THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO Unb tber JnMan Studies BY MICHAEL MACMILLAN B.A. (Oxon.) Fellow of the Bombay University, and Professor of English Literature at Elphin stone College, Bombay LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1895 RY MORSE STEPHENS ^e PREFACE With the exception of the paper on Hered- ity and the Regeneration of India, originally delivered as a lecture to the Elphinstone College Union, the following papers have appeared before in the pages of the Bombay Gazette, Calcutta" Review, and Madras Christian College Magazine, the proprietors of which have kindly consented to their re- publication. The quotations from Gemelli Careri are taken from the translation in Churchill 's Voyages. 512926 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. The Globe Trotter in India Two Hun- dred Years Ago : (i) gemelli careri on his way to india i (2) gemelli careri in the persian gulf and indian ocean . . . 13 (3) gemelli careri in portuguese india 25 (4) a visit to the great mogul . 2)3 (5) gemelli careri and his times . 4 1 II. An Anglo-Indian Man of Letters . 51 III. Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases . 77 IV. Heredity and the Regeneration of India . . . . .115 V. Some Indian Proverbs . . .141 VI. Indian and Homeric Epics . . 171 VII. Morality of the Mahabharata . . 193 Gbe (Slobe trotter in 3nMa Zxoo Ibun&reb JPeare ago* GEMELLI CARERI ON HIS WAY TO INDIA. Gemelli Careri, one of the early European travellers who visited India before the days of the English supremacy, was born at Naples in 1651 and died in 1725. He began his journey round the world, in the course of which he visited India, on June 13th, 1693, and ended it on Dec. 3rd, 1699. Although it was family troubles that drove this Italian doctor in civil law to start on his long journey, he must have had a natural inclination for travelling, as he had already made a tour through Europe in 1683. Before commencing the recital of his travels, he gives his readers some hints as to the various routes to India and as to what the eastern traveller ought to take with him, so that his first chapter might have done very well as an 2 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA introduction to a seventeenth century Murray's Handbook to India. Of the routes to India avail- able in those days lie mentions four. The first was to sail round the Cape in a French, English, Dutch or Portuguese East Indiaman. But by this route there was " much danger to life or at least to health in the midst of these horrible tempests and tedious calms, which keep the spirit in con- tinual alarm, while the body is entirely fed on spoiled food, and one drinks no water which is not tainted and full of worms, all which is due to the sojourn of thirty or forty days that the vessel has to make on the Equator. This voyage may cost from 100 to 200 pieces of eight accord- ing to the part of the ship in which you have your berth." The second route was to go by Leghorn or Malta to Alexandria, and thence to sail up the Nile to Cairo, and continue the journey in Mahometan vessels through the Red Sea. The third and commonest route for Europeans was to sail from Leghorn to Alexandretta or Aleppo, and thence proceed to Ispahan by a choice of five caravan routes, all of which, however, were in- fested with robbers. The fourth and safest route, which Gemelli Careri followed himself and re- commended to others, was to go to Constantinople and then on across the Black Sea to Trebizond. TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 3 As to the manner of travelling, he recommended those going to the East not to provide themselves with large sums of money or letters of credit, but to travel with merchandise. " The traveller thereby provides himself with a natural means of inter- course with all nations, and even the most barbar- ous welcome a merchant who brings them the comforts of life, and think that in pillaging or ill-treating him they would offend in his person the right of nations and expose themselves to the same treatment in the form of reprisals." The best merchandise to take to the East would appear at this time to have been the Waterbury watches of the day, and the charms and balms which were the precursors of Holloway's ointment and pills. " One should take these round and long crystals in the shape of an olive made at Venice, because Orientals buy them at a high price to ornament their arms and legs, which they always leave bare. The theriac of Venice is still the most esteemed in the East and at Ispahan. It can easily be bartered for the precious balm of Persia, that is called the balm of the mummy. A large fortune may be gained by making such an exchange with one of the king's eunuchs, for whom it is collected. To make very considerable gain with a small capital and less trouble, it will be necessary to buy 4 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA at Malta these petrified serpents' tongues and eyes found in the place where St. Paul, according to the common tradition, caused all the venomous animals of the island to assemble and die. They can be bought wholesale at a sou apiece, and in Persia and in India are sold for as much as two crowns, and for much more in China ; experience having made plain that the serpents of these countries, however venomous they may be, do no harm to those who wear one of these petrified tongues inside a ring in such a way that the stone touches the flesh. Emeralds sell well, because their colour is extremely pleasing to Mahometans. Cheap watches are in demand there." The traveller is also recommended to provide himself before starting with a certain amount of medical and surgical skill, including, if possible, the ability to operate on diseased eyes. Provided with such knowledge and a medicine box, the traveller was " esteemed and caressed " everywhere in Turkey, Persia, and India, and had the chance of not merely paying his way, but returning home rich by the exercise of the healing art. After this pre- liminary discourse on choice of route and equip- ment, Gemelli Careri proceeds to commence the account of his own journey. On what he saw and did before he began to TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. o travel straight for India we need not dwell. Suffice it to say that he spent some ten months in preliminary travels through Egypt, the Holy Land, and Turkey, before he landed at Trebizond on April 21st, 1694. From Trebizond he went through Asiatic Turkey and Persia, visiting on the way Erzeroum, Kars, Erivan, Ispahan, Shiraz, and finally reaching the Persian Gulf at Bander- Abbas after a land journey of 176 days. On his way through Turkish Asia he met with so much in- civility, obstruction, and extortion, that he looked forward to the day when he should cross the border as a release and respite from his troubles. He tells us that, as soon as he got to the further side of the river that parted the Turkish and Persian Empires, he alighted down from his horse to kiss the Persian soil that he had so long yearned to reach in order that he might be delivered from the frauds of the Turks. Persia, however, though an improvement upon Turkey, was not in every respect a traveller's paradise. The officials and people were more courteous to strangers and un- believers, the caravanserais were all large and magnificent brick buildings, " so uniform and well proportioned, that they are not inferior to the best structures in Europe," but the Shah's messengers had an unpleasant practice of requisitioning 6 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA travellers' horses for their own use, and the road police exacted continually small fees for the protec- tion they afforded. It is remarkable that not only in Persia but also in Turkey our traveller, though occasionally threatened, was never actually de- spoiled by highway robbers. Perhaps the horrible punishments inflicted on thieves were sufficiently strong inducements to limit the dishonest to the safer and more profitable employment of petty ex- tortion. Thus it was that not many adventures of an exciting character were encountered on the way. At Erzeroum, owing to a difference of opinion about paying the duty for a gun, a Turk ran after Gemelli with a knife, and would have stabbed him had he not been cleverly collared by Mr. Prescot, an English merchant, who acted as consul in that town. Between Ispahan and Shiraz, one of his travelling companions, the Reverend Father Francis, had to break the head of an obstinate Armenian to settle a disputed charge. But with these exceptions the travellers traversed the whole distance from sea to sea without coming into actual conflict with official or private persons. Although no sensational adventures are re- counted in Gemelli's diary of this journey, it is in other respects full of interest. A traveller through Asia in the seventeenth century was sure TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 7 to meet strange characters among the religious men and merchants who had left Europe to make their fortunes or preach Christianity in distant countries. Most of his travelling companions were Roman Catholic missionaries. We have seen how one of them gave a specimen of muscular Christianity in a controversy with an Armenian. Another of them was Father Villot, a Lorraine missionary on his way to Erzeroum, who knew the Armenian language perfectly, " and invented a game like that of the goose to make the Armenians remember the divine mysteries, calling it a game of devotion, because the said mysteries were printed on it." The question of the pay and comfort of missionaries, which has lately been discussed with some violence, seems to have already cropped out in the seventeenth century ; for Father Dalmasius, as he toiled up the Armenian hills on foot, exclaimed, " Come hither, gentlemen of the Propaganda, and see what a condition we are in here. Come along you who do not give a penny, and I am satisfied you will give all you are worth to be at home again." Among the secular characters whom Gemelli met on his travels, a good specimen of the baser sort was a Frenchman who turned up at Erzeroum on the 8th of May. and "next day became a Mahometan, despairing of ever obtain- 8 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA ing his pardon for two duels he fought, killing two men in France." He pretended he had been sent by the French King into Turkey as a spy. As a specimen of the more prosperous adventurer let us take James Norghcamer, Agent of the Dutch Company in Ispahan, whom Gemelli found " shoot- ing turtle doves in the garden which was delicious for its fountains and curious rows of trees. After we had drank merrily, he showed me a dozen horses and mares, the finest any monarch in the world can be master of, as well for mettle as the curious spots of several colours, not inferior to the finest figure, nor could a painter colour them to more perfection. Thence he led me to see his little house of sport, where he had ten hawks fit for all sorts of birds and beasts, with servants to look to them ; a custom they have learnt from the Persians, whose greatest delight this is. He had several pipes of gold and silver set with jewels for those to smoke that came to bear him company by his fish pond. In short, he lived great in all respects." On his way through Persia, Gemelli had the good fortune to be in Ispahan at the time of the death of the Shah, so that he records the funeral ceremonies of one king and the coronation of an- other. Toward the end of September Scia-Selemon TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. V (Shah Sulaiman) began to have a continual suc- cession of apoplectic fits, and although he dis- tributed 3,700 tomans among the poor and ordered all prisoners to be released, he died on the 29th. The obsequies were performed on the afternoon of August 1st. " An hundred camels and mules led the way, loaded with sweetmeats, and other provisions to be given on the road to a thousand persons that accompanied the body. Then came the body in a large litter, covered with cloth of gold, and carried by two camels led by the king's steward. On the sides went two servants burning the most precious sweets in two fire-pans of gold, and a multitude of Mullahs saying their prayers in a very noisy manner." In such state, surrounded by all the great officials on foot and with their garments rent, the dead body of the king went to the tomb of his ancestors, and the peasants on the way were expected not merely to rend their garments, but also to gash their flesh in token of their grief. The coronation of the new king was by no means an equally imposing ceremony. When the day considered auspicious by the astrologers had arrived, "there was heard an ungrateful sound of drums and trumpets play- ing to Scia-Ossen (Shah Husain) then seated