Following The Equator, Part 6 by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

FOLLOWING
FOLLOWING 1
THE EQUATOR
Part 6.
A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD
BY
MARK TWAIN
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
THE EQUATOR 2
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, Part 6
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT 3
CONTENTS OF VOLUME 6
CHAPTER LI.
Benares a Religious Temple—A Guide for

Pilgrims to Save Time in Securing Salvation
CHAPTER LII.
A Curious Way to Secure Salvation—The

Banks of the Ganges—Architecture
Represents Piety—A Trip on the
River—Bathers and their
Costumes—Drinking the Water—A
Scientific Test of the Nasty
Purifier—Hindoo Faith in the Ganges—A
Cremation—Remembrances of the
Suttee—All Life Sacred Except Human
Life—The Goddess Bhowanee, and the
Sacrificers—Sacred Monkeys—Ugly Idols
Everywhere—Two White Minarets—A
Great View with a Monkey in it—A Picture
on the Water
CHAPTER LIII.
Still in Benares—Another Living

God—Why Things are Wonderful—Sri 108
Utterly Perfect—How He Came so—Our
Visit to Sri—A Friendly Deity Exchanging
Autographs and Books—Sri's Pupil—An
Interesting Man—Reverence and
Irreverence—Dancing in a Sepulchre
CONTENTS OF VOLUME 6 11
CHAPTER LIV.
Rail to Calcutta—Population—The "City of

Palaces"—A Fluted
Candle-stick—Ochterlony—Newspaper
Correspondence—Average
Knowledge of Countries—A Wrong
Idea of Chicago—Calcutta and the
Black Hole—Description of the
Horrors—Those Who
Lived—The Botanical
Gardens—The Afternoon
Turnout—Grand
Review—Military
Tournament—Excursion on the
Hoogly—The Museum—What
Winter Means Calcutta
CHAPTER LV.
On the Road Again—Flannels in

Order—Across
Country—From Greenland's Icy
Mountain—Swapping
Civilization—No Field women in
India—How it is in Other
Countries—Canvas-covered
Cars—The Tiger Country—My
First Hunt Some Elephants Get
Away—The Plains of
India—The Ghurkas—Women
for Pack-Horses—A Substitute for a
Cab—Darjeeling—The
Hotel—The Highest Thing in the
Himalayas—The
Club—Kinchinjunga and Mt.
Everest—Thibetans—The
Prayer Wheel—People Going to the
Bazar
CHAPTER LVI.
On the Road Again—The

Hand-Car—A Thirty-five-mile
Slide—The Banyan Tree—A
Dramatic Performance—The
CHAPTER LIV. 12
Railroad—The Half-way
House—The Brain Fever
Bird—The Coppersmith
Bird—Nightingales and Cue Owls
CHAPTER LVII.
India the Most Extraordinary Country on

Earth—Nothing
Forgotten—The Land of
Wonders—Annual Statistics
Everywhere about Violence—Tiger
vs. Man—A Handsome
Fight—Annual Man Killing and Tiger
Killing—Other
Animals—Snakes—Insurance
and Snake Tables—The Cobra
Bite—Muzaffurpore—Dinapore—A
Train that Stopped for Gossip—Six
Hours for Thirty-five Miles—A
Rupee to the Engineer—Ninety Miles
an Hour—Again to Benares, the Piety
Hive To Lucknow
CHAPTER LVIII.
The Great Mutiny—The Massacre in

Cawnpore—Terrible Scenes in
Lucknow—The
Residency—The Siege
CHAPTER LIX.
A Visit to the
Residency—Cawnpore—The
Adjutant Bird and the Hindoo
Corpse—The Tai Mahal—The
True Conception—The Ice
Storm—True Gems—Syrian
Fountains—An Exaggerated Niagara
CHAPTER LVI. 13
CHAPTER LX.
To Lahore—The Governor's
Elephant—Taking a Ride-No Danger
from Collision—Rawal
Pindi—Back to Delhi—An
Orientalized Englishman—Monkeys
and the Paint-pot—Monkey Crying
over my Note-book—Arrival at
Jeypore—In
Rajputana—Watching
Servants—The Jeypore
Hotel—Our Old and New
Satan—Satan as a Liar—The
Museum—A Street
Show—Blocks of Houses—A
Religious Procession
CHAPTER LI.
Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.
—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Yes, the city of Benares is in effect just a big church, a religious hive, whose every cell is a temple, a shrine or
a mosque, and whose every conceivable earthly and heavenly good is procurable under one roof, so to
speak—a sort of Army and Navy Stores, theologically stocked.
I will make out a little itinerary for the pilgrim; then you will see how handy the system is, how convenient,
how comprehensive. If you go to Benares with a serious desire to spiritually benefit yourself, you will find it
valuable. I got some of the facts from conversations with the Rev. Mr. Parker and the others from his Guide to
Benares; they are therefore trustworthy.
1. Purification. At sunrise you must go down to the Ganges and bathe, pray, and drink some of the water. This
is for your general purification.
CHAPTER LX. 14
2. Protection against Hunger. Next, you must fortify yourself against the sorrowful earthly ill just named. This
you will do by worshiping for a moment in the Cow Temple. By the door of it you will find an image of
Ganesh, son of Shiva; it has the head of an elephant on a human body; its face and hands are of silver. You
will worship it a little, and pass on, into a covered veranda, where you will find devotees reciting from the
sacred books, with the help of instructors. In this place are groups of rude and dismal idols. You may
contribute something for their support; then pass into the temple, a grim and stenchy place, for it is populous
with sacred cows and with beggars. You will give something to the beggars, and "reverently kiss the tails" of
such cows as pass along, for these cows are peculiarly holy, and this act of worship will secure you from
hunger for the day.
3. "The Poor Man's Friend." You will next worship this god. He is at the bottom of a stone cistern in the
temple of Dalbhyeswar, under the shade of a noble peepul tree on the bluff overlooking the Ganges, so you
must go back to the river. The Poor Man's Friend is the god of material prosperity in general, and the god of
the rain in particular. You will secure material prosperity, or both, by worshiping him. He is Shiva, under a
new alias, and he abides in the bottom of that cistern, in the form of a stone lingam. You pour Ganges water
over him, and in return for this homage you get the promised benefits. If there is any delay about the rain, you
must pour water in until the cistern is full; the rain will then be sure to come.
4. Fever. At the Kedar Ghat you will find a long flight of stone steps leading down to the river. Half way
down is a tank filled with sewage. Drink as much of it as you want. It is for fever.
5. Smallpox. Go straight from there to the central Ghat. At its upstream end you will find a small whitewashed
building, which is a temple sacred to Sitala, goddess of smallpox. Her under-study is there—a rude
human figure behind a brass screen. You will worship this for reasons to be furnished presently.
CHAPTER LI. 15
CHAPTER LI. 16
CHAPTER LI. 17
6. The Well of Fate. For certain reasons you will next go and do homage at this well. You will find it in the
Dandpan Temple, in the city. The sunlight falls into it from a square hole in the masonry above. You will
approach it with awe, for your life is now at stake. You will bend over and look. If the fates are propitious,
you will see your face pictured in the water far down in the well. If matters have been otherwise ordered, a
sudden cloud will mask the sun and you will see nothing. This means that you have not six months to live. If
you are already at the point of death, your circumstances are now serious. There is no time to lose. Let this
world go, arrange for the next one. Handily situated, at your very elbow, is opportunity for this. You turn and
worship the image of Maha Kal, the Great Fate, and happiness in the life to come is secured. If there is breath
in your body yet, you should now make an effort to get a further lease of the present life. You have a chance.
There is a chance for everything in this admirably stocked and wonderfully systemized Spiritual and
Temporal Army and Navy Store. You must get yourself carried to the
7. Well of Long Life. This is within the precincts of the mouldering and venerable Briddhkal Temple, which
is one of the oldest in Benares. You pass in by a stone image of the monkey god, Hanuman, and there, among
the ruined courtyards, you will find a shallow pool of stagnant sewage. It smells like the best limburger
cheese, and is filthy with the washings of rotting lepers, but that is nothing, bathe in it; bathe in it gratefully
and worshipfully, for this is the Fountain of Youth; these are the Waters of Long Life. Your gray hairs will
disappear, and with them your wrinkles and your rheumatism, the burdens of care and the weariness of age,
and you will come out young, fresh, elastic, and full of eagerness for the new race of life. Now will come
flooding upon you the manifold desires that haunt the dear dreams of the morning of life. You will go whither
you will find
8. Fulfillment of Desire. To wit, to the Kameshwar Temple, sacred to Shiva as the Lord of Desires. Arrange
for yours there. And if you like to look at idols among the pack and jam of temples, there you will find
enough to stock a museum. You will begin to commit sins now with a fresh, new vivacity; therefore, it will be
well to go frequently to a place where you can get
9. Temporary Cleansing from Sin. To wit, to the Well of the Earring. You must approach this with the
profoundest reverence, for it is unutterably sacred. It is, indeed, the most sacred place in Benares, the very
Holy of Holies, in the estimation of the people. It is a railed tank, with stone stairways leading down to the
water. The water is not clean. Of course it could not be, for people are always bathing in it. As long as you
choose to stand and look, you will see the files of sinners descending and ascending—descending
soiled with sin, ascending purged from it. "The liar, the thief, the murderer, and the adulterer may here wash
and be clean," says the Rev. Mr. Parker, in his book. Very well. I know Mr. Parker, and I believe it; but if
anybody else had said it, I should consider him a person who had better go down in the tank and take another
wash. The god Vishnu dug this tank. He had nothing to dig with but his "discus." I do not know what a discus
is, but I know it is a poor thing to dig tanks with, because, by the time this one was finished, it was full of
sweat—Vishnu's sweat. He constructed the site that Benares stands on, and afterward built the globe
around it, and thought nothing of it, yet sweated like that over a little thing like this tank. One of these
statements is doubtful. I do not know which one it is, but I think it difficult not to believe that a god who could
build a world around Benares would not be intelligent enough to build it around the tank too, and not have to
dig it. Youth, long life, temporary purification from sin, salvation through propitiation of the Great
Fate—these are all good. But you must do something more. You must
10. Make Salvation Sure. There are several ways. To get drowned in the Ganges is one, but that is not
pleasant. To die within the limits of Benares is another; but that is a risky one, because you might be out of
CHAPTER LI. 18
town when your time came. The best one of all is the Pilgrimage Around the City. You must walk; also, you
must go barefoot. The tramp is forty-four miles, for the road winds out into the country a piece, and you will
be marching five or six days. But you will have plenty of company. You will move with throngs and hosts of
happy pilgrims whose radiant costumes will make the spectacle beautiful and whose glad songs and holy pans
of triumph will banish your fatigues and cheer your spirit; and at intervals there will be temples where you
may sleep and be refreshed with food. The pilgrimage completed, you have purchased salvation, and paid for
it. But you may not get it unless you
11. Get Your Redemption Recorded. You can get this done at the Sakhi Binayak Temple, and it is best to do
it, for otherwise you might not be able to prove that you had made the pilgrimage in case the matter should
some day come to be disputed. That temple is in a lane back of the Cow Temple. Over the door is a red image
of Ganesh of the elephant head, son and heir of Shiva, and Prince of Wales to the Theological Monarchy, so
to speak. Within is a god whose office it is to record your pilgrimage and be responsible for you. You will not
see him, but you will see a Brahmin who will attend to the matter and take the money. If he should forget to
collect the money, you can remind him. He knows that your salvation is now secure, but of course you would
like to know it yourself. You have nothing to do but go and pray, and pay at the
12. Well of the Knowledge of Salvation. It is close to the Golden Temple. There you will see, sculptured out
of a single piece of black marble, a bull which is much larger than any living bull you have ever seen, and yet
is not a good likeness after all. And there also you will see a very uncommon thing—an image of
Shiva. You have seen his lingam fifty thousand times already, but this is Shiva himself, and said to be a good
likeness. It has three eyes. He is the only god in the firm that has three. "The well is covered by a fine canopy
of stone supported by forty pillars," and around it you will find what you have already seen at almost every
shrine you have visited in Benares, a mob of devout and eager pilgrims. The sacred water is being ladled out
to them; with it comes to them the knowledge, clear, thrilling, absolute, that they are saved; and you can see
by their faces that there is one happiness in this world which is supreme, and to which no other joy is
comparable. You receive your water, you make your deposit, and now what more would you have? Gold,
diamonds, power, fame? All in a single moment these things have withered to dirt, dust, ashes. The world has
nothing to give you now. For you it is bankrupt.
