a blue shirt and grass-green mushroom hat with white half-moons round the brim, his boat picked out with bright green and blue to match his garments, is waiting about to see if the officers or men have occasion for his services. Thunder is rolling round us, and a shower while the sun is shining makes the grass and foliage look doubly green. It rains hot water here. I went to the cathedral service in Singapore. The church is very neat and nice inside, if you can call that inside which is open like a cloister on both sides. In the evening it is lighted mth gas, lit too early, or rather turned up high too early, otherwise every precaution is taken to ensure coolness ; the church besides being shaded by trees, is open all round, and has open cane seats set in dark wood. The sight of the thirty-two punkahs tugged by different strings by thirty-two Moormen, waving out of time in all direc- tions towards nave and transept, and not at the same level, has a most bewildering effect. It makes some people feel sea-sick. The punkahs should be moved by one string as they are in large halls. The music is 230 RETURN TO TEE NINETEENTH CENTURA. soft aud sweet, and for the most part congregational, though there is a surpliced choir. Major Grey, governor of the prison here, dined with us, and from him we learnt how much better and more humane our prison arrangements are than those of the Chinese or Siamese. His great aim is to lead the prisoners to a better life, and carefully to distinguish between hardened criminals and those capable of returning to be of use to society. Our government does not recognise the debt slavery often incurred through gambling. Gambling altogether has been prohibited in Singapore. Perhaps this is one reason why the Chinese look so flourishing and happy here. ' This is so good for the Sultan of Johore,' said Mr. Swan, slily. ' He can finish the steam tram-line and bnng over a thousand Chinese a day to gamble in his territory.' 231 CHAPTER X. THE SULTAN OF JOHOKE. Emeralds ! The colour, Fanny, of the light Sifted through lime leaves, on a summer noon, Or curl of crested wave, when foam-bells bright Tinge the green furrows of the sea in June. Sir Edwin Arnold. ' Has his Grace a Johore flag for the Sultan ?' asks Mr. Swan of Mr. Butters. Mr. Swan is an author- ity in right of some years' residence in these parts. ' No, he hasn't got a flag, has he?' ' Oh, very much a flag, a blue crescent and star on a red ground.' I off^ered to paint an Egyptian star and crescent blue for the purpose. ' Suppose we call it somebody's birthday and dress the ship with all her flags ?' proposed the Duke. ' Who will have a birthday ? Perhaps he'll make you a present.' Omnes : ' We'll all keep our birthdays.' This was settled. Fourth of March the universal birthday. Now we are ofi^ to Johore ; we expect to stay two da3'S with the Sultan. We pass up the 232 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. eastern passage from the island of Singapore to the mainland of the Malayan peninsula, the southern portion of which is the territory of Johore. The mangrove-grown shores are broken by pretty little Malay villages on stilts peeping out from among the greenery. "We reach Johore, with the Malay village of Kranjie on the opposite side of the straits, soon after five p.m. ' Midships !' and the anchor drops. ' That's the old railway-station,' says Mr. Swan, our cicerone in these Malayan regions. ' Was there ever a railway here ?' 'Yes, but it was eaten up by the white ants. They ran the engine on till it came to a place where there were a good many of these ants ; the engine fell into the hole, and they left it there. That was the trial trip, and they were timber sleepers.' We were about to see another phase of Oriental life. The gay little town of Johore Bharu, a Malay town, with an admixture of ten thousand Chinese, centralised by a market-place of architectural pre- tensions, with a sea-side portico built for the recep- tion of the young Princes of Wales, was festive with flags, and the shipping of small craft in the straits was all gaily dressed with the Johore flag, dark- blue with a red quarter charged with a white crescent and star — but the precise colour does not seem to signify greatly, so that it has the crescent and star, and dark blue somewhere. The belt of sea looks like a river, or, rather, like a narrow lake, so blue and smooth. They say it can be rough sometimes. The Sultan's house near THE SULTAN OF JOHOB.E. 233 the sea appears a comfortable country-seat. Its gardens slope down to the water's edge. It is set in palm-trees and the beautiful ash-leafed tree, poinciana regia, known as flamboyante, or flame of the forest, with scarlet flame-like blossoms, and other trees, some with what we should call autumn-tints in Europe. The leaves do fall, even in the tropics, though imperceptibly, so that but few trees are bare at a time. Dato Sri Amar d'Raja, the Sultan's private secretary, a highly intelligent young man in European dress, and speaking English fluently, came with another Malay gentleman on board the Sans Peur to meet us. The latter gentleman wore the checked silk or cotton skirt, like a duster, round his waist, that is the national sarong. The Sultan, a stout, pleasant-looking man of middle age, with olive complexion, wearing drab clothes and gold bracelets, received us at the head of the garden stairs of the palace and ofi^ered us tea, which was spread on a large round table in the entrance. The view of both shores of the straits from this portico was truly charming. We were shown our rooms : the Duke and we ladies had each a pleasant suite of rooms apportioned us, with bed-room, dressing-room, ante-room, and drawing-room facing the sea, where we could see the Sans Peur behind the palm-trees, and a bath- room below each suite, approached by a winding stair from the dressing-room. Instead of doors there are screens raised eight inches from the ground, fastened at the top, at about six feet from the floor, with a sliding piece of carved wood. This 234 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. arrangement, only less ornamental, is the custom at Singapore. There are no locks or bolts ; it is under- stood that no one opens a door whose sliding-panel is drawn across. Animals can run in under, but only a very tall man can look over. The Istana, as it is always called, the Malay word for palace, is European, that is Anglo-Indian in build ; in style Renaissance. It was built entirely by Chinese workmen under a European architect. It is internally handsome and well-furnished ; the halls and rooms very large and lofty, and the marble staircase broad and fine. The saloon and ball-room on the first floor are hung with rich damask draperies and large portraits of our royal family, and lined with tall Japanese vases, brought home by the Sultan from Japan, with other handsome Chinese and Japanese ornaments ; the other furni- ture, sofas, ottomans, &c., all European. The stair- case and saloon have many tall trumpet glasses, eight feet high, full of tall fronds, or rather boughs, of the delicate phoenix rupicola variety of the date- palm, the glasses twined with climbing - fern ; this makes a most elegant and striking decoration, giving an appearance as of a grove of palm-trees with their gracefully waving plumes reared high above our heads, though not nearly reaching the lofty ceiling. The floral decorations all over the house are worthy of the tropics, besides the ferns so bright and green, the various crotons and begonias so rich and dark and velvety, and all so tropically luxuriant as scarcely to be imagined by a Londoner. As we met each other in a large verandah-like THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 235 room, common to all of us, between our private apartments, we said, 'We shall enjoy this place thoroughly ;' and we all secretly wished our stay might be longer than the two days we had at first almost unwillingly spared. The Sultan appeared elegantly dressed for dinner, in a monkey-jacket, with the order of the Star of India, and a black velvet fez, with an aigrette of large diamonds in the front ; half-a-dozen large gipsy-rings on each hand, almost covering his dark, fat little fingers ; the rings all rubies and diamonds on one hand, all emeralds and diamonds on the other. The secretary, Sri Amar d'Raja, was dressed in real English fashion ; the other Malay gentlemen wore black coats and trousers, and coloured check sarongs. These Malays were less akin to Europeans in feature than the Siamese, but I cannot see that the Malays are a distinct race from all others ; I trace Mongolian features in every line. I was taken down to dinner by the Sultan, and found him agreeable to talk to. His English is good, though less perfect than that of some of his suite. The very long dining-room is cooled by a line of punkahs, and by open corridors on each side, lined with ferns and other plants. The Sultan bought in London the famous gold dinner-service made for Lord Ellenborough when Governor-General of India, and never sent out. A portion of this was used to decorate the Sultan's table. The large wine-coolers, filled with flowers, are heavy, but the smaller pieces of this service, in Neo-Pompeian style, are very elegant. 236 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. After dinner, we had a number of the Sultan's carriages and gharries, and drove through the busy, stall-crowded streets of the town to the Chinese opera, where we sat in a kind of state barn, at some distance, luckily, from the singers, who acted on a raised stage, with a proscenium or frame round it, and simple, fixed scenery. There was a promen- ade parterre between us and them. The spectators stared at us more than at the other spectacle. More than ever was 1 struck with eastern costumes as being such a mixture of nakedness and jewels. The play had a good deal of casting up the legs, and twirling, strutting, striding, and stalking, as in our barn or fair-theatres, the nature of actors being the same all the world over. The piece was to us like a pantomime, with processions of first, second, and third heroes, all equally heroic ; alter- nately with four soldiers going round and round as an army. The voices were mostly in falsetto. The best we could say of the singing was, 'It is a beautiful inarticulate row.' The clashing of cym- bals, and thumping of serpent-skin cylinders and drums was a din, and nothing less. In music, the Chinese and Malays are very, very far behind the Siamese, whose music is heavenly compared with this ; indeed, it is very pleasing, and often delight- ful — a real art, and not a discordant screaming and clashing. We ladies had a carriage, and went home after the opera; the rest waited to see the fire-works, which I heard were tine, and then they went to the Chinese gambling-house, which, it seems, is the THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 287 cHief fun here. Johore is considered an Asiatic Monte Carlo. The second breakfast, or tiffin, is nominally at noon, though, as His Highness is easy-going and unpunctual, and there are excursions to be con- sidered, the hours at the Istana are not fixed as fate. Time is no object here. The excursion planned for to-day was a four-in- hand drive to Singapore. In the Sultan's launch we crossed the Straits to Kranjie, on the Singapore Island, which island was sold to the English govern- ment by the then Maharajah of Johore, passing the Sans Feur, dressed rainbow-fashion with all her flags. The white ship is a pretty feature in the landscape as we see her from the palace windows peeping between the palm-trees. We are often told that no Mohammedan can wear a hat with a brim, or stiff crown, of any kind, which would prevent him bowing his forehead to the earth in worship. Yet the Sultan of Johore wears the pith-helmet, and most of the Malay gen- tlemen wear billycock hats. The red-gravelled road is extremely good, as all the roads are round Singapore. The Sultan sat on the" box, but did not drive. The fine horses went capitally; the vegetation is beautiful and most interesting, the ferny undergrowths being especially charming; and the drive would have been perfection had not the thermometer stood at 92° in the shade ; in the lesser shade of our lined- parasols, it was much higher. Yes, the tropics are like Bull's hot-houses, only 238 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. you cannot get out of them We sat and cooled our- selves in tlie verandah of the Raffles Hotel till four o'clock, spelling the same old newspapers ; and then, in other carriages, we drove to the Sultan's pretty villa, Tyersall, some two miles out of Singapore, where we had (Liberian) coffee and cream, a luxury in the tropics, and examined His Highness's collec- tion of Chinese and Japanese curios, imported by himself. The Sultana lives at Tyersall. She is no longer young ; but the Sultan esteems her highly, and consults her in everything. It is true he has other, younger, wives, but only the Sultana is a power in the state. She possesses also the power of the purse, for ' in Malay marriage contracts it is agreed that all savings and " effects " are to be the property of husband and wife equally, and are to be equally divided in case of divorce.' * It is currently reported that the Sultan has already spent his share, or rather invested it in improvements, jewels, furni- ture, and splendour ; and it is rumoured she gives him an allowance. Any way, they seem an amiable couple. He talks of re-building and enlarging her house at Tyersall. The fire-flies had come out by the end of our drive back to Kranjie, where we took the steam- launch to return. The Sultan looks at Singapore as if he were sorry he had sold it, and at times arises a sort of jealousy of us ; at once quelled by the remembrance of the advantage to himself, and his hopes for the future in following our example closely. * Bird. THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 239 There was a large dinner-party invited for half-past seven, who all arrived just as we entered the Istana, so we hastened to dress, and we were all ready long before the Sultan, who kept us waiting till half-past eight, while he opened his jewel-case and took out his best black velvet tarboosh, with a still more magnifi- cent aigrette enriched with the Johore star and crescent in brilliants, and three orders — the Star of India, St. Michael and St. George, and the Johore star in diamonds and rubies — on his short, funny little jacket. The Sultan's wines are excellent and deliciously cooled ; the still hock is a dream, but he and all the Mohammedan gentlemen take only water at dinner ; just one tumbler is set for them instead of the sheaf of glasses standing by our plates. An American lady once came to give temperance lec- tures at Johore ; the Sultan, who, like all his Moslem subjects, drinks nothing but water or tea, spoke of this with a keen twinkle of amusement. The Sultan generally says, 'What you call' before he can re- member the English name for things. He loves to talk of his travels and of his reception, at various times, at ' Marble ' (Marlborough) House. I sat on His Highness's left this evening, and next to Dato Meldrum, a Scotch gentleman, a botanist, long resident here, who talked to me about the Johore forests. Aleck played the pipes, walking round the table ' by desire;' the fulness of his tartan kilt being a matter of deep curiosity to the Malay visi- tors and attendants, who wear their checked sarongs so extremely scanty, not quite two yards and a 210 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. quarter round and one yard and- a quarter long, ttough the men shorten it in the wearing by many folds, and the women drape it gracefully in a knot at one side. The meaning of the Malay word sarong is, literally, case or sheath. The. Siamese panung, never worn with trousers, is an altogether different arrangement, and very seldom of checked pattern, which the sarong always is, whether of cotton or silk. White or black jacket and trousers, and a sarong is the costume of Malays of the upper class. More of the gold EUenborough dinner-service was used this evening ; the numerous golden candelabra, twined with climbing fern, Cycopodium japonicum, and the flower decorations were exquisitely arranged. These are varied at every meal, and always tasteful. We numbered eight English ladies at dinner this, evening, chiefly from Johore and its neighbourhood. On retiring from table, at a signal of numerous rockets from the Sans Peur, we all went out in the garden to see the yacht lighted up with white and crimson fires alternately aU along the ship, the reflec- tions streaming down on the water in diamond and ruby radiance, the masts and yards illuminated by a sheaf of rockets. It was a charming spectacle as seen among the deeply-shadowed palm-trees. As we took our coffee in the garden, the Sultan, perceiving us from a distance, gallantly said, ' It is a dream of fair women.' Distance and distraction lent the requisite enchantment to the view. We adjourned to the billiard-rooms, where they played billiards and pool. I watched the games. The Sultan is a fairly good player. Sentries walk THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 241 up and down the corridors here by the billiard- rooms, near which is the Sultan's jewel-room, as they do up and down the lower garden terrace-walk between the Istana and the sea. These soldiers are Sikhs, with white turbans and fierce, rolling eye- balls. The Sultan insisted on our staying longer at Johore, and we were nothing loth to be pressed to stay with this most hospitable host who did every- thing to entertain us ; for every da}' there were excursions and parties, and, but for collapse from the extreme heat, we might have worked all day and night at amusement. One day we took what we called a rest-day, but so many things were crowded into it as an empty day, which could not so well be done on days when excursions were made, that we worked very hard indeed at being idle. Many such idle days as this would be the death of us ; we hastened to crowd on the excursions as an easier fate. The dinners and tiffins were an effort, though we are accustomed to these ; but sometimes we had a Malay breakfast, beginning with a capital mayonnaise of fish and capers, and then a ponderous Malay curry, twenty courses in one, of about twenty- six dishes and ' sambals, ' which are grated, shredded, chopped or powdered preparations of seven little dishes in each sambal-tray, of which you are ex- pected to select several or nearly all. There are several sets of sambals. We enjoyed the curry, and made merry over it, counting the different dishes and flavourings we had heaped together on our hot-water plates. The Sultan piled his plate R 242 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. high as possible with all the twenty-six varieties — • and the sambals — enjoyed it, and came for more. Other curries after this will be sorrow's crown of sorrow, making us remember happier things. A Malay curry comprises in itself a dinner, ay, even a German dinner. As Count Smorltork would say, ' A Malay curry surprises by himself,' &c. This masterpiece is compounded by the Babu — the Sultan's chef — under the Sultan's own eyes. Like a domesticated Frenchman, Sultan Abubekir likes poking about doing his housekeeping, looking after the 'perfectionating' of the sambals. When he comes to England, or goes anywhere on a visit, he can eat nothing that has not been prepared by his own cooks ; of course, like all Moslems, he can only eat meat slaughtered by a Mohammedan butcher. Then the whole paraphernalia of dishes was handed round again to be eaten with the yellow glutinous rice, which they made a point of our tasting. This small-grained rice is a special sort. Yellow being the royal colour, it is received as an honour by the guests ; but it is really not so good as the ordinary rice. Johore being so close to Singapore is better off for supplies than the rest of the Malay peninsula, where you get only buffalo meat, fresh pork, and fowls. After the curry, they handed round large dishes of pommeloes, a green fruit here, not at all like what we see in Covent Garden. It had a flavour like the Bangkok perfumery. I watched the servants rearranging the palm-trees, THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 243 as we call the groves of calamus Lewisianus (from Penang) in the tall trumpet glasses. They brought sheaves of boughs. What a wealth of beauty ! in- conceivable by us who prize little pots of this fairy palm about a foot high for our dinner-tables at home. I enjoyed the sight of the picturesque figures of Chinese gardeners carrying their yoked baskets, Punjaubee sentries with fierce eyes that yet look protectingly at us, as if they liked the English rather than otherwise. Malay servants, too, in various costumes were to be seen singly or in groups moving across the pillared halls and corridors among the dark velvet-foliaged plants, bearing masses of flowers for the table in fanciful baskets or on metal trays, the creepers of the verandahs and the more distant palms forming a background to the groups. The dark-blue flag of Johore is to-day flying from the yacht, along with the burgee and the pussy-cat flag. Aleck is gone off in the victoria to meet and pick up Lady Clare and Mr. Swan who have walked on. Mr. Swan is our sheet-anchor ; as he speaks Malay we all try to secure him to go out shopping or driving. Poor Aleck looks so utterly miserable, he is helpless if the Dato Secretary does not tell the driver exactly where to go. He might be left in the jungle with the tigers. Dato is a title almost synonymous with Pasha. This afternoon, about four o'clock, the Sultan, the Duke, Mr. Cobham, and I set off in the Sultan's steam-launch up the Scudai river, really an arm of the sea, to see the brick-and-tile works. I am re- 244 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. minded of Dartmoor by the distant hill-scenery beyond the jungle which stretches for miles behind the mangroves, whose timber, such as it is, is good for fuel. Nearly the whole of the interior of Johore is dense virgin forests. Dato Meldrum tells me the magnitude and grandeur of these forests, viewed from the summit of the blue mountain yonder, called Gunong Pulai, about twelve miles from Johore Baru, fills the mind with a feeling of something akin to awe. There is a bed of stiff red clay here being worked for bricks by Messrs. Fraser and Fowke, who live here in a rough bachelor bungalow, and employ many Klings, Chinese, Javanese, and others. There is likewise a marl of very fine quality. The Sultan, who is always on the look-out for what will improve his property, pricked up his ears at ray suggestion that it might possibly be fuller's- earth. The Chinese employed here are immensely powerful men. The Chinese complexion varies very much ; in some persons it is yellow, these are chiefly the townspeople and those who live in- doors ; in these men at the brick-works it is often quite red, like the North- American Indians. The Javanese are an industrious race, much more so than the Malays, who will not work continuously at anything, preferring to be idle altogether. They do not so much object to work as coachmen or drivers of waggons and carts. Camoens talks of ' Malays enamoured and valiant Javanese.' It is difficult to keep the peace between the different nationalities and races. THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 2i5 The proprietors have plenty of furnaces and good machinery, including a steam-saw for their fuel-timber. The sheds have attap roofs, as their own tiles are too costly. White ants are invading the bungalow, where the Sultan and I took coco-nut milk, and Messrs. Fraser and Fowke offered whisky-and-soda to the Duke and Mr. Cobham. Their life here so near Singapore, and the society very frequently gathered by this hospitable Sultan, if rough, cannot be dull like that of remote settlers in Manitoba or Australia. It is delightful scenery, and they have a flourishing business, and are made much of by their landlord the Sultan, who is using many of the bricks and tiles for the new palace he is building at Muar. Among their chief troubles are the white ants, which are, however, easily stopped in tbe beginning of their ravages with arsenic, tar, &c. I never saw such a place as Johore for ants of all sorts, and insects with wings and stings. One gets used to seeing the ants running over the white table-cloth ; they do not hurt, but they tickle. They fly in at the windows in countless numbers when the lamps are lighted ; but they are not intolerable like the mosquitoes. I looked about for alligators in the river, as I had read in books on the Malay peninsula that alligators are so thick that you cannot sit on a log without its coming to life and turning to an alligator. Another illusion dispelled. They said it was the fault of the tide. This evening the Sultan had a good many additional visitors, including several ladies, at 246 