on the throne, and in this mean manner was the 10 THE GLOBE TROTTEH IN INDIA coronation of so great a king solemnised." Five days later Gemelli was at a royal banquet. " First came several sorts of fruit and sweetmeats in golden dishes. Then three great basins of pillau, red, white, and yellow, covered with pullets and other flesh which was distributed in gold plates. I being at the ambassador's table ate no pillau, because I cannot endure butter, and therefore tasted only some fruit seasoned with sugar or vinegar. The king had the same diet on a table covered with cloth of gold." The gold dishes sound grand, but what shall we say of the king's 1,500 horses, " noble creatures with gold troughs before them and great pins of the same metal to tie them by the feet ! " At the court were Akbar, son of the Great Mogul, and many am- bassadors, including one from the Pope and another from Poland, the latter of whom was trying in vain to rouse the Persians to declare war against Turkey, and so create a diversion in favour of the Eastern European powers then engaged in war with the Ottoman armies. At first it appeared that the new king was something more than an Amurath succeeding an Amurath. Love of drinking had ruined his father in mind and body, and Scia- Ossen signalised his succession by forbidding the use of wine on pain of death, and breaking all TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 11 the vessels containing wine in the palace. Two poor wretches caught drinking wine were publicly bastinadoed till their nails dropt off, although they pleaded ignorance of the edict. But the hereditary disposition soon proved too strong for his reforming zeal, and before Gemelli left the country Scia-Ossen promised to become as good a toper as his father. To the antiquarian the most interesting passage in the account of the journey through Persia will be the elaborate description of the palace of Darius at Persepolis, which, owing to the delicacy of the carving and the architectural skill displayed in it, was in Gemelli's opinion such a splendid relic of antiquity, that " there neither is nor ever was a wonder in the world to compare to it." Of more special interest to those of us who live in India is his account of his visit to the Goris, the Zoroastrians who remained in Persia, refusing either to be converted to Mahometanism or to leave their native country. They lived in one long street a mile long, adorned with two rows of green cinar trees. It is interesting to compare their manners and customs as they appeared to an observant traveller in 1694, with the manners and customs of the modern Parsees. They are very careful, he tells us, "to kill all 12 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA unclean creatures, there being a day in the year appointed on which men and women go about the fields killing the frogs. They drink wine and eat swine's flesh, but it must be bred by themselves and not have eaten anything unclean. They abstain but five days in the year from eating flesh, fish, butter, and eggs, and three other days they eat nothing till night. Besides, they have thirty festivals of their saints. When any of them dies, they carry him out of the town or village to a place wall'd in near the mountain. There they tie the dead body standing upright to a pillar (there being many for the purpose) seven spans high ; and going to prayers for the soul of the person departed, they stand till the crows come to eat the body ; if they begin with the right eye, they bury the body and return home joyfully, looking upon it as a good omen ; if they fall upon the left eye, they go away disconsolate, leaving the body unburied." The whole account of the Goris deserves to be examined carefully by the Parsees of to-day, and, if so examined, wall be a good test passage by which to form an opinion of the general accuracy or inaccuracy of Gemelli's narrative. TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 13 GEMELLI CARERI IN THE PERSIAN GULF AND INDIAN OCEAN. It was at Bander Congo that Gemelli Careri first found himself within the sphere of Indian in- fluence. Indeed, Bander Congo might also be re- garded as a part of Portuguese India, so great were the powers and privileges granted to the Portuguese in this port. There they received by treaty from the king of Persia a tribute of five horses and eleven hundred tomans a year. There they had their flag flying and exercised jurisdic- tion over all Christians in the town, and we are even told that their predominance was so great that no Christian could be converted to Mahomet- anism there. Indeed, in the words of our author, they had " almost as absolute a command as if they were in Goa, not only over their own subjects, but all Christians who passed that way." At the time of his arrival the Hindu merchants were adorning their houses inside and out with fine cloth and lamps for the Diwali. They re- ceived the stranger hospitably, and after sprinkling him with rose-water entertained him with an ex- hibition of Indian dancers. This account of what he saw is interesting as being, perhaps, the first 14 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA description of an Indian nautch by an European pen, although the performance has been so often described by Western travellers to the East since his time. The dancing women were "clothed some in Persian, others in Indian dress, and sang in both languages. The former had a dress of striped silk which did not reach lower than the calf of the leg and widened below like a petticoat. Under- neath they had a long pair of drawers which descended to the instep and were ornamented with a circlet of silver. They had also a large number of gold and silver rings on their toes and fingers which were painted with imma or red earth, as also their teeth, the inside of their eyes, and their foreheads were with black earth. They wore a little cap bordered with a band of gauze, half silk and half thread, whence fell their long hair down to their waists. A long yellow and red veil covered their shoulders and came eddying as far as their arms. Besides double earrings they had in the middle of their nostrils a great gold ring, and other pendants fastened or glued to their foreheads. But of all these ornaments the most uncomfortable seemed to me to be a stud gilt or of gold which they passed through and through the curved part at the top of the nose, which appeared to us Europeans a great deformity. They had a gold TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 15 carcanet or a collar of pearls, according to their means, and beautiful bracelets. In this dress they began to dance with much gravity to the sound of a drum and of two pieces of metal, together with the bells they had on their feet. Afterwards they excited themselves by a thousand gestures and a thousand immodest postures, cracking their fingers with much grace and from time to time mingling songs with the dance, which pleased me so much that I wished to see them more than once, and others also who danced in a different manner in another house." While Gemelli Careri was staying at Bander Congo, the town was startled by a characteristic Oriental tragedy. The Persian custom-house officer, being displeased with the conduct of two rich Arab merchants, took advantage of a visit they paid him to poison them with diamond dust, which he put in their cups of coffee. One of them drank the coffee, but the other courteously gave his cup to the uncle of the Persian official. Both of those who drank the poisoned coffee died in agony on the following night. The servant who had pre- pared the coffee disappeared, and it was said that he had been killed for fear he might reveal his master's crime. At Bander Congo our traveller was first intro- 16 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA duced to the practices of the Hindu religion. While there, he visited under a great banyan tree two Hindu temples, and saw the Indian settlers on the Persian coast taking their offerings of rice and butter to the silver-headed and silver-footed image of Bhawani. Every morning and evening they went to the seashore to scatter rice on the water for the benefit of the fishers and to bring back water to wash the face and ears of their families. The Indian merchants in Persia made their best profit out of pearls. Gemelli saw them separating the large from the small ones by passing them through copper sieves as if they were making shot. By taking them to Surat they could make thirty per cent, gain, if they managed to smuggle them in without being detected by the custom-house officers there. In spite of the nautches, the shooting and the Roman Catholic services that Gemelli enjoyed at Bander Congo, he was eager to go on to India. His friends, Father Francis and Father Constan- tine, had taken passages for themselves and for their slaves on an English ship bound for Surat, and wanted him to accompany them. But he would not embark on an English vessel, fearing the rigorous custom-house at Surat and the French who lay in wait for English ships attempting to TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 17 enter that harbour. So he preferred a Moorish ship which was taking to Damaun eight horses that the king of Portugal had received as tribute from the king of Persia. Although he got his passage for nothing, he had good reason to repent of his choice before he reached his destination. He got on board at five o'clock on a Friday- night. As ships were not allowed to supply them- selves with water at Bander Congo for fear of a water famine there, they touched at Angon, but, finding the cisterns there dry, had to go on two miles further to the island of Kechini, where they took in a supply of brackish water. Gemelli landed on the island to shoot and take notes, and found that the inhabitants knew how to manufac- ture the dried fish familiar to us under the name of Bombay ducks. " They eat there excellent pil- chards, as also in the island of Angon. The people of the country have no better food. They have them dried in the sun and keep them as substitutes for bread during the whole year. Fine pearls are also obtained in these two islands, but the islanders like their pilchards better, as something more sure and easy to fish." On the first of December he sailed past Ormuz. Nothing remained to give evi- dence of the ancient wealth which won its im- mortality in Milton's sounding verse. " It grows 18 THE GIOBE TROTTER IN INDIA neither tree nor herb, being all covered with very white salt which causes its barrenness. The water which falls from heaven is the only swe6t water to be got for drinking there, and it is collected in cisterns for the garrison of the fort." Gemelli evidently kept a diary on his voyage, ex- tracts from which we will endeavour to construct out of his detailed narrative, taking care to add no- thing, but abridging and omitting when convenient. Dec. 4th. Entered Indian Ocean without losing sight of land. The Moors continually occupied in rubbing their eyelids with a black drug, good, they say, for the eyes, pulling out with little pincers the hair of their beards where they don't want them to grow again, and covering the nails of their feet and hands with red earth. They are, however, much less insolent in their behaviour to strangers than the Turks. The captain and crew pay me much respect on account of the recommendation of the Superintendent of Bander Congo. Dec. 7th. Becalmed before uninhabited islands, used as retreats by corsairs. Excessively hot. Indian winter seems like an Italian summer. The Persians on board early in the morning strip them- selves naked and throw plenty of salt water over their heads. At evening a favourable wind took us in sight of the island of Pishini. Our head TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 19 still to the east, in order that after making the point of Diu we may sail more easily towards Surat and Damaun. Dee. 8th. False alarm. Vessel coming to meet us. Amused to see the eagerness with which the Moors take their rusty matchlocks on which they base their hopes of defence, as the ship has only eight cannon, bad and worse served. The ship sheers off, showing a red flag in token of amity. Dec. 9th. At daybreak a ship in the east. The Moors so frightened that, taking their arms, they begin to howl like dogs barking at a distance. They won't get into the skiff to board the vessel, as I advise them to do, offering myself to go with them. Presently the suspicious vessel sails away northwards and puts an end to the cries and fears of the Moors, who thought it was one of the corsairs, called Sangans, inhabiting the isles and marshy places on the continent near Sind and Gujarat. In the evening a calm. Saw a Terrankin or ship of Kanas. We had some reason to fear that it might take advantage of the darkness of night to