I do not claim that the pilgrims do their acts of worship in the order and sequence above charted out in this
Itinerary of mine, but I think logic suggests that they ought to do so. Instead of a helter-skelter worship, we
then have a definite starting-place, and a march which carries the pilgrim steadily forward by reasoned and
logical progression to a definite goal. Thus, his Ganges bath in the early morning gives him an appetite; he
kisses the cow-tails, and that removes it. It is now business hours, and longings for material prosperity rise in
his mind, and be goes and pours water over Shiva's symbol; this insures the prosperity, but also brings on a
rain, which gives him a fever. Then he drinks the sewage at the Kedar Ghat to cure the fever; it cures the fever
but gives him the smallpox. He wishes to know how it is going to turn out; he goes to the Dandpan Temple
and looks down the well. A clouded sun shows him that death is near. Logically his best course for the
present, since he cannot tell at what moment he may die, is to secure a happy hereafter; this he does, through
the agency of the Great Fate. He is safe, now, for heaven; his next move will naturally be to keep out of it as
long as he can. Therefore he goes to the Briddhkal Temple and secures Youth and long life by bathing in a
puddle of leper-pus which would kill a microbe. Logically, Youth has re-equipped him for sin and with the
disposition to commit it; he will naturally go to the fane which is consecrated to the Fulfillment of Desires,
and make arrangements. Logically, he will now go to the Well of the Earring from time to time to unload and
freshen up for further banned enjoyments. But first and last and all the time he is human, and therefore in his
reflective intervals he will always be speculating in "futures." He will make the Great Pilgrimage around the
city and so make his salvation absolutely sure; he will also have record made of it, so that it may remain
absolutely sure and not be forgotten or repudiated in the confusion of the Final Settlement. Logically, also, he
will wish to have satisfying and tranquilizing personal knowledge that that salvation is secure; therefore he
goes to the Well of the Knowledge of Salvation, adds that completing detail, and then goes about his affairs
CHAPTER LI. 19
serene and content; serene and content, for he is now royally endowed with an advantage which no religion in
this world could give him but his own; for henceforth he may commit as many million sins as he wants to and
nothing can come of it.
Thus the system, properly and logically ordered, is neat, compact, clearly defined, and covers the whole
ground. I desire to recommend it to such as find the other systems too difficult, exacting, and irksome for the
uses of this fretful brief life of ours.
However, let me not deceive any one. My Itinerary lacks a detail. I must put it in. The truth is, that after the
pilgrim has faithfully followed the requirements of the Itinerary through to the end and has secured his
salvation and also the personal knowledge of that fact, there is still an accident possible to him which can
annul the whole thing. If he should ever cross to the other side of the Ganges and get caught out and die there
he would at once come to life again in the form of an ass. Think of that, after all this trouble and expense. You
see how capricious and uncertain salvation is there. The Hindoo has a childish and unreasoning aversion to
being turned into an ass. It is hard to tell why. One could properly expect an ass to have an aversion to being
turned into a Hindoo. One could understand that he could lose dignity by it; also self-respect, and nine-tenths
of his intelligence. But the Hindoo changed into an ass wouldn't lose anything, unless you count his religion.
And he would gain much—release from his slavery to two million gods and twenty million priests,
fakeers, holy mendicants, and other sacred bacilli; he would escape the Hindoo hell; he would also escape the
Hindoo heaven. These are advantages which the Hindoo ought to consider; then he would go over and die on
the other side.
CHAPTER LI. 20
Benares is a religious Vesuvius. In its bowels the theological forces have been heaving and tossing, rumbling,
thundering and quaking, boiling, and weltering and flaming and smoking for ages. But a little group of
missionaries have taken post at its base, and they have hopes. There are the Baptist Missionary Society, the
Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and the
Zenana Bible and Medical Mission. They have schools, and the principal work seems to be among the
children. And no doubt that part of the work prospers best, for grown people everywhere are always likely to
cling to the religion they were brought up in.
CHAPTER LII.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
CHAPTER LII. 21
In one of those Benares temples we saw a devotee working for salvation in a curious way. He had a huge wad
of clay beside him and was making it up into little wee gods no bigger than carpet tacks. He stuck a grain of
rice into each—to represent the lingam, I think. He turned them out nimbly, for he had had long
practice and had acquired great facility. Every day he made 2,000 gods, then threw them into the holy Ganges.
This act of homage brought him the profound homage of the pious—also their coppers. He had a sure
living here, and was earning a high place in the hereafter.
The Ganges front is the supreme show-place of Benares. Its tall bluffs are solidly caked from water to summit,
along a stretch of three miles, with a splendid jumble of massive and picturesque masonry, a bewildering and
beautiful confusion of stone platforms, temples, stair-flights, rich and stately palaces—nowhere a
break, nowhere a glimpse of the bluff itself; all the long face of it is compactly walled from sight by this
crammed perspective of platforms, soaring stairways, sculptured temples, majestic palaces, softening away
into the distances; and there is movement, motion, human life everywhere, and brilliantly
costumed—streaming in rainbows up and down the lofty stairways, and massed in metaphorical
flower-gardens on the miles of great platforms at the river's edge.
All this masonry, all this architecture represents piety. The palaces were built by native princes whose homes,
as a rule, are far from Benares, but who go there from time to time to refresh their souls with the sight and
touch of the Ganges, the river of their idolatry. The stairways are records of acts of piety; the crowd of costly
little temples are tokens of money spent by rich men for present credit and hope of future reward. Apparently,
the rich Christian who spends large sums upon his religion is conspicuous with us, by his rarity, but the rich
Hindoo who doesn't spend large sums upon his religion is seemingly non-existent. With us the poor spend
money on their religion, but they keep back some to live on. Apparently, in India, the poor bankrupt
themselves daily for their religion. The rich Hindoo can afford his pious outlays; he gets much glory for his
spendings, yet keeps back a sufficiency of his income for temporal purposes; but the poor Hindoo is entitled
to compassion, for his spendings keep him poor, yet get him no glory.
We made the usual trip up and down the river, seated in chairs under an awning on the deck of the usual
commodious hand-propelled ark; made it two or three times, and could have made it with increasing interest
and enjoyment many times more; for, of course, the palaces and temples would grow more and more beautiful
every time one saw them, for that happens with all such things; also, I think one would not get tired of the
bathers, nor their costumes, nor of their ingenuities in getting out of them and into them again without
exposing too much bronze, nor of their devotional gesticulations and absorbed bead-tellings.
But I should get tired of seeing them wash their mouths with that dreadful water and drink it. In fact, I did get
tired of it, and very early, too. At one place where we halted for a while, the foul gush from a sewer was
making the water turbid and murky all around, and there was a random corpse slopping around in it that had
floated down from up country. Ten steps below that place stood a crowd of men, women, and comely young
maidens waist deep in the water-and they were scooping it up in their hands and drinking it. Faith can
certainly do wonders, and this is an instance of it. Those people were not drinking that fearful stuff to assuage
thirst, but in order to purify their souls and the interior of their bodies. According to their creed, the Ganges
water makes everything pure that it touches—instantly and utterly pure. The sewer water was not an
offence to them, the corpse did not revolt them; the sacred water had touched both, and both were now
snow-pure, and could defile no one. The memory of that sight will always stay by me; but not by request.
CHAPTER LII. 22
A word further concerning the nasty but all-purifying Ganges water. When we went to Agra, by and by, we
happened there just in time to be in at the birth of a marvel—a memorable scientific
discovery—the discovery that in certain ways the foul and derided Ganges water is the most puissant
purifier in the world! This curious fact, as I have said, had just been added to the treasury of modern science.
It had long been noted as a strange thing that while Benares is often afflicted with the cholera she does not
spread it beyond her borders. This could not be accounted for. Mr. Henkin, the scientist in the employ of the
government of Agra, concluded to examine the water. He went to Benares and made his tests. He got water at
the mouths of the sewers where they empty into the river at the bathing ghats; a cubic centimetre of it
contained millions of germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead. He caught a floating corpse, towed it
to the shore, and from beside it he dipped up water that was swarming with cholera germs; at the end of six
hours they were all dead. He added swarm after swarm of cholera germs to this water; within the six hours
they always died, to the last sample. Repeatedly, he took pure well water which was bare of animal life, and
put into it a few cholera germs; they always began to propagate at once, and always within six hours they
swarmed—and were numberable by millions upon millions.
CHAPTER LII. 23
For ages and ages the Hindoos have had absolute faith that the water of the Ganges was absolutely pure, could
not be defiled by any contact whatsoever, and infallibly made pure and clean whatsoever thing touched it.
They still believe it, and that is why they bathe in it and drink it, caring nothing for its seeming filthiness and
the floating corpses. The Hindoos have been laughed at, these many generations, but the laughter will need to
modify itself a little from now on. How did they find out the water's secret in those ancient ages? Had they
germ-scientists then? We do not know. We only know that they had a civilization long before we emerged
from savagery. But to return to where I was before; I was about to speak of the burning-ghat.
They do not burn fakeers—those revered mendicants. They are so holy that they can get to their place
without that sacrament, provided they be consigned to the consecrating river. We saw one carried to
mid-stream and thrown overboard. He was sandwiched between two great slabs of stone.
We lay off the cremation-ghat half an hour and saw nine corpses burned. I should not wish to see any more of
it, unless I might select the parties. The mourners follow the bier through the town and down to the ghat; then
the bier-bearers deliver the body to some low-caste natives—Doms—and the mourners turn
about and go back home. I heard no crying and saw no tears, there was no ceremony of parting. Apparently,
these expressions of grief and affection are reserved for the privacy of the home. The dead women came
draped in red, the men in white. They are laid in the water at the river's edge while the pyre is being prepared.
The first subject was a man. When the Doms unswathed him to wash him, he proved to be a sturdily built,
well-nourished and handsome old gentleman, with not a sign about him to suggest that he had ever been ill.
Dry wood was brought and built up into a loose pile; the corpse was laid upon it and covered over with fuel.
Then a naked holy man who was sitting on high ground a little distance away began to talk and shout with
great energy, and he kept up this noise right along. It may have been the funeral sermon, and probably was. I
forgot to say that one of the mourners remained behind when the others went away. This was the dead man's
son, a boy of ten or twelve, brown and handsome, grave and self-possessed, and clothed in flowing white. He
was there to burn his father. He was given a torch, and while he slowly walked seven times around the pyre
the naked black man on the high ground poured out his sermon more clamorously than ever. The seventh
circuit completed, the boy applied the torch at his father's head, then at his feet; the flames sprang briskly up
with a sharp crackling noise, and the lad went away. Hindoos do not want daughters, because their weddings
make such a ruinous expense; but they want sons, so that at death they may have honorable exit from the
world; and there is no honor equal to the honor of having one's pyre lighted by one's son. The father who dies
sonless is in a grievous situation indeed, and is pitied. Life being uncertain, the Hindoo marries while he is
still a boy, in the hope that he will have a son ready when the day of his need shall come. But if he have no
son, he will adopt one. This answers every purpose.
Meantime the corpse is burning, also several others. It is a dismal business. The stokers did not sit down in
idleness, but moved briskly about, punching up the fires with long poles, and now and then adding fuel.