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. dinner. Aleck played the Sultan's own ivory pipes decked with red tartan ribbons. We tasted the durian-fruit disguised as a con- serve ; it was eatable, but not very good ; it re- minded us all too much of the powders taken in jam of our youthful days, when all life was not bliss, whatever the poets feign. The Sultan laughed, thinking he had cheated us into liking durian. We could not exactly tell him it was horrid. After dinner, we drove in the Sultan's gharries to the famous gambling-house that Ave had heard so much about, and which it is etiquette for every guest of the Sultan to visit once at least. We were taken first to see a Chinese theatre, which was not much unlike the Chinese opera, only there was shouting instead of screaming. The piece was tragic, but very funny. The heroine committed suicide by cutting oiF her head with a sword ; she sprang to life again two seconds afterwards and did it again — that is, it was encored. Several of the other char- acters likewise committed suicide on the stage, but in different forms. It appeared to be entirely a matter of personal choice, for we could not detect any circumstance that drove them to it. Then the Sultan, according it seems to custom, handed us each ten dollars to gamble with. The game is excessively simple; the superintendent Chinaman, or croupier, twirls a small brass teetotum containing a cube coloured half-red, half- white. When it stops he lifts the cover and you win or lose according to where the colour you have backed drops. The board is crossed and again crossed THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 247 diagonally your stake the colour your stake in lines of white and red. If is on the central lines and is what you have backed, is tripled ; and if you win on one of the diagonals you receive as much again as your stake. If the cube falls with the wrong colour upon the lines you have backed you lose, as you do if it falls on any of the other lines but those your stakes are on. All winnings pay ten per cent, to the bank. It seems perfectly fair play, and the people are passionately fond of trying their luck or tempting their fate. I was a winner in a small way, but I should not care to go there often. First, the place was hot and close — not at all a gambling palace, but a small upper room, approached through several stuffy rooms used indifferently for sleeping and gambling, furnished by a small wooden table, round which we all crowded ; secondly, I see it is a horribly de- moralizing thing. I am glad to have seen it once, but it does not excite me in the way I have read of gambling acting on most people. The Duke said it did not stir him either ; but it is not easy to ima- gine a rich duke being excited by gambling for dollars and fractions. I was glad to come away, and did not go again, having once subscribed to the etiquette of Johore. We usually took our first breakfast alone in our rooms, but one morning Bertha came in to tell me that the Sultan wished the Duke and the ladies to take coffee with him early in his own apartments. I dressed in a hurry, and went through another long suite of handsomely-furnished apartments — 248 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. with no end of spare bed-rooms — to the Sultan's pleasant morning-room. It is His Highness's cus- tom to present all his visitors, the ladies with a sarong, the gentlemen with a malacca cane. He gave me both, a pretty green plaid silk sarong and a grey clouded cane, a ratan, silver-mounted. Dato Meldrum says the malacca cane is found everywhere in the forest ; like other ratans, it climbs trees, descends again, runs along the ground, and perhaps ascends another tree. It is sometimes as much as five hundred feet long. There are many different kinds of ratans or canes, some no thicker than a quill, others thicker than a good-sized walk- ing-stick. It is a very useful plant — indeed, it is a fail-me-never to the native. The Sultan gave the Duke and Mr. Cobham each a box of native Johore tea, and to the Duke a large map of his territory. Sultan Abubeker is opening up the country energetically. He has attracted a multitude of Javanese, Chinese, and other settlers here ; he has made Johore Baru a free port, with only small dues, and gives a free grant of land to settlers. He makes good roads, and villages spring up beside them as if by magic. By these and other enlightened measures the Sultan is yearly increas- ing his influence and his income. Instead of being crushed by the prosperity of Singapore, he is using the Lion City as a market, or rather a central depot for the distribution of his native productions. The territory of Johore, Muar, and their dependencies consist of about ten thousand square miles, and are bounded on the north by the native state of Pahang THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 249 and the British settlement of Malacca. The popu- lation of this southern part of the territory, exclu- sive of Muar, is about one hundred thousand Chinese and fifty thousand Malays. We all put on our sarongs for tiffin. Lady Clare arranged one about her head in the way the women of the country wear them : mine was knotted at the side for me as the Malay women wear them, when their flow is not unlike the lines of the Greek drapery as worn by the Venus de Milo. The Duke wore his carelessly arranged, but Mr. Cobham and Mr. Swan were dressed by the secretary and others in complete Malay gentleman's costume. This fancy dress amused the native servants very much, and also the Sultan when he came in an hour late, having been to Singapore on business. Several of the principal residents in Johore lunched mth us ; the Sultan having asked Mrs. Bentley, the agreeable wife of the Johore attorney-general, who lives close by the Sultan's grounds, to do the honours of the Istana. Prince Bernhard of Saxe- Weimar, who is making the tour of the planet, arrived this day on a visit to the Sultan. We were invited to-day to a garden-party at Mathna, the country-seat of the Unkoo Abdul Medjid, the Sultan's brother.* We drove in three carriages to Mathna, a concise word signifying half-way house between two palaces. Many ladies and gentlemen were assembled to play tennis, but the amusements were damped hj heavy rain, and tropical rain does indeed damp a garden- * Unkoo means prince, Unkana princess. Dato, Pasha ; Da tine, the feminine thereof. 260 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. party ; the long tables spread with tea-cakes, ices, &c., were completely drenched. While the rain continued, we ladies visited the harem, furnished in semi-European style, where the Unkana, a Turkish lady, dressed in black satin, with a 'pouff' dowdily arranged in Euro- peanfashion, received us dumbly,as she couldspeak no Frankish language, but cordially ; she was assisted by two other of the Unkoo's younger wives, one in sky-blue satin, rather ill-made, and very ill-fitting, looking like dresses one sees in a cleaner's shop- Mindow. After we had mutually taken stock of each other, and exhausted conversation by signs about the weather, and made a baby squall with terror at our caresses as we handed it from one to another, we said good-bye to the ladies of the harem, and the rain was over. We watched the tennis-players led by Mrs. Bentley, the champion player of Singapore, and soon tiring of that, we walked round the grounds well-planted with strange trees, on soine of which grow masses of elk-horn fern, and the in- closure where various sorts of deer are kept, some fallow deer, and one of a native sort very wild and fierce, and sawthe plantations and improvements. We had the system of growing Liberian cofi^ee, pepper, and other crops for export explained to us practically. They pay great attention to all this farming. On leaving Mathna we drove home by a difi'erent way, and saw more of the cultivation of tea, coffee, cloves, gambir, pepper, &c., in its various stages ; with all the lesser crops and kitchen-gardening for home and Singapore consumption. Pepper when staked looks like hops twining round stout stumpy THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 251 poles. The young plant has many enemies, but it is easily grown when once established. They are very careful in sheltering some sorts of young plants by some coarser-growing vegetables near them, which shall shelter the tender crop from the sun by its larger foliage. They are opening up the country wellj the Sultan is improving his territory vastly. The Sultan offers fifty dollars for each tiger killed and brought in. The coffee-trees near Unkoo Medjid's house Avere a great object of interest to the Sultan and others. They appeared to be in a fair state considering the late dry weather. The Sultan, as well as ourselves, greatly hopes to make Johore and Singapore a coffee-producing land, to take the place of the extinct coffee plantations of Ceylon. The land is undulating and fertile ; round Mathna it looked not unlike a newly-planted pleasure-ground in the North of England, with that tree which looks at a distance so like Scotch fir scattered about the hill-ranges. Specimens of three hundred and fifty kinds of trees from here were sent by Dato Meldrum, by command of the Sultan, to the Forestry Exhibition at Edinburgh in 1885. Between Johore Baru and Mathna there is a Roman Catholic church, besides a chapel for the small Presbyterian community. The mosque and the Chinese joss-houses are in Johore Baru. It rained heavily as we went home, so we had the attap or roof of the carriage closed. Attap is the Malay word for roof of any sort, not only the 252 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. palm-leaf thatch that we call attap, attap of the carriage ; the word sounds very like top or a-top. To-night there was a large dinner-party at the Istana ; the Sultan blazed with four stars, a very grand aigrette in his cap, and diamond buttons to his short best jacket. We pulled crackers, and the Sultan's band played during dinner, and Aleck played the pipes. The Prince of Saxe-Weimar, who took me down to dinner, had never heard them before; he said he did not understand them. Of course no German can like what he has not got to the bottom of: he suifered, but we laughed consumedly at his half-hidden tortures. The Sultan who was next me on the other side thought it fine fun ; he knew all about the pipes — he did, having been in Scotland, and having im- ported a set of pipes of his own. One lady of the party was a Japanese in European dress ; she spoke English, but she was very quiet and retiring. Still the Sultan will not hear of the Duke leaving Johore, as he says he wants to take us to Muar to see his northern territory when he goes there him- self shortly. We are not unwilling to stay, for it is really too hot to go out or even to move. Most of us forage in the library for books ; the library is large, but the collection is not extensive. Wilkie Collins is the favourite author, there are also volumes o^ Punch and the Art Journal. Our greatest happi- ness is to sit in thin white morning-wrappers in our rooms pretending to read — but there are ladies to be entertained at luncheon, so brace ourselves to THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 253 the work we must. There was also an excursion to inspect the gaol and hospital (whither the hos- pitable Sultan took the indefatigable Duke), from which it will be rightly inferred that both were creditable to his sovereignty ; and to see the Johore saw-mills. Mr. Cobham meanwhile assisted at an examination of the schools. The boys wrote well from English dictation. The Johore steam saw-mills, established in 1859-60, have gradually increased their plant until they may be pronounced the most extensive concern of the kind in Asia. The Sultan gave facilities and encouragement to a few private individuals to set them a-going, and from their foundation up to the present time large quantities of manufactured timber have been shipped to China, India, Maui'itius, Java, Ceylon, &c., besides supplying local demands. The mills lie at a jettj'^ where there is deep water, and facilities for unloading with dispatch. Wood only is burned in the machinery, the fuel being rinds, slabs, and ends. The sawdust is not utilized in any way. Dato Meldrum, who came on most days to the Istana, to help us to ideas, says Malay wood-cutters are employed to go in the forests to bring the timber in rafts to the mills. A company of six to ten is made up ; they are generally friends and relations : a head- man is selected, and he is generally held responsible for the advances of money that are made to them. A sum is paid down when the agreement is made ; with this money they purchase a boat and lay in a stock of provisions, tools, &c. In a month the head- 264 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. man makes his appearance and receives another ad- vance, reporting progress ; this is repeated three, four, or five times, according to the size of the raft they mean to bring. Sometimes six months or more elapse before the raft is brought to the mills, there being many contingencies that interfere with regular work : the habits and customs of the Malays, sick- ness, rainy weather, and sometimes want of rain sufficient to float the logs out of the small stream- lets into which they have been rolled or dragged. Wives and children accompany their husbands, and frequently lend a hand in hauling or rolling the logs out of the forest. They live in the jungle in huts while the trees are being felled, and in huts on the rafts when they are made up and in transit to the mills. They are a quiet, orderly people now ; very independent, yet kindly disposed. Their wants are few, as they do not sufi'er the privations attendant on the rigorous and changeable climate of more northern latitudes. Theirs is a constant snmmer, monotonous perhaps in its sameness, more or less relaxing, nevertheless very pleasant and enjoyable to them. They take nothing intoxicating, and are very fond of liberty and a free and easy life. By all this it will be seen that Johore under its present Sultan affords a good field for enterprise to natives as well as Europeans. In Siam civilization is potential ; in Johore it is at work. I was glad to hear, notwithstanding the necessary supply of timber for the saw-mills, that the country is. not being disforested, but that all is being done under careful supervision. This is Dato Meldrum's THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 255 province, and he has to take care that the land is not desolated as in Ceylon, where ' Government has played fast and loose with its land and what stands on it, and lived on capital instead of interest.' No botanist has ever spent much time in Johore, so Dato Meldrum, who is inspector of forests rather than a regular botanist, says an interesting jB.eld is open to the first who goes there. He strongly recommends the British and Johore Governments to plant the invaluable tree, the gutta-percha, which is now get- ting scarce and very costly, the tree being destroj^ed in obtaining the gutta. Gutta-percha, or, as the Malays call it, getah-taban, was first discovered, or at least first brought into use from the Johore forests. It was a fortunate thing that just when the telegraph was brought into use gutta-percha appeared in the market. Nothing has been found better adapted for covering deep-sea cables than gutta-percha. We had a Malay curry fifty dishes strong to-day, with sambals in proportion ; the Prince of Saxe- Weimar is as much afraid of it as he is of the bag- pipes. A Malay curry is vast and potent, like the German army. After luncheon we all assembled in the portico and vestibule to watch a thunder-storm and a heavy tropical downpour, while those who were better used to such things sat down to play cards in the large pillared hall. Rain was in itself a novelty to us, for, until our return to Singapore, we had not seen a drop of rain since lea-sdng England early in December. Now it fell in sheets and deluges, flooding the pavements, and shooting from 256 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. the roofs and streaming down the pathways, while blue lightning flashed out of the dark cloud masses over the Straits of Salat Tambran, and thunder pealed loud enough to deafen even ears attuned to the Chinese opera. For one comfort, it cooled the air, and the weaker spirits went for an easy drive afterwards. We energetic ones, the Sultan, Duke, Prince, Commissioner, and author, went in the Sultan's launch to the police-station of Pasai Godown, or, as the Sultan himself calls it, Makao Koodang, where we picnicked, as well as inspected the station and the young coffee plantations. Though river-police are still required to keep down piracy; things have much improved in this southern part of the Malay peninsula under the Sultan's rule. As Miss Bird tells us, formerly no boat could go up or down Malay rivers without paying black-mail to one or two river rajahs ; but the Chinese settlers as well as the pirates are powerful men, and help the cause of law and order by taking their own part. The Sultan inspects these police stations periodically. The high jetty here is of split bamboo, making one of the frail platforms on stilts which are here consider- ed convenient piers, easier for monkeys to climb on than for ladies to land by ; this is approached by a most difficult ladder, inaccurately so called, man- trap describes it better. It is a steep and slippery £erial ladder of three round rungs, each about two and a half feet apart, to which one must cling tight, for a false step would precipitate one into the river and deep mud. The Sultan tells me olives grow wild here in the THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 267 jungle, but they are not cultivated. I suggested he should grow them. He asked me if I thought seeds would grow. I thought cuttings would do better and quicker, the delicate French and the large Spanish olives struck in pots and carried out ; from these grafts might be taken to graft on to the wild olive-trees. This seemed a bright idea to him ; he said he should put it into execution. He is always on the look-out for new ideas and improvements, especially in the way of crops ; often asking my really very unimportant opinion about cultivation in general. On returning, we find the green woods have turned black, the green sea has turned white, and the blue sea, chameleon-like, has turned tawny and grey, gathering into deep dim purples. We reached the Istana in time to keep the guests invited to dinner waiting three-quarters-of-an-hour only. As it was a small party, not more than twenty, the Sultan only wore his second-best diamond aigrette ; the Duke wore only the order of the Thistle, but Prince Bern- hard was profusely decorated. We thought the Prince of Saxe- Weimar was go- ing to have a fit, with suppressed ecstasy ; he bursts and chokes so when Aleck begins to play the pipes. He still did not understand it, as Ah Sin-like he does not understand billiards either ; he has not yet concentrated his great mind on these subjects. The attendants as iisual look closely at Aleck's kilt amusedly and amazedly, as if he had not arranged his sarong properly. A fine handsome lad of fresh colour, he looks like a being of another star from 258 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. these dusky, quiet, stealthy-footed Malays, as he strides and marches round the table Scottish fashion. On the 10th of March we were keeping the Prince of Wales' silver-wedding, when the Sultan, who had gone across to Tyersall, telephoned the news of the death of the old Emperor of Germany ; the flags on the yacht were placed half-mast high, and everyone, Malays as well as Europeans, expressed respectful sympathy with the Emperor Frederick's sad condition. Boats have been ordered at half-past four to take us to the yacht to give a tea-party to the Johore ladies. It is sultry and it looks like a storm coming on. There is the first peal of thunder. The tall Punjaubee sentry shelters himself under the thick palm-trees. Our tea-party came off after all, for the rain ceased just at the time they, told us it would do so. Rain is so regular in its habits here that they can always calculate upon its movements. Lightning was playing all round the ship, and fine effects of cloud were seen over the straits, the nearer forests, and the distant hills. The views, when we landed for a walk, were glorious up on the hill behind the Istana, which the Sultan has had laid out in walks, and planted as a fine public garden, with gardenias blossoming in the shrubberies, and all manner of delightful tropical trees and flowers. Below this hill, near the Istana, a large town-hall is being built and nearly finished, as well as a justice- room and public offices, with broad steps leading to the water-side. On Sunday, March 11th, we had a large full-dress state dinner to celebrate our last evening at Johore. THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. 269 Several notabilities from Singapore were invited to meet the Duke. The guests' attire was various : the European gentlemen mostly wore uniform or lev^e dress ; there were many fezzes with diamond aigrettes worn by Malay princes. The Sultan was glittering with stars and diamond and ruby buttons down his monkey jacket, and gay with ribbons, among them the yellow ribbon of the Crown of Johore. There were a good many ladies present on this occasion. We had the whole of the gold Ellenborough ban- quet service for this one last evening, all dressed with purple sprays of the bougainvillea. Eleven large centre-pieces including three great candelabra, and wine-coolers used as flower- vases ; twenty lesser raised pieces holding fairy lamps (above one's eyes) ; and twenty salt-cellars and the same number of pepper-boxes, these smaller things being of really artistic form and workmanship. The coup doeil was dazzling on entering the long dining-room, with the mass of crimson-purple and gold, all regal and state-' ly. The room was lighted besides by lamps in sconces round the walls, and the archway openings all round filled with soft greenery of ferns gave the necessary contrast of repose and shade. Speeches were made at this farewell dinner. His Highness the Sultan proposed the Duke of Sutherland's health in a fcAV appropriate words in Malay, elegantly translated by the accomplished Dato Secretary, and his Grace, in replying, said he was not likely soon to forget the royal hospitality of Johore ; that when he arrived he did not feel like a stranger, as he had not only the honour of His Highness's acquaintance s 2 260 THE SULTAN OF JOHORE. before, but he had heard so much about him from the Prince of Wales that it was like visiting an old friend. This also the secretary fluently translated into Malay, and it was received with cheers of approval from the Malay princes assembled. The Sultan has asked us to accompany him in his yacht, the Pantie, in a journey to Muar, the northern province of his territory. This place is about ten leagues south of Malacca. At its embouchure the river is six hundred yards wide, and, eighteen miles up, it diminishes to one-sixth of this breadth. We cannot go up in the Sans Peur, as the coast is shallow, and a sand-bar obstructs the river's mouth, on which there is no more than three-quarters of a fathom of water. The Pantie, which draws eight feet of water, is able to get about easily, where w^e, drawing fourteen feet, should stick hopelessly. In the Pantie we shall cross the bar easily at flood-tide. Hey for the land of peacocks, gold, and ivory ! 