"Would you like to go down in a diving-costume from a boat alongside the barque?" asks the biologist; "it's perfectly safe, and I have a dress that will fit you. Frequently I go to the bottom to study the curious growths there, and last season the colonial secretary did the thing two or three times."

With a readiness of speech rivaling gunfire in promptness I nipped in the bud the preparations for carrying out the proffered courtesy, explaining that I was glad to accept a vicarious description of things at the ocean's bottom.

The dingy fleet blossoms into a cloud of canvas, with every boat headed for Marichchikkaddi, the instant the "cease work" gun is fired. The scene suggests a regatta on a gigantic scale, and from a distance the leaning lug and lateen sails of the East give the idea of craft traveling at terrific speed. It is a regatta, a free-for-all, devil-take-the-hindmost affair. The prizes are choice berths on the beach as near as possible to the kottu, and the coolies who must carry the sacks of oysters see to it that the "tindal" and his sailors make no retarding error.

The camp had been peaceful and somnolent while the boats were out; but the word that the fleet was coming in had roused every laborer, every petty dealer, speculator, and harpy to nervous activity. Everybody goes to the sea-front to witness the beaching of the boats and to watch the unloading. An hour probably elapses between the coming of the leader of the fleet and the arrival of the slowest boat. During this period the important functionary is the beach-master, who shouts his commands to boats seeking to crowd into positions not rightly theirs. When a boat is securely drawn upon the strand, there is no waste of time in getting the cargo started for the government storehouse. Muscular porters, glistening in their perspiring nudeness, go in single file between boat and kottu like ants executing a transportation feat. In a very few minutes the oysters are being counted by nimble-handed coolies. Important gamblers in oysters, men with sharp eyes and speculative instincts, have only to note the number of sacks delivered from one or two boats—and secure a hint from an obliging diver as to whether the bivalves are "thin" or "thick"—to arrive at a safe hypothesis of what the day's take has been, and also whether the oysters promise to be fairly pearliferous. The opinions of two or three of these experts make a basis for starting the prices at the auction in the evening, and these "sharps" are seldom wrong in their estimate of what would be a safe offer for a thousand chances in the great lottery of Asia.

The count in the kottu is soon completed, and each boat's catch is divided into three piles, when an official selects two for the government, and the third is so expeditiously removed that a quarter of an hour later the share of the divers is being huckstered throughout the camp to small speculators.

Upon each craft throughout the day has been a native watchman of supposed honesty, in the government's employ, whose duty has been to see that no oysters were surreptitiously opened on the banks or during the run home. Suspicion of the extraction of pearls on the part of any member of the crew leads to the police being informed, and an arrest follows. A favorite way of hiding pearls is to tie the gems in a rag attached to the anchor that is thrown overboard when the boat lands. Another is to fasten a packet to a piece of rigging adroitly run to the masthead, there to remain until opportunity permits the dishonest schemer to remove it unobserved.

On their way to their sleeping quarters it is interesting to observe divers stopping at boutiques and tea saloons for refreshments, paying their score with oysters, extremely acceptable to the shopkeeper itching to test his luck. In a small way, oysters pass current in the Cadjan City as the equivalent of coins. Probably the variations in value lead to fluctuations in exchange, but these are so keenly understood that the quotations are apparently adjusted automatically, like exchange between nations.

The sale is held in the building where the camp magistrate all the afternoon has been dispensing justice in breaches of Marichchikkaddi's morals—simple assaults, thieving, and other petty misdemeanors usual to police courts. Punctually at sunset the auction begins. If the universe offers a stranger gathering for which commerce is responsible, it would be difficult to give it location. The gentle government agent sits on the platform, and in front of the rostrum is the splendidly appareled chief mudiliyar, to interpret between auctioneer and buyers. The bidders-to-be number half a hundred, and their eager faces are directed toward the august official of the government, each probably praying secretly to his god that undue competition be not inspired to the extent of excluding bargains. In the throng are chetties. Moor merchants, and local hawkers, hoping to get a few thousand bivalves at a price assuring a profit when peddled through the coastwise villages.

"Do these men represent actual capital!" you ask the agent. "They do, indeed," is the reply, "and collectively they are backed by cash in hand and satisfactory credits in Ceylon banks of at least a hundred lakhs of rupees." Forced as you are to accept the statement, you inwardly confess that they don't look it, for $3,200,000 is a goodly credit anywhere.

In the fading light of day the agent announces that approximately two million oysters are to be sold, and he invites offers for them by the thousand—the highest bidder to take as many as he chooses, the quotation to be effective and apply to others until it is raised by some one fearing there will not be oysters enough to satisfy the demands of everybody. It is the principle of supply and demand reduced to simplicity. The competition to fix the price of the first lot consumes perhaps a minute. The initial bid was thirty rupees; this was elevated to thirty-two, and so on until thirty-six was the maximum that could be induced from the motley assemblage. With his pencil the agent taps the table, and the mudiliyar says something in Hindustani meaning "sold." The buyer was an Arab from Bombay, operating for a syndicate of rich Indians taking a flier in lottery tickets. In a manner almost, lordly he announces that he will take four hundred thousand oysters. Then a sale of two thousand follows at an advanced price to a nondescript said to have come all the way from Mecca; a towering Sikh from the Punjab secures twenty thousand at a reduced rate, and so on. In ten or twelve minutes the day's product is disposed of to greedy buyers for the sum of 62,134 good and lawful rupees. A clerk records names of buyers with expedition, glancing now and then at a document proving their credit, and in a few minutes issues the requisitions upon the kottu for the actual oysters that will be honored in the early morning.

The primitive process by which the pearls are extracted from the oysters is tedious, offensive to the senses, and of a character much too disagreeable to be associated with the jewel symbolizing purity. A few million oysters are shipped to southern India, and some go to Jaffna and Colombo; but the preponderating bulk is dealt with in the private kottus in the outskirts of the camp belonging to the men who crowd the auction room. To open fresh from the sea and scrutinize every part of the oyster would be too slow a method to be applied to the business of pearl-getting. The native who obtains a few dozen seeks shelter under the first mustard-tree, and with dull-edged knife, dissects each bivalve with a thoroughness permitting nothing to escape his eye.

The burning sun, bringing putrefaction and decay to the oyster, is the operator's agency for securing what pearls his purchase may contain. For a week or ten days the oysters are stacked in his private kottu, and the process of disintegration is facilitated by swarms of flies and millions of maggots. When the tropical sun can do no more, the contents of the shells—putrid, filthy, and overpoweringly odoriferous—are gathered in troughs and other receptacles to be put through a process of cleansing by washing with water frequently drawn away. The residue, carefully preserved, is picked over when dry by experts, working under the watchfulness of owner or his deputy—and in this manner the pearls of my lady's dainty necklace and the engagement ring are wrested from nature.



Sometimes an impatient speculator is seen with his coolies on the beach carefully washing vatfuls of "matter," perhaps employing a dugout canoe as a washing trough. Wherever the work is done the stench is almost overpowering, and the odors defy neutralization. The wonder is that some dread disease of the Orient does not make a clean sweep of the city's population. The medical officers claim that the malodorous fumes are not dangerous, and experience has taught these officials to locate the compounds, wherein millions of oysters are to decompose, in positions where the trade winds waft the smells seaward or inland, without greatly affecting the camp's health. The British official whose olfactory organ survives a season at the pearl camp deserves from his home government at least the honor of knighthood.

Interesting as Marichchikkaddi is to the person making a study of the conduct of unusual industries and the government of Eastern people, the medical officer looms important as the functionary shouldering a greater responsibility than any other officer of the camp. To draw forty thousand people from tropical lands, grouping them on a sand plain only a few hundred miles above the equator, is an undertaking pregnant with danger, when considered from the standpoint of hygiene. Strange to say, Marichchikkaddi's health is always satisfactory; but tons of disinfectants have to be used. Malarial fever is ever present, but is of a mild type. The outdoor dispensary does a rushing business, but only seventy-five cases were sufficiently serious last season to be sent to hospital, and only ten of these were fatal. The divers are prone to pneumonia and pleurisy, and these diseases carried off five. The deaths out of hospital totaled twenty-two.

In the hospital I saw a man with grizzled beard whose escape from death bordered upon the marvelous. His head had been jammed four days before between colliding boats, cracking his skull to the extent of letting the brain protrude. He was rushed to the hospital to die, but had no intention of passing to another world, the doctors learned. Sitting upright on his cot-bed, the poor fellow said to me with an earnestness almost compelling tears: "Help me to get out of this place, please. I want to be with my boat, for there is no better diver than I am, and I can earn a hundred rupees a day as easily as any man in Marichchikkaddi."

As an illustration of the white man's supremacy, in dealing with black and brown peoples, Marichchikkaddi probably has no equal. Here, in an isolated spot on the coast of Ceylon, hours from anywhere by sea, and shut off from the large towns of the island by jungle and forest wherein elephants, leopards, and other wild animals roam, twelve or fifteen Britishers rule, with an authority never challenged, more than forty thousand adventurous Asiatics—men whose vocation is largely based on their daring, and whose competing religions and castes possess the germ of fanaticism that might be roused to bloodshed. The white man's control is supported by the presence of two hundred policemen, it is true, but these are natives. The keynote of this exposition of a multitude ruled by a handful of Europeans is the absolute fairness of their control, of course. Were justice non-existent, it would be inviting disaster for the white official to apprehend a wrong-doer, place him on trial, and personally administer with lash or birch the corporal punishment to be witnessed any morning in front of the camp lockup.