Sometimes they hoisted the half of a skeleton into the air, then slammed it down and beat it with the pole,
breaking it up so that it would burn better. They hoisted skulls up in the same way and banged and battered
them. The sight was hard to bear; it would have been harder if the mourners had stayed to witness it. I had but
a moderate desire to see a cremation, so it was soon satisfied. For sanitary reasons it would be well if
cremation were universal; but this form is revolting, and not to be recommended.
The fire used is sacred, of course—for there is money in it. Ordinary fire is forbidden; there is no
money in it. I was told that this sacred fire is all furnished by one person, and that he has a monopoly of it and
charges a good price for it. Sometimes a rich mourner pays a thousand rupees for it. To get to paradise from
India is an expensive thing. Every detail connected with the matter costs something, and helps to fatten a
priest. I suppose it is quite safe to conclude that that fire-bug is in holy orders.
CHAPTER LII. 24
Close to the cremation-ground stand a few time-worn stones which are remembrances of the suttee. Each has
a rough carving upon it, representing a man and a woman standing or walking hand in hand, and marks the
spot where a widow went to her death by fire in the days when the suttee flourished. Mr. Parker said that
widows would burn themselves now if the government would allow it. The family that can point to one of
these little memorials and say: "She who burned herself there was an ancestress of ours," is envied.
It is a curious people. With them, all life seems to be sacred except human life. Even the life of vermin is
sacred, and must not be taken. The good Jain wipes off a seat before using it, lest he cause the death of-some
valueless insect by sitting down on it. It grieves him to have to drink water, because the provisions in his
stomach may not agree with the microbes. Yet India invented Thuggery and the Suttee. India is a hard country
to understand. We went to the temple of the Thug goddess, Bhowanee, or Kali, or Durga. She has these names
and others. She is the only god to whom living sacrifices are made. Goats are sacrificed to her. Monkeys
would be cheaper.
CHAPTER LII. 25
CHAPTER LII. 26
There are plenty of them about the place. Being sacred, they make themselves very free, and scramble around
wherever they please. The temple and its porch are beautifully carved, but this is not the case with the idol.
Bhowanee is not pleasant to look at. She has a silver face, and a projecting swollen tongue painted a deep red.
She wears a necklace of skulls.
In fact, none of the idols in Benares are handsome or attractive. And what a swarm of them there is! The town
is a vast museum of idols—and all of them crude, misshapen, and ugly. They flock through one's
dreams at night, a wild mob of nightmares. When you get tired of them in the temples and take a trip on the
river, you find idol giants, flashily painted, stretched out side by side on the shore. And apparently wherever
there is room for one more lingam, a lingam is there. If Vishnu had foreseen what his town was going to be,
he would have called it Idolville or Lingamburg.
The most conspicuous feature of Benares is the pair of slender white minarets which tower like masts from the
great Mosque of Aurangzeb. They seem to be always in sight, from everywhere, those airy, graceful, inspiring
things. But masts is not the right word, for masts have a perceptible taper, while these minarets have not. They
are 142 feet high, and only 8 1/2 feet in diameter at the base, and 7 1/2 at the summit—scarcely any
taper at all. These are the proportions of a candle; and fair and fairylike candles these are. Will be, anyway,
some day, when the Christians inherit them and top them with the electric light. There is a great view from up
there—a wonderful view. A large gray monkey was part of it, and damaged it. A monkey has no
judgment. This one was skipping about the upper great heights of the mosque—skipping across empty
yawning intervals which were almost too wide for him, and which he only just barely cleared, each time, by
the skin of his teeth. He got me so nervous that I couldn't look at the view. I couldn't look at anything but him.
Every time he went sailing over one of those abysses my breath stood still, and when he grabbed for the perch
he was going for, I grabbed too, in sympathy. And he was perfectly indifferent, perfectly unconcerned, and I
did all the panting myself. He came within an ace of losing his life a dozen times, and I was so troubled about
him that I would have shot him if I had had anything to do it with. But I strongly recommend the view. There
is more monkey than view, and there is always going to be more monkey while that idiot survives, but what
view you get is superb. All Benares, the river, and the region round about are spread before you. Take a gun,
and look at the view.
The next thing I saw was more reposeful. It was a new kind of art. It was a picture painted on water. It was
done by a native. He sprinkled fine dust of various colors on the still surface of a basin of water, and out of
these sprinklings a dainty and pretty picture gradually grew, a picture which a breath could destroy. Somehow
it was impressive, after so much browsing among massive and battered and decaying fanes that rest upon
ruins, and those ruins upon still other ruins, and those upon still others again. It was a sermon, an allegory, a
symbol of Instability. Those creations in stone were only a kind of water pictures, after all.
A prominent episode in the Indian career of Warren Hastings had Benares for its theater. Wherever that
extraordinary man set his foot, he left his mark. He came to Benares in 1781 to collect a fine of L500,000
which he had levied upon its Rajah, Cheit Singly on behalf of the East India Company. Hastings was a long
way from home and help. There were, probably, not a dozen Englishmen within reach; the Rajah was in his
fort with his myriads around him. But no matter. From his little camp in a neighboring garden, Hastings sent a
party to arrest the sovereign. He sent on this daring mission a couple of hundred native soldiers
sepoys—under command of three young English lieutenants. The Rajah submitted without a word. The
incident lights up the Indian situation electrically, and gives one a vivid sense of the strides which the English
had made and the mastership they had acquired in the land since the date of Clive's great victory. In a quarter
CHAPTER LII. 27
of a century, from being nobodies, and feared by none, they were become confessed lords and masters, feared
by all, sovereigns included, and served by all, sovereigns included. It makes the fairy tales sound true. The
English had not been afraid to enlist native soldiers to fight against their own people and keep them obedient.
And now Hastings was not afraid to come away out to this remote place with a handful of such soldiers and
send them to arrest a native sovereign.
The lieutenants imprisoned the Rajah in his own fort. It was beautiful, the pluckiness of it, the impudence of
it. The arrest enraged the Rajah's people, and all Benares came storming about the place and threatening
vengeance. And yet, but for an accident, nothing important would have resulted, perhaps. The mob found out
a most strange thing, an almost incredible thing—that this handful of soldiers had come on this hardy
errand with empty guns and no ammunition. This has been attributed to thoughtlessness, but it could hardly
have been that, for in such large emergencies as this, intelligent people do think. It must have been
indifference, an over-confidence born of the proved submissiveness of the native character, when confronted
by even one or two stern Britons in their war paint. But, however that may be, it was a fatal discovery that the
mob had made. They were full of courage, now, and they broke into the fort and massacred the helpless
soldiers and their officers. Hastings escaped from Benares by night and got safely away, leaving the
principality in a state of wild insurrection; but he was back again within the month, and quieted it down in his
prompt and virile way, and took the Rajah's throne away from him and gave it to another man. He was a
capable kind of person was Warren Hastings. This was the only time he was ever out of ammunition. Some of
his acts have left stains upon his name which can never be washed away, but he saved to England the Indian
Empire, and that was the best service that was ever done to the Indians themselves, those wretched heirs of a
hundred centuries of pitiless oppression and abuse.
CHAPTER LIII.
True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.
It was in Benares that I saw another living god. That makes two. I believe I have seen most of the greater and
lesser wonders of the world, but I do not remember that any of them interested me so overwhelmingly as did
that pair of gods.
When I try to account for this effect I find no difficulty about it. I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder
to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our
wonders at second hand. We are eager to see any celebrated thing—and we never fail of our reward;
just the deep privilege of gazing upon an object which has stirred the enthusiasm or evoked the reverence or
affection or admiration of multitudes of our race is a thing which we value; we are profoundly glad that we
have seen it, we are permanently enriched from having seen it, we would not part with the memory of that
experience for a great price. And yet that very spectacle may be the Taj. You cannot keep your enthusiasms
down, you cannot keep your emotions within bounds when that soaring bubble of marble breaks upon your
view. But these are not your enthusiasms and emotions—they are the accumulated emotions and
enthusiasms of a thousand fervid writers, who have been slowly and steadily storing them up in your heart day
by day and year by year all your life; and now they burst out in a flood and overwhelm you; and you could not
CHAPTER LIII. 28
be a whit happier if they were your very own. By and by you sober down, and then you perceive that you have
been drunk on the smell of somebody else's cork. For ever and ever the memory of my distant first glimpse of
the Taj will compensate me for creeping around the globe to have that great privilege.
But the Taj—with all your inflation of delusive emotions, acquired at second-hand from people to
whom in the majority of cases they were also delusions acquired at second-hand—a thing which you
fortunately did not think of or it might have made you doubtful of what you imagined were your own what is
the Taj as a marvel, a spectacle and an uplifting and overpowering wonder, compared with a living, breathing,
speaking personage whom several millions of human beings devoutly and sincerely and unquestioningly
believe to be a God, and humbly and gratefully worship as a God?
He was sixty years old when I saw him. He is called Sri 108 Swami Bhaskarananda Saraswati. That is one
form of it. I think that that is what you would call him in speaking to him—because it is short. But you
would use more of his name in addressing a letter to him; courtesy would require this. Even then you would
not have to use all of it, but only this much:
Sri 108 Matparamahansrzpairivrajakacharyaswamibhaskaranandasaraswati.
You do not put "Esq." after it, for that is not necessary. The word which opens the volley is itself a title of
honor "Sri." The "108" stands for the rest of his names, I believe. Vishnu has 108 names which he does not
use in business, and no doubt it is a custom of gods and a privilege sacred to their order to keep 108 extra ones
in stock. Just the restricted name set down above is a handsome property, without the 108. By my count it has
58 letters in it. This removes the long German words from competition; they are permanently out of the race.
Sri 108 S. B. Saraswati has attained to what among the Hindoos is called the "state of perfection." It is a state
which other Hindoos reach by being born again and again, and over and over again into this world, through
one re-incarnation after another—a tiresome long job covering centuries and decades of centuries, and
one that is full of risks, too, like the accident of dying on the wrong side of the Ganges some time or other and
waking up in the form of an ass, with a fresh start necessary and the numerous trips to be made all over again.
But in reaching perfection, Sri 108 S. B. S. has escaped all that. He is no longer a part or a feature of this
world; his substance has changed, all earthiness has departed out of it; he is utterly holy, utterly pure; nothing
can desecrate this holiness or stain this purity; he is no longer of the earth, its concerns are matters foreign to
him, its pains and griefs and troubles cannot reach him. When he dies, Nirvana is his; he will be absorbed into
the substance of the Supreme Deity and be at peace forever.
The Hindoo Scriptures point out how this state is to be reached, but it is only once in a thousand years,
perhaps, that candidate accomplishes it. This one has traversed the course required, stage by stage, from the
beginning to the end, and now has nothing left to do but wait for the call which shall release him from a world
in which he has now no part nor lot. First, he passed through the student stage, and became learned in the holy
books. Next he became citizen, householder, husband, and father. That was the required second stage.
Then—like John Bunyan's Christian he bade perpetual good-bye to his family, as required, and went
wandering away. He went far into the desert and served a term as hermit. Next, he became a beggar, "in
accordance with the rites laid down in the Scriptures," and wandered about India eating the bread of
mendicancy. A quarter of a century ago he reached the stage of purity. This needs no garment; its symbol is
nudity; he discarded the waist-cloth which he had previously worn. He could resume it now if he chose, for
neither that nor any other contact can defile him; but he does not choose.
There are several other stages, I believe, but I do not remember what they are. But he has been through them.
Throughout the long course he was perfecting himself in holy learning, and writing commentaries upon the
sacred books. He was also meditating upon Brahma, and he does that now.
CHAPTER LIII. 29
White marble relief-portraits of him are sold all about India. He lives in a good house in a noble great garden
in Benares, all meet and proper to his stupendous rank. Necessarily he does not go abroad in the streets.