surprise us, so I advised the captain to give powder and shot to twenty soldiers who were on board, and to have the artillery loaded and set sentinels ; for the Moors travel like brutes without 20 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA any foresight, waiting for the enemy to be upon them before they distribute ammunition and load. Dec. 10th. The terrankin out of sight. Dec. 11th. An annoying calm. In the evening a sailor caught a fish weighing five pounds. As it was the first caught on the voyage, the sailors put it up to auction, according to the custom of the Moors, aud fastened it to the mast. After a brisk competition a merchant bought it for twenty-two abasis (about six crowns), which were divided among the sailors for a dinner. Dec. 12th and 13th. Contrary winds. Changed our course to avoid a boat supposed to be manned by Sangans. At night, real danger in the form of a squall. Dec. 14th. Squall worse and wind contrary. The ignorant sailors resolve to return to Kechini, although we see an English vessel keeping steadily on her course. In vain I encouraged them and assured them that the tempest would not last. They would not be persuaded. However, I had prophesied truly : the storm stopped before night, and we returned to our course, the captain swear- ing that it was for love of me that he turned the ship's head eastward. Saw for the first time the flying fish. It rises a gun shot above the water and falls back again, TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 21 its wings being unable to sustain its weight of ten or twelve ounces. It quits its natural element when pursued by the fish called by the Portuguese the abnous. This fish, which eats the others, is blue, of good flavour, and enough for four persons. Dec. 15th. A furious wind. We are in danger. A tremendous fall of rain all night, wetting those below as well as those on deck. The Moorish women in the cabin under the poop weep bitterly, while their husbands on deck call upon Mahomet to save them from the death which they think near. Dec. 16th. Fine weather again. The sailors think they descry the continent at Giaske which belongs to the Baluchis, and we make for it, but can't regain what we lost the day before. All this was due to the incredible ignorance of the pilot who came at, a venture, and at Congo had never been anything but a tobacconist. The captain, who saw the danger to which we were exposed by the pilot's inexperience, addressed a long discourse to me and told me that I ought to take charge of the ship. I excused myself, and told him that the old pilot, after having chewed opium all day to add to the imbecility due to old age, sailed through the night with the two topsails lowered and the head of the ship 22 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA towards the land, thereby exposing the ship to the danger of running into rocks. If the captain wished to save us from perishing, he must spread all sail and turn the ship's head to sea. He immediately gave orders to this effect, and prayed me to attend to the compass and watch over the management of the ship, because, in addition to the fact that he no longer had confidence in the ignorant pilot, he believed that I understood navi- gation and naval charts. As the danger was common, I yielded to the captain's prayer, con- ducted the working of the ship, and made the soldiers take their arms when any ship appeared in sight. So that on the slightest occasion they immediately call for the Aga Gemelli, maintain- ing that as an European I ought to know every- thing so high is the opinion they have of us. Thus they make me play the part both of com- mander and pilot. However, as I don't know much more than them, all that I do is to guide the ship southward during the day. As sleep is a necessity, at night I leave the direction to the ignorant pilot, who robs us of all the progress made during the day. Dec. 17th. The result is that, though we spread five sails and had a good wind, we find ourselves in the same place as we were in eleven days ago. TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 23 Such are the delays to which those are exposed who embark on Moorish vessels. Towards even- ing we sight some towns in the kingdom of Sind, a province of the Great Mogul. Dec. 25th. I have such a quarrel with the pilot, who did not work the ship at all during the night, that I refuse any more to have anything to do with the working of the ship. Dec. 28th. At daybreak the ignorant sailors and pilot think they have made out the town and fortress of Diu, which projects into the sea more than any other. On this glad tidings the captain distributes to all the crew, according to the Moorish custom, cacciari, which is a mixture of black beans, rice, and lentils. They eat it in Indian fashion, dipping one hand in a plate of melted butter and filling it in another plate with the cacciari, which they carry to the mouth by handfuls. The sailors turn out to have been mistaken. Having recognised their error, they turn the ship's head towards the south for Damaun in such a way that the wind, from being contrary, becomes favourable. Dec. 29th. I have already said that the pilot understood neither the compass nor charts. This was how it happened that to-day, seeing them- 24 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA selves near land, they all persuaded themselves that it was the village of Maym (Mahim ?) near Bassein, a town belonging to the Portuguese, and therefore they had arrived at the end of their voyage. All the crew manifested great joy, and still more the merchants, who believed that they had saved their persons and their goods. As for the ignorant pilot, proud of having conducted the ship so successfully to India, he went round with a paper in his hand to mark down what the passengers promised him for having shown such diligence. When he came to me, I told him I would give him nothing, because I knew well that the land we saw was not what he thought it was. Gemelli's suspicions turned out to be well founded. When they landed they found to their alarm that, instead of being at Mahim, they were at Mangalore in Gujarat, 400 miles north-east of Damaun. However, after that they got on rather better, and on January 8th, 1695, our traveller found himself, to his great joy, actually anchored off Damaun, after a voyage of 1,200 miles, which would have been only half as long if they had had an efficient pilot. TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 25 GEMELLI OARERI IN PORTUGUESE INDIA. The farther Gemelli was from his native land, the better he was pleased. We have seen how he kissed the Persian soil as soon as he passed the boundary line between the Turkish and Persian Empires. His emotions of delight seem to have been even stronger when he landed at last on the strand of India. " A traveller," he remarks, " who has been long separated from his native land, and who has suffered all kinds of fatigues, does not feel greater joy at returning home and finding himself surrounded by his friends, to whom he tells what he has seen, than that which I felt on arriving at India after a very wearisome voyage. The pleasure belonging to the mere recital of all the precious things produced by this rich country may indicate the great satisfaction I enjoy at this moment, when I am on the point of seeing them and forming an opinion of them for myself." Damaun, the first town in India that he made the acquaintance of, did not fall beneath his ex- pectations. When he landed, he found himself in a very beautiful town built in Italian style and divided by large parallel streets. The houses were tiled, and each was surrounded by its own garden 26 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA planted with fruit trees. The windows, instead of glass, were fitted with oyster shells so beautifully prepared that they were transparent. Gemelli was very much impressed w r ith the grandeur of the Portuguese in Damaun, whether he looked to their tables, their garments, or the number of slaves who carried them about even the friars in richly ornamented palanquins. For amusement they indulged in hunting boars, wolves, foxes, hares, and tigers. About tigers and boars Gemelli was told at Damaun a strange piece of natural history which we may believe or not, according to the amount of our credulity. " As the tigers," we read, " are always going on the tracks of the boars, these latter, taught by nature to defend themselves, roll in the mud and then dry themselves in the sun until it has made them a very hard crust. In this way, instead of becoming the prey of their enemies, it often happens that they tear them with their sharp pointed tusks, having the whole time to kill them that the tigers are engaged in digging their claws into this mud to tear it." Gemelli was rather particular about his food, and found nothing very good to eat in Damaun, except the bread and the fruits. The beef and pork were bad, and sheep and goats were seldom killed. The necessity of strict abstemiousness was generally recognised. TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 27 Any intemperance was sure to be punished by terrib]e attacks of disease, incurable, or that could only be cured by such violent burning of the body that those who recovered bore the scars of the hot iron upon them till their dying day. The dread of these diseases, and, still more, of the remedies, ought to have been a sufficient deterrent from ex- cessive indulgence in the pleasures of the table. From Damaun Gemelli visited Surat, at that time the principal port in India, " all nations in the world trading thither, no ship sailing the Indian Ocean but what puts in there to buy, sell, or load." All its wealth of spices, cottons, silk, gold stuffs, muslins, agates, etc., was defended only by a weak wall, and the streets were narrow, and the houses were made of mud. Gemelli only stayed a few days there, and does not give a detailed description of the city. The next town he visited was Bassein, still in its glory as a great Indo-European city, although destined to be wrested from the Portuguese forty- three years later, after having been in their pos- session for more than two centuries. What Gemelli admired most at Bassein was the Cassabo, a great pleasure ground fifteen miles long, full of delightful gardens planted with all kinds of Indian fruit trees, and kept green and fruitful by continual watering : 28 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA "so that the gentry, allured by the cool and delightful walks, all have their pleasure-houses at Cassabo, to go thither in the hottest weather to take the air and get away from the contagious and pestilential disease called Carazzo that infects all the cities of the northern coast." Our traveller attended a wedding of some people of quality at Bassein, and, wondering that the bridegroom gave the bride his left hand, was told that such was the Portuguese custom, the idea being to leave the bridegroom's right hand free to defend his bride. Gemelli had himself a tempting offer of marriage at Bassein. He was a Doctor of Civil Law, and there was no Portuguese Doctors of Civil Law in India. So. as an inducement to keep him in the country, he was offered as wife a lady with a por- tion of 20,000 pieces of eight (Rs. 44,000), and was promised legal work that would bring him in 600 pieces of eight (Rs. 1,320) a year. Having no in- clination to live in those hot climates, he answered that, though offered 100,000 pieces of eight, he would never be induced to quit Europe forever. Whether the lady was of prepossessing appearance or not is a point upon which our curiosity is not satisfied. From Bassein Gemelli made an expedition to the Buddhist caves at Kennery, twenty miles from TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 29 Bombay on the island of Salsette. As neither Tavernier nor any other European traveller had described them before him, he gives a long and elaborate account of their architectural features. We must not expect to get from him valuable historical information about their origin. He lived in an age not famous for minute historical investi- gation : so, hearing that the construction of the caves was ascribed to Alexander the Great, he accepts the statement with simple faith on account of the " extraordinary and incomparable workman- ship, which certainly could be undertaken by none but Alexander." The Greek conqueror seems to have been found as useful in India as the Devil in England, when an author had to be found for great works of unknown origin. Thus the cutting of a way through the rock for the Tanna creek was also attributed to him. No doubt the two conjectures supported each other, and were regarded as con- clusive evidence of Alexander's presence as far south as Bassein. So, Gemelli was quite satisfied and did not trouble