261 CHAPTER XI. MUAR. And once more I said ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew ; Still, still let me, as 1 gaze upon you, Feel my soul becoming vast like you. But with joy the stars perform their shining, And the sea its long moon-silvered roU ; For alone they live, nor pine with noting All the fever of some differing soul. Matthew Arnold. The place we are going to is called Bundac Mahar- anee. All our luggage was carried down to tlie Sans Peur, which was sent oif before us, at nine a.m., so as to save the tide in the straits, as she draws too much water for the shallow western passage, except at flood-tide. How pretty the white ship looks as she glides away, leaving a great blank behind the palm-trees where she stood. The Sultan's smaller yacht takes her place before the palace, waiting to take us on to Muar. The Sultan gave us each a large photograph of himself, and Dato Meldrum sent me a collection of orchids and nepenthes, for which Johore is famous, 262 MUAR. to carry home to England. The Sultan's son, a tall youth who is shortly going to finish his education in England, was presented to the Duke ; we had not seen him before. ' Stop for this investiture,' cries Mr. Cobham, as T was hurrying to put away my sketching-tackle, &c. ; and we all assembled in the middle hall. A gold tray was brought forward by some attend- ants in rich costume. On it was a box containing the collar, star, ribbon, and jewel of the order of the Crown of Johore, of which honour the Duke of Sutherland is the first European recipient. The Sultan made a speech (in Malay) on presenting this to the Duke, who is now an Unkoo as well as a Duke. We bade farewell all round to the large party, including most of the datos, who accompanied us to the Sultan's yacht. The European residents cheered us in British style from the pier, three times three, and we waved handkerchiefs while standing on the hurricane-deck of the Pantie^ a word meaning the high hill beyond the sand-bank at the mouth of the Johore river. Unkoo Slayman, a brother of the Sultan, and the Prince of Saxe- Weimar accompanied us to Muar. We steamed out by the western channel of the Straits of Salat Tambran, opposite the passage we came in by in coming to Johore, passing the distant view of the fine blue hill-range beyond the creeks of the Scudai river, and between the mangrove- fringed islets and undulating river-banks. This Malayan Bosphorus is the place alluded to by Camoens in the Lusiad : MUAR. 263 ' But on tlie point of lanl see Sincapoor, Where narrow strait admits of ships but few.' Now we have been all round the island of Singa- pore, as well as across and about it. At four p.m. a second luncheon was spread on deck, with several strange dishes, and a great mould of stiff sea-weed jelly, a national dish, which is something like Turkish delight. We then put out to sea, and overtook the Sans Pew\ which had been ordered to go ' dead slow,' and mutually dipped our colours. Aleck comforted Prince Bernhard by a tune on the pipes ; and, as the Sultan's box of games had been brought on board. Lady Clare taught him beggar-my-neighbour, while Mr. Swan taught poker to one of the datos ; the Duke and I sharing, by turns, the only book on board, ' Sarong and Kris.' The rest of the datos were interested in the 'skitch' I was making of the fine-peaked outline of the Island of Carimon. At six o'clock the table was laid for dinner — the Sultan was determined to fatten us — but the wind had risen and there were heavy clouds ahead ; a thunderstorm soon followed with cold wind. We now saw the great superiority of the Sans Peur as a sea-going vessel to this pretty little fair-weather craft. The hurricane-deck that we had envied in the smooth sunny waters of the straits was now swamped •with rain, notwithstanding the thick awn- ing and side curtains, and we wondered how they were going to light the table. They hung ship- lanterns all round, and, the rain having ceased, they spread gratings for our feet, and the Sultan's good 264 MUAR. curry and champagne soon warmed us to cheer- fulness. A stub-tailed Malay cat, like a Manx cat, was a favourite on board. The Siamese cats are also tailless. After this we signalled the Sans Peur by a blue light, and the Duke, Mr. Cobham, and I went on board with some difficulty in the dark on account of the boat bobbing up and down so mucb. Lady Clare and Bertha remained on board the Pantie. Next morning we had arrived off a flat coast with low islets to the west, and larger, loftier isles on the eastern side, a lofty blue peak peeping out above the clouds which lay heavy on the low palm-fringed coast. This is Mount Ophir 'with its golden history.' Many hills here are named Mount Ophir. The gold-mines are called 'ophirs ' by the Malays. The Sultan's yacht lay alongside of us. We breakfasted at seven o'clock, and went on board the Pantie, where two fine tall young men, one in gold, the other in silver-laced uniform, were presented by the Sultan as his nephews. They spoke English, one of them had been educated in England. Both these handsome young men are clever ; one has surveyed the territory and made the large map of Johore that the Sultan gave to the Duke, the other is a skilful engineer. All this family are highly intelligent. The Sultan kept his nephews waiting at a distance in their launch till the Duke came on board the Pantie, when he called them alongside and on board and introduced them. Mr. Swan, who understands Malay, told us he said to them quite sharply, MUAR. 265 ' Now mind you talk to these English people ; if you can't talk sense talk nonsense, only talk plenty.' Does the Sultan think one sort of talk is as good as another for English ladies ? However, they talked very good sense indeed. We anchored in the Muar river, opposite a large bungalow occupied by the Sultan's nephews; and a gay townlet turned out all its gaily-dressed inhabi- tants to welcome the Sultan and his guests. The whole settlement was waiting at the pier to receive us, the Malays wearing divers tartan garments, besides the national sarong, of Rob Roy and other tartans. The blue-gowned Chinese filed off after seeing the great sight, the idler Malays hovered about to see us get into the gharries and other car- riages which were waiting to take us to see the country, and the new palace that the Sultan is building, in order that he may reside at Muar occasionally and foster his promising young colony. The town of Bundac Maharanee is not five years old, but it is already very thriving. Life moves very quickly out here when the English and Chinese have once come to see the natural advantages of a place, and the rapid growth of Nature answers to their efforts. In incredibly few years, when roads are once made, the jungle gives up its wealth to the clearer, and a numerous population follows the navigator and cultivator. Houses are built, estates are planted, and money flows in. Sultan Abubeker encourages the industrious Chinese ; he says he finds them valuable as original settlers, as they are indefatigable labourers, clearing 266 MffAR. the jungle, cultivating the ground, and turning everything to account : then, as he sees openings, — and he is always looking for them, — he can set up companies for working mills, mines, &c., with Chinese labour under European direction. His feeling towards railways is the direct converse of that of the Siamese. He does all he can to attract railway companies, feeling that population will follow the railway. He has already made roads, drained on one side by narrow canals navigable for the light native boats : these roads were now heavy after the rain, our piebald ponies felt them to be so. Filling the light gharries, we felt like costermongers over-crowding their carts on a Sunday, and we got out to walk as soon as our hosts would allow us to do so. The blue Mount Ophir looks -fine beyond the palm forest in which the new Istana is being built. This palace, a large building situated in the very heart of the forest, is expected to be ready in about ten months from the date of our visit. It is to be furnished from London. The large supply of attap or nipah palm grown here is in readiness for roofing and building the new villages which are expected to gather round the new palace, so soon as the Sultan takes up his abode here. The nipah-palm grows nothing but the attap for roofing and walls, Avhich is valuable ; the fruit is insignificant. On the road back to the bungalow, we were struck with the comfortable and prosperous appear- ance of the settlement and the good cultivation of the ground : the town is chiefly Chinese, the Malays keeping to the country and suburbs. MUAR. 267 Liinclieon was laid for us in the large airy verandah on the first-floor which is used as a dining-room, though not often for such a large party, I suspect, from the number of birds' nests in the rafters of the verandah on the ground-floor below. This noontide repast was completely a Malay meal, picturesque and plentiful. A whole kid, skilfully roasted so as to retain its juices, and stuffed with rice and raisins, reminded us of the description of the Emir's repast in ' Tancred ; ' this was carved by Mr. Cobham, who, from his residence in Cyprus, was well used to large dishes of this kind. There were vast preparations of Malay curry with countless dishes of sambals, and in the centre of the table a huge dish of royal yellow rice, set with eggs, dyed deep purple, stuck on with tinsel flowers and long ornamental pins ; a sort of Christ- mas-tree stood on the top of the high-piled dish, with crimson woollen balls for flowers and crimson cloth stars and green tinsel leaves ; it was altogether a glorified and majestic curry. The table was decorated with the brilliantly variegated crotons which admirably do duty for flowers here. One gorgeous croton, with richly- coloured, pendulous leaves nearly a foot long, was very handsome as a central ornament. A dish of pine-apple, minced with fish, tur- meric, saffron and chillies, was excellent. Then came the course de resistance^ the dui'ian, which the Sultan made such a point of our enjo3'ing. ' We have, what you call, we have durian.' 268 MUAR. ' Oh, thank you ;' aside, ' I'll give you my share, Prince.' Soup-plates extra large and deep were brought for the durian, prepared in a thick, porridge-like way. We do not think we can manage it. This is only our second breakfast, and we hear there is to be a third at four o'clock ! Durian is an acquired taste, and, to say the least of it, it is a little garaey. Its flavour reminded the gentlemen too forcibly of the Wat Sakhet at Bang- kok. Then came a course of fifteen difi^erent kinds of puddings, or large flat cakes about an inch and a half thick, made of coco-nut, ground rice, and pith of various edible palms, &c. Some of these were very good, though most of them were too sweet, and tasting strongly, one would say, of bacon-fat, were these people not Mohammedans. Our hospitable entertainers were afflicted because we could only eat half an inch or so of the puddings we tried ; but it was like eating bride-cake, one cannot get through pounds of this at a sitting. We felt like young employes at a confectioner's with the run of the shop on the first day. This feeling was quite a new experience to the Duke, and perhaps to all of us. A tiger was to be exhibited. ' Come and see him,' said the Sultan. We put a few questions first. 'A baby tiger?' ' No, not baby tiger ; what you call great-grand- father tiger.' Oh, we thought we would just peep and see what sort of collar he had on. We saw several MUAR. 269 men taking off their state sarongs to get him put into a boat for us to look at. The Sultan offered him to the Duke as a present. ' He's for you,' said the Sultan to the Duke. It was good to see the Duke's face of dismay. ' But I can't feed him ; he wants half a man every day !' His Grace remembered that his men would not be likely to oblige, and at that rate even the stout Herries would only last him for three days. "We reflected that at the rate of a man every other day it would soon be our turn, leaving to the last those more necessary for the navigation of the ship — and the tiger. We all exclaimed ' No !' at the idea of his coming on board the Sans Peur, and we kept the broad space of green turf before the bungalow Avell be- tween us and the tiger. Though the tall posts sup- porting the verandah roof are set on hewn granite bases, the trellis-work of the balconies would be but a frail defence against the onset of a great- grandfather tiger. There is a fine, broad river here, broader than the Thames at Richmond. They say it goes on over a hundred miles farther, and is as broad nearly all the way. The winding of this river, according to the Prince's map, is remarkable, so it does not go so very deep into the country after all. It takes its rise in Mount Ophir, as does the Johore river on the east of the territory, on which the town of Johore itself is situated (not Johore Baru but the chief town). The national Malay boat has a curved prow, a sort of 270 MUAR. crook. Its shape, which is very graceful, is exactlj'' that of an old Chelsea china butter-boat. The heat — and the heavy luncheon — bring a drowsiness over some of the party, who dream they are in England again as they are lulled by the frequent sound of bells, like church bells. Billiard-balls are clicking below, and the German prince, after his nap, takes a pack of ecartd cards from his pocket and practises combinations by himself. Bundac itself, as seen from the verandah, is more like an English village than an Oriental town ; with the donkey grazing on the green, enclosed with posts and chains. The attap roofs look like thatch, the carpenters' work of joists and beams yonder Avhere they are red-tiling a roof is very English- like; the tiles are semi-circular. The areca and coco-nut palms in the background alone show it is not European, for the majority of the costumes seen near the princes' bungalow show a European ten- dency. Three sheep and one pig are grazing on the common, and a horse and a draught cow (of the humped breed) are lying under the clump of bam- boos in the centre of the green. Nearer me is a girl at play, wearing a white jacket, red cap, and a long sarong. I thought she was dancing by the way she waved her arms ; she is flying her kite. We walked up the Chinese street and did a little shopping. I happened to admire a tall brown vase Avith numerous handles, when the Sultan's nephew turned to some of his men and ordered it to be lifted for me into the boat which was carrying our MUAR. 271 provisions to the Sans Peur. We were taken to the much-ornamented house of the Capitan China, where we found a refection of tea with fruits and pastry spread on a table before a sideboard, or kind of domestic altar, covered with crimson silk beauti- fully embroidered. We had thimblefulls of ex- quisitely fragrant tea in doll's tea-cups, and cakes and a dark-green orange each to carry away. The Capitan China is the head-man of a Chinese colony, chief magistrate, and responsible for the behaviour of his countrymen. The Sultan of Johore and Muar is very fond of the Chinese. Their prin- ciples are such as make Orientals love them much better than we are able to do ; as Quang Chaw, a learned mandarin, says : ' Man must be patient, and likewise exceedingly respectful. All good laws teach this ; and all dutiful Chinese reverence the laws, because they are the finest fruits and flowers which the heavenly sun extracts from the roots of wisdom.' .Dreading the four o'clock repast, which we gath- ered from report was to be stupendous, we made the threatening appearance of the weather an excuse for making an earlier start, as we had to get out to the Sans Peur, which was a long way off. We embarked in a large steam-launch to go out to the Pantie, which was anchored at some distance off up-stream. On board the Pantie we saw the tiger in his cage, bat declined having the creature exhibited more fully. The Straits Times of March 20th says : ' A very fine tiger was brought from Muar by the Sultan, and is now exhibited in Johore Baru ; it is one of the largest ever seen in these parts.' 272 MUAV. And this was to have been our fellow-passenger ! The Sans Peur must have changed its name had that tiger come on board. A thunderstorm came on while we were on board the Pantie with the tiger, which delayed our departure somewhat. The hospitable Sultan insist- ed upon our having champagne, and himself led the cheering over a glass of water ; we replied by three times t h ree, an d one hearty British cheer more for the S ultan. Again on board the launch to go out to the Sans Peur^ which stood at four miles out to sea beyond the shallow sand-banks and the bar. The German prince was left behind lamenting, but the Sultan, with the princes and datos and Mr. Swan, accom- panied us to the last, and we steamed out past the quaint fishing villages of matting and attap huts reared on unusually lofty piles in the water-covered mud-banks. The houses look more like bird-cages than human habitations ; some of them at a distance give one the idea of magnified lobster-pots set on poles. From the tops of the houses are set tall fishing- rods with lines attached, very long and strong to catch the larger fish. These peculiar villages just now only supply Muar with fish, but the Sultan tells us they could supply half London. The quality of the tropical fish is vastly inferior to ours. The idea of these stilted houses of the Malays is perhaps borrowed from the mangrove, the screw- pine, and many Malayan stilted plants, stilted in their natural effort to keep themselves from rotting. Nearly all the best palms are Malayan, and many even of these are stilted when grown by river banks, partly because the soil washes away from beneath MUAR. 273 them. This curious spectacle of watery dwellings will not readily be forgotten, though Muar is fading away into the past, the dim past, as Johore and Siam have already got behind our lives. It rained heavily just as we reached the Sans Peur, which made it difficult to ship our provisions, in- cluding ice, palm-sugar wrapped in palm-leaves, coco-nuts, and other fruits, most of which we knew pretty well by this time, and seven durians, which the Sultan gave us in order that we might acquire the taste for them. These solid, heavy, prickly fruits are highly valued. They give the name to these Straits of Durian, the only place where this fruit grows naturally — which is as well — though it is much relished by the natives and those who have learnt to like it. Besides these things, the Sultan supplied us with boxes of Johore tea, plenty of live poultry, and a goat and other provisions. He seemed to think he could never do enough to show his love for the Duke, and, for that matter, for all the rest of us. The Sultan, I think, hoped we should take kindly to the sugar-candy, as he caUed the palm-sugar, and bring it into notice in England, so that it may become an article of commerce. Perhaps it is the manner of its preparation that makes it less palat- able than French, sweetmeats, and this may be im- proved. I brought some home, and I have heard school-boys pronounce it as being like concentrated ginger-bread. Farewell to the Sultan, princes and datos, and to Mr. Swan, who is going to remain behind con- T 274 MUAR. strucHng Malayan railways. We shall miss him much. Friends may come and friends may go, but we go on for ever, we feel, as the Sans Peur weighs her anchor, and ' we go on our way, and we see them no more.' The last we have heard of Mr. Swan was by letter, wherein he mentions his cook having been eaten by a tiger. He waited some time for dinner — in Malayan jungles — and supposed the cook was drunk or had run away. Lo, the poor fellow had been himself prepared for a tiger's dinner. A thunderstorm hides the steam-launch from our view ; but Mount Ophir shines out blue and bril- liant, its crest standing out clear-cut among the clouds. The thunderstorms have always crossed us from east to west. We are nearly opposite Malacca. Now for the long sea-passages to weary us, and bring out the natural man in our disposi- tions and tempers. This should be poetical and interesting. Is it often so, or ever so ? Let us chase away dull care, and go and make friends with the happy family on board — rabbits, ducks, fowls, kid, monkeys, mongoose, &c. What a mercy the tiger is not on board too ! How pretty it is to see the mother and baby monkey clasping each other so lovingly— a long- tailed variety this, with tails not prehensile, like our poor dead Jacko's. The black minah bird with the yellow beak, who tries to talk English; the two prettily-coloured parakeets, and the Java sparrows are still well. The zebra-parakeet, Avith the small beak which did not break the rounded outline of his head, flew MUAR. 275 away. He bit his way out of the slight bamboo cage, and was washed off the rigging by the rain. Johore is called one of the protected states. ' Well,' says the Duke, ' we've been protecting it for tbe last ten days.' The way our Queen is supposed to have given, as it is said, the title of sultan to the Maharajah of Johore is this : that, as she had no objection to styling him sultan if he wished it, — in fact, she recognised him as such. She has no power to confer such a title, but her recognition indeed gives it. The ceremony of the coronation, with a regal diadem, took place in the ball-room of the palace at Johore Baru. No ladies were allowed to be present in the room ; but the European ladies of Johore and Singapore looked down on the scene from the latticed-gratings above the pictures. We live the contemplative life at sea. Though "we are glad of the rest, it is dull enough during the heavy showers, after the gaieties of eastern courts ; the only objects of out-look being two small pud- ding-shaped islets, of the same apparent size and form, on the port and starboard sides. They ap- pear to be useful as points for steering, or to determine our position. We expect to reach Colombo in six days from now. It felt homely on board the yacht, as we settled down to our books and works. I distin- guished myself by an immortal work — but I will relate the circumstance. We were at breakfast, and the others could not get away ; the smooth sea gave them no reasonable excuse for moving. T 2 276 MUAR. ' I will recite you part of a poem I composed this morning myself,' said I. (A thrill — of delight, I was sure — passed through the audience, but I dis- claimed it modestly.) ' Don't shudder ; it is but a fragment.' They looked attentive. A less accurate observer would have said resigned. I began — ' Through Siam and Malaysia though we may trot, Wherever we wander there's no place like the yacht.' It had a delirious success. They applauded loudly, quite stopping my voice. There may have been finer poems, though they all thought so highly of this, even the Duke (who is an admitted judge, in virtue of his alleged descent from the respectable Gower) ; but seldom has a contemporary work so immediate a success. They thought it perfect in itself, needing no addition. As a great French critic says, ' Un sonnet vaut mieux qu'un poeme.' I could see to read the small print of Crawford's * Dictionary of the Eastern Archipelago ' till twenty minutes past six, and to sketch the grand outline of the Golden Mountain of Sumatra, sometimes (wrongly) called Mount Ophir. This fine mountain, nine thousand two hundred feet in height, is a much grander object than the Mount Ophir of the Malay peninsula, which is only four thousand three hun- dred and twenty feet. It was pleasant in the later evening to sit on the bridge watching the phosphorescence and the stars, the Pole Star, the Great Bear, Orion, and the Southern Cross, all visible at once. As we leave the shelter of Sumatra, we have at night the usual MUAR. 277 struggle with the port-holes, some rolling besides in the night, and our stout bos'un's fairy footfall up on deck, laying his strength to the ' strings ' tuning them up to the breeze. Up on deck to find a blue sea and fair wind ; an outward-bound steamer going to the pretty places we have left, and flying-fish taking long flights, are the only glimpses of life in the whole circle of thirty miles round beyond the bulwarks. A flying-fish was caught as it fell on the top of the deck-house, sixteen feet or more above the sea. One flying-fish, trying to fly right over the ship, was caught in the sails and knocked down. A shark was pursuing a shoal of these fish. The oceanic flying-fish differs from the Mediterranean variety in being more slender and more silvery in colour, and from the ventral fins being seated near the pectoral ones, besides being much smaller and of a slightly lunated form. As we have all the sails set, we are not able to have the large awnings spread, and, though it is a glacier blue sea, there is no glacier coolness. At last our provisions fail us a good deal. The goat is not tempt- ing ; the champagne and cider are popping, and being wasted. Of ice we have none left ; what the Sultan gave us did not last long. The bananas are nearly finished, and the tinned soups, &c., are spoiled with the hot weather. We look to Colombo as a place where we shall get everything, from sapphires to soda-water. The Duke is fond of music ; so, besides the second cook's banjo and Dark Charlie's wheezy cornopean, a dismal jemmy of an accordion is much affected by one of the men. We almost feel this a judgment 278 MUAR. upon us for having teased Prince Bernhard of Saxe- Weimar so mercilessly with the bagpipes. Since leaving Egypt, where the sunsets are really fine, the average sunset has been the tamest of spectacles. As the much-talked-of big stars are a fraud, and the glorious sunsets a delusion, so was the vaunted 'kief that we have always heard of as enwrapping the orientals in its 'broidery of bliss, and which we expected likewise to enjoy when there should be nothing else to do. Perhaps in these last days of sailing from Sumatra to Ceylon were the only hours when we felt anything approach- ing the condition of Nirvana, or of ' kief,' as it is described in the romance of eastern travel. Eastern life, as I saw it — or as it seemed to me — was a state not of ' kief,' but of perpetual gadding about, the in-between hours redeemed by riding in the early morning and lawn-tennis in the afternoon. We had been reading of Nirvana — in Edwin Arnold's poems — and found high jinks. Sixth or seventh illusion dispelled. In this book, though I have been moderate in my descriptions, I have shown, what is rarely seen, in how much comfort it is possible sometimes to leave the beaten tracks of travel. We had read the ' Golden Chersonese ' by Miss Bird, and heard of the ' Chersonese with the Gilding off,' by a resident in Singapore, a book regarded here as truthful ; but we found we must lay more gilding on, and deck our tale with jewels. I do not mean the Sultan's rubies, but the potentialities of these countries, with their immense seaboard ; and the vegetable and mineral MUAR. 279 productions of the teeming soil. Ruskin reminds us that all wealth comes from the earth, and here the earth's riches are greater than in most places, partly so on account of the moist climate ; and we are not yet educated up to the use of these wonderful pro- ductions of Nature, which, without the aid of the Chinese and Javanese, we cannot get at, for the Malays will not work, and we in this climate cannot dig, but only direct the digging. Wealth indeed ! Think of all these trees and plants which it is an education in itself to know and know the use of. Few can realise the marvels of the forest universe — from the tapioca at our feet that makes our puddings to the soaring talipot which feeds our minds with the literature of the East. What I have gathered from my short visit to the East is a deep respect for China as a nation ; the mother of many future industrious, prosperous colonies. Singapore shows what can be done by the friendly fusion, or rather combined action, of the leading races of Europe with the Chinese, and Muar bids fair to follow on the same traditions. 