Deities would never be able to move about handily in any country. If one whom we recognized and adored as
a god should go abroad in our streets, and the day it was to happen were known, all traffic would be blocked
and business would come to a standstill.
This god is comfortably housed, and yet modestly, all things considered, for if he wanted to live in a palace he
would only need to speak and his worshipers would gladly build it. Sometimes he sees devotees for a
moment, and comforts them and blesses them, and they kiss his feet and go away happy. Rank is nothing to
him, he being a god. To him all men are alike. He sees whom he pleases and denies himself to whom he
pleases. Sometimes he sees a prince and denies himself to a pauper; at other times he receives the pauper and
turns the prince away. However, he does not receive many of either class. He has to husband his time for his
meditations. I think he would receive Rev. Mr. Parker at any time. I think he is sorry for Mr. Parker, and I
think Mr. Parker is sorry for him; and no doubt this compassion is good for both of them.
When we arrived we had to stand around in the garden a little while and wait, and the outlook was not good,
for he had been turning away Maharajas that day and receiving only the riff-raff, and we belonged in between,
somewhere. But presently, a servant came out saying it was all right, he was coming.
And sure enough, he came, and I saw him—that object of the worship of millions. It was a strange
sensation, and thrilling. I wish I could feel it stream through my veins again. And yet, to me he was not a god,
he was only a Taj. The thrill was not my thrill, but had come to me secondhand from those invisible millions
of believers. By a hand-shake with their god I had ground-circuited their wire and got their monster battery's
whole charge.
He was tall and slender, indeed emaciated. He had a clean cut and conspicuously intellectual face, and a deep
and kindly eye. He looked many years older than he really was, but much study and meditation and fasting
and prayer, with the arid life he had led as hermit and beggar, could account for that. He is wholly nude when
he receives natives, of whatever rank they may be, but he had white cloth around his loins now, a concession
to Mr. Parker's Europe prejudices, no doubt.
As soon as I had sobered down a little we got along very well together, and I found him a most pleasant and
friendly deity. He had heard a deal about Chicago, and showed a quite remarkable interest in it, for a god. It
all came of the World's Fair and the Congress of Religions. If India knows about nothing else American, she
knows about those, and will keep them in mind one while.
He proposed an exchange of autographs, a delicate attention which made me believe in him, but I had been
having my doubts before. He wrote his in his book, and I have a reverent regard for that book, though the
words run from right to left, and so I can't read it. It was a mistake to print in that way. It contains his
voluminous comments on the Hindoo holy writings, and if I could make them out I would try for perfection
myself. I gave him a copy of Huckleberry Finn. I thought it might rest him up a little to mix it in along with
his meditations on Brahma, for he looked tired, and I knew that if it didn't do him any good it wouldn't do him
any harm.
CHAPTER LIII. 30
He has a scholar meditating under him—Mina Bahadur Rana—but we did not see him. He wears
clothes and is very imperfect. He has written a little pamphlet about his master, and I have that. It contains a
wood-cut of the master and himself seated on a rug in the garden. The portrait of the master is very good
indeed. The posture is exactly that which Brahma himself affects, and it requires long arms and limber legs,
and can be accumulated only by gods and the india-rubber man. There is a life-size marble relief of Shri 108,
S.B.S. in the garden. It represents him in this same posture.
CHAPTER LIII. 31
Dear me! It is a strange world. Particularly the Indian division of it. This pupil, Mina Bahadur Rana, is not a
commonplace person, but a man of distinguished capacities and attainments, and, apparently, he had a fine
worldly career in front of him. He was serving the Nepal Government in a high capacity at the Court of the
Viceroy of India, twenty years ago. He was an able man, educated, a thinker, a man of property. But the
longing to devote himself to a religious life came upon him, and he resigned his place, turned his back upon
the vanities and comforts of the world, and went away into the solitudes to live in a hut and study the sacred
writings and meditate upon virtue and holiness and seek to attain them. This sort of religion resembles ours.
Christ recommended the rich to give away all their property and follow Him in poverty, not in worldly
comfort. American and English millionaires do it every day, and thus verify and confirm to the world the
tremendous forces that lie in religion. Yet many people scoff at them for this loyalty to duty, and many will
scoff at Mina Bahadur Rana and call him a crank. Like many Christians of great character and intellect, he has
made the study of his Scriptures and the writing of books of commentaries upon them the loving labor of his
life. Like them, he has believed that his was not an idle and foolish waste of his life, but a most worthy and
honorable employment of it. Yet, there are many people who will see in those others, men worthy of homage
and deep reverence, but in him merely a crank. But I shall not. He has my reverence. And I don't offer it as a
common thing and poor, but as an unusual thing and of value. The ordinary reverence, the reverence defined
and explained by the dictionary costs nothing. Reverence for one's own sacred things—parents,
religion, flag, laws, and respect for one's own beliefs—these are feelings which we cannot even help.
They come natural to us; they are involuntary, like breathing. There is no personal merit in breathing. But the
reverence which is difficult, and which has personal merit in it, is the respect which you pay, without
compulsion, to the political or religious attitude of a man whose beliefs are not yours. You can't revere his
CHAPTER LIII. 32
gods or his politics, and no one expects you to do that, but you could respect his belief in them if you tried
hard enough; and you could respect him, too, if you tried hard enough. But it is very, very difficult; it is next
to impossible, and so we hardly ever try. If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that
settles it. I mean it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
We are always canting about people's "irreverence," always charging this offense upon somebody or other,
and thereby intimating that we are better than that person and do not commit that offense ourselves. Whenever
we do this we are in a lying attitude, and our speech is cant; for none of us are reverent—in a
meritorious way; deep down in our hearts we are all irreverent. There is probably not a single exception to this
rule in the earth. There is probably not one person whose reverence rises higher than respect for his own
sacred things; and therefore, it is not a thing to boast about and be proud of, since the most degraded savage
has that—and, like the best of us, has nothing higher. To speak plainly, we despise all reverences and
all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange
inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us. Suppose
we should meet with a paragraph like the following, in the newspapers:
"Yesterday a visiting party of the British nobility had a picnic at Mount Vernon, and in the tomb of
Washington they ate their luncheon, sang popular songs, played games, and danced waltzes and polkas."
Should we be shocked? Should we feel outraged? Should we be amazed? Should we call the performance a
desecration? Yes, that would all happen. We should denounce those people in round terms, and call them hard
names.
CHAPTER LIII. 33
And suppose we found this paragraph in the newspapers:
"Yesterday a visiting party of American pork-millionaires had a picnic in Westminster Abbey, and in that
sacred place they ate their luncheon, sang popular songs, played games, and danced waltzes and polkas."
Would the English be shocked? Would they feel outraged? Would they be amazed? Would they call the
performance a desecration? That would all happen. The pork-millionaires would be denounced in round
terms; they would be called hard names.
In the tomb at Mount Vernon lie the ashes of America's most honored son; in the Abbey, the ashes of
England's greatest dead; the tomb of tombs, the costliest in the earth, the wonder of the world, the Taj, was
built by a great Emperor to honor the memory of a perfect wife and perfect mother, one in whom there was no
spot or blemish, whose love was his stay and support, whose life was the light of the world to him; in it her
ashes lie, and to the Mohammedan millions of India it is a holy place; to them it is what Mount Vernon is to
Americans, it is what the Abbey is to the English.
CHAPTER LIII. 34
Major Sleeman wrote forty or fifty years ago (the italics are mine):
"I would here enter my humble protest against the quadrille and lunch parties
which are sometimes given to European ladies and gentlemen of the station at
this imperial tomb; drinking and dancing are no doubt very good things in
their season, but they are sadly out of place in a sepulchre."
Were there any Americans among those lunch parties? If they were invited, there were.
If my imagined lunch-parties in Westminster and the tomb of Washington should take place, the incident
would cause a vast outbreak of bitter eloquence about Barbarism and Irreverence; and it would come from
two sets of people who would go next day and dance in the Taj if they had a chance.
As we took our leave of the Benares god and started away we noticed a group of natives waiting respectfully
just within the gate—a Rajah from somewhere in India, and some people of lesser consequence. The
god beckoned them to come, and as we passed out the Rajah was kneeling and reverently kissing his sacred
feet.
If Barnum—but Barnum's ambitions are at rest. This god will remain in the holy peace and seclusion of
his garden, undisturbed. Barnum could not have gotten him, anyway. Still, he would have found a substitute
that would answer.
CHAPTER LIV.
Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins,
the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.
A comfortable railway journey of seventeen and a half hours brought us to the capital of India, which is
likewise the capital of Bengal—Calcutta. Like Bombay, it has a population of nearly a million natives
and a small gathering of white people. It is a huge city and fine, and is called the City of Palaces. It is rich in
historical memories; rich in British achievement—military, political, commercial; rich in the results of
the miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings. And has a cloud kissing monument
to one Ochterlony.
It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingam is the only large monument in Calcutta, I believe. It is a
fine ornament, and will keep Ochterlony in mind.
Wherever you are, in Calcutta, and for miles around, you can see it; and always when you see it you think of
Ochterlony. And so there is not an hour in the day that you do not think of Ochterlony and wonder who he
was. It is good that Clive cannot come back, for he would think it was for Plassey; and then that great spirit
would be wounded when the revelation came that it was not. Clive would find out that it was for Ochterlony;
and he would think Ochterlony was a battle. And he would think it was a great one, too, and he would say,
CHAPTER LIV. 35
"With three thousand I whipped sixty thousand and founded the Empire—and there is no monument;
this other soldier must have whipped a billion with a dozen and saved the world."
But he would be mistaken. Ochterlony was a man, not a battle. And he did good and honorable service, too; as
good and honorable service as has been done in India by seventy-five or a hundred other Englishmen of
courage, rectitude, and distinguished capacity. For India has been a fertile breeding-ground of such men, and
remains so; great men, both in war and in the civil service, and as modest as great. But they have no
monuments, and were not expecting any. Ochterlony could not have been expecting one, and it is not at all
likely that he desired one—certainly not until Clive and Hastings should be supplied. Every day Clive
and Hastings lean on the battlements of heaven and look down and wonder which of the two the monument is
for; and they fret and worry because they cannot find out, and so the peace of heaven is spoiled for them and
lost. But not for Ochterlony. Ochterlony is not troubled. He doesn't suspect that it is his monument. Heaven is
sweet and peaceful to him. There is a sort of unfairness about it all.
Indeed, if monuments were always given in India for high achievements, duty straitly performed, and
smirchless records, the landscape would be monotonous with them. The handful of English in India govern
the Indian myriads with apparent ease, and without noticeable friction, through tact, training, and
distinguished administrative ability, reinforced by just and liberal laws—and by keeping their word to
the native whenever they give it.
England is far from India and knows little about the eminent services performed by her servants there, for it is
the newspaper correspondent who makes fame, and he is not sent to India but to the continent, to report the
doings of the princelets and the dukelets, and where they are visiting and whom they are marrying. Often a
British official spends thirty or forty years in India, climbing from grade to grade by services which would
make him celebrated anywhere else, and finishes as a vice-sovereign, governing a great realm and millions of
subjects; then he goes home to England substantially unknown and unheard of, and settles down in some
modest corner, and is as one extinguished. Ten years later there is a twenty-line obituary in the London
papers, and the reader is paralyzed by the splendors of a career which he is not sure that he had ever heard of
before. But meanwhile he has learned all about the continental princelets and dukelets.
The average man is profoundly ignorant of countries that lie remote from his own. When they are mentioned
in his presence one or two facts and maybe a couple of names rise like torches in his mind, lighting up an inch
or two of it and leaving the rest all dark. The mention of Egypt suggests some Biblical facts and the
Pyramids-nothing more. The mention of South Africa suggests Kimberly and the diamonds and there an end.