his head to question the re- ceived belief about the construction of the caves, but devoted all his energies to giving a full description of them, which is too long to be here reproduced. Anyone can nowadays visit them from Bombay with very little exertion. Only it 30 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA is to be hoped that few who visit the caves may- have their inner man as ill fortified for the expedi- tion as Gemelli's was. Landing hot and dry on the island of Salsette, he was offered by Father Edward, to whose hospitality he had been recom- mended, nothing more sustaining than a glass of water and two preserved citron peels, which were so covered with ants that he could only eat one. On the following day, when he was starting early for the caves, the same Father Edward told him the bread was not baked yet, and that he could dine in a village half way. When he got to the village indicated, he found nothing to eat there but a little half-boiled rice and water, so he went on his way fasting. That he was able on an empty stomach to make such a thorough investigation of the caves as he did reflects great credit on his energy and perseverance. It is sad to relate that, when he returned to Father Edward's roof after his labours, he fared little better, and " went to bed, quite spent with hunger and weariness, wishing for the next day that he might fly from that wretched place." Perhaps, if Gemelli had been more hospit- ably treated in Salsette, he might have ventured on to Bombay and told us how it looked in 1695. Unfortunately he did not choose to do so, but went straight back to his friends at Bassein. TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 31 Gemelli next visited Goa, the metropolis of Portuguese India. Here he saw most plainly the evidence of the decline of Portuguese power in India, which he attributed chiefly to the hostility of the Dutch, and to the fact that the conquest of Brazil diverted the greater portion of Portuguese energy to the New World. The effect of these causes was visible in the decline of Goa from its former greatness, manifested by the compass of its walls, which extended full four leagues, with good bastions and redoubts, a world too wide for the city of some 20,000 inhabitants that Gemelli visited in 1695. He found its trade declining, and its wealth and grandeur impaired " to such a degree that it was reduced to a miserable condition." The commencement of the decline of Goa was supposed to have been indicated seventy-four years before Gemelli's arrival by a crucifix on a hill in Goa which " was found with its back miraculously turned towards Goa, which city from that time has very much declined." There was another miracul- ous crucifix in the church of St. Monica's Augustin- ian nuns, one of whom had died in the monastery " with the reputation of sanctity, she having the signs of our Saviour's wounds found upon her, and on her head, as it were, the goring of thorns, whereof the archbishop took authentic informa- 32 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA tion." But, of course, the greatest object of religious veneration at Goa was the body of St. Francis Xavier at the church of Bon-Jesu. Gemelli, as a great favour, was allowed to view it, although for nine years past the Jesuits had allowed it to be seen only by the Viceroy and some other persons of quality. It was in a crystal coffin, within another of silver, on a pedestal of stone ; but they expected a noble tomb of porphyry stone from Florence, ordered to be made by the Great Duke. Gemelli tells us that " since, with the Pope's leave, the saint's arm was cut off, the rest of the body has decayed, as if he had resented it." It was on account of this supposed resentment that the Jesuits were unwilling to show the body to every- body who wanted to see it. Of the European nations in India, Gemelli evi- dently much preferred the Portuguese to the Dutch and English, which preference is natural enough, as he was a zealous Roman Catholic. He specially commends Portuguese politeness. " Courteous," he remarks, " is the Portuguese nation," and elsewhere he speaks of " the Portuguese civility, which in all places I found they practised more towards me than towards their own countrymen." One good story he tells that shows how the Portuguese occasionally abused their knowledge of the ceremonial law of TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 33 etiquette, and how an Indian prince outwitted them. The son of an Indian king about to visit a Portuguese Governor got an inkling that an attempt would be made to sit upon him by giving him no chair to sit upon : so he gave to two slaves instruc- tions of such a kind that he both avoided the affront and effectually turned the tables on the Portuguese magnate. " Being come into the Gov- ernor's room, and seeing no chair brought him, he caused his two slaves to squat down, and sat upon them. The Portuguese admired his ingenuity, and presently ordered chairs to be brought. After the visit the two slaves stayed in the Governor's house, and their master being told of it by the Governor's servants, that he might call them away, he answered he did not use to carry away the chairs he sat on." The Indian prince's ingenuity in converting his slaves into chairs rivals that of the Highland chief who won a bet with an English lord by turning his tall retainers into candlesticks, as related in Scott's Marquis of Montrose. A VISIT TO THE GREAT MOGUL. Gemelli only made one expedition into the in- terior of India, but what he saw at the end of his short journey is of considerable interest to the 34 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA historian. He started on March 5th, 1694, from Goa to visit Aurangzebe's camp at Galgala. His journey there and back was very uncomfortable, for he tells us "it is far different travelling through the Mogul's country than through Persia or Tur- key, for there are no beasts for carriage to be found, nor caravanserais at convenient distances, nor provisions ; and, what is worse, there is no safety from thieves. He, therefore, that has not a horse of his own must mount upon an ox ; and besides that inconveniency must carry along with him his provisions and utensils to dress it, rice, pulse, and meal being only to be found in great towns inhabited by the Mogulstans. At night the clear sky will be all a man's covering or else a tree." He acknowledges, however, that these re- marks are only applicable to the neighbourhood of Beejapoor, which was then the battle-field of India, and harassed by continual war. In the northern parts of the Empire, near Surat or Ahmedabad, travelling was safer and more com- fortable. He started, as we have seen, on March 5th, employing three natives to carry his luggage, whom he kept up to the mark by a liberal use of his cudgel, " because they will never do good service either for fair words or money, but run away as soon as they can, and on the other side TWO HUNDKED YEARS AGO. 35 when thrashed they load themselves like asses." On the 7th, not far from Portuguese territory, he saw the dismal spectacle of a sati. The victim "being come to the place appointed went about undaunted, taking leave of them all ; after which she was laid all along with her head on a block in a cottage twelve spans square made of small wood wet with oil, but bound to a stake that she might not run away with the fright of the fire Lying in this posture, chewing betel, she asked of the standers-by whether they had any business by her to the other world, and having received several gifts and letters from those ignorant people to carry to their dead friends, she wrapped them up in a cloth. This done, the Brahman who had been encouraging her came out of the hut and caused it to be fired, the friends pouring vessels of oil on her that she might be the sooner reduced to ashes and out of pain." Such sights were ordinary incidents of a journey through India two hundred years ago. In spite of the difficulties and dangers of the journey, which latter must have been considerably enhanced by his practice of breaking idols when- ever he thought he could do so unobserved, our traveller managed to reach his destination on March 17th. He was hospitably received by the 36 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA leading Christians serving in Aurangzebe's array. They told him it was a pleasure and diversion to serve the Great Mogul, because no prince paid his soldiers better, and, if they did not choose to tight and keep guard properly, they were only punished by losing their pay for the day they were convicted of such dereliction of duty. They were also not deprived of the consolations of religion by their bigoted employer. The Koman Catholics in the army had a convenient chapel with mud walls in which two Canarese priests officiated. The Christian officers were allowed to enforce strict discipline. Gemelli saw two Ma- homedans convicted of being drunk bound to a stake and cruelly lashed for their offence by order of a Christian captain, whom they humbly thanked for inflicting upon them such a salutary chastisement. The whole number of the forces in the camp was estimated to amount to 60,000 horse, and a million foot soldiers, for whose baggage there were 50,000 camels and 3,000 elephants. Taking into account the camp-followers, mer- chants, artisans and other non-combatants, Gemelli described the whole camp as a " moving city con- taining five million souls and abounding not only in provisions but in all things that could be desired." We are not told how much space was occupied by TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 37 this huge assemblage, but everything was on a vast scale. The Emperor's and princes' tents occupied an enclosure three miles in compass, defended by palisades, ditches, and five hundred falconets. On the 21st of March, Gemelli had the honour of being admitted by the great Emperor to a private audience. The imperial tents were sur- rounded by an outer or inner court which had to be passed before getting into the presence of the Emperor. In the outer court Gemelli saw kettle- drums and other musical instruments, and a gold ball between two gilt hands, which was carried by elephants on the march as the imperial ensign. In the second inner court was the durbar- tent. Passing through this, Gemelli found himself in the presence of the Emperor, who was seated on rich carpets and gold-embroidered cushions. Au- rangzebe asked him what country he belonged to, why he had come, and whether he wished to enter the imperial service. To this Gemelli answered full courteously that he had come to the camp " only out of curiosity to see the greatest monarch in Asia, as his majesty was, and the grandeur of his court and army." The Emperor next asked him questions about the war in Hungary between the Turks and the European powers, and then dismissed him, as 38 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA it was time for the public audience. Gemelli attended the public audience too. The Em- peror came in, leaning on a staff forked at the top, and took his seat on a gilt throne. He had a white turban tied with a gold web and ornamented by one very large emerald surrounded by four smaller ones. Two servants warded off the flies with long white horse-tails, and another stood with a green umbrella to protect him against the sun. In person he was " of a low stature, with a large nose, slender, and stooping with age. The white- ness of his round beard was more visible on his olive-coloured skin." Although he was now seventy-eight years old, he endorsed petitions with his own hand, writing without the help of spectacles, and from his cheerful smiles he seemed to take pleasure in his work. While the audience was going on, there was a review of the elephants, that the Emperor might see if the omrahs to whom they were entrusted kept them in good condition. After this the princes of the blood royal, including the Emperor's great-grandson, came in, clothed in silk vests adorned with preci- ous stones and gold collars. After paying their obeisance by putting their hands to the ground, on their heads, and on their breasts, they sat down on the first floor of the throne on the left. The TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 39 picture of the old Emperor with a benevolent smile on his countenance, and his children and grand- children clustered round his throne, is delightfully suggestive of domestic felicity. It is a pity to mar it by thinking of the many deeds of blood against his own kindred by which he obtained and established his throne. He knew that it was the hereditary practice of his dynasty for the son to rebel against the father. He therefore blamed the folly of his father, Shah Jehan, who prepared the way for his own overthrow by giving the command of his armies