Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (889 page)

All this world of ours knows something about the Eden Gardens, which are supposed by the uninitiated of the mofussil to represent the gilded luxury of the metropolis. As a matter of fact they are hideously dull. The inhabitants appear in top-hats and frock-coats, and walk dolorously to and fro under the glare of jerking electric lamps, when they ought to be sitting in their shirt-sleeves round little tables and treating their wives to iced lager beer. My friend — it was a muggy March night — wrapped himself in the prescribed garments and said graciously: “You can wear a round hat, but you mustn’t wear deck-shoes; and for goodness’ sake, my dear fellow, don’t smoke on the Red Road — all the people one knows go there.” Most of the people who were people sat in their carriages, in an atmosphere of hot horse, harness, and panel-lacquer, outside the gardens, and the remnant tramped up and down, by twos and threes, upon squashy green grass, until they were wearied, while a band played at them. “And is this all you do?” I asked. “It is,” said my friend. “Isn’t it good enough? We meet every one we know here, and walk with him or her, unless he or she is among the carriages.”

Overhead was a woolly warm sky; underfoot feverish soft grass; and from all quarters the languorous breeze bore faint reminiscences of stale sewage upon its wings. Round the horizon were stacked lines of carriages, and the electric flare bred aches in the strained eyebrow. It was a strange sight and fascinating. The doomed creatures walked up and down without cessation, for when one fled away into the lamp-spangled gloom twenty came to take his place. Slop-hatted members of the mercantile marine, Armenian merchants, Bengal civilians, shop-girls and shop-men, Jews, Parthians, and Mesopotamians, were all there in the tepid heat and the fetid smell.

“This,” said my friend, “is how we enjoy ourselves. There are the Viceregal liveries. Lady Lansdowne comes here.” He spoke as though reading to me the Government House list of Paradise. I reflected that these people would continue to walk up and down until they died, drinkless, dusty, sad, and blanched.

In saying this last thing I had made a mistake. Calcutta is no more Anglo-Indian than West Brompton. In common with Bombay, it has achieved a mental attitude several decades in advance of that of the raw and brutal India of fact. An intelligent and responsible financier, discussing the Empire, said: “But why do we want so large an army in India? Look at the country all about.” I think he meant as far as the Circular Road or perhaps Raneegunge. Some of these days, when the voice of the two uncomprehending cities carries to London, and its advice is acted upon, there will be trouble. Till this second journey to Calcutta I was unable to account for the acid tone and limited range of the Presidency journals. I see now that they are ward papers and ought to be treated as such.

In the fulness of time — there was no hurry — imagine that, O you toilers of the land — I took ship and fled from Calcutta by that which they call the Mutton-Mail, because it takes sheep and correspondence to Rangoon. Half the Punjab was going with us to serve the Queen in the Burma Military Police, and it was grateful to catch once more the raw, rasping up-country speech amid the jabber of Burmese and Bengali.

To Rangoon, then, aboard the
Madura
, come with me down the Hughli, and try to understand what sort of life is led by the pilots, those strange men who only seem to know the land by watching it from the river.

“And I fetched up under the north ridge with six inches o’ water under me, with a sou’west monsoon blowing, an’ me not knowing any more than the dead where in — Paradise — I was taking her,” says one deep voice.

“Well, what do you expect?” says another. “They ought not all to be occulting lights. Give me a red with two flashes for outlying danger anyhow. The Hughli’s the worst river in the world. Why, off the Lower Gasper only last year....”

“And look at the way Government treats you!”

The Hughli pilot is human. He may talk Greek in the exercise of his profession, but he can unite at swearing at the Government as thoroughly as though he were an uncovenanted civilian. His life is a hard one; but he is full of strange stories, and when treated with proper respect may condescend to tell some of them. If he has served on the river for six years as a “cub,” and is neither dead nor decrepit, I believe he can earn as much as fifty rupees by sending two thousand tons of ship and a few hundred souls flying down the reaches at twelve miles an hour. Then he drops over the side with your last love-letters and wanders about the estuary in a tug until he finds another steamer and brings her up. It does not take much to comfort him.