280 CHAPTER XII. CEYLON. And mark me, that untravelled man Who never saw Mazinderan, And all the charms its bowers possess, Has never tasted happiness. FlEDAUSI. Land, ho ! Tumble up, my hearties ! The morning of Monday, the 19th of March, showed us the Beautiful Island on our starboard bow. The blue hills of Ceylon as azure as the sea itself. ' Herries, there's a boat with some fish,' cries the Duke. Delightful excitement. We have lived on tinned fish for a long time ; no eggs left, no fruit, no meat ; Ave are reduced to tins, with rice and potatoes. It has become a duty to drink the cider and champagne to keep them from popping. We stop to negotiate with three men who sit pinching their thin mahog- any legs in the trough of a hollow tree, which forms the keel of their catamaran, so as to make a little room for their catch of fish of curious colours, azure blue, canary colour, and the brightest of scarlet ; CEYLON. 281 no boiled lobster ever equalled the intense and fiery- scarlet of one sort of these fish. We all exclaimed at its vivid colour. The dark men seated them- selves somewhat more comfortably when we had bought their fish, and the man perched on the out- rigger for lack of space, came inside the catamaran. We passed Point de Galle at two p.m., and Colombo light was sighted at dusk. Since the harbour has been improved at Colombo, Point de Galle has lost all its importance with the loss of the mail steamers. Trincomalee is the naval station. We anchored at Colombo at 9.45 p.m. One of the Messageries steamers lying near us looks big and busy as a well-lighted town ; the sing- song of the coolies concluding her lading is con- tinued till very late. These coolies, as at Aden and in the Indian ports, are always singing the same monotonous tune with a turn in it. This time — or maybe it is at this time of night we notice tt — we do indeed smell the fragrance of Ceylon ; spicy, heavy, and oppressive like the odours of Bangkok. Herries counsels us to close our ports because of malaria ; it is a question whether we will be poisoned or stifled ? Like Fair Rosamond, I choose the sweetened poison. A cargo of mails being brought on board in the morning, we fall to and greedily devour our letters and newspapers ; then, animal hunger coming on, we go ashore to the Grand Oriental Hotel to feed on fresh provisions. Every order or message is written on chits, or slips of paper ; which chits indeed answer the 282 CEYLON. purpose of speech in Ceylon and Singapore, as the attendants do not for the most part understand English. Deaf and dumb people might make them- selves very comfortable in these parts with chits. We watched in the entrance an Indian juggler's performance, including the surprising and elegant sleight-of-hand shown in promoting the growth of a mango-tree from a seedling to a stout green sapling covered with fresh leaves. Then we went to see the ' celebrated great cat's- eye,' and other gems of a native jeweller ; sapphires, cats'-eyes, and the Alexandrite, which shows green by day and red by night, form the principal stock. Moonstones are hardly looked upon here in the light of jewels. The appearance of the Cingalese men, with their long shiny black hair twisted in a knot behind and kept smooth by a round tortoiseshell comb, strikes us as just as strange after Malaya as after Europe, and just as puzzling. Is a being with shiny ring- lets and earrings, in a petticoat, fat and feminine- looking, but with a moustache, otherwise than of doubtful gender? It is a Cingalese. This is a word that you may spell any way you please, Cingalese, Singhalese, Sinhalese, &c., putting an accent here and there to make it look better — ^more learned. We went off to the Sans Peur in the full glow of sunset, the masts and yards of the multitudinous shipping traced in intense black on the blazing sheet of the sky. Now we behold Ceylon, the cinnamon isle. We CEYLON. 283 all meant to go our several ways, to meet at a week's end on board the yacht. I had an invitation, from my own family friend Dr. Trimen, to stay at his bungalow in the famous Peradeniya Gardens, of which he is director. Gardens are a passion with me— the others cared for different things. I was called at six o'clock; boat at 6.55 to catch the morning train. Herries got me a carriage and accompanied me to the station, and took my ticket, as he knew the tongue. The fine artificial lake that somewhat cools Colombo is alive with geese and boats, and fringed with people of every hue, clothed with every colour, or altogether unclothed ; washing, standing, dip- ping, boating ; boats and geese all making for a coco-nut isle in the centre. On the other side of the road, opposite this lake, is a swamp with lotuses, where Herries has seen lots of cobras in his time. The natives love travelling by train, taking their holidays in that way. The Kandyan Railway pays as well as any in the world. It has absolutely paid its expenses and is quite clear. Its whole cost, amount- ing to two-and-a-half millions sterhng, was paid by the colony within twenty-five years, and it is now the free property of the Ceylon government. This line, with the sea-side and Ndwalapitiya branches, covers one hundred and twenty miles. Oh, what sights to eyes which have seen nothing but sea and sky for days 1 I revel in gay colours, palms and plantains so vividly green, with the young central leaf like a sulphur-yellow flame. What vegetation ! crimson hibiscus and the ' flame 284 CEYLON. of the forest,' allatnanda and lantana ; swamps covered with lilies, and white domes rising above the bowers of coco-palm, and cinnamon, 'the wealth, the fame, and beauty of Ceylon ;' ponds, rivers, and flooded rice-fields. My unaccustomed eye cannot see a quarter of it. A steep incline and a bridge over a river with logs floating down, the banks crowded by picturesque figures in turbans and long checked-cotton skirts ; the land, absolutely laughing with cultivation, is tufted with areca clumps and groves of coco. The country is all one emerald. Truly the island is, as the Siamese call it, Lanka, ' the resplendent.' Adam's Peak, blue in the distance, is the loftiest of a chain of peaks. Now the nearer forest-grown hills gather round and shut it from the view, bring- ing the bright blossoms of the temple-tree and vinca to light up the dense shade of forest-trees, hung with a cordage of lianas, the pretty pink Honolulu creeper wreathing the lesser trees. There are fre- quent clearings in this cultivated jungle. Each cottage stands in its own palm and plantain-grove for shade and food, and pasture for cattle, of which there is plenty of all colours and sorts, bufikloes for work in the paddy-fields, and humped bullocks to draw the matting-covered waggons. The ground is chiefly red or tawny, with black mud in the rice swamps. As we enter the hill-country the vegetation somewhat changes in its character, though still the wild wayside flowers are all West Indian, and the most characteristic trees and shrubs are all foreign- CEYLON. 285 ers. This is a peculiarity of Ceylon's vegetation ; one wonders what could have been the original flora of the island, for the great majority of the trees and plants here have been introduced by man, and that within recent historical periods. The temple-tree, Plumeria acutifoUa, itself is undoubtedly South Ameri- can, and was probably introduced by the Portuguese, who first came to Java in 1496 — four years after the discovery of America — and to Ceylon in 15U5. Dr. Trimen mentions that in 1520 Magellan sailed direct from South America to the Philippines, and American plants were at once introduced there. It was from these islands that the other eastern tropics obtained many of the plants now so abun- dant. That extraordinary weed from the New World, the lantana, which abounds here as well as in the Malay peninsula, seems to be a recent intro- duction ; it quickly overpowers all lesser plants in the open ground. As the forest becomes less dense, losing some of its jungle-like character, the scenery of piled-up rocks, peaks, roads, torrent-beds, and bridges becomes more visible ; and white clouds wrapping the loftiest moun- tains with their white lace veil. Adam's Peak, seven thousand three hundred and fifty-three feet high, is bluest of the blue ; though this is not the highest mountain in Ceylon, PidurntaMgala is higher by nearly a thousand feet. The tunnelled carriage- road to Kandy winds white below us, fulfilling, even before the railway came, the old Kandyan prophecy that their conquerors were to be a people who should make a road through a rocky hill. 286 CEYLON. Breakfast is prepared in the refreshraent-car — and most of the passengers take breakfast in the train — and at the stations lovely male creatures, mahogany-coloured, with red, scanty skirts, bring pine-apples, yellow bananas, and green coco-nuts, which they chop deftly with a small sickle, and the liquor spouts up temptingly. Perhaps the most picturesque among the crowd, each one of whom is a study, is a figure leaning on a staff, wearing a greenish turban and crimson-brown patterned drapery, and white skirt with its edge dipped in blue and purple dye. Still going up-hill, and still beyond the tunnels, the winding road appears, and terraced cultivation of rice among rocky hills ; and again the beautiful views of blue mountains are seen in vistas behind the palms and scarlet lantana, with dark-fringed jaggery palms and great rocks in the foreground, looking across rich valleys bounded by chains of blue peaks. Here the railway almost overhangs the precipice. This cliff is called Sensation Rock. Great rocks are scattered about the hill-sides, seamed with grass-edged terraces, and we look down on the tallest areca palms, and across the valley to a lofty, rocky mountain, with its golden- lichened sides furrowed perpendicularly like organ pipes. The vegetation is less profuse up here, but tea is grown on these yellow hUls. Below us is the white, winding road, sharply doubling back on itself, and close at hand a gaily-clothed crowd among the red roses and poinsettia blossom at Kaonga- meawa station, chiefly of men wearing scarlet vests CEYLON. 287 just as gaudy. I see no women ; but tlie men make themselves beautiful here, and sport salmon-coloured skirts, green turbans, and Chinese umbrellas. More green caladiums, crops, cows, reeds, and wild sugar- cane ; wet rice-beds being banked up, and buffaloes feeding among the stubble. A sharp curve to the line above the Mahawely river brings me to Pera- deniya station, and a hearty welcome from the director of the famous Peradeniya Gardens. Dr. Trimen's victoria was at the station, and we drove across the satin-wood bridge over the Mahawely river to the director's bungalow just outside the gardens. ' Boy,' shouts my host, ' boy, bring breakfast ;' and an elegant, full-grown being appears ; a true Cingalese, his long, shining black hair knotted and held back by a circular comb. The men's round combs cost ten rupees ; they are made from the claws of the turtle, on which the spots and mark- ings are actually painted, though the natives do not like the variegated scales of the large shell that we admire so much. Breakfast at noon. Ceylon tea six years old : tea is all the better, like good wine, for being kept long, if hermetically sealed. This was news to me; T had heard of the China tea-ships racing home to bring the new season's tea fresh into the market. I was impatient until the day cooled sufficiently for me to go out and see the wonders of Peradeniya, the paradise of the world, according to Moslem tradition the home provided for Adam and Eve, to console them for the loss of Eden, and, as a gar- 288 CEYLON. den merely, occupying botanically the first place, now that Kew has become a kind of assistant under-secretary to the Colonial Office, to look after the agricultural department of the colonies. Here at least was no illusion dispelled : the garden is a Kew palm-stove magnified and glorified ; every tropic tree and plant that I know spindling, drawn up, and skied to hot-house roofs at home, are here displayed in full girth, grace, and development. We entered the gardens by way of a magnificent grove of India-rubber trees which have attained their full size, being about half a century old ; their great sinuous roots, flattened laterally, above ground writhing and meandering, suggest huge saurians ; the roots, grey smooth sides, lighted into silver by the tropic sun, reminded me of the form and colour of the great sea-serpent that I saw in the Indian Ocean. On passing some other tall trees with great buttress-like roots and stems, I was told to note nature's economy of material of wood-formation. Not far from there is a fine specimen of the Amherstia nobilis, a splendid temple-tree, with red and yellow flowers in long drooping racemes ; this very handsome tree is in flower all the year round, though blossoming in greatest profusion from December to March. A specimen that would have passed unobserved had it not been pointed out to me was a bo-tree planted by the Prince of Wales when he was here in 1875, a scrubby little perishing thing that no amount of attention will cause to grow. These royal trees labour under disadvantages in youth, and do no credit to the royal family as gardeners. CEYLON. 289 The young Princes of Wales, when they were here, laughingly wondered why the Director did not show a better one. This bo-tree is a great contrast to the fine tree growing close to the Director's bungalow, which it shades, and its sharply-pointed leaves on long stems, quivering like the aspen, give a cool rustling, refreshing as the murmur of a fountain. Both of these bo-trees were taken from the sacred bo-tree at Anurddhapura, the ancient capital of Ceylon, which is the oldest historical tree in the world, having been planted 288 B.C. When the King of Siam made a pilgrimage to Anurddhapura on his visit to Ceylon he gilt the branches of this sacred bo-tree. Dr. Trimen has built a sort of botanical memorial chapel in honour of Dr. Thwaites, his predecessor as director of the gardens. It is built with the characteristic Cingalese crook-backed roof. Dr. Trimen drew the plan on the model of the octagonal Buddhist library temple at Kandy. Some people advised him to build it in Italian style, but this is in better taste here, and the workmen were able easily to construct this form that they understood. On the top of the memorial stone erected in the centre the natives come and ofi'er flowers to the manes of Dr. Thwaites : they always lay flowers on anything like an altar. We smile, but after all the memorial itself has the same meaning. The bamboos are among the chief glories of the garden. All flesh is grass, but, as in persons there are different degrees, so there are various sorts of grass, from the sweet meadow-hay to the useful u 290 CEYLON. giant bamboo. The yellow stemmed bamboo is native to Ceylon. This gigantic species of the grass tribe is perhaps nowhere seen in greater perfection than at Peradeniya. These golden stems, nine inches in diameter, resemble great organ-pipes and some of them are very resonant. Hearing the wind sighing by its hollow stems one might call this plant an ^olian organ. Most of the stems in this clump are of last year's growth. A patient person may watch them grow half an inch an hour. I can recommend it as an amusement to those of contemplative disposition to sit down and watch the growing stems rise above certain fixed objects. The culms sprout up in the wet season like heads of giant asparagus ; growing at the rate of fully a foot in the twenty-four hours they soon reach their full height of nearly a hundred feet. Slightly larger than this plant is the giant bamboo of Malacca, though the difference is not very marked. These bamboo clumps are beautiful objects reflected in the large pond round which they grow. There is also a male bamboo, with solid stems, very strong and useful, not native to Ceylon, though frequently planted. The interesting family of palms is well represented here, though there are only three palms peculiar to the island ; the very graceful tufted but spiny katu kitul, the sturdy dotalu, and the slender l^nateri ; for Ceylon, with all its luxuriance, is not rich in indigenous palms, well as they grow when once introduced. Here are the stifi^ Palmyra palm, the large oil CEYLON. 291 palm, the great plumed Jaggery palm, and the stately talipot in aloe-like flower, a crown of blossom twenty feet high : a noble palm, the finest of all. It flowers but once, after attaining its full altitude, at an age of between forty and fifty years, and then dies. The ancient Puskola (ola) MSS. in the Buddha monasteries are all written with an iron stylus on narrow strips of talipot palm-leaves boiled and then dried. The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) never flowers in Ceylon. There is a grand specimen of the Seychelles palm, the extraordinary Coco-de-mer, or double coco-nut, the largest seed known. This double fruit has been known for centuries by floating out to sea, or being washed up on the shores of Ceylon and the Mal- dives ; but the tree itself was onlv discovered about one hundred years ago, and it only groAvs in one or two small islands of the Seychelles group, where it is now protected. It has fine, long-stemmed fan- leaves, only one growing each year. The largest specimen at Peradeniya is about thirty-five years old, and no stem is yet visible, the growth being extremely slow. As Dr. Trimen says this palm frequently attains a height of one hundred feet, it must live to a vast age. The nut takes ten years to ripen, and the seed a year or longer to germinate. It would tax the age and patience of Job to watch the growth of this tree. Near this is the papaw-tree, which I only knew from ' Paul and Virginia.' Most of one's early knowledge of tropical vegetation comes from ' Paul and Virginia.' A large specimen of the bo-tree was in course u2 292 CEYLON. of being grown over and eclipsed by a parasite (filicium). All these figs have a parasitic growth, which gradually takes the place of the original tree as this decays. Besides the bo-trees and the great India-rubber-trees (ficus-elastica), there are many interesting species of fig-trees in this garden. Ficus Trimeni, a sort of banyan, but without the supports to the branches so characteristic of the fig-tree of Bengal, has a tremendous spread, covering a circle of ground over two hundred feet in diameter, a world of shading branches. Dr. Trimen is encour- aging some depending shoots of the true banyan (ficus Bengalensis) to droop and take root across a carriage-drive, and shade it. This well-known tree is common in the dry districts of India. At Pera- deniya I see the plan, the rationale of tropical vege- tation : climbing-plants and jungle-growths, all knit together by the ratan, &c. ; the shelter, food, and clothing, the whole life of the people ; the whole economy of tropical life, which it is impossible to comprehend in the bewildering forest itself. The tallest of the fig family (ficus altissima) offers in its topmost branches a playground for a number of large fruit-eating bats, or flying-foxes, whose movements are curious to watch. The garden itself is the haunt of numerous squirrels and other harmless animals. Most curious among the lianas and other para- sites of the tall forest-trees are the rope-like stems of the dul (anodendrum), twisting like a long snake over other stems ; the thorny ratan grappling itself up to the light by its long-hooked tendrils. The CEYLON. 293 stems of this climbing palm sometimes attain a length of several hundred feet. These are the canes of commerce. The long festoons of bignonia, the dark and handsome climbing arum, and many other creepers stretched across from tree to tree, tangled in strange knots, and twisted in wild, luxuriant confusion, aflford a series of densely-shaded pictures that exhaust the mind in attempting to follow the endless variety of the earth's riches, while the ex- quisite colours that fringe the masses on the borders that the sunshine touches bring before the eyes a vision of hitherto unimagined loveliness. The fernery is a delightful maze of tropical foliage in various forms and hues. The ground is shaded by lofty trees, and watered by numerous rivulets flowing by side of the shady paths. The tree- trunks are covered with a variety of creepers, orchids, and parasites of most fanciful form and colour. There are fern-houses besides, with tile- roofs and tatties, or sun-blinds. The ferns are planted in bamboo pots, and on porous chatties, where they grow outside and suck up the water. They split the smaller bamboo pots (for cuttings) before planting in them, so that the roots are undis- turbed when the plants have to be transplanted. They do not employ Chinese gardeners, good though they be. There is no Chinese element in Ceylon at all; indeed, there is not a Chinaman in the island. They have tried to get a footing in Ceylon, but the Tamils completely undersell them. There are few or no manufactures in Ceylon. We stood under the fatal upas-tree unscathed. 294 CEYLON, The foundation for the story of the upas-tree valley of death, in Java, is not the influence of the tree, but of a deadly vapour arising from some springs in its neighbourhood. The upas-tree is harmless enough, though from it is extracted a poison said to owe its properties to the presence of strychnia. The Javanese tree is called Antiaris toxicaria ; the Ceylon variety of the upas is called Ant : Innoxia. There is no perceptible diiference between them ; both have a tall, straight, slender stem. They are closely allied, if not the same plant. Among other curious trees are the Chinese weep- ing-cypress, used at Chinese funerals and planted by their graves — a very graceful, feathery cypress — and the very bright-green rain-tree, the guango of South America, much planted in India and Ceylon for shade. But to give a list would catalogue the garden which the whole world has contributed to enrich. The choice cultivated flowers and foliage-plants in the shelter-houses, (for one cannot call them hot- houses here) come from London, from Bull, Veitch, and others. This reminds me of the Duke of Sutherland's story of his asking for orchids in the West Indies and hearing that their best all came from Trentham. Phloxes do well, roses not very well ; they have constantly to be renewed from England. ' Look at my substitute for lavender ;' the Director pointed out a small salvia: 'the best I can do as imitation ; the colour exact, but no odour.' How natural it is that they should best enjoy what CEYLON. 296 reminds them of home. I knew a retired Member of Council of India who, when he came home to Eng- land, enjoyed the wild flowers so rapturously that he liked to plant primroses and other ' weeds ' in his wife's magnificent gardens, while she vainly tried to gain his admiration for the superb collection of orchids he had, in the course of years, sent her from India. No, he loved best the wildings that reminded him of his boyhood. There is much that is home- like in Ceylon, especially after seeing Siam. Indeed, England feels like next door when we hear that the quickest mail from London has arrived in fifteen days. 