to his sons, although he " might have learnt by many years' experience that the kings of Hindustan, when they grow old, must keep at the head of a powerful army to defend themselves against their sons." Gemelli prophesied that, not- withstanding all his precautions, he would come to no better an end than his predecessors, but history has not verified the prediction. Next to the Emperor himself, the most interest- ing person that Gemelli saw at Galgala was Sicun- der Adil Shah, the deposed king of Beejapoor, who went to the royal tent to pay his respects with a handsome retinue. " He was a sprightly youth, twenty-nine years of age, of a good stature, and olive-coloured complexion." His capital had been taken by the army of Aurangzebe in 1686, 40 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA and, according to Meadows Taylor, he died in captivity three years after. But Gemelli relates that he saw him alive at Galgala in 1695. King Tanak Shah of Golcondah, who had lost his throne and liberty about a year after the fall of Beeja- poor, was not with the Emperor at Galgala, but imprisoned in the fortress of Dowlutabad. Gemelli heard interesting details of the fall of Golcondah from European officers in the Mogul army who had taken part in the campaign. At Galgala Gemelli was unfortunately deserted by his interpreter and other attendants : so he was reduced to the painful necessity of proceeding on his return journey without any servant, and had " to venture all alone through a country in- fested with robbers and enemies to Christianity." He started on Sunday, March 27th, after first hearing mass at the mud-built chapel in Aurang- zebe's camp. He had great difficulty in getting eatable food on the way. On the second day of his journey, he writes : " Desiring a Gentile by signs to make me a cake of bread, the knave, instead of wheaten flour, made it of nachini, which is a black seed that makes a man giddy, and so ill-tasted that a dog would not eat it. Whilst it was hot, necessity made me eat that bread of sorrow ; but I could not swallow it cold TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 41 though I had none for three days." Trees and bushes afforded him shelter by night. On April 2nd he was stopped by Mahrattas, who inquired of him by signs whether he could shoot a musket or cannon. On his replying in the negative they let him go. The hardships he encountered on this journey were so great that when he got back to Goa on April 5th he was very ill. His friends in that city, who had tried to dissuade him from making the expedition into the interior, were not surprised that he returned in such sorry plight. w The Father Prefect, seeing me so sick, told me that had happened because I would not take his advice. I answered ' Hew patior telis vulnera facta meis.' Both he and Father Hippolitus en- deavoured to recover me with good fowls, to which the best sauce was their kindness ; and thus I recovered my flitting spirits." GEMELLI CARERI AND HIS TIMES. We do not propose to follow the footsteps of our seventeenth century globe-trotter on the rest of his journey round the world. Naturally our interest in him diminishes when he sails away from the port of Goa to travel farther east. Yet from a more universal point of view his travels are 42 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA interesting to the end. From Goa he sailed to Macao, on the way passing by the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra and making a short stay at Malacca. From Macao he made a seven months' tour in China, visiting the great cities of Canton, Nanking and Peking, and personally inspecting the Great Wall of China. He was graciously admitted to an interview by the Emperor of China, as he had been in India by the Great Mogul. From China he sailed to Manilla, and then across the Pacific, which he did not find at all pacific, to Acapulco. He stayed nearly eleven months in Mexico, visiting the principal cities, travelling through the country and risking his life in danger- ous descents into the bowels of the earth to see the silver mines. In the end of the year 1698 he took ship on board the Sevilian, joined the Spanish plate fleet at Havana, and sailed with it across to Cadiz. Finally he concluded, in December 1699, at Naples, his voyage round the world, in which he had spent five years five months and twenty days of his life. It does not take so long to get round the world now. Gemelli believed many strange things ; but if he had been told that in two hundred years it would be possible to make the circuit of the world in eighty days, he would have been inclined TWO HUN DEED YEAES AGO. 43 to laugh in the face of his informant. It took Gemelli more then eighty days to sail across the Atlantic to Cadiz, and his voyage through the Pacific from Manilla to Acapulco extended to over twenty-nine weeks. So that in bis time it was not advisable for any one who had not a very large amount of spare time at his disposal to under- take a journey round the world. The account given of the hard and disgusting fare obtainable on this long voyage across the Pacific might be read with advantage by luxurious travellers of the present day, who are ready to grumble if their dinners at sea are not quite such as are supplied by the best hotel on land. Gemelli made arrangements with the boatswain to supply him with food. On flesh days he got " tassajos fritos" that is, steaks of beef and buffalo dried in the sun or wind, " which are so hard that it is impossible to eat them without they are first well beaten like stockfish, nor is there any digesting them without the help of a purge." On fish days he had rotten fish and vegetables like kidney beans full of mag- gots that swam on the top of the broth. The only variety of diet was when they happened to catch sharks. The biscuits were also full of maggots. If such was the diet available for a passenger who could pay for what he wanted, the lot of the poor 44 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA sailors must have been much worse, cheated as they were of their provisions by the master of the ship. The sailors had to be paid well for undertaking such a voyage, or they would never have been tempted to embark. They got three hundred and fifty pieces of eight (Rs. 770) for the return voyage. The merchants made profits at the rate of 150 to 200 per cent. It was reckoned that the captain of Gemelli's ship would make forty thousand pieces of eight by the voyage and the pilot twenty thousand. The amusements they had on boardship, besides the shark fishing, were dancing and occasional acting. On December 7th, 1697, although a sailor had died in the morning, the crew celebrated saturnalia like those that used to be, and perhaps are still, indulged in by sailors on the occasion of crossing the line. Mock courts were established to try the officers and passengers. " The clerk read every man's indictment, and then the judges passed sentence of death, which was immediately bought ofF, with money, chocolate, sugar, biscuit, flesh, sweetmeats, wine, and the like. The best of it was that he who did not pay immediately, or give good security, was laid on with a rope's end at the least sign given by the president." Gemelli was some- thing of a gourmand, so we are not surprised to find that the charge brought against him was eat- TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 45 ino- too much of the fish called cachorretas. In spite of such casual diversions the voyage was terribly long and tedious, and the first signs of approaching land were looked for as eagerly as by Columbus and his sailors when they crossed the Atlantic. When the first seaweed was seen, the sailor who saw it got a chain of gold from the cap- tain and fifty pieces of eight from the passengers. At the same time a bell was rung at the prow, everybody congratulated everybody else to the sound of drums and trumpets, and the Te Deum was sung. Nor are these rejoicings wonderful when we consider the length and hardship of the voyage on the one hand, and the great profit ex- pected at the end of the voyage on the other. On land Gemelli suffered less comfort and in- curred less danger than might have been expected. His last days in Europe were spent in chains, into which he had been thrown on suspicion of being a Venetian spy. But in none of the other three Con- tinents did he suffer the indignity of imprisonment. Although he was subject to a great deal of petty extortion, he was never robbed of the bulk of his possessions, which cannot have been small, as he carried with him some merchandise and col- lected curiosities in the countries he went through. Also he carried with him to the end the MSS. of 46 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA his travels, which he seems to have written care- fully every day. We have seen that he found Persia well supplied with commodious caravan- serais. In India he was hospitably entertained in the Portuguese cities as a good Roman Catholic, but fared worse when he penetrated into the interior. In the interior of China travelling was remarkably safe. At intervals of four miles along the canals guards were stationed, armed with firelocks, and they had large boats, with cannons in the prow, ready to pursue robbers. Similar care was taken to defend the roads. He was luxuriously rowed along the canals in boats, and it was "very pleasant travelling, both the green banks appearing as a man lies in his bed." Pheasants and fowls and hares were extremely cheap. At one place he bought four pheasants for two shillings and hares at three halfpence a piece. In Mexico there were travellers' bungalows provided with two servants one to order the traveller whatever he might require, the other (a messman) to cook his food and supply him with fuel and water, all at the public expense Gemelli was very particular about his inner man, and informs his readers of the fact as often as he was incommoded by bad or insufficient food. On the whole he seems to have fared pretty well. As to his outer man, we know that on the way through TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO- 47 Persia he was clad in buckskin breeches, on which account his fellow-travellers amused themselves by- pretending that he was a wrestler, as the Persian wrestlers wore such garments. When those who saw him thought he was too lean for wrestling, they were told he was grown lean owing to excessive exercise. By the time he reached China his buck- skin breeches were presumably worn out, for we find him dressed in Chinese clothes. What strikes us most, perhaps, when we attempt by the help of Gemelli's travels to estimate the progress made by the world in the last two hundred years, is his great credulity. In this respect there is far less difference between him and Herodotus, who lived more than two thousand years before him, than between him and an ordinary nineteenth century traveller. We have no reason to think that Gemelli was exceptionally credulous for his age. He was an educated man, and as a Doctor of Civil Law must have had some practice in sifting evidence. His frequent criticisms of Tavernier show that he knew well enough that travellers were in danger of being misled by the deceitfulness of their informants or by misunderstanding. Yet he was ready to accept numberless statements that no educated man of the present day would think worthy of 48 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA a moment's consideration. Many instances of his credulity have already been mentioned incidentally, but plenty more are to be found scattered over his pages. He took away from Egypt a mummy's skull, " being good, as they say, for wounds and some distempers," and this treasure he carried all round the world with him. He thoroughly believed in the active interposition of the devil in the affairs of the world. Seeing some Arabians striking their breasts with iron pins heavy enough to drive through a wall and not hurting themselves, he remarks : " How this came to pass they best know and the devil that teaches thern ; but this I know, that these cheats and sons of perdition would not suffer another to strike them with the same pin, for then perhaps the charm would have failed them." An Indian tumbler at Bassein performed such wonderful feats as could not be done, Gemelli thought, without some supernatural assistance. Speaking of some of the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, he remarks gravely that " the devil appears to some of them because they call upon him in time of need and offer sacrifice to him." He accounts for the number of blind people in Bengal by the custom of exposing infants at night to be pecked at by crows. He accepts with faith the story of an old man at Diu who TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 49 lived to over 400. "He had changed his