And what might happen if the divers, through their ringleaders, objected to surrendering to the Ceylon government the demanded "rake-off" of two thirds the oysters rescued from the sea by their efforts, in the event of these courageous fellows being assured that all the law in the world on the subject says that all the sea and all therein contained, beyond the distance of three nautical miles from shore, belongs to the universe! But the Manar diver knows naught of the three-mile law, presumably.

Does the fishery pay? Tremendously, so far as facts upon which to base an answer are obtainable. The government treasury is sometimes enormously expanded as a result of the enterprise. In 1905, the most prosperous of all Manar fisheries, the government sold its fifty million oysters for two and one half million rupees, and at least $600,000 of this was profit. Years ago, it is true, there were several fisheries producing for the treasury nothing but deficits. Nobody ever knows what reward visits the purchasers of oysters, for it is their habit to spread the report of non-success and disappointment. But the buyers and speculators come each year in larger numbers, with augmented credits, and they pay in competition with their kind a larger price for the oysters. The conclusion is, therefore, that they find the business profitable.

Even rumors of luck and profit would bring more speculators and rising prices at the auction sales, manifestly. Reports of fortunate strikes at Marichchikkaddi may more frequently be heard in India than in Ceylon, let it be said; and it is the gilded grandees of Hind—princes, maharajahs and rajahs—rather than the queens of Western society, who become possessors of the trove of Manar.

No Colombo merchant or magnate, or man or woman of the official set, is superior to tempting fortune by buying a few thousand oysters freshly landed from Marichchikkaddi. And the interminable question of caste, banning many things to Cingalese and Tamil, inhibits not the right to gamble upon the contents of a sackful of bivalves. If the fishery be successful, all Ceylon teems with stories of lucky finds, and habitations ranging from the roadside hut to the aristocratic bungalow in the Cinnamon Gardens are pointed to as having been gained by a productive deal in oysters. A favorite tale is that of the poor horse-tender, who, buying a few cents' worth of oysters, found the record pearl of the year; another is of the 'rickshawman suspected of having money in the bank as a result of a lucky find on the seafront of Colombo of three or four oysters dropped from a discharging boat—in a shaded alley between buildings he forced the bivalves to disgorge a pearl worth hundreds of pounds sterling. Most stories of this character are as untrue as the reports of soubrettes and telephone boys winning fortunes in Wall Street.

Did I try my luck? Of course I did. Who could resist the temptation? I purchased two great sackfuls of oysters, a thousand in number, which were brought off to the government tug Active by salaaming peons from the government agent's office. At five o'clock the tug was ready to start Colomboward the instant the "despatches" I was to deliver came on board. At last the precious package, with a parade of red tape and impressive wax seals, was handed over the side. It may have contained something as priceless as a last year's directory; I never knew. It was my deep-seated suspicion, however, that the packet was somebody's excuse for letting the public treasury expend a few hundred rupees in carrying one in private life back to Colombo to catch his steamer for China the next evening.

Confident was I that the bags on the stern grating that had been freshly soused with seawater as the Active steamed away from Marichchikkaddi contained a wealth of pearls. In the cool of the early morning I would subsidize the eight native sailors, getting them to open the shelled treasures, while I garnered the pearls. With this thought uppermost, I turned in on a cushionless bench to snatch a few hours' sleep. But slumber was out of the question; my brain was planning what might be done with the pearls I was soon to possess. Yes, there surely would be plenty for a pearl-studded tiara for the loved one awaiting me; and any superfluity might be made into ropes and collars for admiring relatives at home. Cousin Jessie had always coveted a necklace of pearls with a diamond clasp. The dainty baubles were in those sacks; there was no question about that. Yes, my luck at pearl-getting would compensate for missing Sir Thomas Lipton's dinner in Colombo. Sleep always comes in time, and at last I was dreaming of the cargo of priceless gems with me on the boat.

How extremely uncomfortable the bench was! What was that! I was not asleep, but very wide-awake—and such pains! In an instant I was rolling on the deck and shrieking from the terribleness of my suffering. Could it be cholera, the plague, or simply appendicitis with which I was stricken? The sailors held me down, but not a soul on board knew a word of English. I was positive that my end had come, and the thought of expiring away from friends and with a pocketful of prepaid around-the-world tickets was not agreeable. In an hour the pain was excruciating, and it continued for ten long hours with varying severity. Morning came, and the Indian skipper was plying his furnace with lubricating oil and turpentine—with anything that would help him get me to Colombo and medical skill. At last, eighteen hours out from Marichchikkaddi, the Active was in the harbor and I was being carried to the Grand Oriental Hotel.

"What about the two bags of oysters, the captain wishes to know!" the hotel interpreter asked.

"Oh, give them to the men," was the answer; "I have ceased to care for pearl-studded tiaras and collars. I'm glad to get away alive from the decaying millions of oysters at the fishery. Even God's free air there is poisoned by them. What I want most is a doctor."



CHAPTER IV

UPWARD TO THE SHRINE OF BUDDHA

From Colombo it is but seventy-five miles to Ceylon's ancient capital, and the journey thither is picturesque almost beyond description. For fifty miles the railway leads through the rich vegetation of the lowlands, with groves of cocoanut palms seemingly as boundless as the sea. In a suburb of Colombo the sacred Kelani River is crossed, at a point not remote from the Buddhist temple claimed to be contemporary with Gautama himself. The valley of the Kelani is vivid with rice-fields of green. The line then pushes its way through a bewildering medley of tropical vegetation—there are miles of cashew and breadfruit trees, of frangipani and jaks, and more than once a stately talipot-palm is discerned in full blossom—for half a century the tree has stored its vitality for this one effort; and the burst of splendor spent, its career on earth is ended. For twenty-five miles the train zigzags up hills, running now and then on the edge of a shelf from whence the traveler looks down hundreds of feet sheer upon foam-crested rapids. The journey from Colombo to Kandy affords one of the memorable experiences of Ceylon.



England has held the interior region of the island, controlled for centuries by the Kandyan kings, for but ninety odd years, and it is curious to observe wings of palaces at Kandy, where a semi-barbaric rule long held sway, employed now as British administrative offices. Little antiquity is discernible in the old hill capital, due to former rival interests of the Portuguese and Dutch. When one nation had control of the picturesque town, it was customary to efface or demolish everything that the other had done.

Kandy is the city of Buddha's tooth, and as such is the object of unbounded reverence with more than four hundred million inhabitants of the earth. Oudh, where Gautama Buddha died, lacks the sacred importance of Kandy; and the sepulcher at Jerusalem means no more to Christians, nor Mecca and Medina to followers of Mahomet.

Kandy was but a mountain village when the holy molar was brought here in the sixteenth century for safe-keeping. The small temple wherein it was deposited was beautified and enlarged, and finally the priesthood made the place their principal seat, and the Kandyan kings later made the city their stronghold and capital of the country.

Thousands of pilgrims come yearly to offer to the Temple of the Tooth their gifts of gold and silver ornaments, coins, jewels, vestments for the priests, even fruits and flowers—and these devotees have traveled from every hamlet of Ceylon and from every land where Buddha has believers—from Nepaul, the Malay Peninsula, China, Japan, even from Siberia and Swedish Lapland. The kings of Burmah and Siam, in compliance with the wish of their subjects, send annual contributions toward the support of the temple enshrining the tooth; and Buddhist priests in far-away Japan correspond with the hierarchy of the temple of Kandy. No other tooth has the drawing power of this one, certainly.

Strange to say. Buddhism has been cast out from India, where it originated, by the Hindu faith, which it was meant to reform. In India's enormous population scarce seven millions to-day worship at Buddha's shrine. Christianity, as well, is a stranger to the land where it was born. It appears the irony of fate that these great religions, glorious in principle, have abiding places without number, save in the countries where they originated. But such is the fact.

Few scholars can study the tenets of Buddhism without the conviction that it is a religion of striking merit—that is, as form and dogma are described by writers and commentators; but as practised by races not far removed from pagan illiteracy, with whom idolatry and superstition are inherent, it may no longer be the perfection of doctrine that was espoused by Prince Gautama.

Sir Edwin Arnold, who thoroughly knew most Eastern religions, admired enthusiastically the precepts of Buddha, and no one can read his writings without experiencing some regard for the Buddhism of literature. In "The Light of Asia" the five commandments of the great religion of the Orient are thus poetically recited:

Kill not—for Pity's sake—and lest ye slay The meanest thing upon its upward way.

Give freely and receive, but take from none By greed, or force or fraud, what is his own.

Bear not false witness, slander not, nor lie; Truth is the speech of inward purity.

Shun drugs and drinks which work the wit abuse; Clear minds, clean bodies, need no Soma juice.

Touch not thy neighbor's wife, neither commit Sins of the flesh unlawful and unfit.