Somewhere in the open sea some days later.
I give it up. I
cannot
write, and to sleep I am not ashamed. A glorious idleness has taken entire possession of me; journalism is an imposture; so is Literature; so is Art. All India dropped out of sight yesterday and the rocking pilot-brig at the Sandheads bore my last message to the prison that I quit. We have reached blue water — crushed sapphire — and a little breeze is bellying the awning. Three flying-fish were sighted this morning; the tea at
chota-hazri
is not nice, but the captain is excellent. Is this budget of news sufficiently exciting, or must I in strict confidence tell you the story of the Professor and the compass? You will hear more about the Professor later, if, indeed, I ever touch pen again. When he was in India he worked about nine hours a day. At noon to-day he conceived an interest in cyclones and things of that kind — would go to his cabin to get a compass and a meteorological book. He went, but stopped to reflect by the brink of a drink. “The compass is in a box,” said he, drowsily, “but the nuisance of it is that to get it I shall have to pull the box out from under my berth. All things considered, I don’t think it’s worth while.” He loafed on deck, and I think by this time is fast asleep. There was no trace of shame in his voice for his mighty sloth. I would have reproved him, but the words died on my tongue. I was guiltier than he.

“Professor,” said I, “there is a foolish little paper in Allahabad called the
Pioneer
. I am supposed to be writing it a letter — a letter with my hands! Did you ever hear of anything so absurd?”

“I wonder if Angostura bitters really go with whisky,” said the Professor, toying with the neck of the bottle.

There is no such place as India; there never was a daily paper called the
Pioneer
. It was all a weary dream. The only real things in the world are crystal seas, clean-swept decks, soft rugs, warm sunshine, the smell of salt in the air, and fathomless, futile indolence.

No. II

THE RIVER OF THE LOST FOOTSTEPS AND THE GOLDEN MYSTERY UPON ITS BANKS. THE INIQUITY OF JORDAN. SHOWS HOW A MAN MAY GO TO THE SHWAY DAGON PAGODA AND SEE IT NOT AND TO THE PEGU CLUB AND HEAR TOO MUCH. A DISSERTATION ON MIXED DRINKS.

“I am a part of all that I have met, Yet all experience is an arch where through Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.”

There was a river and a bar, a pilot and a great deal of nautical mystery, and the Captain said the journey from Calcutta was ended and that we should be in Rangoon in a few hours. It is not an impressive stream, being low-banked, scrubby, and muddy; but as we gave the staggering rice-boats the go-by, I reflected that I was looking upon the River of the Lost Footsteps — the road that so many, many men of my acquaintance had travelled, never to return, within the past three years. Such a one had gone up to open out Upper Burma, and had himself been opened out by a Burmese dah in the cruel scrub beyond Minhla; such another had gone to rule the land in the Queen’s name, but could not rule a hill stream and was carried down under his horse. One had been shot by his servant; another by a dacoit while he sat at dinner; and a pitifully long list had found in jungle-fever their sole reward for “the difficulties and privations inseparably connected with military service,” as the Bengal Army Regulations put it. I ran over half a score of names — policemen, subalterns, young civilians, employés of big trading firms, and adventurers. They had gone up the river and they had died. At my elbow stood one of the workers in New Burma, going to report himself at Rangoon, and he told tales of interminable chases after evasive dacoits, of marchings and counter-marchings that came to nothing, and of deaths in the wilderness as noble as they were sad.

Then, a golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizon — a beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple spire. It stood upon a green knoll, and below it were lines of warehouses, sheds, and mills. Under what new god, thought I, are we irrepressible English sitting now?