teeth three times, and his beard as often grew grey after having been black." Compared with him, the old lady of 114 in the last American census may hide her diminished head. We have seen the immense estimate Gemelli formed of the number of the Mogul's army at Galgala. Still more astonishing is the population he attributes to the great cities of China, though not without hesitation, on the authority of Roman Catholic missionaries, who estimated the population of Pe- king at 16,000,000 and of Nanking at 32,000,000 ! In the Philippine Islands he saw leaves which, " when they come to a certain pitch of ripeness, become living creatures with wings, feet and tail, and fly like any bird, though they remain of the same colour as the other leaves." What he saw were, no doubt, specimens of those insects which by the process of natural selection have become almost indistinguishable from their leafy habitat. Among the many wonderful herbs, he mentions a nut which was such an effective antidote against poison that, if you carried it about your person, it not only protected you but hurt your would-be poisoner. "This is so certain," we are told, "that Father Alexius, a Jesuit, having one of these nuts he found accidentally in the garden in his pocket, 50 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA. and an Indian coming to poison him with a blast of venomous herbs, instead of doing the Father harm, he himself dropped down in his sight." Among the evidences of deficient geographical knowledge in GemelK's travels is a long discussion as to whether California is an island or part of the continent. The belief of a land connection between America and Asia was based on the story of a Christian slave at Peking who said that she had been brought from Mexico to China by way of Great Tartary. Russia and China were still far apart, though not entirely out of com- munication with one another. Gemelli gives an interesting account of a quarrel between the Chinese and Russians, or Muscovites as he calls them, about the pearl fishery of Lake Nepehyu, and how peace was restored by the good offices of some Jesuit missionaries. The result of the treaty was the arrival at Peking of " the ambas- sadors from the Great Duke of Muscovy, whom the Emperor received sitting on a throne raised twenty steps above the ground, whither he after- wards made them ascend to drink ; and though they at first refused to touch the ground with their heads according to the custom of the country, at last they consented. They much admired to find a Tartar family in such majesty." Hn Hnolo3nMan flDan of letters* In the beginning of the present year (1892) Anglo- Indian literature sustained a severe loss in the death of one who will always hold a high rank among its most accomplished journalists and men of letters. We refer to Mr. Cur wen, the fatal ter- mination of whose illness was marked by the suddenness that is such a terribly common feature in our life in this country. There was a consul- tation of doctors, a hurried embarkation of the sick man in the P. &. O. steamer, and then, in six days, there came a telegram from Aden, conveying to his friends the sad intelligence that he had died in the Indian Ocean, only two days after his de- parture from Bombay. There can be no doubt that Mr. Curwen's days were shortened by hard work and by the late hours that have to be kept by a journalist. No profession is more trying to health in this country than the press. To sit up late writing leading articles on the latest telegraphic intelligence is an 5i 52 AN ANGLO-INDIAN unhealthy occupation anywhere, and, in the tropics, it is simply deadly. Mr. Curwen came out to join the staff of the Times of India in 1877, and for fifteen years, first as assistant editor and afterwards as editor, gave himself up energetically to the work of the paper, and spared neither time, nor trouble, nor health in promoting its success. As a journalist he was distinguished by shrewd common sense, and by a quickness of insight which enabled him to take a clear view of a new situation of affairs with remarkable rapidity. If his articles did not actually lead publi opinion, at any rate they were always well up to date, and thoroughly expressed the views of the Anglo-Indian community whom the Times of India represented. But we do not wish here to dwell upon this phase of his career. In spite of his marked success as a journalist, we cannot help regretting that Mr. Curwen lavished on the dry lead- ing columns of a daily paper so much of the literary energy that might have been devoted to more con- genial subjects. In his heart he took much more interest in belles lettres than in municipal disputes and the political questions of the day. Traces of this leaning might clearly be discerned in the con- duct of the Times of India during all the years in which it was under his guidance. A large space MAN OF LETTEKS. 53 was devoted to the review of literary works ; on Saturday the leading columns were almost always open to the discussion of literary questions, or to the examination of some new book more or less connected with India ; and there was also to be found in the body of the paper a large amount of original literary work. It may be added that Mr. Curwen was always extremely ready to detect and encourage any evidence of literary talent, especially among young contributors. He took a kindly interest in every one who aspired, in however humble a way, to the honours of authorship, and was quick to discern the least sign of promise in their productions One of the last acts of his life was to bring out an edition of Carlyle's Lectures on Literature, the manuscript of which had long lain concealed from the world in the library of the Bombay Branch of the Asiatic Society. There was little or no chance of the speculation paying from a financial point of view. Yet the book was brought out regardless of expense, because it was not only a work of great literary interest, but was also likely to bring into notice a promising young Parsee writer, who, till then, had had no opportunity of distinguishing himself before the world. In many another case Mr. Curwen gave a helping hand to those who 54 AN ANGLO-INDIAN needed it. He did not confine his aid and sym- pathy to promising young writers, but was always ready to assist with his advice, as well as with his purse, those who had fried their hand at journalism unsuccessfully and fallen into destitution. To the subordinate members of his office he was a kind and liberal master, always generous to them in any difficulty, and willing to give them the much-needed rest that he too often denied himself. Mr. Cur wen had already gained some reputation as a writer in London before he left England. In the end of the year 1873, he brought out his History of Booksellers, a large work of five hundred pages, in which he sketched the rise and progress of the great English and Scotch publishing houses, and narrated the principal incidents in the lives of their founders. The book is full of lively anecdote and interesting information ; but, being of the nature of a compilation, it afforded the author little power of displaying his literary talents to advantage. A year later appeared Borrow and Song : Studies of Literary Struggle, containing short biographies of Henry Murger, Novalis, Alexander Petofi, Honore" de Balzac, Edgar Allan Poe, and Andre Chenier. This must have been a much more congenial task for its author than its predecessor. Himself a new writer, struggling for name and MAN OF LETTERS. 55 fame, he naturally had more sympathy for men of genius who had had a hard and painful struggle with adversity, than for prosperous booksellers. The lives are told with the enthusiasm which shows that the biographer loved his heroes in spite of their follies and their vices. In fact there is no doubt that, in the questions at issue between Philistia and Bohemia, Mr. Curwen was distinctly on the side of the Bohemian. His partiality for that mysterious and fascinating country is revealed again in the last work he brought out before he left England. This was a work of fiction called Within Bohemia: or Love in London. It came out in 1876, and was so successful, that a second edition was required in the following year. The review of the stories given in the Academy, re- marks, that " the general effect of the volume is that of immaturity. Mr. Curwen's cleverness is quite undeniable, and, with all its faults of taste his book has more character and style than the ordinary novel." It was, as far as we know, his first attempt at fiction, and did not do more than give promise of the more excellent work, in the same line, that was to proceed from his pen at a later period, when his talents were matured by practice and a wider experience of the world and its inhabi- tants. Mr. Curwen would seem himself to have 56 AN ANGLO-INDIAN recognised the justice of the verdict of the Academy critic, for the heroine of one of his later and more mature works remarks, that " no man should ever be allowed to write a novel before he is forty," and, at the time of the publication of his Bohemian tales, he had not yet reached his thirtieth year. For many years after his arrival in India, Mr. Curwen contributed nothing to general literature. His intellectual energy seemed to be entirely ab- sorbed in his journalistic work. But all the while, in spite of incessant hard work and the imperious necessity of providing his leading columns daily with criticisms on current events, he must have been secretly cherishing an ideal life of imagina- tion. For, in 1886, there appeared from his pen, in Blackwood's Magazine, the wonderful story of the early experiences of Zit and Xoe, a work full of poetic fancies and delicate humour, such as could hardly have been expected from a hard- worked Indian editor who had to spend most of his time in the Philistine labour of exchanging hard blows w 7 ith his local contemporaries. Perhaps it was owing to a consciousness of this contrast, that this story in the magazine, and in its subsequent book form, and the two later works of fiction from the same pen, were published anonymously. The author may have thought that the production of MAN OF LETTERS. 57 such flowers of fancy might seem to the general public to be incompatible with his reputation as a newspaper editor holding practical views on the questions of the day. It is such a work as might naturally be attributed to a man of letters, who had retired, like Mr. Stevenson, from the hurry and skurry of civilised life, to the seclusion of some flowery isle in the sunny Pacific. For it is a tale of the days when the world was young, and when man and woman first began to look with joy and wonder on the beautiful world in which their lot was cast. The idea of writing the story of Adam and Eve from a Darwinian point of view, is surely one of the happiest thoughts that ever entered the mind of an author in search of an original subject for a story. It is admirably worked out, and the result is an extremely beautiful prose idyll of love and family life. Mr. Cur wen was neither a philosopher, nor a man of science. He makes no attempt to give a strictly realistic account of the life led by man be- fore his intellect and moral sense were developed. If he had tried to do so, his work might have been interesting and instructive from a scientific point of view, but would have failed to give delight to the general reader. For the most part only such facts of early human existence as harmonise with a 58 AN ANGLO-INDIAN life that is not only simple but also beautiful, are introduced into the story. Thus we are given ac- counts of the invention of fish-hooks, of flint weapons, of fire, of pottery, and of boats, but all the more repulsive and ugly circumstances that must have attended the life of primitive man, are kept artistically in the background. In the char- acters of the hero and heroine, still less attempt is made at scientific accuracy. Their thoughts and emotions are such as could not possibly have be- longed to beings immediately sprung from quad- rum ano us parents. Imagine the children of highly civilised parent^, by some impossible means, to have survived and grown up to manhood arid womanhood in the solitude of a beautiful desert island, and the result would be something like the delightful combination of primitive simplicity with half conscious instincts of the artificial conventions of polite society that is to be found in the char- acters of Zit and Xoe. We all remember Eve's account of her first meet- ing with Adam in Paradise Lost. In Mr. Cur- wen's story it is Zit who relates the corresponding incident. By the shore of the sea, one day, a beautiful apparition came rushing towards him, as if borne on the wings of the wind. He pours forth compliments with a fervour and straightforward- MAN OF LETTERS. 