Whether present-day Buddhism is the exact religion taught by the princely priest, and gracefully described by the English poet, matters little—its fountainhead is Kandy, and temple and dependencies of the sacred bone form the Vatican of the faith. This miraculous tooth, alleged to be the left eye-tooth of Gautama Buddha, and taken from the ashes of his funeral pyre twenty-five hundred years ago, has played a mighty part in Eastern intrigue, and wars between nations have been fought over it. For centuries it was the priceless marriage dower going with certain favored princesses of royal blood. It was brought from India to Ceylon in the fourth century after Christ. The Malabars secured it by conquest more than once, the Portuguese had it for a time at Goa, and for safety it was brought to Kandy in the sixteenth century, and it has there since been cared for with scrupulous fidelity.

A relic supported by so much history should at least be genuine—the history may be all right, but the tooth is a shambling hoax, at best a crude proxy for the molar of Gautama. Intelligent priests of Buddhism must know this, but the millions of common people finding solace in the faith have never heard the truth—and wouldn't believe it if they did. No more amazing display of faith over a reputed sacred relic is known than is associated with this bogus tooth of Kandy.

Reference to any library of unimpeachable works on the world's religions proves conclusively that the actual tooth was burned by the Catholic archbishop of Goa in 1560, in the presence of the viceroy of India and his suite—this is authentic history. Six years after the event at Goa a spurious tooth had to be provided to effect an international marriage long under contract, and the molar of a wild boar or of an ape was used. This tooth eventually was brought to the town nestling in the hills of Ceylon, and surrounding it grew the capital of the proud kingdom of the Kandyans. In the year of Waterloo, the British overthrew the reigning sovereign, and the bogus tooth and its temple have since had the protection of English rule.



The dimensions of the tooth are fatal to its pretended genuineness, for it is a discolored ivory two inches in length and one in diameter. No human mouth ever gave shelter to such a tooth. To view it would be a test of credulity too trying even for fanaticism to stand. The hoax, consequently, is concealed from sight. On important occasions it is displayed—at a distance. When the Duke and Duchess of York visited Kandy the high priests of the temple exhibited the tooth; and on occasions it is supposed to be carried in processions through the streets on the back of an elephant—but deception and trickery in connection with the tooth come easy.

The enshrined humbug reposes on a massive silver table, encrusted with gems and festooned with jeweled chains. The chamber in which it is kept in the temple is stiflingly hot, with atmosphere heavy from the perfume of flowers. Within six or eight bell-shaped metal covers the tooth is held by a standard as if emerging from the petals of a lotus flower of gold. Visitors to the museum at Colombo may see a replica of the relic and its setting: it is a tawdry, unimpressive object.

Glance where you will in Kandy, drive in any direction, penetrate any avenue or footpath, and priestly disciples of Buddha, of every age from the novice to the patriarch of exalted rank, accost the vision. Pilgrims appear to be constantly arriving. They are present from Jaffna in the north, from Galle in the south, from Nuara Eliya in the mountains, from everywhere—some come on foot, some by curious carts drawn by buffaloes or bullocks, some by railroad train. All are unshod, and the head of each is bare and shaven. Each wears the robe of eternal yellow, with an arm and shoulder bare, and the sunshade and palm fan have been the adjuncts of the brotherhood since Gautama left his royal parents' house to teach the word of Buddha.

Celibacy is the rule of the priesthood. Nothing can be less obtrusive than the demeanor of the brethren. Visitors to their temples are welcomed, and courteous replies are always made to inquiries.

Cremation is general in the priesthood, but apparently optional with others of the faith. When a dignitary of the priesthood passes away his confreres assemble from far and near at the funeral pyre to do him honor. The incineration usually takes place in a palm grove. The corpse is surrounded with dried wood, made additionally inflammable with oils. The rites of the pyre include nothing of a sensational character; the assemblage chants for a time, then a priest of high rank applies the torch, and in an hour nothing remains but a mound of embers and ashes. A cremation may be readily witnessed at Kandy or Colombo, or other place possessing a considerable population.

The peoples of low caste of the East are too numerous to be catalogued. India teems with them, of course, and the paradise island of Ceylon has a considerable percentage of human beings denied by their betters of almost every privilege save breathing the free air of heaven. The lowlands and coastal regions have been so commercialized that human pariahs are there almost overlooked—but they are at every turning of the road in every hamlet, everywhere. Kandy, once royal city, knows the abhorred low caste to-day as it did five hundred years ago, for in plain view of the capital in the hills there are settlements of men and women still excluded from communion with the world by reason of a royal curse pronounced centuries ago—and it is a condition worse than death itself.

Representatives of the Rodiya caste may be seen any day by pedestrians in the city's outskirts. There are not many of them, fortunately—perhaps a thousand all told. Tradition has it that hundreds of years ago a vengeful monarch condemned their race to never-ending degradation for having supplied the royal table with human flesh instead of venison. Custom forces these poor mortals to ford or swim a stream, instead of using a ferry; and forbids their drawing water at public wells. They must not live in houses like other people, but in hovels constructed usually by leaning a hurdle against a rock, and their men and women must never clothe their bodies above the waist. Until recent years courts of justice have been closed to them, and if overtaken on their travels by darkness they must find shelter in caves or abandoned hovels. They recognize their degradation by falling on their knees when addressing even toilers on the highway, and shout a warning on the approach of a traveler, that he may halt long enough for them to get off the road to secure his passing without possibility of defilement.

These groveling worms of the earth are nominally Buddhists, but are forbidden to enter a temple. Hence they pray "standing afar off." Demon worship is accredited to them. Their headman can officiate only when he has obtained the sanction of the common jailor of the district. Even to ask alms they must not enter a fenced property, and it is said at Kandy that water over which their shadows have fallen is held to be so defiled that other natives will not use it until purified by the sun's rays. And thus it is; their race is penalized in every manner, and the ban goes unchallenged by the miserable beings.

Their denial by mankind of ordinary fellowship has driven them to filthy and beastly habits. They devour the flesh of monkeys and tortoises, even carrion, it is claimed; and of late years they haunt feasts and ceremonials hoping to obtain fragments of food thrown from the tables of their betters. Now and then they are paid something for watching fields, and for burying carcasses of dead cattle. It is not known that they are thieves, but they are shunned as if they were. In emergencies, when there is a scarcity of labor, they are induced to work on tea estates, or at road mending; but the habits of vagabondage are too rooted to allow their remaining long in useful employment.



Superior in every way to their men, the Rodiya women are the most beautiful in all Ceylon. Their scantiness of raiment, it is pleaded in their behalf, is due in no sense to immodesty. Rodiya girls wander the country as dancers and jugglers, and their erect figures, elastic step, and regalness of carriage, would be envied by the proudest woman promenading Vanity Fair; some of them have faces so perfect in a classic way that a sculptor or painter might make himself famous by reproducing them.

Believe not that these miserable people represent the lowest grade of degradation in Lanka's isle, for there are two outcast races so far beneath them in the social scale as to be avoided by Rodiyas as if they reeked with a pestilential disease. These castes are hopelessly beyond the pale.

British rule in Asia recognizes no caste distinctions, but it has been a humane work of the wives of several English governors of Ceylon to seek to improve the position of the women of the Rodiya caste, especially of the young girls. Some benefit is claimed as a result of the efforts of the English women—but the majesty and power of Great Britain are puny institutions compared with the force of caste among native races. To keep down the Rodiya population a certain Kandyan king, it is stated on good authority, used to have a goodly number of them shot each year.



CHAPTER V

IN CEYLON'S HILL COUNTRY

When good Kandyans discourse in flowery vein, they say Kandy is only forty miles from heaven. Visitors who have fallen under the charm of the place are more likely to wonder at their moderation than question their ability to measure celestial distances. If Gautama Buddha's "eternal rest" were to be had on earth, Kandy would surely be the reward of Nirvana promised those who have acquired merit.

The beauty of Kandy is based upon naturalness; it is not grand like Taormina in Sicily, nor produced by nature and art in combination like Monte Carlo. Everything connected with the spot is fascinating, even the jungle that by day harbors the jackals which sometimes make night hideous to sojourners. Everybody appears happy; even elephants hauling timber in the suburbs toil cheerfully.

This inland province that formed the kingdom of Kandy preserved its integrity throughout the Portuguese and Dutch invasions of the island; and the English were in possession of the coast section full nineteen years before the Kandyan monarchy succumbed to their power.

This beautiful city was a different place under the native kings. They loved grandeur, apparently, but it was the grandeur of selfish surroundings and luxury. The lake now the center of the city was constructed by the last king, it is true; but its shore witnessed atrocities never surpassed in savage excess. Near the spot where stands a monastery of yellow robed monks of Buddha, the last king assembled his people in 1814 to witness the punishment of the innocent wife and children of a fleeing official accused of treason. By the blow of a sword the head of each child was severed from its body in the mother's presence, even that of the babe wrenched from her breast. The heads were placed in a mortar, and the woman forced under threat of disgraceful torture to pound them with a huge pestle.