'Doesn't this remind you of an old ivy-grown abbey ?' We were walking up a road by a line of tall old tree-trunks that did indeed look like ruined columns, covered as they were with masses of the Burmese thunbergia, whose close-growing polished leaves are so suggestive of ivy, did not its large, pale-blue flowers weaken the illusion. ' We call these the ruins.' I was for examining more closely the pseudo ivy-grown banks, when the Director advised me not to stray far into the thickets. ' We have done our best to extirpate the numerous cobras from the more frequented parts of the gar- dens, but they are found just here perhaps more often than anywhere else.' I kept strictly to the paths after this hint, which so strongly reminded me of the presence of serpents even in Paradise. Near here was a singular flower called Napoleonia imperialis, with blossoms growing curiously back against the stem, of bufi', purple, and cream-white ; 296 CEYLON. more like a sea-anemone than an imperial crown. The nutmegs are not quite ripe, the mace enclosing them is as yet a delicate pink, shading off into white. The fragrant allspice is agreeable as you crush the leaves. These spice-trees form a dark evergreen bower, meeting across the walks. Near tbere are the jack-fruit and the durian growing out at once from the stout timber stems and branches of full-grown trees ; and likewise the wild bread- fruit, of the same family as the jack, a tree useful for house, food, and clothing, and for many con- veniences besides. Early hours are kept here : the first breakfast is never later than seven o'clock. In the night I heard the noise of an animal; I thought it was in my room. I thought of the stuffed ' pantherette ' down- stairs that Dr. Trimen had shot close by ; could it be a beast of this sort that had climbed up a tree, leapt on to the shingle verandah-roof, and in at my open window? I kept my shuddering as little audible as I could, not wanting to direct attention to myself. All the books I had been reading lately pointed in the direction of alarm. I heard lapping of water, and thought the creature had got at the water-jug. I felt like Jack-o'-the-Beanstalk when the giant, snuffing about, utters the awful words, 'Fe fi fo fuin.' Silence again, and I began to hope the creature had gone out of mndow the way he came. Next morn- ing I found it was Dr. Trimen's little dog, Charlie, woolly-white and aged, who was in the habit of making night hideous with his wanderings and his asthma. We had home-grown coffee as well as tea CEYLON. 297 for breakfast, for, though the coffee hand is con- sidered played out in Ceylon, they still grow a little Liberian coffee. I mentioned meeting a train full of tea. ' Yes,' said the Director, ' harvesting goes on at all seasons pretty nearly. Tea is a very long- suffering tree, it always responds. Ceylon is just the country for a tree grown for its leaves. They nearly strip the tree, and young buds shoot out almost immediately. In many ways the tea culti- vatioQ has been a great boon to Ceylon. Since we have taken to tea, the fashion for heavy drinking is gone out. Fashion in things is greater than any moral force : people in India drink less than they did ; they take fewer pick-me-ups.' ' It is the fashion everywhere to take less, I fancy.' ' Yes, and besides that the Ceylon planters are poorer since their losses in the coffee plantations.' Tea did not find such ready favour among them at first as a substitute for coffee-cultivation, because it required preparation ; besides, the forests were too lavishly cut down in the clearings, and now the planters find they have to pay high for wood to dry their tea. They planted the coffee too exclusively, and the mysterious blight fell upon it ; proving, ac- cording to the universal experience, that it is not good for one vegetable to grow alone. The early morning was' deliciously cool and fresh with the breeze blowing down from the blue moun- tains round, and with the morning flowers all out that wither in the noontide. We went for a long walk round the grounds, shrivelling the sensitive plant 298 CEYLON. as we walked across the dewy turf, our footsteps causing a blackened train of blight to fall on the turf covered with this tender lilac-tasselled grass, whose very stems as well as leaflets shrink from our touch. The river is low from the drought, for the season has been unusually dry. With heavy rain there is sometimes as much as twenty-four feet difference in one night in the height of the river. ' Here is my farmyard.' The Director showed me with justifiable pride his pretty calves and numerous cows that supply him with milk and fresh butter every morning ; . real luxuries in the tropics. Here are likewise some emeus from Australia. From this we went to the building which was originally the Director's bungalow, and. which — so like a man — he has turned into a museum, and to the herbarium, where are kept the collection of dried plants and drawings of Ceylonese plants by a native who is kept always employed in drawing and painting from the plants, which he does remark- ably well, this sort of flower-painting being eminently adapted to native notions of art. Another native is constantly at work drying and preparing the plants and sticking them into books. The economic value of these gardens to the planters is very great, teaching them what they can or cannot profitably grow. Planters bring their troubles, too, to the Director, and their invalid coco-trees, blights, mildews, and what not. One of these houses is a kind of hospital for diseased plants. Besides tea and cacao, cinchona is now so CEYLON. 299 largely planted in Ce34on that the j^rice has gone down. The bark is often only twopence a pound, and at that price does not pay the cost of peeling. Quinine, which used to sell at fourteen shillings the ounce, is now sold at one shilling and threepence. The market for it is entirely ruled by Ceylon. Directly the planters think they can make a little money, they throw a million pounds into the market and down the prices go again. In the afternoon we drove to Kandy, a pleasant drive of four miles. We went to the Queen's Hotel to call on the Duke and hear his plans for the week. We went on to see the Art Museum, got up by Dr. Trimen and a few gentlemen of Kandy, where curios are collected, and the natives are encouraged to copy the old manufactures for sale. We went to the library and reading-room by the lake, a very comfortable institution, then to the famous Temple of the Tooth : the ' Dalada ' or tooth of Buddha. The temples here are comparatively plain, as is natural for the places of worship in what is like a reformed Buddhism. In Thibet and Siam Buddhism is a ritual; in Ceylon it is merely a philosophy. The Temple of the Tooth is Indian in style, in its Cingalese development : some of it is of late date, and some of it much earlier. It is surrounded by a cloister curiously painted with the Buddhist Inferno in all manner of Dantesque designs, — like the fresco- dreadfuls of the middle ages. The tooth itself could not be seen, as it is only exhibited once a year. If the Duke of Sutherland asked especially to see it, it 300 CEYLON. would be shown, but he had seen it before, when here with the Prince of Wales, and none of us cared much about it. Dr. Trimen believes the Buddha tooth to be simply a bit of ivory ; but, if it is a tooth at all, it is most likely that of a creature called the dugong, something like the "West Indian manatee {Helicore dugong). The flesh of this herbivorous mam- mifer is greatly superior to that of the green turtle. We went up an external winding flight of stone stairs to see the library where the famous Buddhist records are kept, written on talipot palm-leaves all strung together and held by chased silver backs, handsome and very precious ; these were shown to us by a shaven-headed yellow-robed priest. Gautama, the Buddha, spoke Magadhi, the language of the kingdom of Magadha, now called Behar. As con- taining the sacred books of the Buddhists it is called Pali ' row, series.' These Pali writings and records are called ola books. This octagonal building, which has the Kandyan crook-backed roof, is the same that Dr. Trimen copied for the Thwaites memorial in the Peradeniya Gardens. The views of and from this temple are truly delightful, situated as it is overhanging the moat and artificial lake, bordered with open-worked stone balustrading of quaint pattern, that gives charm and coolness to Kandy. We went to the Court of Justice, where we admired the old carved wood pillars, of the squared tapering form so peculiarly Cingalese, with carved capitals. The Kandyans of old had a genius for carpentry. Thence we went to the bright and pretty Pavilion Gardens, the private grounds of CEYLON. 801 the Governor of Ceylon, now away on leave. Above these gardens rise the densely-shaded hills inter- sected with winding pathways, one of which is called Lady Horton's walk, that lead to a summit giving a fine view of Kandy and its charming situation in a valley surrounded by hills of varied outline ; the distant peaks blue with forests, the nearer slopes broken and agreeably diversified, but mostly green and smiling, and reflected in the glassy lake. We wound up our promenade by going to the pretty English church to hear a special Lent sermon by the Archdeacon, a great friend of Dr. Trimen's. We had a pleasant drive back to Peradeniya by moonlight, the white road crowded by swarthy Cinga- lese out enjoying the air, and still blacker Tamils who, by their continual immigrations from Southern India, have driven the Cingalese southward in the island. We ate bread-fruit at dinner instead of potatoes. It eats something like mashed potato, only more insipid. Dr. Trimen took pains that I should taste and try the various native fruits and vegetables ; the monster pineapples, full of j uice, were the best of any.* We took our coffee in the verandah, where we sat talking of mutual friends and rela- tions as we enjoyed the cool air and fire-fly-studded shade. There were comparatively few fire-fiies, be- cause of the unusual drought, also no reptiles. I was glad of the latter, though it was another dis- pelled illusion. I had read of the multitudes of cobras in Ceylon, and I had seen none save the tame one belonging to the conjuror in Colombo. * Note C. Appendix. 302 CEYLON. ' We must bring you in a cobra to keep up the credit of tbe country,' said my host. ' They always know where to lay their hands on a cobra when they want one.' A few days ago a cobra crawled under Dr. Tri- men's writing-table ; he told his ' boy ' to kill it when it had crept under the matting. The ' boy ' slew it, saying it was a low-caste cobra. They will not usually kill cobras — though they are very easily slain — as they are in some sort sacred animals. They speak of the Director's dog as a high-caste dog. The natives at once distinguish the differ- ence of the caste of white people, and call an ill- bred Englishman a pariah gentleman. The philoso- phic Buddhist condemns caste distinctions. ' A man,' he says, 'is whatever caste he makes himself Deeds are the test of caste to the Buddhist, as birth is to the Brahmin. The respectable father of a family, whom Dr. Trimen calls ' boy,' or ' bhoy,' is the principal servant in the house. I gather from the Anglo-Indian dictionary that boy must be an old Sanscrit word. A lad is called sraallo boy. Were it not for the insects, nothing could be more delightful than to sit thus, at morn or dewy eve, in the entrance porch, shaded by tatties and sur- rounded by flowers of crimson hibiscus. ' That's a nice bit of colour, plain red and yellow, none of your gaudy colours.' The sand-flies — * poochies ' is their name for troublesome insects of all kinds — do not worry one so much while reading or talking with a hand free, but once sit down to write or CEYLON. 303 draw and they show themselves determined foes to literature and art. We are not so much troubled by mosquitoes — as in Malaya, at least ; and leeches have not sought my life : I have seen none. This, they tell me, is be- cause of the dry weather, but I know a lady who spent six months on a tea plantation in Ceylon with- out finding a single leech. The men digging showed me a queen white ant, a ' hen white ant,' the ' boy ' calls it. They have dug up an ants' nest, and the natives eat the queen ants as a delicacy. The little head and legs look so funny struggling out of that enormous body. It suggests to one a little man en- cumbered with a great position. Dr. Trimen says it is very unpleasant when, after a shower of rain, an ants' nest is disturbed'; the ants rise in a cloud like smoke and come in myriads into the houses, covering everything, and rise again, shedding their wings like dew. An old steel areca-nut cutter was brought round to see if Dr. Trimen, who often buys curiosities, would purchase it. They have no clue to the reason of our likings, except that we like what is old, and, the more apparently useless it is, the better we seem to,like it. They must look upon us as very daft. Whatever rubbish they have by them they bring round to try to sell ; sometimes, as on the present occasion, it happens to be the wrong thing, and they depart melancholy and mystified. The finely-wrought, silver-mounted native knives are now becoming scarce. There is little of the native engraved brass-work now to be had, but it 304 CEYLON. can always be made to order ; and if they are not hurried the natives will work it now as finely as ever. On Palm Sunday morning, after breakfasting at six, we had a truly delightful drive into Kandy to the first service, at a quarter-past seven, at the neat and pretty church. The cool of the morning here is the perfection of climate, and to me the whole of the road is interesting, from the elegant entrance- gates of the Botanic Gardens, shaded by a grove of choice palms, near which the women of the village are always sitting by the roadside with open baskets of grain for sale to casual passers-by, through the road bordered by strange trees which are a continual delight to me, to the bright and pleasant village suburbs of Kandy, where many Portuguese customs and fashions in building still remain, and houses with pillared fronts and lofty steps up to our old-fashioned porticos- It is singu- lar that while, as in Siam, many memorials linger in Ceylon of Portuguese rule in words and local laws, few or no traces exist of the Dutch settle- ment here, except the coco-groves of the shore. In Ceylon is seen the Aryan village life in all its fulness. The head-man rules, and doubtless taxes the people, and probably bullies them; but they are less taxed than formerly. To them there is otherwise little difference between our rule and that of the native kings : they still have their paddy- fields in common. The reason of this is that they must all share in common the water-supply that overflows their fields. The sowing of the rice CEYLON. 805 in the flooded fields is perhaps one meaning of ' Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days.' One supply of water serves the whole valley full of terraces. It is the one thing'the natives are clever in, utilising the water-supply for agriculture, and this they probably learnt of the Arabs, who introduced the coffee, whose descendants are the Moormen of the towns. A channel is dug on each side of the field in case of an overflooding by rain. Rice for the priests' food is placed in bowls by the wayside. They have such a strict vow of poverty that even the yellow robe, their only possession, is torn up and sewn again to make it valueless as a piece of stuff. The Buddhist priest's yellow robe is supposed to be woven, dyed, torn, and sewn up and made all in one day. The superior priests often Avear satin and fine silk robes ; they should not, as silk cannot be obtained without destroying life, so it is not lawful for the priests. They are supposed to hold a palm-leaf fan before their face always, as they may not look at anyone, especially not at a woman. Like other priesthoods, they do not strictly keep their rule. We passed a very fat priest who did not look as if he lived on the leavings of other people's rice. We met picturesque groups carrying flowers and offer- ings covered with white handkerchiefs to the temple, and a procession of country people with temple ofi'erings, young coco-nuts, palms, &c., accompanying a priest from one village to another. We saw some Siamese nuns : there is a colony of X 806 CEYLON. them here. I did not hear of these nuns in Siam. After church we called on the Duke, who had given up the idea of going to Nuwara Elya, fearing the cold of its high elevation. Mr. Cobham has re- turned from Nuwara Elya (City of Light.) He is disappointed with it : ' Oh, dear no, it is nothing near to Darjeeling.' The English love the place so much because there they find the home-flowers, and by their firesides they can almost fancy themselves in England. Of course we did not yet want to do that. Mr. Cobham finds Kandy more amusing. As the Governor of Ceylon was away on leave, there were no receptions and ceremonials, which made life easier for the Duke, who wished to rest and recruit quietly after the fatigues of Siam and Malaya. The Kandyan chiefs, however, insisted on welcoming him, and came to meet him at the Temple of the Tooth in full costume of necklaces, and many voluminous petticoats. Full dress takes this form in Ceylon as well as in Europe. The Duke made them a pretty speech, which Mr, Neville interpreted perhaps prettier. They seemed to like it. We went to Nata-dewali, formerly a Tamil temple, now Bhuddist. This is a cluster of wooden temples and white stone dagobas gathered in a grove on the shore-side of the road by the lake. In the temple precincts is a large bo-tree, planted origin- ally as a slip from the sacred tree at Anurkdhapura. The views all round the lake with its charming island, on which are still some remains of the harem of the native Kings of Kandy, and the varied temple architecture grouped about its shores, afford a series CEYLON. S07 of tempting scenes to the sketcher. Kandy abounds in such scenery. We lunched at Mr. Neville's pretty and charmingly-situated bungalow by the lake. He has a perfect museum of Cingalese curios, antiquities, and treasure of natural history. He is the editor of the Taprobanian, a scientific and archaeological paper full of connoisseurship, which he writes from cover to cover. We sat down only three to luncheon, though the Cingalese 'boy' laid the table for four, according to their custom. Even if one person is dining alone, they lay covers iov four. Dr. Trimen had arranged a pic-nic in the gardens for the Duke and his party, but the much-needed rain came down and spoiled the day for us. However, his Grace came out another day instead, and enjoyed the grounds, hearing all about everything of interest from the Director, and gaining, as he always tries to do, hints for home improvements. The intelligent peon who attended us is in the habit of conducting people round the gardens. As he knows the Director's guide-book oif by heart, people mostly remark, ' What an intelligent guide, he knows the names of all the plants !' Dr. Trimen accompanied the Duke in a drive round, by the now full and cafe-au-lait coloured river, the Mahawelyganga, which surrounds the gardens on all sides except the south, where they are bounded by the high-road. This river, the largest in Ceylon, the Ganges of Ptolemy's maps, is about one hun- dred and fifty miles long, and falls into the sea at Trincomalee on the east coast. The vignette views from the gardens, of the river embowered in foliage, x2 808 CEYLON. are enchanting, especially that seen near the place where we took our tea, where the Mahawely is crossed by the satin-wood bridge of a single span ; an enchanting view framed in light tresses of bam- boo. 'Almost equal to Darjeeling, I fancy;' the Duke glanced at Mr. Cobham. There was a lovely moonlight after the rain. Fire-flies hovered thickly about the large mango-tree before the lawn, and the great bo-tree near the house was a beautiful object, dropping showers of rain off its pointed pendulous leaves quivering in the breeze, while a multitude of fire-flies lit it up into a fountain of luminous sparks. Dr. Trimen one day ordered a chaise-a-porteurs with four coolies to carry me to see some temples at about six or seven miles from here. There is a fine group of temples within a radius of half-a-dozen miles or so. Gadaladeniya is the chief one we are going to . see ; then if we have time, and it is practicable, we shall see Lankatilakawihara, called the most striking Buddhist temple. The temples of Embekke and Wegiriya are within three miles of these. We talked about the temples and read about them in the guide-book, but I do not think we really saw any of these, as there is such a muddle with the names ; no two people call them alike. At three o'clock the carriage came round and we started for Galangoda (? Gadaladeniya). We drove as far as we could, and then turned off to the by- path where the coolies were waiting. They hoisted my chair on their shoulders by long bamboo poles ; I felt like the Pope must feel when thus carried. CEYLON. 809 The uneven ground made it difficult to balance the chair, and once they let me fall, chair and all; luckily it was a piece of turfy ground where I fell, and I was soon mounted again. The bearers were Cingalese, who bore the bamboo-poles on their shoulders, Tamils would have canned them on their heads, thus I had the less far to drop. Fortunately too for me, they did not spill me over into the newly- sown paddy swamps, lying deep below the path. A train full of coolies was once upset into the paddy- fields, wbere they were nearly all suffocated. On turning the angles of a dark frowning basaltic rock, the white temple of Galangoda appeared as a surprise. It is in style Indian Renaissance, quite modern, and dazzling in the whiteness and newness of its European-looking columns and mouldings. It is built in two stories above the ground-floor, which also is led up to by a flight of steps. There is something to be learnt from the love of semi- savage nations for the Renaissance, in white marble or white-wash. Internally the nave, with its four massive octagonal pillars and round arches, resembles the crypt of a Christian church. It is painted in the primitive colours and green, with figures and patterns, thus : flesh unmitigated red, clothing green or yellow, skies blue, trees green. There is an ambulatory round this painted shrine. A staircase, in the chancel, led to an upper temple, to which they would not let us ascend without taking off our shoes, a ceremonial that Dr. Trimen has never known required during his residence in Ceylon ; but here they made even the 310 CEYLON. Governor of Ceylon take his boots off. I did not mind, as in these warm climates it is a comfort to take off one's shoes and walk on the stone pavement in thin stockings. The wall-paintings along the corridors are very Byzantine in style and colour. The shrine of the upper temple is very rich in costly treasures. The fine gilt-bronze dagoba here protected by a strong metal cage, was seen in the Kandyan portion of the Ceylon court at the Colonial Exhibition. Candles were lighted, that we might examine the jewels and the very fine chased work in silver-gilt on the dagoba within the cage, and the brass and silver bo-trees growing by it, representing a grove. A common green-glass ball (sacred, I presume, or else representing the sun) is hung above these treasures among the elegant golden lotus-flowers suspended 9,bove the dagoba, and spreading like a firmament of spherical leaves and blossoms. Several small figures of Buddha, in gold or silver, in the three •positions — seated, standing, or reclining — are dis- posed about. On the surrounding brass lamps are figures of cocks. The ceilings are painted with Buddhas seated in meditation. Near the shrine are numerous life-sized figures in painted plaster. ,' This face belongs to a priest living now,' was said of one of these figures, a portrait-model. Not flattering, I should imagine. We were able to converse mth the priests, as we had the Director's ' boy ' with us, as well as the intelligent peon. They showed us an ivory Bud- dha, carved, they said, out of elephants' bones, and CEYLON 311 a Burmese Buddha in white marble, looking very different to any of the others — calmer, or, at any rate, smoother. Red lilies are chief among the floral offerings. This again is unusual in a Buddhist temple. 