59 ness worthy of the first love of the first man who ever loved : " How beautiful you are ! Your eyes are pure and blue. Your lips, when you smile, as you did for a little while at first, are far redder than the sweetest roses. I never saw anything like the way your colour comes and goes. And why are you so fair, and why is your hair so long and golden, and why are your hands so white and tiny ? " And, quite unconsciously, I tried to take one of her hands in mine. She drew herself up, and her blue eyes had a strange reproachful look. " I am certain," she said very slowly, " that it is not right of you to speak like that. And you really talk so quickly, that I cannot follow half of what you say." " You would talk quickly, too," I retorted, " if you were talking for the first time in your life." . . . I had been watching her eyes and her lips so eagerly, that I had never noticed that she was sit- ting all this time upon the back of a beautiful white horse, and that she was robed, almost from head to foot, in some soft, whitey-yellowy fleecy stuff. Both her round arms were bare, and one shoulder quite free. She had a broad girdle of 60 AN ANGLO-INDIAN plaited golden grass about her waist, and bunches of great yellow lilies on her breast and in her hair. I always think of Xoe as I saw her then : lithe- some, free, and beautiful, in this flowing, clinging garment, with one little hand caressing and re- straining her fiery steed, with her drooping eyes and faint smile and fleeting blushes. A beautiful subject for a painting or a sculpture, bright and graceful as the Europa of Moschus borne by the divine bull over the waves of the Bosphorus with her purple robes flowing in the breeze ! The mysterious robe in which Xoe was clad was made of the great cocoons of tussar silk that she had noticed clinging to the mulberry trees. She had watched the spiders for days working at their webs, and had learnt from them how to spin. Zit thought he also must go in for clothes, but he made them so rudely of deerskins that, to his great chagrin, the fair Xoe only laughed at him for his pains : " That is really nice of you," she said, trying to stop laughing, " and it suits you exactly. Please, don't think me rude. I can't help it " and here she fairly broke down " but it does so remind me of the fright I made of myself two days after I ran away. I wonder if you went down to the river, too, and looked into it, and how long you stopped there ? " MAN OF LETTERS. 61 My conscience pricked me here, and I cried out rather bitterly " You are really too bad, Xoe ! " Her voice changed at once. * I am not bad," she answered. " I don't know how to explain it, but a girl never says what she thinks. If you want to get on with me, you must not believe a word I say, and when I cry and laugh, you must not believe me either. There ! It is horrible, but ever since yesterday morning, I have felt it to be true. I don't know why I should warn you like this perhaps, because I feel it is good of you and kind of you to take such a world of trouble to do what you think I wish, and really you would not look nice in tussar silk." This mollified me, of course, and as we sat over breakfast, I said, "I hope you did not think I had gone for ever, Xoe ; I was afraid you would be frightened." " Oh dear, no ! " she replied with half a pout : <: I saw your stick directly I came out. I knew you would never leave that ; and then I was here too." In the above passage we have a good specimen of the art with which Mr. Curwen works into his story, not too obtrusively, reminiscences of Paradise Lost. It will be remembered how, 62 AN ANGLO-INDIAN soon after her creation, Eve lay down to look into the clear, smooth lake that seemed another sky : " As I bent down to look, just opposite A shape within the watery gleam appeared, Bending to look on me ; I started back, It started back ; but, pleased, I soon return'd ; Pleased, it returned as soon with answering looks Of sympathy and love." Xoe, and seemingly Zit, too, were guilty of the same weakness as Milton's Eve. The stick, so archly referred to by Xoe, was a walking-stick which Zit had carved for himself in his lonely days, and which had been his only companion until he met Xoe. We have not space to dwell longer on the court- ship of Zit and Xoe, or to tell how Xoe's cruelty and perverseness drove him to encounter a big black bear with an aggravating sardonic grin, by which he would have been killed, had not Xoe come in the nick of time and saved his life. He recovered from his swoon to find himself lying with his head on her lap, and the big black bear lying stone dead beside them. " Who killed him ? " I asked, still bewildered, trying to rise to my feet. MAN OF LETTERS. 63 " Be quiet, Zit ! " said Xoe very softly. " I killed him, dear. I could not help it. I thought he had killed you. Don't be cross to me now. I will never be cross to you again." " Poor thing," she went on, " how pale you looked! I saw nothing but you, and I pushed your big spear right through that horrible beast. He fell away, and I have been sitting here with your head in my lap ever since. What a dread- ful world it is I and all, I know, on my account. But I could not help it, and I can't help it, Zit. Do say that I was right and that I could not help it." The author shows much artistic skill in tracing the gradual transformation by which the way- wardness and liveliness of Xoe's " uncertain, coy, and hard to please " maidenhood was converted into the mellower grace of a wife and a mother. Suffice it to say that she remains equally charming to the end, even to the last scene of all, when, as a great-great-grandmother, she looks over her hus- band's shoulder, and gives his white hair the loving little pat that always presages a scolding. Enough has surely been quoted to show what a pleasure is in store for those who have not yet read this delightful prose idyll. Yet the story is not one 64 AN ANGLO-INDIAN that gains by the process of selection, as it is an admirably finished piece of literary work from begin- ning to end, full of delicate humour, lively dialogue, and beautiful descriptions of natural scenery. The scene of Mr. Curwen's next book opens in the garden of Eden ; not in the luxuriant tropical scenery where Zit and Xoe loved each other in the morning of the world, but in the veritable Garden of Eden as it exists in the present day : " a dank, desolate marsh, where the muddy waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates meet to- gether." Here Mr. Hicks, the hero, into whose mouth is put the story of Lady Bluebeard, met his Eve in the person of Mrs. Fonblanque. She coolly sat down on the trunk of the Tree of Good and Evil, which he had just had cut down for the benefit of an uncle who loved such interesting curios. Mrs. Fonblanque and Xoe are about as unlike each other as two women who are both very charming could possibly be. This difference might naturally be expected between two persons separated by all the centuries that have rolled away since the time when man first appeared on the earth. The heroine of Lady Bluebeard is a typical woman of the nineteenth century, the result of many centuries of evolution and culture. Although she is always witty and often MAN OF LETTERS. 65 light-hearted, her life has been saddened for ever by an unfortunate early marriage, and her modern education and refinement have spread the "pale cast of thought" over her brow. She is past the first joyousness of youth ; her experience of life, so far, has been very melancholy ; and when she meets her new lover she is wandering rather aimlessly about the world, in the vain attempt to escape from bitter memories. Yet, like many a lady in real life who has gone through a discipline of sorrow, she is very charming, and does much to make those around her happy by her vivacity, her unselfishness, and her gentle sympathy. Her character is beautifully drawn, and has the strong individuality that cannot be given to a fictitious personage, unless its creator has a touch of genius. The love story contained in the novel is so very bare of incidents, that it would hardly afford sufficient material for a short story in Belgravia or Temple Bar. It must also be allowed that the few incidents of which the plot is composed, are extremely unnatural and that the conclusion is melodramatic. Neverthe- less, in this long-drawn narrative, the character of the hero, and still more that of the heroine, are made to unfold themselves clearly to the reader with so much artistic skill that he is entirely 66 AN ANGLO-INDIAN fascinated with the book from beginning to end, and, in spite of the absence of exciting incidents, the interest never flags. This fascination is partly due to the psycho- logical insight of the author, and partly to the fact, that Lady Bluebeard contains elements of interest not to be found in ordinary novels. The leading characters reveal themselves, not so much by what they do, as by what they say. They have long discussions on all kinds of interesting questions, such as the position of women, poetry, painting, heredity, and pessimism. There are also three chapters of clever satire which describe Eng- land as seen through Oriental spectacles, after the manner of Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. These discussions, besides familiarising us with the speakers, have an interest of their own. Owing to the wit of the dialogue and the suggestiveness and variety of the thoughts expressed, Lady Bluebeard may be compared with such works as The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Guesses at Truth and Landor's Imaginary Conversations, and does not suffer from the comparison. There is yet a third distinct point of interest in Lady Bluebeard, inas- much as the book is a record of the personal obser- vations made by the author in his holiday tours # The, greater portion of the two volumes gives a MAN OF LETTERS. 67 faithful description of what is to be seen in a voyage from Baghdad to Bombay. We have known travellers by this route who have taken Lady Bluebeard with them and found it a most admirable guide-book. This might, at first blush, seem to be a disparaging remark, did we not remember that Scott's Lady of the Lake has been, for nearly a century, a necessary part of the equip- ment of Highland tourists. Mr. Curwen's descriptions of Oriental scenery, and of the cities of Asia and their inhabitants, are wonderfully animated and picturesque. Here, for instance, is an admirable sketch of an Arabian town, struck off in a few bold strokes : " But now turn your chair quickly round, Mr. Hicks. What do you think of that for the Gulf ? " I am seldom profoundly impressed, but I had certainly never seen anything like this. We were steaming rapidly, as I turned, right into a huge wall of precipitous volcanic rocks. Suddenly we rounded the point, and glided smoothly into a quiet little cove, surrounded on its three sides by towering black hills and rugged mountains. The nearest hills and crags and peaks to the right and left, looking each one of them like an iron-bound fortress, dropped sheer and bluff to the water's 68 AN ANGLO-INDIAN edge. At either extremity a strong fortress scowled fiercely down upon us, and a number of smaller forts and watch-towers and galleries seemed to connect the two in a semi-circle behind. The shore was low and open for a little way in front, and there, between the black rocks and the blue sea, nestled a town of white flat-roofed houses. We anchored within a cable's length of the Sultan's palace, with his blood-red flag still stream- ing over it. There was not a tree or shrub to be seen. But the white houses, the turreted forts, the deep blue sea, and the quaint craft with which the little cove was half filled, contrasted strangely with the encircling masses of dark rock all around, and a sky that was, for a moment before the sun sank, flooded with gold and crimson. To enjoy the first view of Muscat properly, you should come straight upon it, as we did, from a tedious sea voyage along the arid coast of Persia, and you should enter the harbour exactly as the sun is going down. In another moment the sunset guns were thundering and reverberating among the rocks, and then all was still, except when a deep voice from a mosque-tower, here and there, sum- moned the Faithful to prayers. The same pen that traced the stern outlines of MAN OF LETTERS. 