When news of this reached the coast the English determined to intervene in the interests of humanity. While the horror was yet fresh in the public mind, a party of native merchants of Colombo came to Kandy to trade. The fiendish king ordered them seized and horribly mutilated. When, a few weeks later, the survivors returned to the sea-coast deprived of ears, noses and hands—with the severed members tied to their necks—the English decided to act immediately. Three months later Kandy was in their possession, and the king an exile in southern India.

From that time, with the exception of a few years when the hereditary Kandyan chiefs were troublesome through finding their privileges circumscribed, the progress of Ceylon as a whole has been remarkable. Perhaps the finest example of benefits coming with England's colonial rule is this "Eden of the Eastern Wave." Slavery and forced labor on public works have been abolished, fine roads constructed everywhere, and adequate educational facilities placed within easy reach.

A visitor perceives no squalor, few beggars, and apparently no genuine poverty. All these advantages have been secured practically without taxing the natives in any manner. Uniform contentment, consequently, is everywhere visible. The naked babies, looking like india-rubber dolls, have apparently never learned to cry.

Oddly enough, the English made Kandy the Saint Helena of Arabi Pasha's exile, until the broken and aged man was permitted a few years since to return to his beloved Egypt.



Itself beautiful with poinsettia, bougainvillea, crotons, hibiscus and palms, a botanical garden in Kandy would seem to have no proper place. But the city possesses one that is almost unique among tropical gardens. It is in the suburb of Peradeniya, four miles out, and it is embraced on three sides by Ceylon's principal stream, the Mahavaliganga. For eighty years the Ceylon government has treated the Peradeniya garden and its associated experimental stations as an investment—and it has paid well, for through its agency the cultivation of cinchona, cacao, rubber and other economic crops has been introduced to the people. Throughout Asia the Peradeniya garden is famous. Whether the claim that it is the finest in the world be correct would require an expert to determine. The botanical garden at Demerara may be as good, if not larger and better.

A layman visiting Peradeniya returns to Kandy in a state of bewilderment. He has seen so many attractive and strange manifestations of nature that lucid description is beyond his power. He is aware, nevertheless, that he has viewed nearly every tree, shrub, plant and vine known to tropical and subtropical climes; shrubs that produce every spice, perfume and flavoring he ever heard of, or that contribute to medicine, as well.

At Peradeniya the palm family has nearly a hundred representatives, including the areca, palmyra, talipot, royal, fan, traveler's, date and cocoanut. The forty or more varieties of crotons include the curious corkscrew of the West Indies, and range extravagantly in colors and markings. Huge Assam rubber-trees have exposed roots suggesting a tangle of octopi. A tree noticeable for its perfect foliage is the breadfruit; and there are sensitive plants that shrink from intimate attention, and water-plants whose roots need not come into contact with the earth.

Here and there are kola trees, cardamom bushes, aloe plants from which sisal is drawn, camphor and cinnamon shrubs, and probably every species of the parasitical family, depending like many human beings upon stronger relatives or neighbors for support. The orchid enclosure would arouse any collector's covetousness. There are foliage plants producing leaves counterfeiting elephant ears, and others that look like full spread peacock tails. A small leaf which the official guide of the gardens is obviously partial to is deep green when held to the light, purple when slightly turned, and deep red if looked at from another angle. The visitor moves swiftly into the sunlight when told that he is standing in the shade of the deadly upas.

A traveler approaching the island of Ceylon hears constantly of the wonders of Peradeniya; and some statements in praise of the garden are taken usually with reserve, especially that asserting there are trees there which develop so rapidly that the spectator can actually see them grow. This seems incredible, but there is ample basis for the statement. After a rain the fronds of the giant bamboo frequently grow a foot in the course of a day. At the office of the director of the garden are records of many measurements proving that fronds have lengthened a half inch in an hour. A tree growing a half inch in sixty minutes is a Ceylon fact. The first time I went to Peradeniya, thousands of flying-foxes, suspended bat-like from the giant bamboos a hundred feet from the earth, were sleeping away the day, while soaring above the trees were hundreds of these queer objects, scolding like disturbed crows.



Peradeniya's visitors come from every land in the world, some traveling great distances to see the wonders of the garden. One has not to be arboriculturist or botanist to appreciate the establishment; it is always entertaining, sometimes amusing, and appeals variously to the tastes of visitors. For example, the Mexican goes involuntarily to the aloe from which his beloved pulque is made, the Egyptian to the date-palm, the Connecticut man to the nutmeg grove, and the New Yorker to the tree under which handfuls of cloves may be scooped up without charge, whereas at home they are acquired one at a time at considerable expense.

Explore the highways and byways of Kandy keenly as one may, nothing is in evidence explaining its manifest prosperity—the place has no distinctive product or business. It is the seat of management, however, of the island's greatest industry—tea raising.

In Ceylon tea is "king." This being the fact, no visitor to the town where the Planters' Association has its administrative machinery can close his ears to tea talk. Elsewhere people talk over their tea-cups; in Kandy, they talk tea over every other kind of cup. Kandy's big hotel bristles with planters in overspreading sun hats, as do club and friendly bungalow verandas. Some are "down" for a day (and a night) from up-country estates, while others are "up" from smallish properties at levels below Kandy. Nearly all have to purchase supplies and draw a few sacks of rupees from the bank with which to pay off their coolies. But some have come to discuss market conditions and prospects with their agents. A few, not yet wholly emancipated from the social side of life in which they were reared, have journeyed to Kandy to rub shoulders for a few days with civilization.

The orbit of each and every one of these transplanted Britons is tea, and this in its primal form. They can have no concern with Steel common. Amalgamated copper or Erie 4's, and to them the jargon of stock exchanges would be as meaningless as Sanskrit platitudes. Their speculative medium is tea—tea in bulk, and pretty large bulk at that.

The daily cable from London summarizing the tea market interests each of these men as vitally as the tale of the ticker interests the American taking a flier in stocks. The story is told in two or three lines, and by a presentation of numerals appearing exceedingly unimportant to the sojourner whose operations in tea never exceeded the purchase of a pound package.



Yes, the figures tell the story—a tale of occasional success, but often of failure and woe. A bracketed set of fractions explains the range of prices for broken pekoes, another set deals with common pekoes, another with orange pekoes, and still another with common souchongs. Then follow such words as "steady," "generally firm," and "somewhat lower"—each a phrase with potential significance. The crux of the communication, like that of a school-girl's letter, comes last. If it reads "general market closed 1-8th penny up," the planter has visions of happiness and affluence, and forthwith orders a "peg." But if the postscript says "1-8th down," the young planter foresees nothing but disaster, and may consider levanting with the bags of rupees by the next steamer from Colombo. A planter is always a bull on prices, while the important buyer in Europe is chronically bearish.

The yearly tea product of Ceylon is aggregating 155,000,000 pounds, and of this Uncle Sam purchases 12,000,000 pounds, while 98,000,000 go to Great Britain. The value of the annual output varies little from $21,000,000—and from this Ceylon supports itself so comfortably that the tea-plant seems to merit adoption as the emblem of the colony.

The rise of the industry affords one of the most remarkable instances of rapid development of an agricultural pursuit. Coffee used to be the dominating crop in the island, until "coffee blight" ruined the industry. Tea was then experimented with. In 1875 barely a thousand acres were under tea; now the acreage is 385,000. A journey from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya, in the mountains, is through an interminable tea-garden, and on every hand is proof of substantial investment of capital. The choicest crops are raised between five and six thousand feet above sea-level, and lands in this zone are worth as much as $500 an acre. The scientific cultivation of tea paid its pioneers handsomely, but the current opinion is that overproduction is killing prices, and that a new crop must be sought—probably rubber.

Ceylon's important tea estates are the property of companies, whose shares are dealt in on the London and Colombo stock exchanges. Small plantations are owned by individuals, usually the persons conducting them. One or two thousand Europeans, mainly Englishmen and Scotchmen, are employed on the important estates as managers, assistants and accountants. Hosts of young Britons work a year or two without compensation for the experience. They are called "creepers," and some of them eventually obtain salaried offices, or embark in the industry on their own account. The laboring force on an estate is provided chiefly by Tamil coolies from southern India, and numbers from one to two thousand. Both men and women contrive to lay by a competence at a wage rate of from eight to fifteen cents a day.

If let alone, the tea-plant would grow to be a tree eighteen or twenty feet high, but by generous top pruning it is kept down to three feet, thus becoming a squat bush possessing a biggish leafing area. Every eight or twelve days the shoots and young leaves are plucked—when treated these become the tea of commerce. Tea-plants are alike, speaking generally, grades being effected by the discrimination of picker and sorter. Fresh buds and tender young leaves make the pekoes, older ones the souchongs. Tea gathered exclusively from buds and tips is called "flowery;" if the first young leaf be included, it is "orange pekoe." In order of quality the Ceylon grades are: orange pekoe, pekoe, pekoe-souchong, souchong, congou, and dust.



Tea-plants are perennial, and are set about four feet apart on hillsides. At three years of age they become productive. Familiar sights in the hills are the coolies with baskets of slips setting out plants wherever unemployed spaces may be found, and groups of Tamil girls plucking buds and young leaves from mature bushes. These girls are happy countenanced, some slender and graceful in carriage and movement, and none express objection to being snapshotted by travelers. The girls' baskets are emptied and contents systematically sorted at convenient places in the field, or at the factory. Essential to every important estate is the factory, for there the leaves are withered, broken by rolling, fermented, fired, and finally sifted into grades preparatory to packing in lead-lined boxes ready to be despatched to the markets of the universe.