Formerly the mention, to a Hindoo, of America suggested a name—George Washington—with
that his familiarity with our country was exhausted. Latterly his familiarity with it has doubled in bulk; so that
when America is mentioned now, two torches flare up in the dark caverns of his mind and he says, "Ah, the
country of the great man Washington; and of the Holy City—Chicago." For he knows about the
Congress of Religion, and this has enabled him to get an erroneous impression of Chicago.
When India is mentioned to the citizen of a far country it suggests Clive, Hastings, the Mutiny, Kipling, and a
number of other great events; and the mention of Calcutta infallibly brings up the Black Hole. And so, when
that citizen finds himself in the capital of India he goes first of all to see the Black Hole of
Calcutta—and is disappointed.
The Black Hole was not preserved; it is gone, long, long ago. It is strange. Just as it stood, it was itself a
monument; a ready-made one. It was finished, it was complete, its materials were strong and lasting, it needed
no furbishing up, no repairs; it merely needed to be let alone. It was the first brick, the Foundation Stone,
upon which was reared a mighty Empire—the Indian Empire of Great Britain. It was the ghastly
episode of the Black Hole that maddened the British and brought Clive, that young military marvel, raging up
from Madras; it was the seed from which sprung Plassey; and it was that extraordinary battle, whose like had
CHAPTER LIV. 36
not been seen in the earth since Agincourt, that laid deep and strong the foundations of England's colossal
Indian sovereignty.
And yet within the time of men who still live, the Black Hole was torn down and thrown away as carelessly as
if its bricks were common clay, not ingots of historic gold. There is no accounting for human beings.
The supposed site of the Black Hole is marked by an engraved plate. I saw that; and better that than nothing.
The Black Hole was a prison—a cell is nearer the right word—eighteen feet square, the
dimensions of an ordinary bedchamber; and into this place the victorious Nabob of Bengal packed 146 of his
English prisoners. There was hardly standing room for them; scarcely a breath of air was to be got; the time
was night, the weather sweltering hot. Before the dawn came, the captives were all dead but twenty-three. Mr.
Holwell's long account of the awful episode was familiar to the world a hundred years ago, but one seldom
sees in print even an extract from it in our day. Among the striking things in it is this. Mr. Holwell, perishing
with thirst, kept himself alive by sucking the perspiration from his sleeves. It gives one a vivid idea of the
situation. He presently found that while he was busy drawing life from one of his sleeves a young English
gentleman was stealing supplies from the other one. Holwell was an unselfish man, a man of the most
generous impulses; he lived and died famous for these fine and rare qualities; yet when he found out what was
happening to that unwatched sleeve, he took the precaution to suck that one dry first. The miseries of the
Black Hole were able to change even a nature like his. But that young gentleman was one of the twenty-three
survivors, and he said it was the stolen perspiration that saved his life. From the middle of Mr. Holwell's
narrative I will make a brief excerpt:
"Then a general prayer to Heaven, to hasten the approach of the flames to the
right and left of us, and put a period to our misery. But these failing, they
whose strength and spirits were quite exhausted laid themselves down and
expired quietly upon their fellows: others who had yet some strength and
vigor left made a last effort at the windows, and several succeeded by leaping
and scrambling over the backs and heads of those in the first rank, and got
hold of the bars, from which there was no removing them. Many to the right
and left sunk with the violent pressure, and were soon suffocated; for now a
steam arose from the living and the dead, which affected us in all its
circumstances as if we were forcibly held with our heads over a bowl full of
strong volatile spirit of hartshorn, until suffocated; nor could the effluvia of
the one be distinguished from the other, and frequently, when I was forced by
the load upon my head and shoulders to hold my face down, I was obliged,
near as I was to the window, instantly to raise it again to avoid suffocation. I
need not, my dear friend, ask your commiseration, when I tell you, that in this
plight, from half an hour past eleven till near two in the morning, I sustained
the weight of a heavy man, with his knees in my back, and the pressure of his
whole body on my head. A Dutch surgeon who had taken his seat upon my
left shoulder, and a Topaz (a black Christian soldier) bearing on my right; all
which nothing could have enabled me to support but the props and pressure
equally sustaining me all around. The two latter I frequently dislodged by
shifting my hold on the bars and driving my knuckles into their ribs; but my
friend above stuck fast, held immovable by two bars.
"I exerted anew my strength and fortitude; but the repeated trials and efforts I
made to dislodge the insufferable incumbrances upon me at last quite
exhausted me; and towards two o'clock, finding I must quit the window or
sink where I was, I resolved on the former, having bore, truly for the sake of
others, infinitely more for life than the best of it is worth. In the rank close
CHAPTER LIV. 37
behind me was an officer of one of the ships, whose name was Cary, and who
had behaved with much bravery during the siege (his wife, a fine woman,
though country born, would not quit him, but accompanied him into the
prison, and was one who survived). This poor wretch had been long raving
for water and air; I told him I was determined to give up life, and
recommended his gaining my station. On my quitting it he made a fruitless
attempt to get my place; but the Dutch surgeon, who sat on my shoulder,
supplanted him. Poor Cary expressed his thankfulness, and said he would
give up life too; but it was with the utmost labor we forced our way from the
window (several in the inner ranks appearing to me dead standing, unable to
fall by the throng and equal pressure around). He laid himself down to die;
and his death, I believe, was very sudden; for he was a short, full, sanguine
man. His strength was great; and, I imagine, had he not retired with me, I
should never have been able to force my way. I was at this time sensible of
no pain, and little uneasiness; I can give you no better idea of my situation
than by repeating my simile of the bowl of spirit of hartshorn. I found a
stupor coming on apace, and laid myself down by that gallant old man, the
Rev. Mr. Jervas Bellamy, who laid dead with his son, the lieutenant, hand in
hand, near the southernmost wall of the prison. When I had lain there some
little time, I still had reflection enough to suffer some uneasiness in the
thought that I should be trampled upon, when dead, as I myself had done to
others. With some difficulty I raised myself, and gained the platform a
second time, where I presently lost all sensation; the last trace of sensibility
that I have been able to recollect after my laying down, was my sash being
uneasy about my waist, which I untied, and threw from me. Of what passed
in this interval, to the time of my resurrection from this hole of horrors, I can
give you no account."
There was plenty to see in Calcutta, but there was not plenty of time for it. I saw the fort that Clive built; and
the place where Warren Hastings and the author of the Junius Letters fought their duel; and the great botanical
gardens; and the fashionable afternoon turnout in the Maidan; and a grand review of the garrison in a great
plain at sunrise; and a military tournament in which great bodies of native soldiery exhibited the perfection of
their drill at all arms, a spectacular and beautiful show occupying several nights and closing with the mimic
storming of a native fort which was as good as the reality for thrilling and accurate detail, and better than the
reality for security and comfort; we had a pleasure excursion on the 'Hoogly' by courtesy of friends, and
devoted the rest of the time to social life and the Indian museum. One should spend a month in the museum,
an enchanted palace of Indian antiquities. Indeed, a person might spend half a year among the beautiful and
wonderful things without exhausting their interest.
It was winter. We were of Kipling's "hosts of tourists who travel up and down India in the cold weather
showing how things ought to be managed." It is a common expression there, "the cold weather," and the
people think there is such a thing. It is because they have lived there half a lifetime, and their perceptions have
become blunted. When a person is accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not
valuable. I had read, in the histories, that the June marches made between Lucknow and Cawnpore by the
British forces in the time of the Mutiny were made weather—138 in the shade and had taken it for
historical embroidery. I had read it again in Serjeant-Major Forbes-Mitchell's account of his military
experiences in the Mutiny—at least I thought I had—and in Calcutta I asked him if it was true,
and he said it was. An officer of high rank who had been in the thick of the Mutiny said the same. As long as
those men were talking about what they knew, they were trustworthy, and I believed them; but when they said
it was now "cold weather," I saw that they had traveled outside of their sphere of knowledge and were
floundering. I believe that in India "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use
CHAPTER LIV. 38
through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob
and weather which will only make it mushy. It was observable that brass ones were in use while I was in
Calcutta, showing that it was not yet time to change to porcelain; I was told the change to porcelain was not
usually made until May. But this cold weather was too warm for us; so we started to Darjeeling, in the
Himalayas—a twenty-four hour journey.
CHAPTER LIV. 39
CHAPTER LV.
There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear
false witness against thy neighbor.
FROM DIARY:
February 14. We left at 4:30 P.M. Until dark we moved through rich vegetation, then changed to a boat and
crossed the Ganges.
February 15. Up with the sun. A brilliant morning, and frosty. A double suit of flannels is found necessary.
The plain is perfectly level, and seems to stretch away and away and away, dimming and softening, to the
uttermost bounds of nowhere. What a soaring, strenuous, gushing fountain spray of delicate greenery a bunch
of bamboo is! As far as the eye can reach, these grand vegetable geysers grace the view, their spoutings
refined to steam by distance. And there are fields of bananas, with the sunshine glancing from the varnished
surface of their drooping vast leaves. And there are frequent groves of palm; and an effective accent is given
to the landscape by isolated individuals of this picturesque family, towering, clean-stemmed, their plumes
broken and hanging ragged, Nature's imitation of an umbrella that has been out to see what a cyclone is like
and is trying not to look disappointed. And everywhere through the soft morning vistas we glimpse the
villages, the countless villages, the myriad villages, thatched, built of clean new matting, snuggling among
grouped palms and sheaves of bamboo; villages, villages, no end of villages, not three hundred yards apart,
and dozens and dozens of them in sight all the time; a mighty City, hundreds of miles long, hundreds of miles
broad, made all of villages, the biggest city in the earth, and as populous as a European kingdom. I have seen
no such city as this before. And there is a continuously repeated and replenished multitude of naked men in
view on both sides and ahead. We fly through it mile after mile, but still it is always there, on both sides and
ahead—brown-bodied, naked men and boys, plowing in the fields. But not woman. In these two hours I
have not seen a woman or a girl working in the fields.
CHAPTER LV. 40
Those are beautiful verses, and they have remained in my memory all my life. But if the closing lines are true,
let us hope that when we come to answer the call and deliver the land from its errors, we shall secrete from it
some of our high-civilization ways, and at the same time borrow some of its pagan ways to enrich our high
system with. We have a right to do this. If we lift those people up, we have a right to lift ourselves up nine or
ten grades or so, at their expense. A few years ago I spent several weeks at Tolz, in Bavaria. It is a Roman
Catholic region, and not even Benares is more deeply or pervasively or intelligently devout. In my diary of
those days I find this:
"We took a long drive yesterday around about the lovely country roads. But it
was a drive whose pleasure was damaged in a couple of ways: by the
dreadful shrines and by the shameful spectacle of gray and venerable old
grandmothers toiling in the fields. The shrines were frequent along the
roads—figures of the Saviour nailed to the cross and streaming with
blood from the wounds of the nails and the thorns.
"When missionaries go from here do they find fault with the pagan idols? I
saw many women seventy and even eighty years old mowing and binding in
the fields, and pitchforking the loads into the wagons."
CHAPTER LV. 41
I was in Austria later, and in Munich. In Munich I saw gray old women pushing trucks up hill and down, long
distances, trucks laden with barrels of beer, incredible loads. In my Austrian diary I find this:
"In the fields I often see a woman and a cow harnessed to the plow, and a
man driving.
"In the public street of Marienbad to-day, I saw an old, bent, gray-fheaded
woman, in harness with a dog, drawing a laden sled over bare dirt roads and
bare pavements; and at his ease walked the driver, smoking his pipe, a hale
fellow not thirty years old."
Five or six years ago I bought an open boat, made a kind of a canvas wagon-roof over the stern of it to shelter
me from sun and rain; hired a courier and a boatman, and made a twelve-day floating voyage down the Rhone
from Lake Bourget to Marseilles. In my diary of that trip I find this entry. I was far down the Rhone then:
"Passing St. Etienne, 2:15 P.M. On a distant ridge inland, a tall openwork
structure commandingly situated, with a statue of the Virgin standing on it. A
devout country. All down this river, wherever there is a crag there is a statue
of the Virgin on it. I believe I have seen a hundred of them. And yet, in many
respects, the peasantry seem to be mere pagans, and destitute of any
considerable degree of civilization.
