The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
There was an equal number of the other sex—a lady calling herself Mrs. Lewis, and three sturdy wives of sergeants. Fortunately also, there were three native servants who spoke Hindostani.
The Voyage and Arrival.
The voyage began as usual by a straight run down the Channel, and a June weather passage along the coasts of Europe and Africa. There were delays in the Doldrums and calms near the Line. Neptune came on board as usual, but there was very little fun, the numbers being too small. At such times troubles are apt to break out on board. The captain, Richard Cleland, was one of the best seamen that ever commanded a ship, yet his career had been unlucky—as Vasco da Gama said to Don Manoel, "Men who are unfortunate at sea should avoid the affairs of the sea." He had already lost one ship, which was simply ill-fortune, for no seaman could be more sober or more attentive to his duty. He managed, however, to have a row on board, called upon the cadets to load their pistols and accompany him to the forecastle, where he was about to make a mutineer a prisoner. These were very disagreeable things to interfere with, and the Supreme Court of Bombay always did its best to hang an officer if a seaman was shot on these occasions; one man in particular had a narrow escape.
The discipline on the ship was none of the best. Captain Cleland had begun early, and determined to establish a raw, and invited me to put on the gloves with him. The result was that the tall lanky Scotchman, who was in particularly bad training, got knocked into a cocked hat. Then arose the usual troubles amongst the passengers. Normally on such voyages, all begin by talking together, and end by talking with themselves. Of course there were love passages, and these only made matters worse. The chief mate, a great hulking fellow, who ought to have hit like Tom Spring, but whose mutton fist could not dent a pat of butter, was solemnly knocked down on quarter-deck for putting in his oar. Then followed a sham duel, the combatants being brought up at midnight, and the pistols loaded with balls of blackened cork instead of bullets. During the day there were bathings along the ship in a sail, to keep out the sharks; catching of sharks and flying-fish, and massacring of unhappy birds. I, however, utilized my time by making the three native servants who were on board, talk with me, and by reading Hindostani stories from old Shakespeare's text-book. I made a final attempt to keep up musical notation, and used the flageolet to the despair of all on board; but the chief part of my time was passed in working at Hindostani, reading all the Eastern books on board, gymnastics, and teaching my brother youngsters the sword. There was also an immense waste of gunpowder, for were not all these young gentlemen going out to be Commanders-in-Chief?
The good ship John Knox ran past the Cape in winter, and a magnificent scene it was. Waves measuring miles in length came up from the South Pole, in lines as regular as those of soldiers marching over a dead plain. Over them floated the sheep-like albatrosses, whom the cadets soon tired of shooting, especially when they found that it was almost impossible to stuff the bird. The little stormy petrels were respected, but the Cape pigeons were drawn on board in numbers, with a hook and a bit of bait. Nothing could be brighter than the skies and seas, and the experience of what is called "a white gale" gave universal satisfaction. It came down without any warning, except ploughing up the waters, and had not Captain Cleland been on deck and let go his gear, most of the muslin would have been on the broad bosom of the Atlantic.
There was little interest in sailing up the eastern coast of South Africa. We saw neither the coast nor Madagascar, but struck north-east for the western coast of India. The usual tricks were played upon new-comers. They had been made to see the Line by a thread stretched over a spy-glass, and now they were told to smell India after a little oil of cloves had been rubbed upon the bulwarks!
When the winds fell, the cadets amused themselves with boarding the pattymars, and other native craft, and went ferreting all about the cabins and holes, to the great disgust of the owners. They gaped at the snakes, which they saw swimming about, and were delighted when the John Knox, one fine night, lumbered on her way through nets and fishing stakes, whose owners set up a noise like a gigantic frog concert. Next morning, October 28th, the Government pilot came on board; excited questions were put to him, "What was doing in Afghanistan? What of the war?" At his answer all hopes fell to zero. Lord Ellenborough had succeeded Lord Auckland. The avenging army had returned through the Khaybar Pass. The campaign was finished. Ghuzni had fallen, the prisoners had been given up. Pollock, Sale, and Pratt had been perfectly successful, and there was no chance of becoming Commanders-in-Chief within the year.
I never expected to see another Afghan War, and yet I did so before middle age was well over.
"Thy towers, Bombay! gleam bright, they say,
Against the dark blue sea,"
absurdly sings the poet. It was no picture like this we saw on the morning of the 28th of October, 1842, when our long voyage ended. The bay so celebrated appeared anything but beautiful. It was a great splay thing, too long for its height, and it had not one of the beautiful perpendiculars that distinguish Parthenope.
The high background is almost always hid by the reek that rises during the day, and the sun seems to burn all the colour out of the landscape. The rains had just ceased, yet the sky seemed never clear, and the water wanted washing. After this preliminary glance, the companions shook hands, and, not without something of soreness of heart, separated, after having lived together nearly five months. I went to the British Hotel in the Fort, then kept by an Englishman named Blackwell, who delegated all his duty to a Parsee, and never troubled himself about his guests. A Tontine Hotel had been long proposed, but there is a long interval between sayings and doings in India. The landing in a wretched shore-boat at the unclean Apollo Bunder, an absurd classicism for Palawa Bunder, was a complete disenchanter. Not less so to pass through the shabby doorway in the dingy old fortifications, which the Portuguese had left behind them when the island was ceded to Charles II. The bright Towers were nowhere, and the tower of a cathedral that resembled a village church, seemed to be splotched and corroded as if by gangrene.
Bombay was in those days the most cosmopolitan City in the East, and the Bhendi Bazaar, the centre of the old town, was the most characteristic part of all—perhaps more characteristic than were those of Cairo or Damascus. It was marvellously picturesque with its crowds of people from every part of the East, and its utter want of what is called civilization, made it a great contrast to what it became a score of years afterwards. Englishmen looked at it with a careless eye, as a man scours his own property, but foreigners (Frenchmen like Jacquemont, and Germans like Von Orlich) were delighted with its various humours, and described them in their most picturesque style. Everything looked upon a pauper scale.
The first sight of a Sepoy nearly drove me back to the John Knox. I saw an imitation European article; I saw a shako, planted on the top of a dingy face, and hair as greasy as a Chinese's. The coat of faded scarlet seemed to contain a mummy with arms like drumsticks, and its legs, clad in blue dungaree, seemed to fork from below its waist; and yet this creature in his national dress, was uncommonly picturesque, with his long back hair let down, his light jacket of white cotton, his salmon-coloured waistcloth falling to his ankles, in graceful folds, and his feet in slippers of bright cloth, somewhat like the piéd d'ours of the mediæval man-at-arms. The hotel was an abomination. Its teas and its curries haunted the censorium of memory for the rest of man's natural life. The rooms were loose boxes, and at night intoxicated acquaintances stood upon chairs and amused themselves by looking over the thin cloth walls. I stood this for a few days till I felt sick with rage. I then applied to the garrison surgeon, in those days Dr. J. W. Ryan, popularly known as Paddy Ryan.2 He was a good-natured man; he enquired copiously about my Irish relations and connections, knew something of Lord Trimleston, and removed me from the foul hotel, to what in those days was called the Sanitarium.
The Sanitarium.
The Sanitarium was a pompous name for a very poor establishment. About half a dozen bungalows of the semi-detached kind, each with its bit of compound or yard, fronted in a military line Back Bay, so famous for wrecks. The quarters consisted of a butt and ben, an outer room and an inner room, with unattached quarters for servants. They were places in which an Englishman tolerably well off would hardly kennel his