It is reassuring to witness the system and scrupulous cleanliness of every step employed in producing Ceylon tea. Anybody who has spent a day on an up-country estate is fairly certain to be friendly to Ceylon tea the rest of his life, for modern machinery does much of the work which in China and Japan is performed by hands none too clean and amid surroundings none too healthful.



CHAPTER VI

BOMBAY AND ITS PARSEE "JEES" AND "BHOYS"

The Parsee is the only sect holding religious tenets strange enough to stamp them as "peculiar people" who amount to much in the material affairs of life. Every country possesses groups of people having religious beliefs and practices which attract to them a curious interest; but Bombay's Parsee colony is the only illustration of a brotherhood following strange lives who shine resplendently in the financial and social worlds.

Everything in Bombay is dominated by the Parsee element, and every public hospital and other charitable institution, public statue, or drinking fountain, is the benefaction of a Parsee. The mansions and finest villas are Parsee homes, the leaders of club life are Parsees, and almost every bank and influential commercial house bears a Parsee name on its door. Bombay's population is not far from nine hundred thousand, of which the Parsees number only sixty thousand—but this minority impresses its importance on the majority and gives a character of unique interest to the city.

These dominating people are Indians only by adoption. Twelve hundred years ago the Mohammedan conquerors of Persia persecuted the disciples of Zoroaster to an extent that many of the strongest men and women of the faith fled to India for safety, and the Parsees of to-day are the descendants of these refugees. For generations they have made education a feature, have always helped each other, and been extremely clannish, although preserving toward people of other religions a respectful attitude. Their creed, claimed to have descended from the Hebrew prophet Daniel, is expressed in three precepts of two words each: Good thoughts, good words, good deeds. Orthodox Parsees wear a white girdle of three coils as reminder of these principles; but present-day Parsee men have discarded all evidences of their creed save the designating vizorless cap, and dress in garments of European pattern, and their women are garbed in robes of delicately-shaded and clinging silks, and wear embroidered mantillas on their heads.

Most Parsees are superbly educated, variously accomplished, and speak English fluently. Their equipages are the smartest in Bombay, and every walk of life is led by them. The great fortunes of this part of India are theirs, and Parsee names are identified with everything contributing to Bombay's importance. These names are strikingly peculiar, are usually of from four to six syllables, the last being usually "jee" or "bhoy." The Jeejeebhoy family is intensely Parsee, of course, and important enough to possess an English baronetcy. The city's principal hospital was the gift of Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy. Other families of renown in the financial world are the Readymoneys, Jehangirs and Sassoons.

Turn where you may the eye meets something donated to the public by generous Parsees. These people have long been loyal supporters of British rule in India, and frequently able to neutralize Hindu or Mohammedan opposition to a public measure. Baronetcies and knighthoods have consequently been showered upon them from London. Incidentally, a good deal of the money with which hospitals and libraries were given by great Parsees of a former generation came as reward for running a successful "corner" in Indian cotton at the time of America's civil war. Lancashire mills could get no staple from the Southern states, and astute Bombay capitalists, securing control of the native crop, held the same until the price advanced from ten or twelve cents to a dollar a pound. The fruits of this coup., some of them at least, dotted Bombay with noble buildings and statues.

Some Parsees drive public street vehicles, work on tramways and railways, and pursue humbler vocations, it is true; but most Parsees dwell in princely homes and go to their offices and clubs in splendidly appointed broughams and victorias. Success in life even in Parseedom is based upon the principle of survival of the fittest—or astutest.



The Parsees stoutly deny that they are fire worshippers. The sacred flame perpetually burning in their houses of worship, brought by their ancestors from Persia, is but a symbol, they insist. God, according to their faith, is the emblem of glory, refulgence, and spiritual life; therefore they face the holy flame when praying as the most fitting symbol of the Deity. In the open air they prostrate themselves when praying to the setting sun. Parsee temples are plain to severity, with walls bare and floors uncovered and empty; but there is always the recess wherein burns the sacred fire of incense and sandalwood.

The method of dealing with the Parsee dead is startlingly original, and said to be in strict keeping with the teaching of Zoroaster. According to Parsee tenets fire is too highly venerated to be polluted by burning the dead, while water is equally respected, and Mother Earth as well. Hence the Parsees offer their dead to the elements and the birds of the air, and the bones of rich and poor, high and low, even of the malefactor and suicide, are consigned to eternity in crumbled state in a common pit.

The Towers of Silence occupy the finest site on Malabar Hill, overlooking beautiful Bombay, and high above the Arabian Sea—it is Nature's beauty spot, embowered in graceful shrubbery and palms, with fragrant flowers everywhere. The governor of Bombay Presidency resides at Malabar Point, further along, and the homes of men high in officialdom or commerce occupy every available site in the neighborhood. The Towers, five in number, are of whitewashed stone and cement, 275 feet in circumference, and perhaps twenty-five feet high. An iron door admits the corpse of the Parsee, and once within the strange building it is proffered to the birds of the air—gloating vultures, coarse and repugnant in every aspect.

Four carriers of the dead are seen approaching the beautiful garden with a bier on their shoulders. Two bearded men, the only living persons permitted to enter a Tower, come next. Then follow from fifty to a hundred mourners and friends in pure white robes, walking two and two, each couple holding a handkerchief between them in token of a united grief. The apex of the hill reached, the mourners turn into the house of prayer, wherein the eternal fire is burning, or take position beneath spreading palms for solitary meditation. The bearers deliver the corpse to the bearded functionaries at the entrance to the Tower, and these carry it within. The floor of the Tower is of iron grating with three circles whereon the corpses are placed. The inner circle is for children, the next for women, and the outer for men.

The bearded men are lost to view for a minute or two only, and their concluding office within is to remove the shroud, leaving the body wholly bare. The iron door clangs as they emerge, there is a mighty whir of wings, and in a twinkling the corpse is in possession of hundreds of greedy, competing vultures. In twenty minutes not a vestige of flesh remains on the bones, and the loathsome birds resume their watch from the edge of the Tower for the next comer. Their experienced gaze perceives a funeral procession a mile away in the direction of the city, and a signal cry is so readily understood by vultures resting on trees in the neighborhood that a unanimous attendance is assured long before the corpse passes the portal of the grounds.

The human skeletons are left within the Tower to disintegrate by action of sun and wind, heat and cold. In time the bearded men, gloved and with tongs, remove them to a vast well in the middle of the enclosure, where with lapse of time they turn to dust.

Corpses being considered unclean by Parsee standards, carriers of the dead, as well as those who enter the Towers, are assigned to a class by themselves, and forbidden to mix with others of their strange religion. There is a superstition that an awful curse would be visited upon an unauthorized person whose gaze fell upon a body or skeleton inside a Tower of Silence. The habiliments of those whose duty takes them within are always destroyed before they leave the grounds.

Whatever may be claimed in defense of the Parsee method of dealing with their dead, from a sanitary standpoint, the custom possesses an aspect gruesome in the extreme. The Hindus' system of burning on the river bank is even less repulsive.

If any city in the East is sport-mad it is Bombay. Men work there mornings and engage in something of a sportive character afternoons. The school-boy, even, slings his books from a hockey stick, and the departmental clerk sets out for an afternoon's sociability accompanied by his faithful tennis racquet. Nowhere can better polo be seen than on the Marine Lines Maidan; as for cricket, there probably are more players in Bombay, British and native, than in any town of its population in England—and Bombay's cricket is of the best. More than once have crack teams out from England been heartlessly beaten by local Parsee players. Golf is considered too slow. The next best thing to being a member of the nobility is for a Briton to belong to the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, for it gives him the cachet to everything Asiatic. The club-house on the Apollo Bunder possesses the best situation on the water front, and from its verandas fashionables watch matches that are sailed with consummate skill. During winter months foot-ball appeals strongly to the soldier class, while motor-car races and trials appear to be daily events.



It is the horse that is king, however, in Bombay's pastimes. The Hunt Club sends the smart set to the suburbs now and then, and tent-pegging and pig-sticking draw biggish audiences from the military class whenever contests are announced. But the paramount sport of the masses is horse-racing, pure and simple. The course is on the plains a few miles out of town, close to a suburb given over to cotton-mills, where nearly as many spindles fly as at Fall River. All Bombay seems to be at the races, irrespective of religious or social distinctions—everyone present loves the horse and appears possessed of a goodly supply of rupees with which to back his selections.

The Jockey Club has its own lawn and private enclosure on the stand, and there is a box for the governor and anybody coming from Government House. The grand-stand bears a minor importance to the betting ring, for the latter holds a surging, throbbing medley of humanity—society folk from India's innermost official set, sleek Parsees wearing gold rimmed eye-glasses, rajahs from all parts, wealthy merchants and bankers, fez-wearing Mohammedans from the world of Islam, men from the Persian Gulf in astrachan head-gear, Pathans from beyond the Himalayas, Sikhs from the Punjab—as can be gathered in great India, the museum of the human race.