CHAPTER LV. 42
" . . . . We reached a not very promising looking village about 4 o'clock, and I
concluded to tie up for the day; munching fruit and fogging the hood with
pipe-smoke had grown monotonous; I could not have the hood furled,
because the floods of rain fell unceasingly. The tavern was on the river bank,
as is the custom. It was dull there, and melancholy—nothing to do but
look out of the window into the drenching rain, and shiver; one could do that,
for it was bleak and cold and windy, and country France furnishes no fire.
Winter overcoats did not help me much; they had to be supplemented with
rugs. The raindrops were so large and struck the river with such force that
they knocked up the water like pebble-splashes.
"With the exception of a very occasional woodenshod peasant, nobody was

abroad in this bitter weather—I mean nobody of our sex. But all
weathers are alike to the women in these continental countries. To them and
the other animals, life is serious; nothing interrupts their slavery. Three of
them were washing clothes in the river under the window when I arrived, and
they continued at it as long as there was light to work by. One was apparently
thirty; another—the mother!—above fifty; the
third—grandmother!—so old and worn and gray she could have
passed for eighty; I took her to be that old. They had no waterproofs nor
rubbers, of course; over their shoulders they wore
gunnysacks—simply conductors for rivers of water; some of the
volume reached the ground; the rest soaked in on the way.
CHAPTER LV. 43
"At last a vigorous fellow of thirty-five arrived, dry and comfortable,

smoking his pipe under his big umbrella in an open donkey-cart-husband,
son, and grandson of those women! He stood up in the cart, sheltering
himself, and began to superintend, issuing his orders in a masterly tone of
command, and showing temper when they were not obeyed swiftly enough.
"Without complaint or murmur the drowned women patiently carried out the
orders, lifting the immense baskets of soggy, wrung-out clothing into the cart
and stowing them to the man's satisfaction. There were six of the great
baskets, and a man of mere ordinary strength could not have lifted any one of
them. The cart being full now, the Frenchman descended, still sheltered by
his umbrella, entered the tavern, and the women went drooping homeward,
trudging in the wake of the cart, and soon were blended with the deluge and
lost to sight.
"When I went down into the public room, the Frenchman had his bottle of
wine and plate of food on a bare table black with grease, and was "chomping"
like a horse. He had the little religious paper which is in everybody's hands
on the Rhone borders, and was enlightening himself with the histories of
French saints who used to flee to the desert in the Middle Ages to escape the
CHAPTER LV. 44
contamination of woman. For two hundred years France has been sending
missionaries to other savage lands. To spare to the needy from poverty like
hers is fine and true generosity."
But to get back to India—where, as my favorite poem says—
"Every prospect pleases,

And only man is vile."
It is because Bavaria and Austria and France have not introduced their civilization to him yet. But Bavaria and
Austria and France are on their way. They are coming. They will rescue him; they will refine the vileness out
of him.
Some time during the forenoon, approaching the mountains, we changed from the regular train to one
composed of little canvas-sheltered cars that skimmed along within a foot of the ground and seemed to be
going fifty miles an hour when they were really making about twenty. Each car had seating capacity for
half-a-dozen persons; and when the curtains were up one was substantially out of doors, and could see
everywhere, and get all the breeze, and be luxuriously comfortable. It was not a pleasure excursion in name
only, but in fact.
After a while the stopped at a little wooden coop of a station just within the curtain of the sombre jungle, a
place with a deep and dense forest of great trees and scrub and vines all about it. The royal Bengal tiger is in
great force there, and is very bold and unconventional. From this lonely little station a message once went to
the railway manager in Calcutta: "Tiger eating station-master on front porch; telegraph instructions."
It was there that I had my first tiger hunt. I killed thirteen. We were presently away again, and the train began
to climb the mountains. In one place seven wild elephants crossed the track, but two of them got away before I
could overtake them. The railway journey up the mountain is forty miles, and it takes eight hours to make it. It
is so wild and interesting and exciting and enchanting that it ought to take a week. As for the vegetation, it is a
museum. The jungle seemed to contain samples of every rare and curious tree and bush that we had ever seen
or heard of. It is from that museum, I think, that the globe must have been supplied with the trees and vines
and shrubs that it holds precious.
The road is infinitely and charmingly crooked. It goes winding in and out under lofty cliffs that are smothered
in vines and foliage, and around the edges of bottomless chasms; and all the way one glides by files of
picturesque natives, some carrying burdens up, others going down from their work in the tea-gardens; and
once there was a gaudy wedding procession, all bright tinsel and color, and a bride, comely and girlish, who
peeped out from the curtains of her palanquin, exposing her face with that pure delight which the young and
happy take in sin for sin's own sake.
By and by we were well up in the region of the clouds, and from that breezy height we looked down and afar
over a wonderful picture—the Plains of India, stretching to the horizon, soft and fair, level as a floor,
shimmering with heat, mottled with cloud-shadows, and cloven with shining rivers. Immediately below us,
and receding down, down, down, toward the valley, was a shaven confusion of hilltops, with ribbony roads
and paths squirming and snaking cream-yellow all over them and about them, every curve and twist sharply
distinct.
At an elevation of 6,000 feet we entered a thick cloud, and it shut out the world and kept it shut out. We
climbed 1,000 feet higher, then began to descend, and presently got down to Darjeeling, which is 6,000 feet
above the level of the Plains.
CHAPTER LV. 45
We had passed many a mountain village on the way up, and seen some new kinds of natives, among them
many samples of the fighting Ghurkas. They are not large men, but they are strong and resolute. There are no
better soldiers among Britain's native troops. And we had passed shoals of their women climbing the forty
miles of steep road from the valley to their mountain homes, with tall baskets on their backs hitched to their
foreheads by a band, and containing a freightage weighing—I will not say how many hundreds of
pounds, for the sum is unbelievable. These were young women, and they strode smartly along under these
astonishing burdens with the air of people out for a holiday. I was told that a woman will carry a piano on her
back all the way up the mountain; and that more than once a woman had done it. If these were old women I
should regard the Ghurkas as no more civilized than the Europeans. At the railway station at Darjeeling you
find plenty of cab-substitutes—open coffins, in which you sit, and are then borne on men's shoulders up
the steep roads into the town.
CHAPTER LV. 46
CHAPTER LV. 47
Up there we found a fairly comfortable hotel, the property of an indiscriminate and incoherent landlord, who
looks after nothing, but leaves everything to his army of Indian servants. No, he does look after the
bill—to be just to him—and the tourist cannot do better than follow his example. I was told by a
resident that the summit of Kinchinjunga is often hidden in the clouds, and that sometimes a tourist has waited
twenty-two days and then been obliged to go away without a sight of it. And yet went not disappointed; for
when he got his hotel bill he recognized that he was now seeing the highest thing in the Himalayas. But this is
probably a lie.
After lecturing I went to the Club that night, and that was a comfortable place. It is loftily situated, and looks
out over a vast spread of scenery; from it you can see where the boundaries of three countries come together,
some thirty miles away; Thibet is one of them, Nepaul another, and I think Herzegovina was the other.
Apparently, in every town and city in India the gentlemen of the British civil and military service have a club;
sometimes it is a palatial one, always it is pleasant and homelike. The hotels are not always as good as they
might be, and the stranger who has access to the Club is grateful for his privilege and knows how to value it.
Next day was Sunday. Friends came in the gray dawn with horses, and my party rode away to a distant point
where Kinchinjunga and Mount Everest show up best, but I stayed at home for a private view; for it was very
old, and I was not acquainted with the horses, any way. I got a pipe and a few blankets and sat for two hours
at the window, and saw the sun drive away the veiling gray and touch up the snow-peaks one after another
with pale pink splashes and delicate washes of gold, and finally flood the whole mighty convulsion of
snow-mountains with a deluge of rich splendors.
Kinchinjunga's peak was but fitfully visible, but in the between times it was vividly clear against the
sky—away up there in the blue dome more than 28,000 feet above sea level—the loftiest land I
had ever seen, by 12,000 feet or more. It was 45 miles away. Mount Everest is a thousand feet higher, but it
was not a part of that sea of mountains piled up there before me, so I did not see it; but I did not care, because
I think that mountains that are as high as that are disagreeable.
CHAPTER LV. 48
I changed from the back to the front of the house and spent the rest of the morning there, watching the swarthy
strange tribes flock by from their far homes in the Himalayas. All ages and both sexes were represented, and
the breeds were quite new to me, though the costumes of the Thibetans made them look a good deal like
Chinamen. The prayer-wheel was a frequent feature. It brought me near to these people, and made them seem
kinfolk of mine. Through our preacher we do much of our praying by proxy. We do not whirl him around a
stick, as they do, but that is merely a detail.
CHAPTER LV. 49
The swarm swung briskly by, hour after hour, a strange and striking pageant. It was wasted there, and it
seemed a pity. It should have been sent streaming through the cities of Europe or America, to refresh eyes
weary of the pale monotonies of the circus-pageant. These people were bound for the bazar, with things to
sell. We went down there, later, and saw that novel congress of the wild peoples, and plowed here and there
through it, and concluded that it would be worth coming from Calcutta to see, even if there were no
Kinchinjunga and Everest.
CHAPTER LVI.
There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.
CHAPTER LVI. 50
On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair-to-middling views of the stupendous mountains; then,
being well cooled off and refreshed, we were ready to chance the weather of the lower world once more.
We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the summit, then changed to a little canvas-canopied
hand-car for the 35-mile descent. It was the size of a sleigh, it had six seats and was so low that it seemed to
rest on the ground. It had no engine or other propelling power, and needed none to help it fly down those steep
inclines. It only needed a strong brake, to modify its flight, and it had that. There was a story of a disastrous
trip made down the mountain once in this little car by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, when the car
jumped the track and threw its passengers over a precipice. It was not true, but the story had value for me, for
it made me nervous, and nervousness wakes a person up and makes him alive and alert, and heightens the
thrill of a new and doubtful experience. The car could really jump the track, of course; a pebble on the track,
placed there by either accident or malice, at a sharp curve where one might strike it before the eye could
discover it, could derail the car and fling it down into India; and the fact that the lieutenant-governor had
escaped was no proof that I would have the same luck. And standing there, looking down upon the Indian
Empire from the airy altitude of 7,000 feet, it seemed unpleasantly far, dangerously far, to be flung from a
handcar.
But after all, there was but small danger-for me. What there was, was for Mr. Pugh, inspector of a division of
the Indian police, in whose company and protection we had come from Calcutta. He had seen long service as
an artillery officer, was less nervous than I was, and so he was to go ahead of us in a pilot hand-car, with a
Ghurka and another native; and the plan was that when we should see his car jump over a precipice we must
put on our (break) and send for another pilot. It was a good arrangement. Also Mr. Barnard, chief engineer of
the mountain-division of the road, was to take personal charge of our car, and he had been down the mountain
in it many a time.
Everything looked safe. Indeed, there was but one questionable detail left: the regular train was to follow us as
soon as we should start, and it might run over us. Privately, I thought it would.
CHAPTER LVI. 51
CHAPTER LVI. 52
The road fell sharply down in front of us and went corkscrewing in and out around the crags and precipices,
down, down, forever down, suggesting nothing so exactly or so uncomfortably as a croaked toboggan slide
with no end to it. Mr. Pugh waved his flag and started, like an arrow from a bow, and before I could get out of
the car we were gone too. I had previously had but one sensation like the shock of that departure, and that was
the gaspy shock that took my breath away the first time that I was discharged from the summit of a toboggan
slide. But in both instances the sensation was pleasurable—intensely so; it was a sudden and immense
exaltation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable joy. I believe that this combination makes the
perfection of human delight.