69 the picture given above, was equally, or, i possible, even more felicitous in painting the rich and various colours of the forests of Ceylon, of Indian architecture, and of the motley crowds who kept holiday at Baroda on the occasion of the Gaekwar's wedding. Indeed, it is impossible to read Lady Bluebeard without being convinced that Mr. Curwen, if he had chosen to travel through Asia and give an account of his journey, might have rivalled the author of Eothen. Mr. Curwen's last work was Dr. Hermione, pub- lished in 1890. It is less closely connected with India than his two previous works of fiction. In Zit and Xoe, although, consistently with the chronology of the story, no geographical names are introduced, the beautiful pictures of tropical scenery are evidently drawn from the author's experience of India. The heroine of Lady Bluebeard is an Anglo-Indian lady, and the narrative conducts us by way of the Persian Gulf to Bombay, and subse- quently to Baroda, Goa, and Ceylon. In Dr. Hermione, although the two heroes of the story are officers of the Indian army, the scene of the story is laid first in Cumberland and then in Egypt. Mr. Curwen was a native of the English Lake Country, in which his family had been settled for many generations. In the beginning of 70 AN ANGLO-INDIAN Dr. Hermione, he returns to the scenes of his youth, and paints the lights and shadows of the mountain scenery of the lakes with loving fidelity. Towards the end of the novel, the scene is abruptly changed to the southern borders of Egypt, where, after a skirmish with the Dervishes, the characters pair off with one another to their own satisfaction and that of the reader. We can pardon the abruptness of the transition, in consideration of the beautiful descriptions of the banks of the Nile which it enables the author to give us. Here, too, as in Lady Bluebeard, our author is drawing upon his own experiences as a traveller. Some time before he wrote Dr. Hermione he had taken a holiday trip up the Nile ; and the glowing account of the beauties of that famous river is a record of what he then observed. As a story, Dr. Hermione is characterised by the same want of incident that distinguishes Lady Bluebeard from most novels ; and here, again, the paucity of incident is almost forgotten, owing to the brightness of the dialogue and the descriptive power of the writer. So much is said and so little is done, that the work has more of the nature of a drama than of a novel. The characters of the chief persons are revealed, as in Lady Bluebeard, by their conversations much more than by their actions. They are all interest- MAN OF LETTERS. 71 ing sketches, although none of them can be con- sidered such a highly finished portrait as Mrs. Fonblanque. In looking back on Mr. Curwen's three works of fiction, we find that they are weakest in their plots. The author does not appear to have cared much for probability or consistency in the con- struction of his narrative. In Zit and Xoe, the subject chosen was such a happy one, that a very simple succession of incidents was sufficient to supply the thread of the story. In Lady Blue- beard and Dr. Hermione there is little action, and the few incidents that are related do not seem to be very naturally connected with each other. Even in minor details little attention is paid to minute accuracy. In the description of a boat adventure in Dr. Hermione, the wind seems to be blowing in two opposite directions ; but that per- haps may be defended, on Virgil's precedent, as a characteristic of fictitious storms. On one occasion, when the sea was spread before Zit's eyes "in almost unruffled beauty," he nevertheless relates how "laughing and splashing and sparkling just beneath my feet, its white spray glistened like rainbows." Such inconsistencies, however, are but small matters. The greatest of all novelists, in an elaborate description of a storm, made the sun set 72 AN ANGLO-INDIAN in the east. Such trifling slips, though interesting to the curious critic, have little weight with us when we try to estimate the general merits of a work of fiction. Mr. Curwen's literary work ought, moreover, to be judged from a different point of view. He was, in reality, more of a humorist than of a novelist, although he happened to express his humour in the form of fiction. When we call him a humorist, we do not use the term as applied in America to such writers as Bill Nye and Artemus Ward, but in the wider and nobler sense in which the term is used by Thackeray. To be a humorist, in this higher sense of the word, requires high intellectual gifts, and keen insight into human character. In this latter qualification, Mr. Curwen ex- celled, especially in knowledge of the weakness and strength of female character. Xoe, Mrs. Fonblanque, Edith, and Dr. Hermione are real women, very unlike each other, and are all very interesting psychological studies. There is less individuality to be found among Mr. Curwen's men. Mr. Hicks, travelling over the world in search of intellectual excitement, is a modernised repetition of Zit wandering through the primeval forests in which he found " so much to see and so much to taste." Dr. Jones, with his shrewdness MAN OF LETTERS. 73 and his kindly nature concealed under a trans- parent veil of cynicism, is probably what Mr. Hicks would have developed into, if circumstances had confined him, until advanced middle age, in a re- mote provincial town. Nevertheless, Zit, Mr. Hicks, and Dr. Jones, in spite of the family likeness that exists between them, are full of life and very real, and admirably adapted to play their respective parts as contrasts to the female characters to whom the author devotes most of his attention. In the portrayal of the various male and female characters whom he creates, Mr. Curwen shows a delicate sense of humour, and a knowledge of human character, that amply atone for any deficiencies in the plots of the stories. His novels, too, are as much distinguished by wit as by humour. They are, as we have seen, full of long conversa- tions which would be wearisome to the reader, if they were not lightened up by epigram, satire, and acute criticism of literature, art, men, and manners. As a writer of English prose, Mr. Curwen appears at his best in descriptive passages. His style is admirable in its clearness and freedom from all mannerism and affectation. In his pages we find the lonely forests and the populous cities of the East described with equal vividness, so that the whole scene is conjured up before the imagination 74 AN ANGLO-INDIAN of the reader with the perfect art by which art is concealed. The simplicity and unstudied grace of his style is very unlike the artificial brilliancy of that of Sterne, whom he resembles in his subtle and rather whimsical humour; in the skill with which he makes the most ordinary situations amusing or pathetic, or both ; in his fondness for digressions ; in his tendency to relate actual experi- ences of travel in a fictitious setting, and, finally, in the poverty of incident and the very subordinate position of the story in his literary works. But for this difference, we should be almost inclined to regard Mr. Curwen as a nineteenth century Anglo- Indian Sterne. In spite of the chorus of recognition with which the reviewers greeted the appearance of his later works, we hardly think that Mr. Curwen has yet met with the appreciation due to his very great literary merits. This is, no doubt, partly due to the fact that his latest and best works were produced anonymously. It is only under very exceptional circumstances that the general public does justice to an anonymous writer. Further, Mr. Curwen devoted to his journalistic profession a large amount of the intellectual energy which he might have bestowed on literary work of a higher character, and, just when, in spite of these draw- MAN OF LETTERS. 75 backs, he was establishing for himself a high position in the literary world, his career was suddenly cut short. As it is, however, he has left behind him, in Zit and Xoe and Lady Bluebeard, two works of great originality that will not soon be allowed to be forgotten, and, in the rather barren roll of Anglo-Indian literature, he must assuredly take the very highest rank among those who have succeeded in throwing the glamour of romance and poetry over life in the East. HnQlo^nbian Worbs anJ> phrases* From a philological point of view India is now in a position similar to that of England immediately after the Norman Conquest, and to her own former position at the period of her history when Mahome- dan invaders introduced Persian and Arabic into the country. Just as in England, after the Norman Conquest, there were two nations living side by side, speaking different languages, and striving to render themselves comprehensible to each other, so now in India we find everywhere Englishmen speaking English, and the natives of the country speaking their vernacular, and, as intermediaries between the two, the educated native and the Englishman who has mastered Hindustani, Maratbi, Gujarathi, or whatever vernacular is spoken in the part of the country in which he dwells. Norman- French and Anglo-Saxon, after one or two cen- turies, coalesced into one language, and in like manner the mixture of Persian and Arabic with Indian vernaculars produced Hindustani. We have, at the present time, the first steps of a similar 77 78 ANGLO-INDIAN fusion between the English language and the ver- naculars of India, a process which, if continued for a century or two, would produce a new composite language, partly of Eastern and partly of European origin. At present, however, we are only at the very beginning of such a fusion. English and the vernaculars are still separated from each other by a great gulf. Nevertheless, they cannot be in such close contact without a large amount of mutual action and re-action, which will be found, on con- sideration, to be regulated by the same laws as ruled the early relations of English with Norman French at the Conquest, and subsequently with the other foreign languages spoken by the nations with which the enterprising spirit of Englishmen has brought them into commercial and political inter- course all over the world. The philological results of the British Empire in India may be briefly summed up as follows: firstly, that many Indian words have been introduced into the English language; secondly, that many English words have been introduced into the vernaculars of India ; and thirdly, that several English words and several Indian words have assumed new senses and new combinations, owing to the social intercourse between Englishmen and natives of India. Let us first consider the words of Indian origin WORDS AND PHRASES. 79 that have been added to the English language. Some of them are of such old standing that they are thoroughly naturalised. The most rigid purist might use such words as "punkah," "Brahmin," " pariah," " curry," "jungle," " rajah," and " rupee." They need not be printed in italics in English books, and are given a place even in small English dictionaries. Among these words that have been admitted into full English citizenship, may, per- haps, be counted " salam," one of the most interest- ing words that India has given to England. The earliest use of this greeting by an European writer quoted in Yule and Burnell's Hobson Jobson, is a passage from Correa, a Portuguese writer who visited India in the year 1512. But the European use of the word goes back to a much earlier date than the sixteenth century. Some time ago, in turning over the pages of Symonds' Greek Poets, I came upon an epitaph written on himself by Meleager, a Greek epigrammatist, who nourished at Gadara, the town so familiar to us as the home of the Gadarene swine, just before the Christian era. It gave me a shock of surprise to find in this epigram the familiar word " salam " in Greek letters. The epitaph ends by addressing the sup- posed visitor to his tomb as follows : " If you are a Syrian, Salam; if you are a Phoenician, Naidios; 80 ANGLO-INDIAN and if a Greek, Chaire." 1 These lines show that " salam " was the ordinary word of salutation throughout Syria at the beginning of the Christian era. We might, therefore, conjecture that "salam" was one of the words most frequently in the mouth of Christ and his Apostles. This conjecture is raised almost to a certainty by reference to the Gospels. " Salam " is an Arabic word, meaning peace ; and Christ, in taking farewell of his Apostles, says, " Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you." There is little doubt that the very word on that occasion actually used by Christ and translated eirene, peace, was " salam." The mean- ing of the text is that Christ did not leave his disciples an ordinary, meaningless, verbal salam, but the priceless thing which "salam" really means, namely peace. We may, therefore, without hesita- tion add " salam " to the small list of words which we know to have been really spoken by Christ. While such words as salam, punkah, and jungle are sufficiently naturalised to be used by the most scrupulous English writer, there are many other Indian words that are struggling for their English citizenship, and are mostly found in conversation, 1 'AAA' ei \xkv Zv/oos k(j(Ti, SAAAM, el 8'ovv crv ye &6lvi, XAI AI02, el 8 "EAA^v, XAIPE. to 8'avrb pd