Three score book-makers howl their bargains in raucous tones, and a whirlwind of rupee paper passes to the strong boxes. The crowd is backing the favorites. Even the Arab horse dealers from the Bhendi bazaar, manly fellows in the garb of desert sheikhs, whose pockets bulge with rolls of notes, comprehend the book-makers' jargon of English that might be incomprehensible to an Oxford don. A prince who is heir to the rulership of one of the greatest states in India has no scruples against inviting an expression of opinion as to so-and-so's bay filly of a native sportsman with beard dyed red with henna, in keeping with the fashion of his kind. Escorted ladies of position, and unescorted women in pairs from Grant Road, are present before the betting booths. Fair Parsee ladies, wearing clinging robes of delicate shades, wait patiently while their swains place their money on the impending event.

A bell rings loudly—the horses are at the post. The mob rushes from the betting ring to the lawn; only few take the trouble to climb to their seats. It is a quick race. The crowd of standees in the inner field see it best, and down this mighty nondescript body is echoed the cry "Kedge Anchor!" Sure enough, "Kedge Anchor," an unknown from Australia, ridden by a jockey of obscure past, wins the great race. Three favorites are ingloriously beaten. Up go the numbers. All is over in less than two minutes—and the crowd goes pell-mell back to the book-makers' enclosure, hoping for better luck over the next race on the card. If rupees were dollars, the financial aspect of a Bombay racing day would be important.

Kipling wrote true when he called Bombay "India's Queen City." It lacks the depressing influences of Calcutta, as well as the odors. Indeed, it is one of the handsomest cities of the whole British Empire, and has more notable buildings than Manchester or Edinburgh. True, its stately piles blend the Gothic and Indian schools of architecture, but otherwise there is nothing Eastern about Bombay—save its people. A man awakening from long slumber on a ship anchored off the Apollo Bunder would willingly swear he beheld a European town. Eight tenths of India's visitors arrive and depart from Bombay.

The opening of the Suez Canal made certain the importance of Bombay as a trade center. It is now the largest cotton port in the world next to New Orleans, and if plague and smallpox might be controlled for five years it would have a population of a million. Bombay is a comparatively modern city, as cities count in immemorial India. England secured Bombay in 1661, not by conquest, but as a portion of the marriage dowry of Catharine of Braganza of Portugal, when she became the queen of Charles II.

The world's most artistic railway station—not the largest, nor costliest—is in Bombay, and the best marble statue in existence of Queen Victoria was presented to the Bombay municipality by His Highness the Gaekwar of Baroda. Another notable gift is the bronze statue of Edward VII, donated by Sir Albert Sassoon, son of a public-spirited banker from Baghdad, who took up his residence in Bombay. A newcomer among the city's office buildings is "Roosevelt House," advantageously situated near the Apollo Bunder.

The eyes of the person recently arrived from Europe or America behold many strange and amusing sights in the streets of Bombay, and for days your local guide and the obliging porter at the hotel is kept busy the livelong day answering questions. The native policeman is a human institution who explains himself. It is averred that he is loyal and efficient, but with his calfless legs bared to the knee and feet shod in sandals, he looks a queer cousin of Fifth Avenue's "Finest" and of the "Bobby" of London. A person unaccustomed to the habits of subject races gets the idea that the Bombay constable's first duty is the touching of his cap to white men, all and sundry; but it is said to his credit that in a street brawl or a water front quarrel among drunken lascars he fights like a wildcat. He is extremely proud of his truncheon, for it is a badge of office tremendously respected in the city's labyrinths where India's heterogeneous peoples dwell a dozen or more in a room. During the wet monsoon the policeman of Bombay carries an umbrella supplied by the municipality, which heightens his comical aspect—but it keeps him dry.



The markings and badges of caste observed in Bombay streets lead you to a constant interrogation of your sources of information. At the outset you determine to obtain an understanding of the institution of Indian caste, but a fortnight after your arrival in Bombay you conclude that the task is too great for anybody having other things to do, and give it up in despair. A few facts connected with this supreme and dominating characteristic take root in your memory, however, and you have learned that the customs and rites of caste could not be strengthened even by legal enactments, or by the massed strength of all the armies on earth. The word is derived from the Latin word castus, implying purity of blood, and whose essential principle is marriage. India's population groups forty-seven nationalities, divided into 2,378 recognized castes and tribes. Accident of birth determines irrevocably a native's social and domestic relationship, prescribing even what he may eat and drink throughout life, how he must dress, and whom he may marry. There are four fundamental divisions of caste—the priestly or Brahmin (which has close upon fifteen million devotees), the warrior, the trading, and the laboring; and these have interminable subdivisions. Below the laboring caste there is a substratum which is termed pariah or outcast, and these degraded specimens of humanity are not better than animated machines performing the functions of public scavengers.

Throughout India caste is hereditary. The son of a priest becomes a priest, a warrior's son becomes a soldier, and a carpenter's boy a carpenter, and so on. For a father to start a son in any calling but his own, or a vocation that is similar, would be "against his caste." Caste is social as well as religious, and includes the occupation as well as the creed. For a Hindu to rise from his inherited caste is next to impossible, and this tends to make the Hindus an ambitionless race. The infusion of new blood is likewise not tolerated, and in India "caste" and "custom" are perfect synonyms—and each a national curse.

A major part of the people of India are agriculturists, men and women who are dependent upon what they can wrest from the soil for their existence. Their plough, an heirloom from remote antiquity, merely scratches the earth. The use of superior implements would result in superior tillage and augmented crops; but it would be as simple to induce the peasant to change his religion as to get him to forsake the plough used by his ancestors. The implements of daily life mostly belong to the barbarous ages. Attempt to introduce any other and you are rebuked by the reply: "It is not the custom; my father used this article, and therefore it is my duty to use it. Would you have me set myself up for a wiser person than my revered parent?" The toiling masses, consequently, are poor—and seem destined to remain poor until the close of the chapter.

I heard of a contractor engaged in building a railway who objected to the physical toil and slowness of having a bank of earth removed by baskets on the heads of coolies. So he invested in a number of wheelbarrows and explained their use to the natives, and went back to his Bombay office flattering himself that he was a reformer. The next week when he visited the scene of operations he found the barrows in use, but the coolies were filling them with dirt and carrying them up the bank on their heads as they had always carried their baskets. The coolie of Hind is not to be beguiled by any demonstration intended to lighten his task, for he is crusted with conservatism and prejudice.

In Bombay I engaged a man-servant to accompany me on a trip to the Punjab. It being a winter of unusual severity, and the journey involving much night travel, the agent from whom I hired the servant advised me that it would be a beneficial as well as a humane act were I to give the man ten rupees with which to procure an "outfit" suitable for one going to the north. "It's sometimes done, but not often enough to make it a custom," explained the agent; "but it would be the right thing—and because voluntary, the poor fellow should serve you all the better for your generosity. Give him but ten rupees, and see that he spends it all for heavy undergarments and serviceable shoes."

Experiencing some haziness as to how any tittle of reputation for generosity was going to be reared on an expenditure aggregating just $3.20 in American money, I communicated my determination to the man who perforce was to be my constant companion for a month, and who had it in his power to make me love or hate the country. As was to be expected, I was many kinds of a sahib for my munificent benefaction, and Torab Jan salaamed almost to the floor when promising to return from the bazaars in good time to strap my mattress and pack my trunk in readiness to go to the station directly dinner was over.

Hours later, but in time to throw my clothes and books into trunk and bags, Torab stalked into the apartment, and close upon his heels was another native carrying a not overlarge parcel. Torab was frank in stating that he had purchased precisely what he needed, and proffered a snip of paper covered with characters in Hindustani to prove he had expended precisely ten rupees, which made it necessary to have another benefaction—two annas this time.

"What are the two annas for, and who is this man?" I asked.

"He's the coolie bearing my parcel from the bazaar, master," was the response; "you must know that my caste makes it impossible for me to carry parcels."

"See here, you drooling idiot; what do you think I have hired you for? Why, you've got to carry parcels, lots of them, and big ones at that; and you'll have to carry that bed there and my trunk half over India, likely as not. Don't talk to me about caste."

"Pray, master, don't be angry with me. I know I'm to carry your things—that's what I'm for. I forgot to explain that my caste forbids only the carrying of my own parcels," the poor fellow whined.

And so it was. In places where there were no carriages Torab seemed to delight in loading himself dawn with my paraphernalia, but his belongings had always to be carried religiously by a native of a breed earning its living by acting as human drays.



CHAPTER VII

THE VICARIOUS MAHARAJAH OF JEYPORE

Thousands of travelers make the pilgrimage to India, a land hoary with age, and when weary of overwrought temples and tombs, when arid plains and malodorous towns lose their power to interest, they journey north to Rajputana to revel in Jeypore, the unique—at least, lovers of Kipling do. And the effect on jaded senses is like a cooling draught after a parching thirst. Kipling called Jeypore "A pink city, to see and puzzle over," It surely is pink, all of it that is not sky-blue, and for various reasons it is more satisfying than any other town in India.