The pilot car's flight down the mountain suggested the swoop of a swallow that is skimming the ground, so
swiftly and smoothly and gracefully it swept down the long straight reaches and soared in and out of the bends
and around the corners. We raced after it, and seemed to flash by the capes and crags with the speed of light;
and now and then we almost overtook it—and had hopes; but it was only playing with us; when we got
near, it released its brake, make a spring around a corner, and the next time it spun into view, a few seconds
later, it looked as small as a wheelbarrow, it was so far away. We played with the train in the same way. We
often got out to gather flowers or sit on a precipice and look at the scenery, then presently we would hear a
dull and growing roar, and the long coils of the train would come into sight behind and above us; but we did
not need to start till the locomotive was close down upon us—then we soon left it far behind. It had to
stop at every station, therefore it was not an embarrassment to us. Our brake was a good piece of machinery; it
could bring the car to a standstill on a slope as steep as a house-roof.
The scenery was grand and varied and beautiful, and there was no hurry; we could always stop and examine
it. There was abundance of time. We did not need to hamper the train; if it wanted the road, we could switch
off and let it go by, then overtake it and pass it later. We stopped at one place to see the Gladstone Cliff, a
great crag which the ages and the weather have sculptured into a recognizable portrait of the venerable
statesman. Mr. Gladstone is a stockholder in the road, and Nature began this portrait ten thousand years ago,
with the idea of having the compliment ready in time for the event.
We saw a banyan tree which sent down supporting stems from branches which were sixty feet above the
ground. That is, I suppose it was a banyan; its bark resembled that of the great banyan in the botanical gardens
at Calcutta, that spider-legged thing with its wilderness of vegetable columns. And there were frequent
glimpses of a totally leafless tree upon whose innumerable twigs and branches a cloud of crimson butterflies
had lighted—apparently. In fact these brilliant red butterflies were flowers, but the illusion was good.
Afterward in South Africa, I saw another splendid effect made by red flowers. This flower was probably
called the torch-plant—should have been so named, anyway. It had a slender stem several feet high,
and from its top stood up a single tongue of flame, an intensely red flower of the size and shape of a small
corn-cob. The stems stood three or four feet apart all over a great hill-slope that was a mile long, and make
one think of what the Place de la Concorde would be if its myriad lights were red instead of white and yellow.
A few miles down the mountain we stopped half an hour to see a Thibetan dramatic performance. It was in the
open air on the hillside. The audience was composed of Thibetans, Ghurkas, and other unusual people. The
costumes of the actors were in the last degree outlandish, and the performance was in keeping with the
clothes. To an accompaniment of barbarous noises the actors stepped out one after another and began to spin
around with immense swiftness and vigor and violence, chanting the while, and soon the whole troupe would
be spinning and chanting and raising the dust. They were performing an ancient and celebrated historical play,
and a Chinaman explained it to me in pidjin English as it went along. The play was obscure enough without
CHAPTER LVI. 53
the explanation; with the explanation added, it was (opake). As a drama this ancient historical work of art was
defective, I thought, but as a wild and barbarous spectacle the representation was beyond criticism. Far down
the mountain we got out to look at a piece of remarkable loop-engineering—a spiral where the road
curves upon itself with such abruptness that when the regular train came down and entered the loop, we stood
over it and saw the locomotive disappear under our bridge, then in a few moments appear again, chasing its
own tail; and we saw it gain on it, overtake it, draw ahead past the rear cars, and run a race with that end of the
train. It was like a snake swallowing itself.
Half-way down the mountain we stopped about an hour at Mr. Barnard's house for refreshments, and while we
were sitting on the veranda looking at the distant panorama of hills through a gap in the forest, we came very
near seeing a leopard kill a calf.—[It killed it the day before.]—It is a wild place and lovely.
From the woods all about came the songs of birds,—among them the contributions of a couple of birds
which I was not then acquainted with: the brain-fever bird and the coppersmith. The song of the brain-fever
demon starts on a low but steadily rising key, and is a spiral twist which augments in intensity and severity
with each added spiral, growing sharper and sharper, and more and more painful, more and more agonizing,
more and more maddening, intolerable, unendurable, as it bores deeper and deeper and deeper into the
listener's brain, until at last the brain fever comes as a relief and the man dies. I am bringing some of these
birds home to America. They will be a great curiosity there, and it is believed that in our climate they will
multiply like rabbits.
The coppersmith bird's note at a certain distance away has the ring of a sledge on granite; at a certain other
CHAPTER LVI. 54
distance the hammering has a more metallic ring, and you might think that the bird was mending a copper
kettle; at another distance it has a more woodeny thump, but it is a thump that is full of energy, and sounds
just like starting a bung. So he is a hard bird to name with a single name; he is a stone-breaker, coppersmith,
and bung-starter, and even then he is not completely named, for when he is close by you find that there is a
soft, deep, melodious quality in his thump, and for that no satisfying name occurs to you. You will not mind
his other notes, but when he camps near enough for you to hear that one, you presently find that his measured
and monotonous repetition of it is beginning to disturb you; next it will weary you, soon it will distress you,
and before long each thump will hurt your head; if this goes on, you will lose your mind with the pain and
misery of it, and go crazy. I am bringing some of these birds home to America. There is nothing like them
there. They will be a great surprise, and it is said that in a climate like ours they will surpass expectation for
fecundity.
I am bringing some nightingales, too, and some cue-owls. I got them in Italy. The song of the nightingale is
the deadliest known to ornithology. That demoniacal shriek can kill at thirty yards. The note of the cue-owl is
infinitely soft and sweet—soft and sweet as the whisper of a flute. But penetrating—oh, beyond
belief; it can bore through boiler-iron. It is a lingering note, and comes in triplets, on the one unchanging key:
hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o; then a silence of fifteen seconds, then the triplet again; and so on, all night. At first
it is divine; then less so; then trying; then distressing; then excruciating; then agonizing, and at the end of two
hours the listener is a maniac.
And so, presently we took to the hand-car and went flying down the mountain again; flying and stopping,
flying and stopping, till at last we were in the plain once more and stowed for Calcutta in the regular train.
That was the most enjoyable day I have spent in the earth. For rousing, tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no
holiday trip that approaches the bird-flight down the Himalayas in a hand-car. It has no fault, no blemish, no
lack, except that there are only thirty-five miles of it instead of five hundred.
CHAPTER LVII.
She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the
kind of person that keeps a parrot.
So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most
extraordinary country that the sun visits on his round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing over
looked. Always, when you think you have come to the end of her tremendous specialties and have finished
banging tags upon her as the Land of the Thug, the Land of the Plague, the Land of Famine, the Land of Giant
Illusions, the Land of Stupendous Mountains, and so forth, another specialty crops up and another tag is
required. I have been overlooking the fact that India is by an unapproachable supremacy—the Land of
Murderous Wild Creatures. Perhaps it will be simplest to throw away the tags and generalize her with one
all-comprehensive name, as the Land of Wonders.
For many years the British Indian Government has been trying to destroy the murderous wild creatures, and
has spent a great deal of money in the effort. The annual official returns show that the undertaking is a
CHAPTER LVII. 55
difficult one.
These returns exhibit a curious annual uniformity in results; the sort of uniformity which you find in the
annual output of suicides in the world's capitals, and the proportions of deaths by this, that, and the other
disease. You can always come close to foretelling how many suicides will occur in Paris, London, and New
York, next year, and also how many deaths will result from cancer, consumption, dog-bite, falling out of the
window, getting run over by cabs, etc., if you know the statistics of those matters for the present year. In the
same way, with one year's Indian statistics before you, you can guess closely at how many people were killed
in that Empire by tigers during the previous year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and at how
many were killed in each of those years by bears, how many by wolves, and how many by snakes; and you
can also guess closely at how many people are going to be killed each year for the coming five years by each
of those agencies. You can also guess closely at how many of each agency the government is going to kill
each year for the next five years.
I have before me statistics covering a period of six consecutive years. By these, I know that in India the tiger
kills something over 800 persons every year, and that the government responds by killing about double as
many tigers every year. In four of the six years referred to, the tiger got 800 odd; in one of the remaining two
years he got only 700, but in the other remaining year he made his average good by scoring 917. He is always
sure of his average. Anyone who bets that the tiger will kill 2,400 people in India in any three consecutive
years has invested his money in a certainty; anyone who bets that he will kill 2,600 in any three consecutive
years, is absolutely sure to lose.
As strikingly uniform as are the statistics of suicide, they are not any more so than are those of the tiger's
annual output of slaughtered human beings in India. The government's work is quite uniform, too; it about
doubles the tiger's average. In six years the tiger killed 5,000 persons, minus 50; in the same six years 10,000
tigers were killed, minus 400.
The wolf kills nearly as many people as the tiger—700 a year to the tiger's 800 odd—but while
he is doing it, more than 5,000 of his tribe fall.
The leopard kills an average of 230 people per year, but loses 3,300 of his own mess while he is doing it.
The bear kills 100 people per year at a cost of 1,250 of his own tribe.
The tiger, as the figures show, makes a very handsome fight against man. But it is nothing to the elephant's
fight. The king of beasts, the lord of the jungle, loses four of his mess per year, but he kills forty—five
persons to make up for it.
But when it comes to killing cattle, the lord of the jungle is not interested. He kills but 100 in six
years—horses of hunters, no doubt—but in the same six the tiger kills more than 84,000, the
leopard 100,000, the bear 4,000, the wolf 70,000, the hyena more than 13,000, other wild beasts 27,000, and
the snakes 19,000, a grand total of more than 300,000; an average of 50,000 head per year.
In response, the government kills, in the six years, a total of 3,201,232 wild beasts and snakes. Ten for one.
It will be perceived that the snakes are not much interested in cattle; they kill only 3,000 odd per year. The
snakes are much more interested in man. India swarms with deadly snakes. At the head of the list is the cobra,
the deadliest known to the world, a snake whose bite kills where the rattlesnake's bite merely entertains.
In India, the annual man-killings by snakes are as uniform, as regular, and as forecastable as are the
tiger-average and the suicide-average. Anyone who bets that in India, in any three consecutive years the
CHAPTER LVII. 56
snakes will kill 49,500 persons, will win his bet; and anyone who bets that in India in any three consecutive
years, the snakes will kill 53,500 persons, will lose his bet. In India the snakes kill 17,000 people a year; they
hardly ever fall short of it; they as seldom exceed it. An insurance actuary could take the Indian census tables
and the government's snake tables and tell you within sixpence how much it would be worth to insure a man
against death by snake-bite there. If I had a dollar for every person killed per year in India, I would rather
have it than any other property, as it is the only property in the world not subject to shrinkage.
I should like to have a royalty on the government-end of the snake business, too, and am in London now
trying to get it; but when I get it it is not going to be as regular an income as the other will be if I get that; I
have applied for it. The snakes transact their end of the business in a more orderly and systematic way than
the government transacts its end of it, because the snakes have had a long experience and know all about the
traffic. You can make sure that the government will never kill fewer than 110,000 snakes in a year, and that it
will newer quite reach 300,000 too much room for oscillation; good speculative stock, to bear or bull, and buy
and sell long and short, and all that kind of thing, but not eligible for investment like the other. The man that
speculates in the government's snake crop wants to go carefully. I would not advise a man to buy a single crop
at all—I mean a crop of futures for the possible wobble is something quite extraordinary. If he can buy
six future crops in a bunch, seller to deliver 1,500,000 altogether, that is another matter. I do not know what
snakes are worth now, but I know what they would be worth then, for the statistics show that the seller could
not come within 427,000 of carrying out his contract. However, I think that a person who speculates in snakes
is a fool, anyway. He always regrets it afterwards.
To finish the statistics. In six years the wild beasts kill 20,000 persons, and the snakes kill 103,000. In the
same six the government kills 1,073,546 snakes. Plenty left.