'Plenty books,' they tell us ; and show us some ola books inscribed on papyrus of the talipot palm. The wall-paintings in the upper-front corridor are amus- ing. A central picture of elephants cantering up Adam's Peak, with offerings to the foot-print, is very comical, as are a series of scenes in the Buddhist inferno : one of a victim having his teeth taken out with red-hot tongs by blue-devils. There is a great connection between tooth-ache and blue- devils. Demon-worship, or propitiation of what might do them harm, was the original superstition in Ceylon, and still has a far greater hold on the people than Buddhism. A black band painted round the coco-trees is a charm against the evil eye. The different vices are variously treated in this inferno. A hunting-man is being torn to pieces by blue dogs. I suppose he is a type of cruelty : a huntsman would naturally be held chief of sinners by Buddhists. On the wall here is a picture of the great precipitous rock outside this temple, and of people leaping off the rock into lions' mouths. This was explained to be Buddha giving himself to be devoured by the starving tiger. If so, he had followers, and tigers in his day had no stripes. In a large side-chapel is a colossal reclining Buddha, nineteen yards long. The figure is painted 312 CEYLON. red. One calculation makes this Buddha forty feet long. We measured it, and found it nineteen yards long (fifty-seven feet). The walls of this large room, which is nearly filled with the great red Buddha, are painted all over with yellow-clad priests, each bearing a flower for an offering. Strewn on the long console below the gigantic Buddha were roses, yellow bignonias, and red vallota-lilies, the blossoms of the temple-tree, of course, and the areca fruit, looking like green ears of some cereal. Galangoda is the only two-storied temple that Dr. Trimen has ever seen here. From a drawing one would never guess what part of the world the temple belonged to ; it is such a curious jumble of whitewashed Renaissance and Hindoo, yet with a difi"erence to both. Water flows from the tall, dark rock which shelters the temple. The Buddhist priests here, and our followers, look on the Director and myself as extremely religi- ous persons, who take a great deal of trouble to visit the temples. The Director, the intelligent peon, and the ' boy' botanise all along the road. Our followers and the country people here all know the names of their plants ; so unlike our yokels, who can recognise few, and others who know none. They call Dr. Trimen ' the great flower-master.' There was another small temple, and a sharply- pointed dagoba, situated likewise under a rock in the valley below us, visible between the graceful palms and slim stems of the areca-palrus spiring up steep hill-sides ; and, farther on, we examined a CEYLON. 313 small temple painted outside with life-sized ele- phants. This is scarcely more than a way-side chapel, though a great resort of pilgrims. Near this latter temple is a newly-planted bo-tree brought from Anuradhapura. Lady-day is about the longest day here, or rather just now are their longest evenings. To-day (28th of March) it is daylight till nearly seven p.m. The moonlight played beautifully on the river, and on the pearly masses of cloud that had hardly yet lost the rose-flush of sunset ; and, on our road home, we could distinguish the gay colours worn by a crowd of people surrounding a sacred elephant, one belonging to the temple at Kandy : we could even see its faint white markings. More than usually exquisite was the view of the blue mountains beyond the dark satin-wood bridge, and the olive- hued reflections of the palm-groves by the river. This delicious island has been a dream, an oasis of rest. I left Peradeniya early next morning, with a feel- ing of more than thankfulness for the repose it had been to me. Dr. Trimen accompanied me to Co- lombo. We joined the Duke and his party at Pera- deniya junction and journeyed down together. It is seventy miles to Colombo, the rail a single line, broad gauge six feet six inches. Cow-catchers are attached to the engines ; they catch many cows, as so many half-starving bullocks stray on the line. We ascend a hundred feet and then comes a rapid descent, an incline of one in forty-five for twelve miles. Here we cross the water-shed, whence the 314 CEYLON. Mahawely river flows down to the Bay of Trin- comalee. The country is like a relief map as we run along the dizzy verge of the Sensation Rock. Yonder is a rocky peak on a hill, looking like a Rhenish castle, this and the table-shaped mass called the Bible Rock remain long visible, through clusters of scarlet erythrina,aswewind round the hill. ' It doesn't stand the test ?' said we to Mr. Cobham. ' No, certainly not equal to Darjeeling.' This damped us, but Dr. Trimen said that Dar- jeeling, though grand, has only one view, while Ceylon has a great variety. 'To look at the country from here,' Dr. Trimen said, ' you might think it almost inhabited, but it is one mass of little villages ; wherever you see that white tree there is sure to be a house ; it is the oil- tree. But now kerosine is hawked about through- out the country : thus the local industries are dying out everywhere.' Except what Dr. Trimen gives unofficially, there is little teaching afforded as to the use of many of the native trees, nor encouragement to manu- facture hitherto unknown articles. The Indian forestry of&cials are rather red-tape-tied. Tamil workmen were roofing a shed with platted palm-leaves, the fringed edges forming a loose-looking thatch. They use these coarsely-platted palm-leaves for fencing, shading, and for rough baskets. There are few other manufactures even of this inferior kind. They are entirely an agricultural people. Seeing no capacity among the people now-a-days for manufactures, one marvels at the Kandyan CEYLON. 315 carpentry in the Buddhist library and the Hall of Justice in the former native capital. Here at Polgawhela station is one of the few women I have seen travelling about ; she wears a pretty silver ornament in her hair, but this is of Indian manufacture. Nearly all the names of the stations are taken from trees. Pol is the coco-nut-tree. Here are a lot of Salvation Army people wearing red cotton shirts with yellow inscriptions, and red turbans, salmon-coloured cotton skirts, and scarfs. The costume is picturesque on a native, but the English enthusiasts wear just the same, bare feet and all. Other men in equally lively costumes come round offering caroomba, young coco-nut. ' All your stations seem called the same name,' says a griffin, Avho has heard caroomba cried at all the stations. They bring round pastry, too, made of wheaten flour, which is always called American flour. This is a thing quite unknown in the island, except near the towns. Dr. Trimen supplies all the gay station gardens with flowers gratis. He is well-known along the line, as, besides Peradeniya and the pretty pavilion flower-garden at Kandy, he has the control of the branch botanical establishments at Hakgala, a tem- perate garden, situated at an elevation of five thou- sand eight hundred feet, adapted to the cultivation of European and Australian plants, and those of tropical mountain regions ; at Anarddhapura, the ancient capital of Ceylon, ninety miles north of Kandy, possessing a dry climate with a short rainy 316 CEYLON. season, suited to the growth of tropical plants and crops that are intolerant of continuous atmospheric moisture ; and at Henaratgoda, a steaming tropical garden not far from Colombo. The names of the stations are written up in Cingalese, Tamil, and English. The Cingalese use round, the Tamils square characters ; both read from left to right, like all the Aryan languages. Here is Mirigama, written mrgm, vowels, especially a, being understood, the i's are combined with the conso- nants. We fall to talking of philology ; each of us has a nice little theory, of course, but it does not agree -with the facts of the case. The Tamil coolies have a system of names en- tirely their own. If you lose your way it is no use knowing the real name of the place you want to find, as the Tamil names are entirely different. Mr. Jones, say, opened an estate, these Tamil immi- grants wiU call it Jonistohun, whereas it may now be owned by a Mr. Smith, and the English owner perhaps calls it Abbotsham. The stations are covered with English advertisements. What a wonderful garden it is all the way, and just the same all the year round : a monotony of richness ; only now the buffaloes are ploughing the paddy mud. Here are the remains of former cinnamon gardens, and here is the broad Colombo river, the Kelaniganga, and here are fishermen, wearing their very large thick hats. They are above their knees in water for hours, and need to have the head protected. It is intensely hot here at the sea-level. Here is the fishermen's church : CEYLON. S17 the fisher population round the coast are Roman Catholics to a man. Their trade is scorned by the Buddhists. They give to the church a tithe of all the fish they catch. The Roman Catholic priests here are mostly Italians. To our surprise there was no one at the station to meet us : but Dr. Trimen helped us to get a bul- lock waggon, covered with platted palm-leaves, for the luggage, and it was sent down to the quay under the care of Bertha and Dark Charlie, travelling in a carriage keeping it in view. Dr. Trimen took me for a drive round Galle Face, by the sapphire sea curling in on the sands with its fresh sea-smells, on a smooth road shaded by bright green lettuce-trees and the yellow hibiscus, called by the English tulip-tree. We came in sight of the favourite Mount Lavinia Hotel, and then drove round outside the town by the cinnamon gardens, the plumbago works, the breezy lake, and the road between groves and gardens where the villas and bungalows of Eng- lishgentlemen and rich merchants are mostlysituated. The plumbago or graphite is the only mineral of commercial importance exported from Ceylon. The mining industry is entirely in the hands of the Cingalese, who work it in a primitive fashion even as deep as three hundred feet. This is the finest plumbago in the world for crucible purposes, and this valuable trade has sprung up entirely within the last forty years. Here in the East we do not feel as we often do on the Continent that the English are ages behind other nations. 318 CEYLON. We sat awhile in the cool, covered pier waiting for a boat to the yacht ; none being forthcoming, we wondered whose business it was to look after the harbour. The people here seemed only to want to look on. The pier-master's business is ' to wallop all these people and to loaf about.' The Duke's letter to his steward had by some oversight not been sent on board the yacht, so there was no one to meet us and no boats were waiting. On our return from bespeaking lunch at the hotel by chits for ' chickeny stew,' hashed chicken and ' hairy stew,' jugged hare — Mr. Cobham being interviewed on the way by people connected with the rival newspapers eager to get copy from him — we heard a rumour of his Grace being obliged to go out to his own yacht in a casual catamaran. ' Forbid it, ye powers !' we exclaimed, and Dr. Trimen used his knowledge of the language to avert such a catastrophe. The casual catamaran would have been named after the Duke of Sutherland at once. We went to the hotel to tiffin. Dr. Trimen seemed to know everybody, and we all met acquaint- ances. One is sure to meet somebody one knows in this Clapham Junction of the East. Herries and our bos'un in dashing mufti passed through the hotel corridor looking about them cool and critical as if about to rent the premises ; ergo, Herries and the bos'un were not on board. I went out and spoke them returning. They were thunderstruck ! having heard nothing of our coming. At once there was a rush ; the boatswain flew off to his boats, Herries became completely the steward again, and hurried CEYLON. 319 off to buj' up all Colombo market and bring it off. Meanwhile, instead of weighing anchor for England at three o'clock as the Duke intended doing, we fell a prey to all the pertinacious jewellers, and mer- chants of moonstones, and ivory elephants, and tortoiseshell catamarans in Colombo. The yacht itself was in the lively condition of being upset for cleaning : odours of soft soap prevailed above the cinnamon breezes, and we all fell over rolls of carpet. Dr. Trimen had been invited to look over the yacht, and as a preliminary, as Herries had the cabin-keys in his pocket, the carpenter was called forward to unhang the deck- house doors, and we boarded the ship burglariously. We had just read a most flowery description of the Sans Peur headed ' A Floating Palace of Delight,' and — here was another illusion dispelled. At sundown the steward appeared in command of a broad native boat with his live-stock : two sheep, six turkeys, myriads of fowls, baskets of eggs, fish, fruit, and vegetables enough to have left Colombo hungry many days after our departure. We soon, perhaps too soon, got shipshape — foe there was nothing left to grumble at, and for example's sake one ought to be calm as a Buddha. The most useful thing any of us bought at Colombo was a pack of cards. This, after all the crying up of Colombo as the place to buy choice stuffs and curios in ! Never tell me of the East ; London is the place of all others to do your shopping. I have lost my reckoning of dispelled illusions by this time. 320 CHAPTER XIII. THE RETURN VOYAGE. Summer redundant. Blueness abundant — Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same. Browning. We dread the long return passage across the Indian Ocean. We have tried it. It is a popular fallacy that the world is small. It is not ; it is too big by- far — at sea. A long sea-passage is the opportunity for squaring the circle, or doing anything that one has never yet found time to do. We played patience with the new pack of cards. From heat to heat the day declined. We sentimentalized over the outward-bound Messageries steamer, and over our last glimpse of India ; the distant ghauts half- veiled in pearl-lighted clouds and grey by distance, which greys all life as time does, and we are sailing forward into the golden sunset — homewards, homewards — through a sea blue as the sapphires of Ceylon. Tender rose light, like a memory, hangs over the distance which hides Ceylon itself, the isle of pearls and gardens. The deep purple edge of the sea keen as a knife THE RETURN VOYAGE. 321 along the bright still glowing cornelian colour of the lower western ^ky. The western blaze flamed on until the full moon rose behind us, a moon so bright that it seemed literally to scorch us with its light. We passed between the Maldives, the thousand isles, very distant, and the nearer Laccadives to starboard, very low and flat, like a thick black line in the water, pointed with a lighthouse. This near flat island is Minicon : we passed through the eight degrees channel. Ah, the birds seen to-day were inhabitants of these islands. The natural history of these islets must be inter- esting, rich with jetsam and flotsam from so many shores, yet so isolated. ' In Maldive Islands, in the deep sea lies A plant of sovereign power by waters fed, Whose fruit strong poison's influence to prevent Is held an antidote most excellent.* Dinner was laid on a small table on deck in picnic style, pleasant for us all. We made an institution of this. Good Friday : the minah bird died, and so did the beautifully-coloured parrots that the Duke was tak- ing home to her Grace. The mongoose, out without leave one night cruising about the ship, frightened the poor birds : this or a spell of rough weather destroyed them, we scarcely know which. The second cook made us hot cross-buns for breakfast. An immense shoal of fish is being pursued by birds. Now they have sheered off and the fish are * Camoens. Y 322 THE RETURN VOYAGE. splashing about very jolly, taking their morning tub. This sea-travelling induces a curious mixture of laziness and restlessness. Our diaries are chiefly a meteorological record. Our chief sport, besides the game of ' patience,' was playing with the monkeys. The thrumming of the screw prevents writing, except on one's lap, and there is little to write about, and no post-office in reach for many a long day. One's drawings, with the throbbing of the screw and the bobbing of the ocean, suff'er a sea- change into something very strange. It is a clear drop down to the South Pole, so there is no scenery to draw; besides which there is considerable motion in the Indian Ocean: The clock is put back twenty minutes each day, so hard are we running after the untireable sun. It is too hot in the saloon to sit at the piano, and the damp of Siam put it horribly out of tune. The nights are long hours of lassitude and heat, but, taking it altogether, we do not find the return journey quite so trying as we feared. Though we have used up the new books and are thrown upon Shakespeare and Scott and the ' Sailing Direc- tory,' ' patience ' is a powerful resource. The first of April was Easter Sunday. We were still at sea, day by day steaming westward into the sunset. A flying-fish flew in at the Duke's port-hole through the long ventilator and all, he deserved the Queen's prize for the fine shot ; another flew through Lady Clare's port right across to her wardrobe. Poissons d'Avril. We called Mr. Cobham early to come up and see the Sultan of Johore waving his handkerchief to us from on board the Messageries THE RETURN VOYAGE. 323 boat. He turned out eagerly and came on deck, and heard it was the 1st of April. We hunted up new clothes to wear, and bragged of them, but things we had not yet worn had become rare with us. We tried turning the faded side in, but this was pronounced to be shabby and a subter- fuge. We put on our Siamese hats. The Duke had a showy blue tie, quite ducal and neatly hemmed, bought at Colombo ; but then he was a duke, and it is fitting that a duke should be grand. We had a fine turkey for dinner ; we had watched his fattening with interest, and we sang Easter hymns in the saloon in the evening, with Mr. Butters, Herries, the second cook, Charlie, and one or two others to swell the chorus. Weather permitting, the Duke always likes to have hymns on a Sunday evening ; the hymns for Hospitals and for Those at Sea from ' Hymns Ancient and Modern ' always conclude the singing, winding up with his own favourite, that dreary, funeral hymn. No. 289, ' Days and moments quickly flying.' The Southern Cross is bright to-night, the moon rising late. I now see that the Southern Cross is really a finer constellation than the two other pseudo crosses on the right and left of it, which bring to mind so vividly the three crosses of Calvary. The sky is full of lightning, the sea of phosphor- escence, among which the porpoises are illuminated as if in lambent flame. On the 3rd of April a beautiful white gull from Socotra, Africa, or Arabia, tells us we are approach- ing land. This is fortunate, as our eggs are getting y 2 324 THE RETURN VOYAGE. stale ; we have eaten the last of the fish, and when the ice fails good-bye to the rest of our provisions. We passed Socotra in the night, ' Socotra, which doth bitter aloes boast,' but we still made out the lofty island in the mists to the starboard as we came on deck. The ' Brothers ' islands were near us. 'That isle might well be one of the Greek islands,' says the Duke, spying at the lofty, dim and distant isle. We are to see Cape Guardafui this afternoon. How near home we seem now that we can almost lay hold of Africa ! We made a good run of two hundred and thirty-nine knots in the twenty-four hours. Thermometer eighty-six in the deck-house at breakfast and ninety-two at dinner. On the 6th of April we were called early to see the rocks near Aden. They are very wild and grand; others thought the same, for the accordion-player tuned up with ' They're all very fine and large,' and played soothingly until called on to help drop the anchor. General Hogg, the governor, came off and invited us to stay at Government House while the yacht was coaling. We accepted gratefully ; we felt such a longing to set foot on terra-cotta, as we correctly called this baked and parched Aden. We were thirsty for news. There had been no fight between the Italians and Abyssinians, and peace was being talked of. Though the promised shops were in some measure a delusion, few places have progressed in the course THE RETURN VOYAGE. 825 of the Queen's jubilee so much as Aden ; at any rate, as regards population. The number of inhabitants was six hundred in 1837; ten thousand in 1859; in 1888, with Socotra, forty thousand. Socotra has a population of four thousand. Nothing is manu- factured in Aden except salt and water ; condensing the sea-water and dividing the salt from it. Mr. Cobham and I took an open carriage and drove to the ancient tanks, called after the Queen of Sheba, up the long road, or volcanic mud-lane by the sea ; then up to the fort where the road hewn through the rocks is crowned by an archway, and tunnelled underneath the fortified rugged mountain; then down to the Arab town of Aden, invisible from the harbour side of the settlement : a thoroughly oriental populous town built in the crater of the extinct volcano. Near this an avenue of starveling tropical shrub leads to the Jubilee arch, erected over the entrance to the enclosure of the tanks, set in wildest scenery of lofty precipitous crags and mountain peaks, down whose fissures flows every trickle of rain-water when it falls, which is seldom : gathering it in rills to the tanks which are thus filled in three hours when it does rain. There are two tanks connected by a sort of bridge, and there are paved terraces with railings round about the tanks at difi"erent levels ; thence pathways led up among the stern grey precipices themselves, rising seventeen hundred and seventy-five feet high, and away into the roads beyond. The tanks are enclosed in the plantation, which is as much of a garden as the arid and scorching 326 TEE RETURN VOYAGE. situation will allow. These tanks are said to be capable of containing between eight and twelve millions of gallons of Avater. The water was low at the time of our visit, as rain had not fallen for many months. The Governor in speaking jokingly of his poor little plantation, for which earth had to be brought from So- cotra, as there is hardly a spoonful of earth naturally in Aden, said it had already made some difference in the climate, for whereas rain used only to fall once in two years now it falls as often as twice in three years : the percentage of difference, when one thinks of it, is considerable. Once in every two or three years five inches of rain will fall in one day, and then the tanks are filled. As the other water of the place, with the exception of two good wells, is mostly brack- ish, condensers are constantly at work producing the main supply. All the water is carried up to Government House in skins by bheesties. This is why it is so warm in the baths. These tanks, with the surrounding shrubbery and shaded seats, make a pleasant resort for the Adenites in their evening walks ; but we could not stay long to enjoy it, as it was getting dark, and we had three quarters-of-an- hour's drive back. The mountains looked very weird in the dusk, their gloom contrasting with the many-lanterned and busy Arab town of Aden, with dark figures in all hues of oriental costume flitting about among the flaring links and lanterns of the street stalls, the fiery sunset glow still touching the surrounding grey fantastic crests mth flame. The town lies so THE RETURN VOYAGE. 327 completely in a basin, that all round it rise these rigid sentinels of the natural rocky fortification. This ancient city was formerly, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, a great centre of trade be- tween the east and west. Green sandstone is the principal building material. It was pitch-dark before we got back to Government House, which is situated on a hill on the opposite side of the rocky peninsula. We were guided in our drive by the oil lamps placed at regular intervals along the shore road. The bungalow looked very cheery and com- fortable, as we arrived from the outer darkness, with its yellow pillared vestibule and abundant colour of rugs and pictures ; an agreeable mingling in the fur- niture of the colouring of the east, and the comfort of the west. I was given a nice large room with bath-room, dressing-room, and shaded verandah to lounge in. We were a pleasant little party of ten at dinner ; but in the midst of dinner a telegram was brought to the General that young Mr. Ingram, who had lately started from here with a shooting-party in highest health and spirits, had been killed by a furious rogue-elephant on the Somali coast. This sad news cast a gloom over the evening. We amused ourselves, before the ten o'clock break- fast, with looking through General Hogg's mas- terly and interesting sketches of Aden, Socotra, and elsewhere, and chatting with a general officer and his daughter just arrived from India in a mail steamer, during whose stoppage of a few hours they came up to see their old friend the Governor of 328 THE RETURN VOYAGE. Aden. Such visits as these are constant, and cer- tainly do alleviate what would otherwise be a ter- rible banishment in a scorching climate. The General kindly caused ostrich feathers, boas, baskets, curtains, Persian carpets, &c., to be brought up to Government House for us to see, and we made several purchases in this delightfully easy manner. The patterns of Persian carpets are made irregular as a defence against the evil eye ; as Chinese city gates are built in a curve or zigzag in order that the evil spirits may not enter. These spirits can only move in a straight line. This may be the origin of the promiscuous character of Japanese ornamentation. There is a good deal of trade between Aden] and the Persian Gulf. I walked down the cliff paths to the beach, formed in great measure of broken coral, to collect shells, when the sun went down sufficiently to make investigation tolerable. As I took the shells out of my pocket on my return some of them walked away, rather startling me : they had a sort of hermit crabs inside. A great variety of shells come abundantly into Aden from May to September mth the south-west monsoon. A dinner-party of twenty-five was given this day in honour of the Duke; the dining-room cooled by punkahs and large, coloured palm-leaf fans. There was a dance afterwards, with a good many ladies, most of them pre tty young married women. The army oflScers wear white linen round jackets, with broad red or blue silk waistbands, and white trousers. This looks very nice in a ball-room, and sets-off THE RETURN VOYAGE. 