For a land where time is calculated by century units, Jeypore is almost as recent as a "boom" city on an American prairie. As a fact, its first building was reared only a hundred and seventy-eight years ago; and this modernity explains thoroughfares of remarkable breadth that cross each other at right angles. Generations the senior of Jeypore, New York is no better exponent of the checker-board idea. Jeypore is but the setting of a scene harking back to medieval days, however, and is the capital of an independent state greater in area than Belgium, and from its palace and judicial chambers nearly three million souls are governed. Nowhere in India, outside the great Rajputana province, is it possible to view a picture of happy and contented life, and in the city of Jeypore this is seen in its perfection.

This ornate capital on the plains, hemmed in by fortress-crowned hills, is a veritable stronghold of feudal barons and armed retainers, of hermits and monasteries, and is dotted with palaces and public buildings pertaining to the Maharajah's rule. Many of the structures are new enough to suggest what Americans love to call "modern conveniences." The principal streets are broader than Broadway, as well paved, and illuminated by gas systematically enough installed to indicate the presence behind the scenes of European engineers. Strange to say, Jeypore is an Indian city wherein the lordly Briton in khaki is never seen: if the English functionary be here, his master is none other than the Maharajah. Through its streets surge a people almost childish in their happiness, some in ekkas drawn by matched pairs of bullocks, others mounted high on the backs of trotting camels, while bands of chattering Rajputs on foot are omnipresent—every grouping reminds of something witnessed on the stage, and the tout ensemble might be the great scene of a realistic opera intended to glorify the people and the institutions of India.

Feminine adornment is carried in Jeypore to its extreme. The bright-hued skirts of the women are flare-fashioned and "fuller," in dressmakers' parlance, than anything dared by Fay Templeton. But the Jeypore beauty's real passion is for gold and silver jewelry, and she carries this to a degree unrivaled by the women of any other section of India. It is not trifling with fact to say that the average Rajput woman wears from eight to ten pounds in silver on ankles and toes, and bracelets enough to sheath arms from wrist to elbow. Every feminine Jeypore nose bears some metal ornamentation—gold studs through the nostrils, and generally a hoop of gold depending a full inch below the point of the chin. Their ears are deformed by the wealth of metal hanging from lobe or strung on the upper rim of that organ. It can be said of Jeypore's fair sex that they are bimetallists in the strictest sense. The argument of the savings-bank has probably never been brought to their attention, for when one of them has a little money ahead she purchases a silver ornament for her person; and if a windfall come to her by legacy or otherwise, she buys something of gold, most likely a necklace of barbaric design. When one of these women goes to the market-place or the public well, she wears everything of value she possesses, and for the best of reasons her home is never pilfered.

Rajput men and women look a visitor in the face, and by their smiling countenances seem to welcome you to their country. They lack the broken-spirited look and sullen servility of Indian peoples overlorded by Thomas Atkins. In Jeypore there are grandees and warriors, painted dogs, hunting leopards, bedecked horses, and hulking elephants in every street picture—and these pictures change with the facility of groupings of the kaleidoscope.

The open-air shops of the metal workers and enamelers, and of the dyers, whose favorite colors are magenta and yellow, are interesting. There, on the left, is the imposing facade of the Palace of the Winds, extolled by Sir Edwin Arnold as "a vision of daring and dainty loveliness," but which in reality is scarcely more than a mask of stucco erected to make a show from the street. The Maharajah's palace and grounds cover a seventh of the area of this finest of modern Hindu cities. A stone's throw from the palace portal is a temple wherein Jeypore women beseech the image of Siva to bless them with children: and elsewhere are a Gate of Rubies, and a Temple of the Sun. At scores of wayside shops tiny idols of the Hindu hierarchy, and silver bracelets and gewgaws, are sold to people almost infantile in their cheerfulness. Wedding processions pass and repass with a frequency proving an active matrimonial market, each led by joyous singers and drum-beaters.



An entrancing place is this seat of His Highness of Jeypore, and compensating for the tedious railway journey from Delhi landing one at the city's gates in the inky darkness of 4:30 in the morning. At his hotel a visitor learns that a formal request must be made for permission to inspect the Maharajah's palace and stables, and to go to the abandoned capital of the state, Ambir, five miles away. You make application through a deputy, usually the man-servant traveling with you, and an hour later comes formal notification that His Highness welcomes you to his capital, and that a state carriage will be sent for your use, as well as a state elephant to carry you up the hills to Ambir. This outburst of hospitality comes with a surprise and force that almost sweeps one off his feet, and you have instant misgivings for having troubled the august potentate at such an unreasonable morning hour. Then your brain almost reels as you recall books that had dwelt upon the limitless hospitality of Eastern princes, and you hope that His Highness will not insist upon your dining with him—with your evening dress and high hat awaiting you at a Bombay hotel a command to the palace would, to say the least, be awkward.

But you are spared this inconvenience, probably because the Maharajah is as familiar with deputed affairs as you are. Two gaudy chaprassis who have brought the desired permits are His Highness's deputies, and from them you learn that their master has been for a fortnight at Calcutta, but is expected to return in a day or two. They come into your room and assure you in fair English that they are detailed for your use as long as you honor Jeypore with your benevolent presence. They wear curious swords high under the left arm, and beautifully inlaid shields are belted to their right arms—these trappings are badges of office, but you wonder if they would sell them to be taken to America to become conspicuous adornments of somebody's cosy corner.

A person with a fondness for simplicity, or possessing scruples against kingly institutions, may escape the state carriage by despatching a firm and prompt declination of the honor. But the chaprassis remain; and the elephant, already trudging to the base of the Ambir hills to await your coming, cannot be countermanded or headed off. In this charming manner the great Maharajah entertains daily the handful of strangers within his gates—it is India's remaining relic of the hospitality of long ago. A distinction inordinately prized by native princes is the number of guns prescribed by the Indian government as their salutes. The Gaekwar of Baroda and two other feudatory rulers are entitled to twenty-one guns, while the hereditary right of the Maharajah of Jeypore is only seventeen. But the present Maharajah, as a reward for his enlightened administration, is made happy by having four additional guns—and no king or emperor can have higher acclaim from the cannon's mouth.



One cannot tarry a day in Jeypore without hearing redundant testimony that His Highness Sir Sewai Madho Singh is a fine man, devoted to his people and unswervingly loyal to his religion. His visitors are often lords and ladies of England, who find his hospitality as interesting as it is boundless. To the tips of his fingers he is a Hindu devotee with all that the term can mean. When he attended the coronation of Edward VII, in London, the preparations for his sea-voyage were unprecedented in orthodoxy. An ocean liner was specially chartered for him and his suite; in all one hundred and twenty-five people formed the escort. Six special kitchens were fitted up on the ship, including one to prepare food exclusively for His Highness. There was, as well, a special temple, paved with marble, for the family idol, before which the Maharajah prostrated himself many times daily. Drinking water from the sacred Ganges, and every article of food—enough to sustain the entire party for six months—were carried from India. So rigidly was the orthodoxy observed that even the sand for cleaning cooking utensils was placed on board at Bombay; and washermen, carpenters, blacksmiths, and others accompanied the party, that there be no necessity for purchasing anything in England, or having work done by persons not of the Hindu faith. That the august traveler's caste be untainted, extra tanks of water from Benares were subsequently sent to England by frequent steamers.

The Maharajah maintains a military force of nearly 4,000 cavalry and 16,000 infantrymen. Besides these soldiers, his retainers number thousands, and their right to wear a sword is a coveted distinction throughout Jeypore state.

The palace stables contain three hundred horses, but the equipages and trappings are more interesting than the animals. There are some superb Arab steeds, however. A visitor noting the army of grooms wonders that the management is not better systematized; but a word from your traveling companion, who knows the ways of maharajahs, is to the effect that an Indian nabob is forced by custom to support thousands whether there be work for them or not. His Highness's stables and carriage-houses somehow suggest a circus in winter quarters. The fact is that Jeypore's ruler takes little interest in horseflesh and carriagemakers' creations. His preference is for elephants—animals befitting a dynasty descended from the sun and moon.

"Will the sahibs visit the elephant stable!" The sahibs communicate their desire to do so. Mahouts with pikestaffs lead the way, and a myriad of hangers-on swarm in the train of the visitors. The accoutrements seen en route to the stable are interesting, surely, especially the howdahs. Some of these are of silver. One was used by the Prince of Wales; another was fashioned for the Maharajah's use at the Delhi durbar, and a gorgeous one is reserved for the viceroy whenever that mighty personage pays a state visit to Jeypore. A half-dozen howdahs are specially fitted for the Maharajah's favorite sport, tiger-hunting. Some of the howdah cloths represent a fortune in gold and silver bullion, while a few are saved from tawdriness by the skill of the embroiderer in silk.



The elephants are now trumpeting impatiently for inspection. Their compound is a series of roofless walled enclosures, and a visitor notes with grateful appreciation the strength of the chains anchoring the beasts to mother earth. A leviathan is straining at his tether in a mad effort to reach a vagabond who is tantalizing him with a pike, and your guide—one of the official messengers with sword and shield—says: "He no like Hindu people; last week he kill two." Beasts as docile as kittens take nuts from your hand, and evince disappointment when more are not forthcoming. Five magnificent tuskers, that promptly obey their keeper's command, are used by His Highness for tiger-hunting; and a bevy of complaisant elephants, quartered in a single stable, have grown old in carrying tourists up the Ambir hills, it is explained.