“There’s the old Shway Dagon” (pronounced Dagone,
not
like the god in the Scriptures), said my companion. “Confound it!” But it was not a thing to be sworn at. It explained in the first place why we took Rangoon, and in the second why we pushed on to see what more of rich or rare the land held. Up till that sight my uninstructed eyes could not see that the land differed much in appearance from the Sunderbuns, but the golden dome said: “This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about.” “It’s a famous old shrine o’ sorts,” said my companion, “and now the Tounghoo-Mandalay line is open, pilgrims are flocking down by the thousand to see it. It lost its big gold top — ’thing that they call a
‘htee
— in an earthquake: that’s why it’s all hidden by bamboo-work for a third of its height. You should see it when it’s all uncovered. They’re regilding it now.”

Why is it that when one views for the first time any of the wonders of the earth a bystander always strikes in with, “You should see it, etc.”? Such men given twenty minutes from the tomb at the Day of Judgment, would patronize the naked souls as they hurried up with the glare of Tophet on their faces, and say: “You should have seen this when Gabriel first began to blow.” What the Shway Dagon really is and how many books may have been written upon its history and archæology is no part of my business. As it stood overlooking everything it seemed to explain all about Burma — why the boys had gone north and died, why the troopers bustled to and fro, and why the steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla lay like black-backed gulls upon the water.

Then we came to a new land, and the first thing that one of the regular residents said was: “This place isn’t India at all. They ought to have made it a Crown colony.” Judging the Empire as it ought to be judged, by its most prominent points —
videlicet
, its smells — he was right; for though there is one stink in Calcutta, another in Bombay, and a third and most pungent one in the Punjab, yet they have a kinship of stinks, whereas Burma smells quite otherwise. It is not exactly what China ought to smell like, but it is not India. “What is it?” I asked; and the man said “
Napi
,” which is fish pickled when it ought to have been buried long ago. This food, in guide-book language, is inordinately consumed by ... but everybody who has been within downwind range of Rangoon knows what
napi
means, and those who do not will not understand.

Yes, it was a very new land — a land where the people understood colour — a delightfully lazy land full of pretty girls and very bad cheroots.

The worst of it was that the Anglo-Indian was a foreigner, a creature of no account. He did not know Burman, — which was no great loss, — and the Madrassi insisted upon addressing him in English. The Madrassi, by the way, is a great institution. He takes the place of the Burman, who will not work, and in a few years returns to his native coast with rings on his fingers and bells on his toes. The consequences are obvious. The Madrassi demands, and receives, enormous wages, and gets to know that he is indispensable. The Burman exists beautifully, while his women-folk marry the Madrassi and the Chinaman, because these support them in affluence. When the Burman wishes to work he gets a Madrassi to do it for him. How he finds the money to pay the Madrassi I was not informed, but all men were agreed in saying that under no circumstances will the Burman exert himself in the paths of honest industry. Now, if a bountiful Providence had clothed you in a purple, green, amber or puce petticoat, had thrown a rose-pink scarf-turban over your head, and had put you in a pleasant damp country where rice grew of itself and fish came up to be caught, putrified and pickled, would
you
work? Would you not rather take a cheroot and loaf about the streets seeing what was to be seen? If two-thirds of your girls were grinning, good-humoured little maidens and the remainder positively pretty, would you not spend your time in making love?

The Burman does both these things, and the Englishman, who after all worked himself to Burma, says hard things about him. Personally I love the Burman with the blind favouritism born of first impression. When I die I will be a Burman, with twenty yards of real King’s silk, that has been made in Mandalay, about my body, and a succession of cigarettes between my lips. I will wave the cigarette to emphasise my conversation, which shall be full of jest and repartee, and I will always walk about with a pretty almond-coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. She shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when I walk: for these are the customs of India. She shall look all the world between the eyes, in honesty and good fellowship, and I will teach her not to defile her pretty mouth with chopped tobacco in a cabbage leaf, but to inhale good cigarettes of Egypt’s best brand.