329 the ladies' dresses, which are very often of black lace, to advantage, more so than do the scarlet uniforms. The band played loudly but well for the dancing ; the ball closing just before midnight, as it was Saturday, with ' God save the Queen.' It is a drive of eight miles to the camp. The struggle for carriages v^ent on for some time after we had retired to our rooms. Everything was audi- ble through the cane-trellised verandahs, faced with matting. There are plenty of parties, sports, races, &c., given in Aden, as alleviations of life; allevia- tions only too necessary in a station where the mean temperature of the hot weather is 96°, and the mean of the cold weather 82°. The promontory of Aden is connected with the mainland of Arabia by a low, sandy isthmus, beyond which one sees the arid chain of hills of Yemen. In 1858, this isthmus was between two and three hundred yards wide ; but, in 1808, it was covered at each spring-tide, this being one of the instances of recession of water from the Arabian coast. Aden has experienced many vicissitudes, fluctuating with the rise and fall of adjacent countries. It may be considered an eastern Gibraltar, and is yearly rising in importance and usefulness. The remains of its ancient defences proclaim of what importance this place has been. It is naturally a very strong place, and rifles and heavy guns on its numerous ridges and cones would keep an enemy, at bay, who would find no shelter, nor means for counter-works. The camp at Aden 830 THE RETURN VOYAGE. is situated on some table-land above the sea-level, and surrounded by the irregular mountains, near the gate which commands the passage to the main- land. Few of the officers are kept here longer than a year. The Arabian export trade in coffee is mostly from Aden, Mocha having dwindled into a mere name. Numerous articles of the materia medica are ex- ported from here. Fever prevails at the changes of the seasons, principally quotidian intermittent. Small-pox and scurvy are the chief diseases of Aden, though no scurvy appears in the jail, unless when it takes the intensified form of the allied disease called beriberi. For an Asiatic station, it is con- sidered uniformly healthy for Europeans. Phthisis is very rare, but patients who have come here for the change have mostly died. No vegetables are grown in Aden, and its flora is limited and meagre; it is principally dependant on the mainland of Arabia and on Bombay for its supplies. Amongst the quadrupeds at Aden are those of burthen, of food, scavengers, and the usual companions of civilization. The horse, the ox, sheep and goats, camels and dromedaries. The sheep have large tails and drooping ears. Foxes and hyenas roam the hiUs ; the foxes are of silvery colour. Dogs, cats, and rats are very numerous, and, I have heard, do not molest one another ! Various kinds of kites are seen on the look-out for offal, and gulls of small size skim the water ; poultry is plentiful in the market. Of edible fish there is a great variety, plentiful, and fairly good. There are crabs, THE RETURN VOYAGE. 331 rock-oysters, and crawfish. The reptiles here are lizards and some snakes. The wood here used as fuel is the potash plant or ' lana.' From Arabia is procured ' gowaree,' a cereal largely consumed by the natives, and on which horses are fed. It is as highly stimulating as w^heat. The native population is said to be the refuse of India and Africa. The Somali men are generally very tall. The Jews at Aden appear the most degenerate of the brotherhood ; they are the street- hawkers of ostrich feathers. We greatly enjoyed our three days' refreshment at Aden. We left on Sunday at noon, the Governor coming oiF to the yacht with us, and saying ' Good- bye ' as we raised our anchor. A pleasant, genial man, and a capital host. His cheerfulness in the monotony of a station of this sort, where his vice- regal position only renders him the more lonely, is a proof of the value of such a resource as sketching ; it fills his solitude with such interest, and his ex- cursions to the mainland have a double charm. As the Governor sits at his desk doing his official writ- ing, he is fanned the while by a tall black servant in white, flowing drapery, with a very large painted palm-leaf fan. This tall Somali, seen against the large white columns of the room, is a perfect picture. We enjoyed a finely-clouded sunset over the chain of the Arabian hills of the Mocha coast, in all tones of grey and purple on the craggy mountains, these look- ing like waves petrified in the act of breaking, but very lofty as they rose one behind the other in what seemed an infinity of mountain desert. Arab dhows 332 TEE RETURN VOYAGE. sailing by us, with tteir broad lateen-sails touched blood-red with the sun. The islands of Zukur and Zubayir, with a chain of islets between them, were our next scenery, as night made us miss the Straits of Babelmandeb, with fortified Perim. The whole of the sea round the yacht was enlivened by an immense shoal of sharp-nosed dolphins of all sizes, leaping and bound- ing, mostly in pairs, leaping out of a wave together, in the blue freshening sea. They all fled before a cast of Mr. Butters' harpoon. The dolphins came again next day, in the roughish sea, but not in quite such large numbers. Again they fled before the harpoons. The tamest of sunsets for our last night in the tropics ; sky warm grey, sea cool grey ; only this, only this. A popular fallacy indeed is that legend of the gorgeous sunsets of the East. Colour abides in the northern skies. The Southern Cross still well above the horizon in a misty calm. Longer twilight now, I could read till nearly seven o'clock. On the following evening we passed close to St. John's Island, on the Tropic of Cancer, and another islet, a steep and a flat holm, and behind them the mountains of Berenice in Africa. I could only see three stars of the Southern Cross to-night : it was like quitting a friend. The wind rose suddenly as we entered the Gulf of Suez, and we could see neither coast. It often rushes violently down the ravines of the Gulf of Akabah. Old Indians return- ing home call this breeze the morning and evening doctor. The sea grew rough and a sand-storm filled THE RETURN VOYAGE. 333 in both horizons ; we only heard the hissing of the waves as the cold wind rose, and we put on speed to get into port the sooner. Lo, the storm as suddenly cleared and the waves at once began to fall, and they laid the dinner-table without the fiddles. Even- ing cast a rich plum-coloured bloom over the Egyptian mountains bathed in a solemn splendour of tawny sunset all subdued and very harmonious. We had several of these sudden squalls and changes in going up the Gulf of Suez, but at no time could we get a glimpse of the Arabian coast and Mount Horeb. The thermometer stood at 72° at the warm end of the deck-house, and we put on warmer dresses, putting away what Herries called our ' valuable dresses all of mosquito curtain.' Oh, the packing for Cairo and the packing-cases 1 'I've been thinking that them's some of his Grace's coats,' sighs pensive Chippy, wondering which packing-cases he had to screw down for England, and what we wanted to eat, drink, and wear. A red buoy not marked in the chart puzzles our navigators. It turns out to be adrift ; we must report it at Suez. We stayed over Sunday at Suez, anchored oppo- site a square building that we called Staflford House. The sea a glorious colour, azure, violet, and peacock- green. Since we were here they have called one of their donkeys Duke of Suthei'land, and one after Lord Stafford. ' Is that a compliment ?' we asked. ' They meant it kindly,' said Herries, seriously. 334 THE RETURN VOYAGE. Rupee meets florin at Suez : the same sized coin, but what a difference in the nominal value ! We went to Cairo by train, the yacht being sent through the canal to meet us at Alexandria. Siam's streets shine compared with those of Suez ; and the Siamese people are much more cleanly. The Suez people look as if they had never been taught to wash, not even in sand. Dazzling desert bounded by the blue belt of canal, the Bitter Lakes intensely sapphire in their setting of burning sand, with here and there a few dark palm-trees, and by them shadoofs at work ; the mirage making April fools of us on the other side. Malay houses are far superior to these sand-hovels ; but how far better than the Wat Sakh^t and cremation-grounds is the tiny neat cemetery where the rude forefathers of the mud hamlet sleep. Ismailia junction and patches of j^ellow barley increasing in size and number. Is it cemetery or ruins that we see at Tel-el-Kebir ? It is the ruins of houses, with the square window openings left. There is a neat large cemetery outside. Wherever the desert is eaten away into a de- pression there is moisture at once and palms spring up. The desert is always higher in level than the cultivated plain. There is water hereabout, and black earth with rich, varied cultivation and cattle and buffaloes. White ibises are seen in flocks ; palms and sycamore, terebinth and caroub-trees, and ripening harvests ; flax cut and laid in rows to soak ; emerald verdure of ' persim ' in fields and vegetables grass-packed in crates at the stations THE RETURN VOYAGE. 335 cogged water-wheels with strings of jars ; white- domed welys and mud-hovels, some square, some beehive-shaped. Zagazig has much increased since 1 was here before. It is quite a large town with pretty minarets. Red fezzes are universally worn, and costumes varied in fashion and fulness, but all the upper garments are cut V-shaped in front, whether white or blue shirt or black abba. For all the round mud-hovels and the rubbish- heaped roofs to the square ones, Egypt looks more prosperous and happy, less ground down than in the days of Ismail. The Zagazig cemetery is in a desert patch. Here the patches only are desert, oases or islets of desert. The Pyramids ! Though forty centuries look down upon us, bunches of roses, ever fresh, pink and young, are given to us. As the Indian song says : ' Tazeh b'tazeh. No beh no.' ('Fresh and fresh, new and new'). Here are lateen sails on the Nile, and here is Mr. Wright, the Duke's secretary, with the ■ courier to welcome us. We drive to Shepherd's Hotel. It feels like being at home again. The Duke is hailed by a friendly voice (slapped on the back really). ' How are you, dear old fellow?' ' You here, Charlie ! Dine with us.' ' I will.' Yes, indeed, we are next door to home. This is the Earl of D . He is jolly, and entertains us with European talk and cheery stories at dinner in the Duke's private sitting-room, filled with bowls of Marshal Niel roses. It is quite the season of 336 THE RETURN VOYAGE. roses here ; we shall follow the roses all the way home. Lord D told us with great spirit of how Val Baker Pasha went off with him once on a long chase ; General Baker's object being to ' catch Sam ' (Sir Samuel) on his way to the south ; and how they gave chase and at length succeeded in 'catching Sam.' There was plenty of the latest English news to tell, and it made it all the pleasanter hearing it well told. 337 CHAPTER XIV. EGYPT. Fool ! why journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervour, to gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacohara ? These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking oyer the desert, foolishly enough, for the last three thousand years: but canst thou not open thy Hebrew Bible, then, or even Luther's version thereof ? Sartor Resartus. Cairo to-day is like an oriental Paris in miniature in this new Frenchified quarter. The long Boule- vard Mehemet Ali now leads to the old, familiar citadel, where the fresh-faced English sentries and civil non-commissioned officers are a symbol of the best security for the continued tranquillity of Egypt. We gazed on the view of the pyramids from the saluting battery, and the closely-packed, crowded city roofs, and the domes of the city of the dead caliphs in the desert. It is a tradition that the pyramids were built in an apprehension of. the destruction of the city of Memphis by inundation, that some day a great wave of overflow must come from the Nile. How closely past and present are linked in the view from the battery ; the distant pyramids, invested with all the poetry of mystery and all the teeming associations of Napoleon's forty centuries, and a cannon, and the telegraph in the foreground. 338 EGYPT. It is pleasant to see the English soldiers up here in the citadel, and little English boys playing cricket after a fashion. This makes English domin- ation in Egypt appear more an established fact than if there were many more regiments at a distance. The soldiers look healthy and in good spirits. The cheerful sight of these English soldiers on the citadel is the explanation, the true cause of the increased prosperity, happiness, and freedom of the fellahin. It is no imaginary improvement. The Egyptian army is furnished with the S]pin|ider rifle. The origin of this was thus : Ismail sent for Schneider to come to Cairo — meaning Madame Schneider the singer, — and sent her a ring. The telegraph people sent the telegram to Schneider the gun-maker, who came, expecting an order, but mysti- fied about the ring. Ismail sent a message that if she would have a bath and refresh itself — this is a little mixed, but all the more natural to a German — that he would come and see her. The Khedive on be- holding him — the bathed and refreshed gunmaker — was somcAvhat taken aback ; but he felt obliged to give him an order for having had him over to Cairo. The tall-walled mosque of Touloun and others are more crumbling than they were of old, but glad- dening to the memory still. Nothing is ever re- paired in Egypt, any more than in Siam. The labyrinth of bazaars are unchanged, the pyramids are changeless, so I need say no more about them ; but the ostrich-farm was new to me, and it may be so to some of my readers. It is on the road to Heliopolis, EGYPT. 889 which road, beyond the barracks and the tamarisk- groves, planted to screen Cairo from desert invasion, is itself lined with villas and otherwise changed out of knowledge. We approach a narrow gate beyond a slight, frail bridge : it seemed as if our carriage must break it down, and precipitate us into the ditch filled -with bricks made of the Nile mud below. Here is the entr(^e to the farm, admission two shillings each person. This is entirely an Egyptian concern, managed and worked by natives. There are ostriches six months old in the first pen, these are still chickens. Those in the second pen, at seven months old, look full-grown, but they ai'e not plucked; these are for the most part black ostriches with white points. Then comes a pen of four-year-old birds. These plucked birds have a very comical appearance, but they look healthy and no less com- fortable than shorn sheep. A very few short feathers are left on. The birds are fed on biscuit something like ship's biscuit, the empty tins of which are piled hard by. Our pockets were filled with this hard biscuit, with which we fed a pen of three months' old chickens, and then we mounted to the gazabo, a sort of master's eye, commanding a view of the whole farm — a useful notion for most farms — and the view round Matarieh and Heliopolis. On the desert side two camels with their drivers were walk- ing away to Suez, a dreary march. The river, or palm-tree side of the view is more cheerful, with its domes, minarets, and village roofs half hidden away among the palm-trees, and here and there the bend of a lateen sail by which one traces the line of the z2 340 EGYPT. Nile. The obelisk of Heliopolis is concealed by clumps of trees. The Egyptian palm-trees look coarse and clumsy after the cocos and the slender graceful arecas. The date palm stems here look like stone rather than fresh vegetable stalks, they are so dusty. Then we were shown the incubating house, kept warm, but there is no thermometer to measure the temperature. The eggs take forty-five days to hatch, in drawers above a hot-water tank. ' Water ver' hot, nearly boil water,' but they could not tell the precise temperature. The eggs felt warm to the hand. In a dark door there is a hole cut for testing the eggs, which should look translucent and of a clear apricot colour; the bad eggs are clouded or opaque. Two hundred chickens are hatched here every year. The bad eggs are blown and sold at four shillings each. They keep the pens all dry and sandy. Ostriches live in the desert, so they make it like the desert, which is easy enough here. The stock of three hundred birds consumes twenty boxes of biscuit a day at one shilling a box, less than one penny a day for each bird. Each ostrich thus costs about thirty shillings a year to feed. I did not hear of their being fed on iron nails, buttons, and general rubbish to invigorate their digestions. The produce of each bird is one oke or two pounds and three-quarters, valued at twenty-five pounds sterling each bird. The profits seem large, but we do not know what risks there are ; we could EGYPT. 341 hear of none, and the market seems pretty steady. Few people seem to be employed, and wages are not high ; nor can rent be high at that distance out of Cairo, for it is only desert or nearly worthless land ; the plant is not expensive, nor the farm-buildings costly. They have an office on the farm where feathers are sold, very shabby ones at ' two bob ' apiece. We thought of the beauties we bought at Aden and Massowah, and scorned these specimens, and despised a few dyed, dressed, and expensive plumes on the counter. I suppose the good crop is all sold to the regular merchants, and it is chiefly a wholesale business. The Virgin Mary's Tree and the obelisk of Heliopolis were familiar to all of us. The Boulak Museum has been greatly enlarged of late years ; it contains an extremely fine collection of Egyptian antiquities. Most enjoyable is it to sit awhile in its garden, among the silent statues by the Nile with its lateen sails and palm-fringed banks. Here we regretfully said good-bye to Mr. Cobham, who now left us for his government at Cyprus. He had been a pleasant companion, and, besides being an accomplished agreeable man, he was always a walking guide-book among the works of art and the architectural objects of interest in the towns. We had several cloudy and even showery days during the week we stayed in Cairo, and, though late in April, 'it was chilly. We went out bazaaring a good deal, and enjoying the fun of donkey-back. The Duke is cut out of the shopping, for, as Lord D says, ' If " Staf " came, it would spoil all the 3i2 EGYPT. bargains.' An earl would seem next door to a duke to be overcharged, but Lord D says tbey tried on with him at first and now they find it is no use. Besides, he speaks Arabic too well, that is, their sort of Arabic. However, the Duke beat us all in the end, for Parvis, at the great curiosity-and-cabinet-work shop, (that is tucked away behind the butcher's bazaar and the fruit-market) gave his Grace a fine baksheesh. He admired a vase. ' It is yours,' said Parvis, and had it put in a packing-case immediately along with the things the Duke had bought. We came home to put down our things, and then the whole stafi" went ofi^ in a procession of three car- riages to see the twirling dervishes, a curious per- formance. A dozen-and-a-half or so of men in ■white full skirts, white cloth jackets and tall white felt tarbooshes, twirled with arms extended, the right palm turned up, the left hand turned down. One of them had a most comically sanctified ex- pression as he leaned his head on one side and turned up his eyes, the others were more business- like. A few twirled in the centre and the rest twirled round them, two priests in black keeping the outer circle filled evenly at regular intervals. Then the dervishes crossed their arms over their breasts and bowed, an aged priest in a brown dress and blueish turban intoning some verses of the Koran and keeping time : they walked past him and then began to twirl as before ; this was repeated several times. The ladies of the harem looked on from a latticed gallery above, and music of tom-toms and fifes went on in another gallery. .EUYPT. 3i3 One can only conjecture meanings for this curious ceremony, and wonder if David's dancing before the ark was anything like this. To think that this has been going on every Friday for centuries in Moslem lands is a great mysterj'. After staying here a short while, we left this round mosque, through the walled and vine-trellised passages by which we had entered, and drove on a long way in the outskirts of the city to see the howling dervishes, a still more extraordinary per- formance. Seats were set for us round a floor of matting on which was laid a circle of sheep-skins, brown and white. At first there were but few dervishes, uttering prayers and cries, calling on the name of Allah, and making swaying move- ments, but their number increased gradually to about two dozen, surrounding a priest in a long white cloth garment, a very good-looking man, who chiefly stood in front of what might be called the ' mirhab,' or holy place. Many of the dervishes had green turbans; most of them, but by no means all, looked as if they lived on charity. There were many movements of the performance, each one as it proceeded being worked up to a rapid and excited pitch. Loud breathings, uttered first to the right hand then to the left, getting louder and more stertorous as the men were urged on by the priest in the centre, or by an elder who sometimes took his place. Another priest in white chanted verses from the Koran in a wild shrill cadence of roulades and jackal-like utterances, to which the circle of dervishes either groaned, or roared, or harshly 34-1 EGYPT. whispered a burden of accompaniment interspersed with shouts, yells or shrieks, many of these coming from some quite small boys who also worked busily in the dervish circle. Then the men divested them- selves of their upper garments, which were received by an elder who laid them aside ; they let down their shaggy hair from under their turbans — some of the dervishes wore it quite long like women. Most of them took oiF their turbans or tarbooshes and gave them to the elder, retaining the white skull-cap, others having only their shaggy hair, which they tossed wildly backwards and then forwards over their faces in the energetic succession of deep bowings, groaning meanwhile, or making unearthly sounds in all manner of wild play with the lungs. One beggar- dervish, looking like a maniac, was frightfully active ; a young man in sulphur-coloured silk garment looked as if he must become insensible with his exertions ; some of them took no such trouble, but one wild creature in a striped gown when on the point of having a fit, was supported in his place by those on either side of him. I never saw any act of worship or form of devo- tional ceremonial half so extraordinary as this. Tambours, cymbals, and tom-toms were played to encourage the men to yet wilder frenzy ; then, at the moment when it seemed they must drop or die, the whole movement would suddenly cease. One very curious movement was swaying sideways to a succession of tones sung or howled in a chromatic scale, closing, when they could shriek no higher, with a wild scream. At the close of all, the chief EGYPT. 