From the elephant stables the chaprassis scurry the visitors through fragrant gardens and under bizarre arches to the crocodile department, where a score of saurians are pastured in an enclosure that is half swamp and half lake and is acres in extent. Visitors are placed at the top of a staircase of masonry descending to the water, while two wild-eyed Hindus seek to rouse the crocodiles from their siesta on a grassy islet a hundred yards away by a series of shrieks that would disgust self-respecting animals and reptiles. In a leisurely manner the crocodiles seem to recognize the signal to mean that a new lot of tourists desire to see them fed. It requires a good quarter of an hour for the Indians to lure them to the foot of the staircase, and from the first it is plain that the crocodiles view with indifference your visit to Jeypore. The lower step is finally fringed with opened mouths which in a moment engulf a mass of slaughter-house refuse almost thrust down their throats by the wild-eyed showmen, whom you reward with a shower of rupees which they believe marks your appreciation of their efforts.

As you are whisked through the palace yard, on the way to the carriage, you espy through an open door a splendid room fitted with paraphernalia not associated with medieval pastimes. It is the Maharajah's billiard-room, sumptuously furnished, and filled with tables of the latest English make.

Probably because they are proud of the fact that a former ruler of Jeypore was a generous patron of science, the chaprassis pilot you to the park given over to the apparatus of the celebrated Hindu astronomer and mathematician, Jai Singh. It contains dials, azimuth masonry, altitude pillars, astrolabe, and a double mural quadrant of enormous size and height, on which the gradations have been marked. In a way this exhibit of obsolete paraphernalia refutes the idea that Jeypore's maharajahs have lived solely for the gratification of the senses by amusements. A few minutes later you are at the public tiger-cages, where a dozen bona fide "man-eaters" are lazily stretched in shaded corners of their prison cages. Thirty odd years ago the present King of England killed his first tiger near Jeypore, and the animal ever since has played an important part in the city's pleasures. One inmate of the cages has an authenticated record of ten Indians killed, before His Highness's retainers lured him into ambush and made him a prisoner. "Two days from now," explains one of the men carrying sword and shield, "that tiger there,"—indicating a sullen beast,—"is to fight a wild elephant for the Maharajah's entertainment. Would the sahibs care to witness the combat?" The visitors promptly regret that they have unbreakable engagements in another part of India. Cheetahs are then led forth for admiration. Zoos and menageries know them as leopards—in India they are cheetahs, and are trained to course deer and antelope. A huntsman releases a cheetah, whose gaze has been directed to a fleeing deer on the plain, and in a few minutes the deer is a captive.

So much for the diversions of Jeypore's autocrat.

A distinct touch of beauty is imparted to his capital by the peacocks of imperial strut and plumage. They are everywhere—on the crenelated city wall, in the hurly-burly of the streets and bazaars, even on the steps leading to temples and mosques. The peacock is sacred to Jeypore; it crowns in miniature the street lamps, and is sculptured in hundreds of places. Chattering parrots by the roadside may arrest attention, but are forgotten in a moment—a strutting peacock is beautiful enough to place the parrot family in eclipse. When blue-rock pigeons descend by thousands in the market-place to profit by an over-turned sack of grain, visitors marvel at their irridescent necks and breasts—but a beauteous peacock appearing on the scene attracts an admiration amounting to monopoly.

But the appointment with the state elephant—what of that?

Surely, Ambir must be seen. There it was that all the ancient splendor originated and dwelt for centuries, and until a practical maharajah decided that a mountain retreat was ill-suited to the needs of a capital. The possessor of this astute mind moved himself and his machinery of government to the plain below—and all his people followed. This explains why Ambir is now deserted, and why a court steeped in medievalism has a setting bristling with newness.

Every adjunct of a fortified residence is there in the hills. Miles of battlemented masonry, pierced every few feet for bowmen, surrounds the straggling mass of buildings. Terraces are set upon the mountainside like a gigantic staircase, and fringed with railings of stone so artistically wrought as to suggest the grill-work of the matchless Taj Mahal. Great gray monkeys descend from the mountain slope to feed from the hands of your guides; and they are not of the moth-eaten variety seen in captivity, but are freeborn denizens of the forest, whose coats glisten and whose curly tails are of unusual length.

Some of the apartments in the old palace rival anything to be seen at Lucknow, Agra or Delhi. A gem of a temple, adjoining a public audience hall of marvelous richness in finish, is dedicated to the awful goddess Kali, and each morning a goat is sacrificed to this deity, ever craving blood, by Hindu priests attached to the Maharajah's court. This is a revolting blot on a series of majestic buildings that unite to make one of India's greatest sights.

"How blessed would it be," you meditate, "if the betel-chewing priest might be sacrificed in place of the innocent and helpless animal." But no, human sacrifices are no longer permitted in India; England stopped them years ago.

Oh, yes; the state elephant. Well, it was extremely useful, for it rescued four stalwart native servants, laden with tiffin basket and a dozen bottles of mineral water, from toiling up the hills on foot. Perched on his back like nabobs, they probably indulged in remarks disparaging of their masters, electing to walk, and mused maybe upon the theory that now and then man meets his deserts.



CHAPTER VIII

THE WORLD'S MOST EXQUISITE BUILDING

A Mogul ruler who did things was Shah Jahan, and he came of a race not content with ordinary achievements. His grandfather, Akbar, was probably the greatest personage ever born in India. He it was "whose saddle was his throne, the canopy of which was the vaulted dome of heaven." Akbar made Eastern history, made it fast, blazoning it with proud records of conquest and empire extension. Akbar was the grandest man who ever ruled Central India, and it was he who developed the Mogul Empire to the loftiest importance it attained.

Shah Jahan embellished the empire with noble structures, and his impulse for building amounted to mania. Time annulled Akbar's achievements, but those of his grandson stand to-day, and the structures of his era are beautiful enough to attract admirers from every corner of the earth. A famous critic once said that Shah Jahan built like a giant and finished like a jeweler. His works have made Agra, of all cities in India, the place of unrivaled interest.



Agra's Taj Mahal is the most exquisite building ever erected by the hands of man, and is a romance as deftly wrought in marble as any writer ever fashioned in words. It marks a great man's love for a woman—Arjamand Banu Begum, his wife. Shah Jahan was a Mohammedan despot who led a magnificent life, and had other wives; but in his eyes the peer of her sex was Arjamand. When she died in giving birth to a child, he declared he would rear to her memory a mausoleum so perfect that it would make men marvel for all time. And this he accomplished. More poetry and prose have been written about the Taj, with more allusions to it as a symbol of love, than of any other creation marking human affection—and the secret probably lies in the fact that all the world loves a lover.

Arjamand had many titles of rank and endearment, but poets like Sir Edwin Arnold preferred to speak of her as Mumtaz-i-Mahal, meaning the "Exalted of the Palace," when extolling the charms of this splendid niece of Nur-Mahal, who likewise had been famed for beauty and charity.

Shah Jahan ruled from 1628 to 1658, and had been on the throne only two years when death took from him his adored Arjamand. Then came the resolve to erect to her memory a monument that might measure his love and grief. Since Akbar's time, the best architects, artists, and skilled workmen of India, Persia, and Arabia had been attracted to Agra and neighboring Delhi. All were summoned to Shah Jahan's court, and the resources of his empire placed at their disposal. The Taj, consequently, was not the creation of a single master mind, but the consummation of a great art epoch. Its construction was commenced four years after Arjamand's demise.

The bereft emperor had appointed a council of great architects of India to guide the work. Drawings of celebrated structures of the world, especially those in Moslem lands, were studied. More than one European was attracted to the Mogul court, and it is believed that Geronimo Verroneo, who had journeyed from Italy, laid several plans before Shah Jahan. There are records at Agra showing that certain suggestions of the Italian were adopted, but it is common belief that the general design was the recommendation of a Turkish or Persian architect named Ustad Isa.

In keeping with an old Tartar custom, a garden was chosen as the site of the tomb—a garden planted with flowers and fragrant shrubs, emblems of life, and solemn cypresses, emblems of death and eternity. In Mogul days such a garden was maintained as a pleasure ground during the owner's lifetime, and used for his interment when dead.

"And she who loved her garden, lieth now Lapped in a garden. And all this for Love!"

The laborers came from many parts of the world—the chief masons from Northern India and Bagdad, the dome builders from Asiatic Turkey, and the mosaic artists from Persia and probably Italy. Every section of India and Central Asia was drawn upon for materials. The marble, spotless in purity, was brought from Jeypore, 300 miles away, on the backs of elephants and camels or by bullock carts. The red sandstone was contributed by Fathpu Sikrij, the jasper by the Punjab, the crystal and jade by China. The turquoises came from Tibet and the Red Sea, the sapphires and lapis lazuli from Ceylon, coral and cornelian from Arabia, onyx and amethysts from Persia, and the diamonds from Bundelkund.