345 priest put on a black gaberdine instead of or over his white one, and he gave them the kiss of peace or else shook their hands, which they kissed and raised to their foreheads ; then they, and we all, de- parted, baksheesh being given at the doors by the various couriers and dragomans of the spectators. Extremes meet : perhaps the nearest thing I have seen to the performance of the howling dervishes is Signor D 's pianoforte playing. Swing, swing, u]j and down, thump, thump perpetually ; like chop- ping suet. When human nature could hold out no longer, the audience clapped and — encored him. We climbed to our carriages up the broken road deep in the dust of demolitions, for they are con- structing a new quarter here, and hills of cut chaiF quarried for the food of horses and donkeys. We drove to the hotel to lunch, rest, and wash before going to the races, which are very like races else- where. It is a capital race-course at Gezireh. Lord D was very busy on the ground as starter, &c., and a lot of celebrities came to chat with us, includ- ing Mr. Cope Whitehouse, the inventor of the Libyan lake scheme for irrigating the entire area of cultivatable land in the Nile valley and the Delta. He has discovered a deep depression in the desert, which, he said, would make a lake with a surface considerably larger than the Lake of Geneva, and two hundred and fifty feet deep. This he proposes to fill from the enormous excess of the Nile which, even in the worst seasons, escapes into the sea, and which, if stored, would fertilize a quantity of land only partially and occasionally cultivated, or wholly 346 EGYPT. neglected, amounting to over three millionacres. He explained to us his scheme for forming a lake and canal, or river with sluice-gates, in the Libyan desert, to fill the lake when there is a very high Nile, and to supply Egypt with water for irrigation when there is a very low one. There will be reserve force no end for electrical purposes, and every possible benefit to the country. The enthusiastic projector carries one away with his beliefs, if not by his arguments, almost as much as Jules Verne does. Many gentlemen we spoke to think Mr. White- house's scheme quite feasible, but they prefer to think of drainage before any new irrigation proposal. The following may give an idea of Egyptian morals. An Egyptian gentleman of high position was turned out of the English club in Cairo for cheating at cards ; he had a card up his sleeve. The Egyptians only said, ' Poor fellow, perhaps he could not have won in any other way.' Robbing the public by embezzling shareholders' money is still more easily excused. I went alone to the mosque of Mehemet Ali, and, alas ! destroyed an illusion I seemed to remember of translucent golden colour and warm light most exquisite. The lofty dome, large carpets, and clear glass lamps are still striking, but there is no high art, and where is the luminous golden glow ? Lost with my own youth and youth's wonderment, I suppose. Moral: Beware how you return to look upon a remembered loveliness. You will lose it for ever. It is only things of the highest beauty that will stand this test ! We daily had Nubar Pasha or other notabilities EGYPT. 347 about US or dining with us. The Khedive himself called while his Grace was out. He offers his own vice-regal saloon for the Duke and his party to travel in. We are invited to lunch on board the Peninsular and Oriental steamer Gwalior on our arrival at Alexandria on Monday morning. On Sunday I went to the pretty English church here. The Duke tells me he laid the foundation- stone of this church a good many years ago. The shops near here, and many others, are shut, and there is generally a nice Sundayfied feeling about Cairo. The manager and the visitors' ser- vants in the hotel sit under the trees and awnings, and in the open vestibule in front of the hotel. The lower shrubs in the garden are coated, almost caked, with dust, but the bright green acacias and other leaves, reared high above the dust's influence, are fresh and beautiful. Most people are out driving. The street carriages almost all have pairs of horses ; the khavasses still dress in Greek costume, with white, flowing sleeves and full white flowing skirts. I am glad Lord D is to accompany us to Alexandria, he is so full of fun. Luigi, the manager, was just now scofling at Lord D 's portmanteau. ' What a shabby box, just like a German governess's !' He turned, and there was Lord D laughing over his shoulder. Luigi was the most discomfited of the twain. Nubar Pasha was at the station to see the Duke off, and Monsieur Salandino, the banker, gave us ladies large and lovely bouquets of roses. Our grandeur makes the villages of brown huts 348 EGYPT. with palm-trees like brooms sticking up in them seem all the poorer ; but there are orchards and ripe corn, and these people have always the wealth of a golden land and sapphire sky. Alas ! for our own poor cockneys ! Of course we, in our select isolation, have no chance of doing more than look upon the Alexan- drian belles and the dark-eyed women, with their black veils and blue outer dresses, who flutter about the stations, and hear what life in general has to show in the other portions of the train. We, on our 'pedestal where we grow marble,' can only hear and see the outside laughter and the fun of travel — without participation. The Duke himself some- times gets a bit of amusement out of travelling. Once, as he was standing on the door-step of his own saloon-carriage at the station, a bagman saun- tered up, and entered into chat. ' Nice carriage this. Whose is it ?' ' Mine,' said his Grace, naturally. ' Gammon !' said the questioner, laconically. You see, the Duke had not got his stars and garters on. The fellahs preferred the old way of being taxed ac- cording to their crops, rather thanourplan of an equal annual taxation. Our way is best for the land and for the revenue, but not so favourable to their laziness. Egypt is still what it was in Joseph's time, a great corn-field and onion-bed. It is enlivened by white ibises, yoked buffaloes, camels in strings, cows, asses, grey-backed crows and blue-gowned labourers. There is a great fair at Tantah. EGYPT. Sjg ' These Zouaves in light blue, with yellow trim- mings and red fezzes, are General Baker's men,' said Lord D ; ' and here is Said Pasha's bridge, that he had cut and then sent a carriage-load of his obnoxious relations over it, and tumbled them into the river.' The Duke (who loves machinery of all sorts) justifies the use of these steam water-wheels against all our clamour of 'But where is the picturesque? Where the immemorial past ?' These light, airy things are being dusted out by utilitarian civiliza- tion, as they dusted out this railway-carriage with feather-brooms. But the bee-hive and manure- roofed hovels still remain as unsavoury as ever, neither swept out nor swept away. Damanhoor is a big, populous place ; a fair is going on here too. The pomegranate-trees are in blossom, and plantains grow, though shabby and blown to ribbons by the high wind. There are tall bul- rushes, like those of Moses' cradle by the Nile, and lotuses on the Mahmoudieh canal ; and here is Lake Mareotis, with white sails gliding along its mirage- like surface. We drive through the handsomely re-built streets of Alexandria. The houses remind one of Paris ; showing the recuperative power of a commanding situation. See Alexandria to-day, thrice regenerated and prosperous still, notwithstanding the deviation of trade from the Nile to the Suez Canal. We were taken to lunch on board the Gwalior, and the Peninsular and Oriental Company's agent sent baskets of beautiful flowers for the yacht. The 360 EGYPT. Gwalior set sail for Vemce. immediately after we left. We drove out to see Mr. Cornish's pump-works for supplying Alexandria with fresh water from the Nile by the Mahmoudieh canal, which joins the Rosetta branch of the Nile at Atfeh, forty-five miles distant. They bring the water from thirty feet below the surface at the works, which are situated oh the brick-baked sand-hills outside the city, where Alexandria lies enveloped, one might say buried, in her history. Twenty thousand tons of water are raised in the twenty-four hours. These works supply the city with high-service, after filtering it. The water is filtered through washed sea-sand in two filter-beds, a sort of cradles, set in banks clothed with mesembrianthemum and aloes, and shaded by palm-trees. They keep one filter-bed full daring nine days, and then go to the other dry filter- bed, which has been cleansed meanwhile. The sand is washed and used again. There is a very marked difference between the dirty and the cleansed heaps of sand. The sand-washing machine is simple : a zinc barrow, a cylinder of wire-netting, and an Archimedean screw below. The clean sand is de- livered up a shoot, backed with matting, into the waggons again, on the same principle as elevators for hay, &c. There is a large mud deposit from the sand. Mr. Royle, author of 'The Egyptian Campaigns, 1882 to 1885,' whom we met on several occasions, and who dined with us on board the Sans Peur, gave us several interesting facts concerning Mr. Cornish and his water- works. EGYPT. 351 The water supply of Alexandria, after the bom- bardment, began to be a source of anxiety. It came from the Mahmoudieh canal, adjoining the position taken by Arabi at Kafr Dowar. Through- out the bombardment, and subsequently, the town had been abundantly supplied by the efforts of Mr. Cornish. When, previous to the bombardment, all his countrymen and the great mass of Europeans sought safety afloat, he refused to desert his post. He contrived an elaborate system of defence for the water- works. It comprised an arrangement for throwing jets of steam at any possible band of assailants, as well as a line of dynamite bombs, cap- able of being exploded by means of electricity. The upper part of the engine-house was converted into a kind of arsenal, into which he and his men could retire as a last resort, and where rifles and ammunition were in readiness. During the bombardment, the works happily escaped injury. On the morning of the 11th of July, 1882, the day of the bombardment, Mr. Cornish visited the auxiliary pumping-station on the canal, more than a mile distant, as usual. From the roof of the engine-house, Mr. Cornish and his companions (nine Europeans in all) watched the progress of the bom- bardment, until the shot and shell, which whistled overhead, from the vessels firing on Fort Pharos, compelled them to descend. Meanwhile, the pumps were kept working as in ordinary times. On the afternoon of the 12th, when the mob of rioters, who, with their petroleum, etc., did the 352 EGYPT. whole of the damage that devastated the actual toAvn of Alexandria, left off for the time their work of destruction and quitted the town, the majority of them passed a few yards from the works, and in- dulged in curses and execrations at the ' Christian dogs ' within. "With humane forethought, two large jars of Avater were placed in front of the gate and kept supplied from within. Thousands of thirsty natives coming from- the dust and smoke of the town stopped to drink, and, after cursing Mr. Cornish, passed on. To whatever cause it may be attributed, no attack was made on the works, and their courageous director survived to receive the congratulations of the Khedive and of his own countrymen. Mr. Cornish had the decoration of C.M.G. conferred on him for his own conduct on this occasion. By-and- by Arabi made a dam by which all further flow of the Nile was stopped, and on the 2 1st of July Arabi caused salt water to be let into the Mahmoudieh canal by cutting the dam separating it from Lake Mareotis, thereby considerably aggravating the diffi- culty of the water supply. Mr. Cornish held his own, notwithstanding, and condensed the water, and they — I do not exactly know who, but some authority who had the means — gave Mr. Cornish a thousand pounds and a decoration for staying at his post during the war and supplying the town and the army with water. The ruins of Alexandria were shown us in photo- graphs, and we had seen enough of the ruins still quaking and looking ghastly even in the Place des EGYPT. 363 Consuls to be sure that the pictures were not exag- gerated. There are Bedouin tents just outside the fortifications on the hardened sand-hills which are ovei'grown with a red sort of mesembrianthemum much used in making soap. Alexandria is not unhealthy for English people, even their children are rosy and look thriving, and it is a good place for learning languages ; children naturally pick up Arabic, Greek, and Italian, besides the French and German and other lessons that are paid for. Leaving the city at the Rosetta gate, we drove on by the side of the Mahmoudieh canal by way of the water-tunnel six feet below the road, which carries the water to the pumps. The opposite bank of the canal is lined with a nearly continuous Arab village, and beyond Lake Mareotis extends the boundless Sahara. The acacia (lebbek) trees here do not come into leaf until June, in Cairo they are green in April. Bamboo grows here, but the stems are not large in diameter. They are justly proud of Monsieur Antoniades' garden, notwithstanding the marble statues with which it is disfigured, of which they are prouder still. Here the bougainvillea is still in full bloom, though it is fading in Cairo, and has been over for many weeks in Suez. The Tunisian palm was a novelty to us in the way of palms, proud as we were of our knowledge of this subject. Roses, especially cluster-roses twining up the trees, bloom in delightful profusion in these gardens. A hundred and twenty men are employed to work these hundred and thirty AA 854 EGYPT. acres. (At Trentham forty men work twenty acres.) At about ten minutes' walk beyond the farthest summer-house in the garden a Roman (or Greek) temple and tomb have lately been discovered. We turned off in our return drive to see Pom- pey's Pillar. A Greek inscription upon it shows it was erected by Publius, prefect of Egypt, in 296 A.D., in honour of Diocletian. Its height alto- gether is one hundred feet, the diameter at the base ten feet. It is of red polished granite, though no one on seeing it would suspect it of polish any more than Cleopatra's needles, whose loss is now bewailed by the Alexandrians, who have few objects of in- terest left to attract visitors. This new quarter of Alexandria is built of stucco on stone. Here is a large German hospital, a branch of Kaiserswerth. We passed the large Jesuits' College, a new building erected on the site of something destroyed in the fire. One often sees brown-clothed Jesuits in the town. There is one wood-paved street in Alexan- dria, but mostly the streets are well-paved with large stone slabs. The population of Alexandria is two hundred and thirty thousand ; that of Cairo four hundred and thirty-five thousand. As we were going off to the Sans Penr, we heard the Khedive's hymn played at sunset from an Egyptian man-of-war, and then ' God save the Queen.' They began the ' Marseillaise,' and stopped abruptly, for no perceptible reason. Lord D , full of his good stories as usual, told us a yarn of the Little Western, the open boat that EGYPT. 855 sailed across the Atlantic, how she was sighted by a British ship, a liner, which changed her own course and hailed her with benevolent intentions. ' Wall, what can we do for you ?' calls out a cheeky Yankee shoemaker, the skipper of the Little Western ; 'do you want stores or a doctor?' The British captain in a rage gave the order to his steersman never, never again to change their course unless for a ship on fire or actually sinking. ' Lappy ' inspected the troops on shore, and swam back to the yacht again, with a sense of duty fulfilled. He knows how to amuse himself. A wonderful supply of flowers was sent us by Mr. Chapman from his garden at Ramleh. The saloon of the Sans Peur was filled with roses, quite realizing Alma Tadema's picture of Heliogabalus. Had we known of this picture, we might have arranged a tableau of the scene by letting down the awnings filled with roses. Bertha, Aleck, and Charlie were at their wits' end to make garlands quickly enough, and, on looking at the dining-table, Herries severely said he supposed they meant his Grace's guests only to have roses and lilies, and such-like salads for dinner. 'A feast of roses is all very well,' he growled j ' but the chef has planned a different bill-of-fare for to-day.' We wore as many roses as we could crowd on, button-holes at every button. The Duke had his dinner-party in the saloon. We can use the saloon comfortably now in this cool AA 2 356 EGYPT. weatlier. Thermometer 68° in the saloon after dinner. ' Sir Constantine Who did Herries say ?' whispered the Duke. 'What is the white-haired gentleman's name?' ' It sounds like " dear old ducky," but it is spelt Zerouacchi,' said Lord D , who knew everything. We had our first strawberries-and-cream (23rd of April), and Aleck played the pipes, to the great enjoyment of some of the party, and the astonish- ment of others. Mr. Mc wished he could have Aleck to dine with him on shore. ' What, as a commercial speculation ?' his Grace asks, in his half-serious yet quietly-humorous voice ; and he relates how his piper McAlister, in his kilts, was once upon a time — at Berlin — taken for the British ambassador. Lord D also played us several reels and pibrochs on the pipes. We were invited to meet a party of Alexandrian celebrities and heroes of the war at luncheon at the club in the Place des Consuls. This club — on the first-floor above the bourse — ^has fine and very comfortable rooms for dinners, meetings, baccarat, whist, billiards, everything. The luncheon-table was, as usual here, smothered in flowers. We could hardly see the table-cloth for the fresh roses strewed about. We had the Alexandrian native oysters. The oyster-beds supplied from England have thriven here. The oysters are good, but not quite so delicate as English natives. We drove out afterwards to Ramleh, a favourite sea-side place, where many of the merchants and EGYPT. 857 rich European inhabitants of Alexandria have their country houses. We walked in divers private gardens and on the beach gathering shells, and thinking of this place as delightful winter-quarters. It is a pleasant drive out here, but there are frequent trains to and from Ramleh. As we rowed out again in the gig at sunset, the Egyptian evening hymn was played and ' God save the Queen,' and again the ' Marseillaise ' stopped abruptly at the fourth bar as before. Wherefore ? ' Perhaps they don't know any more,' was the Duke's very natural solution. 'Tell me about that Sicilian trip, and I'll write it down,' said Lady Clare to Lord D ; ' because I find, when a man has left, one forgets all he has ever said.' 'There's for you, Charlie,' says the Duke. Many a true word spoken in jest. We had the charming prospect of Sicily before us on our way to England. Lord D bought two of the amusing monkeys of one of the sailors. The rest of the men were pathetic over their frolicsome, tally cousins, as they salaamed their farewells. ' Good-bye, old fellows ; that's the last you'll do for us,' said the sailors, mournfully. The lively creatures had whUed away so many hours at sea. The parting was quite touching. All of us had some fruits, or nuts, or cakes to give them before they were put into a basket-cage covered with grass. Dear monkeys, they will get on better in Cairo than in London, even if they weathered the 368 EGiPT. Bay of Biscay. Only ' Lappy ' did not regret them : they pulled his hair, and grinned at him, and he never understood their fun. Another consignment of flowers came before we weighed anchor, at noon of the 25th. We have been ' bunched ' as much as petted visitors are in America. The whole air breathed roses. The fine, large harbour at Alexandria is bounded by a sandy, broken coast-line. The steam was up, ready to whirl us off; the gig was manned, to carry Lord D on shore. Ano- ther farewell to an agreeable fellow-traveller. We consoled ourselves by thinking and tactlessly saying, ' Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.' 'Well, if you will quote Watts' hymns, I had better leave at once ;' and Lord D ran down the steps into the gig. Our handkerchiefs were out. — Farewell ! APPENDIX. NOTE A. (Page 66)— The Sea-Serpent. I am fully aware of the ridicule gtire to be cast on any assertion of having seen the sea-serpent, or rather a sea- serpent; for, in the face of the abundant testimony of eye-witnesses and tradition, we cannot ignore the prob- abihty — amounting almost to certainty — of there being various marine monsters, of whose appearance we are informed from time to time by amazed spectators. It is greatly against the interests of true science that we should attempt to conceal such facts as come to our knowledge for fear of ridicule. No entry of most of these appearances is made in the log of ships generally, or report made of them, for fear of ridicule. The editor of the Zoologist says : ' I have long since expressed my firm conviction that there exists a large marine animal unknown to us naturalists. I totally reject the evidence of published representations; but I do not allow these imaginary figures to interfere with a firm conviction.' Professor Owen is the main scientific opponent of sea- sei-pent stories, but he admits the scientific possibihty of 360 APPENDIX. every part of the best authenticated descriptions, except- ing the vertical undulations, of which all descriptions speak. This vertical sinuosity is structurally impossible in any of the serpent tribe. And yet this is the very point most dwelt on by those who have seen the creature. One of the committee of the Linnsean Society (of Boston) describes the movement he saw as ' not that of the common snake, either on land or water, but evidently the vertical movement of the caterpillar.' The kraken, or sea-serpent, is usually described as dark brown or black, and remarkably active; and some estimate it as about as long as a large steamer, say two hundred feet. The striking features of the leviathan I saw taking his pastime in the calm blue waters off the coast of Travan- core, Hindostan, on the late afternoon of the 22nd of January, 1888, at about two hundred yards distance from the yacht Sans Peur, were the flatness of its sides, its silvery luminousness, its bridge-like curves in gentle but decidedly vertical motion. If I had any previous idea about the sea-serpent, it was of something between a whale and a boa-constrictor : round, dark, and ugly. The creature I saw was flat-sided, luminous, and beautiful. This appearance, together with the vertical movements, makes some of the authorities at ■ the Natural History Museum in London think it may have been an extraordinarily large sort of ribbon-fish (acanthopterygii taeniformes), which, however, is seldom known to exceed twenty feet ; while, to judge from the apparent size of the two silvery-diapered curves of the creature that I saw, its full length might well have been the length of the yacht itself. From the httle I know of the ribbon-fish, I do not think the serpentine form I saw was of that family. I, the wife of a naval officer, and accustomed to the sea in many climates for many years, am not likely to be easily deceived about an APPENDIX. S61 appearance, though I admit that even skilled naval officers may at times be so ; and the vertical undulations always recorded might sometimes be accounted for in the manner described in Vice-Admiral Gore Jones' letter to the Times of the 20th of October, 1883 : ' The sea- serpent, now supposed to be a long line of soot from a steamer's dirty flues, of a very sticky nature . . . the wave-motion of the tide giving it an undulating, life-like appearance ... a strong tide and fair wind would give considerable velocity . . . .' To this I oppose the remark- able silvery luminousness and strongly-marked diaper- pattern of my example. NOTE B. (Page 209.) Calotropis procera, of the asclepias family, is known to some as one of the many varieties of plants bearing what is called Dead-Sea fruit. It is named from KoiK6<; (beauti- ful), and rp6'7n<; (a keel), in allusion to the ' corona.' It is a shrub reaching fifteen feet in height, covered with white, woolly down; leaves four to ten inches long, intensely green when the light shines through them ; common in Abyssinia, tropical Asia, &c., often growing on old walls, &c. The stems exude a plentiful milky juice, which in Siam is popularly supposed to be poisonous. I was warned not to taste it or let it fall on my fingers. Its flower varies in colour in different localities ; it is usually pink or lilac. In Siam I found a white variety, or white tinged with pink. It is a plant worthy of attention. In India the bark is used as a medicinal plant; the dried milky juice is considered valuable in cases of dysentery. It is not in the British pharmacopoeia. The fibre can be spun into the finest thread. Calotropis procera furnishes the substance called mudar, which is used as a diaphoretic in India. It contains a principle called mudarine, which gelatinizes on being heated, and becomes fluid on cooling. BB S62 APPENDIX. NOTE C. (Page 301.) Darwin reminds us how ' The gardeners of the classical period, who cultivated the best pear they could procure, never thought what splendid fruit we should eat : though we owe our excellent fruit, in some small, degree, to their having naturally chosen and preserved the best varieties they could anywhere find.' Perhaps, then, the wonder is that the tropical fruit should be as good as it is, rather than no better. When the dwellers in the tropics cultivate for flavour and quality, we shall have fine fruits from our trans-oceanic empire. THE END. London : Pi inted hy Duncan Macdonald, Blenlidm House.