There are narrow escapes in India. In the very jungle where I killed sixteen tigers and all those elephants, a
cobra bit me but it got well; everyone was surprised. This could not happen twice in ten years, perhaps.
Usually death would result in fifteen minutes.
We struck out westward or northwestward from Calcutta on an itinerary of a zig-zag sort, which would in the
course of time carry us across India to its northwestern corner and the border of Afghanistan. The first part of
the trip carried us through a great region which was an endless garden—miles and miles of the
beautiful flower from whose juices comes the opium, and at Muzaffurpore we were in the midst of the indigo
culture; thence by a branch road to the Ganges at a point near Dinapore, and by a train which would have
missed the connection by a week but for the thoughtfulness of some British officers who were along, and who
knew the ways of trains that are run by natives without white supervision. This train stopped at every village;
for no purpose connected with business, apparently. We put out nothing, we took nothing aboard. The train
bands stepped ashore and gossiped with friends a quarter of an hour, then pulled out and repeated this at the
succeeding villages. We had thirty-five miles to go and six hours to do it in, but it was plain that we were not
going to make it. It was then that the English officers said it was now necessary to turn this gravel train into an
express. So they gave the engine-driver a rupee and told him to fly. It was a simple remedy. After that we
made ninety miles an hour. We crossed the Ganges just at dawn, made our connection, and went to Benares,
where we stayed twenty-four hours and inspected that strange and fascinating piety-hive again; then left for
Lucknow, a city which is perhaps the most conspicuous of the many monuments of British fortitude and valor
that are scattered about the earth.
The heat was pitiless, the flat plains were destitute of grass, and baked dry by the sun they were the color of
pale dust, which was flying in clouds. But it was much hotter than this when the relieving forces marched to
Lucknow in the time of the Mutiny. Those were the days of 138 deg. in the shade.
CHAPTER LVII. 57
CHAPTER LVIII.
Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the
habit of doing your duty without pain.
It seems to be settled, now, that among the many causes from which the Great Mutiny sprang, the main one
was the annexation of the kingdom of Oudh by the East India Company—characterized by Sir Henry
Lawrence as "the most unrighteous act that was ever committed." In the spring of 1857, a mutinous spirit was
observable in many of the native garrisons, and it grew day by day and spread wider and wider. The younger
military men saw something very serious in it, and would have liked to take hold of it vigorously and stamp it
out promptly; but they were not in authority. Old-men were in the high places of the army—men who
should have been retired long before, because of their great age—and they regarded the matter as a
thing of no consequence. They loved their native soldiers, and would not believe that anything could move
them to revolt. Everywhere these obstinate veterans listened serenely to the rumbling of the volcanoes under
them, and said it was nothing.
And so the propagators of mutiny had everything their own way. They moved from camp to camp
undisturbed, and painted to the native soldier the wrongs his people were suffering at the hands of the English,
and made his heart burn for revenge. They were able to point to two facts of formidable value as backers of
their persuasions: In Clive's day, native armies were incoherent mobs, and without effective arms; therefore,
they were weak against Clive's organized handful of well-armed men, but the thing was the other way, now.
The British forces were native; they had been trained by the British, organized by the British, armed by the
British, all the power was in their hands—they were a club made by British hands to beat out British
brains with. There was nothing to oppose their mass, nothing but a few weak battalions of British soldiers
scattered about India, a force not worth speaking of. This argument, taken alone, might not have succeeded,
for the bravest and best Indian troops had a wholesome dread of the white soldier, whether he was weak or
strong; but the agitators backed it with their second and best point prophecy—a prophecy a hundred
years old. The Indian is open to prophecy at all times; argument may fail to convince him, but not prophecy.
There was a prophecy that a hundred years from the year of that battle of Clive's which founded the British
Indian Empire, the British power would be overthrown and swept away by the natives.
The Mutiny broke out at Meerut on the 10th of May, 1857, and fired a train of tremendous historical
explosions. Nana Sahib's massacre of the surrendered garrison of Cawnpore occurred in June, and the long
siege of Lucknow began. The military history of England is old and great, but I think it must be granted that
the crushing of the Mutiny is the greatest chapter in it. The British were caught asleep and unprepared. They
were a few thousands, swallowed up in an ocean of hostile populations. It would take months to inform
England and get help, but they did not falter or stop to count the odds, but with English resolution and English
devotion they took up their task, and went stubbornly on with it, through good fortune and bad, and fought the
most unpromising fight that one may read of in fiction or out of it, and won it thoroughly.
The Mutiny broke out so suddenly, and spread with such rapidity that there was but little time for occupants
of weak outlying stations to escape to places of safety. Attempts were made, of course, but they were attended
by hardships as bitter as death in the few cases which were successful; for the heat ranged between 120 and
138 in the shade; the way led through hostile peoples, and food and water were hardly to be had. For ladies
and children accustomed to ease and comfort and plenty, such a journey must have been a cruel experience.
Sir G. O. Trevelyan quotes an example:
CHAPTER LVIII. 58
"This is what befell Mrs. M——, the wife of the surgeon at a
certain station on the southern confines of the insurrection. 'I heard,' she says,
'a number of shots fired, and, looking out, I saw my husband driving
furiously from the mess-house, waving his whip. I ran to him, and, seeing a
bearer with my child in his arms, I caught her up, and got into the buggy. At
the mess-house we found all the officers assembled, together with sixty
sepoys, who had remained faithful. We went off in one large party, amidst a
general conflagration of our late homes. We reached the caravanserai at
Chattapore the next morning, and thence started for Callinger. At this point
our sepoy escort deserted us. We were fired upon by match-lockmen, and one
officer was shot dead. We heard, likewise, that the people had risen at
Callinger, so we returned and walked back ten miles that day.
M—— and I carried the child alternately. Presently Mrs.
Smalley died of sunstroke. We had no food amongst us. An officer kindly
lent us a horse. We were very faint. The Major died, and was buried; also the
Sergeant-major and some women. The bandsmen left us on the nineteenth of
June. We were fired at again by match-lockmen, and changed direction for
Allahabad. Our party consisted of nine gentlemen, two children, the sergeant
and his wife. On the morning of the twentieth, Captain Scott took Lottie on to
his horse. I was riding behind my husband, and she was so crushed between
us. She was two years old on the first of the month. We were both weak
through want of food and the effect of the sun. Lottie and I had no head
covering. M—— had a sepoy's cap I found on the ground. Soon
after sunrise we were followed by villagers armed with clubs and spears. One
of them struck Captain Scott's horse on the leg. He galloped off with Lottie,
and my poor husband never saw his child again. We rode on several miles,
keeping away from villages, and then crossed the river. Our thirst was
extreme. M—— had dreadful cramps, so that I had to hold him
on the horse. I was very uneasy about him. The day before I saw the
drummer's wife eating chupatties, and asked her to give a piece to the child,
which she did. I now saw water in a ravine. The descent was steep, and our
only drinkingvessel was M——'s cap. Our horse got water, and
I bathed my neck. I had no stockings, and my feet were torn and blistered.
Two peasants came in sight, and we were frightened and rode off. The
sergeant held our horse, and M—— put me up and mounted. I
think he must have got suddenly faint, for I fell and he over me, on the road,
when the horse started off. Some time before he said, and Barber, too, that he
could not live many hours. I felt he was dying before we came to the ravine.
He told me his wishes about his children and myself, and took leave. My
brain seemed burnt up. No tears came. As soon as we fell, the sergeant let go
the horse, and it went off; so that escape was cut off. We sat down on the
ground waiting for death. Poor fellow! he was very weak; his thirst was
frightful, and I went to get him water. Some villagers came, and took my
rupees and watch. I took off my wedding-ring, and twisted it in my hair, and
replaced the guard. I tore off the skirt of my dress to bring water in, but was
no use, for when I returned my beloved's eyes were fixed, and, though I
called and tried to restore him, and poured water into his mouth, it only
rattled in his throat. He never spoke to me again. I held him in my arms till he
sank gradually down. I felt frantic, but could not cry. I was alone. I bound his
head and face in my dress, for there was no earth to buy him. The pain in my
hands and feet was dreadful. I went down to the ravine, and sat in the water
CHAPTER LVIII. 59
on a stone, hoping to get off at night and look for Lottie. When I came back
from the water, I saw that they had not taken her little watch, chain, and
seals, so I tied them under my petticoat. In an hour, about thirty villagers
came, they dragged me out of the ravine, and took off my jacket, and found
the little chain. They then dragged me to a village, mocking me all the way,
and disputing as to whom I was to belong to. The whole population came to
look at me. I asked for a bedstead, and lay down outside the door of a hut.
They had a dozen of cows, and yet refused me milk. When night came, and
the village was quiet, some old woman brought me a leafful of rice. I was too
parched to eat, and they gave me water. The morning after a neighboring
Rajah sent a palanquin and a horseman to fetch me, who told me that a little
child and three Sahibs had come to his master's house. And so the poor
mother found her lost one, 'greatly blistered,' poor little creature. It is not for
Europeans in India to pray that their flight be not in the winter."
In the first days of June the aged general, Sir Hugh Wheeler commanding the forces at Cawnpore, was
deserted by his native troops; then he moved out of the fort and into an exposed patch of open flat ground and
built a four-foot mud wall around it. He had with him a few hundred white soldiers and officers, and
apparently more women and children than soldiers. He was short of provisions, short of arms, short of
ammunition, short of military wisdom, short of everything but courage and devotion to duty. The defense of
that open lot through twenty-one days and nights of hunger, thirst, Indian heat, and a never-ceasing storm of
bullets, bombs, and cannon-balls—a defense conducted, not by the aged and infirm general, but by a
young officer named Moore—is one of the most heroic episodes in history. When at last the Nana
found it impossible to conquer these starving men and women with powder and ball, he resorted to treachery,
and that succeeded. He agreed to supply them with food and send them to Allahabad in boats. Their mud wall
and their barracks were in ruins, their provisions were at the point of exhaustion, they had done all that the
brave could do, they had conquered an honorable compromise,—their forces had been fearfully
reduced by casualties and by disease, they were not able to continue the contest longer. They came forth
helpless but suspecting no treachery, the Nana's host closed around them, and at a signal from a trumpet the
massacre began. About two hundred women and children were spared—for the present—but all
the men except three or four were killed. Among the incidents of the massacre quoted by Sir G. O. Trevelyan,
is this:
"When, after the lapse of some twenty minutes, the dead began to outnumber
the living;—when the fire slackened, as the marks grew few and far
between; then the troopers who had been drawn up to the right of the temple
plunged into the river, sabre between teeth, and pistol in hand. Thereupon
two half-caste Christian women, the wives of musicians in the band of the
Fifty-sixth, witnessed a scene which should not be related at second-hand. 'In
the boat where I was to have gone,' says Mrs. Bradshaw, confirmed
throughout by Mrs. Betts, 'was the school-mistress and twenty-two misses.
General Wheeler came last in a palkee. They carried him into the water near
the boat. I stood close by. He said, 'Carry me a little further towards the boat.'
But a trooper said, 'No, get out here.' As the General got out of the palkee,
head-foremost, the trooper gave him a cut with his sword into the neck, and
he fell into the water. My son was killed near him. I saw it; alas! alas! Some
were stabbed with bayonets; others cut down. Little infants were torn in
pieces. We saw it; we did; and tell you only what we saw. Other children
were stabbed and thrown into the river. The schoolgirls were burnt to death. I
saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the water, a few paces off, by the next
boat, we saw the youngest daughter of Colonel Williams. A sepoy was going
CHAPTER LVIII. 60
to kill her with his bayonet. She said, 'My father was always kind to sepoys.'
He turned away, and just then a villager struck her on the head with a club,
and she fell into the water. These people likewise saw good Mr. Moncrieff,
the clergyman, take a book from his pocket that he never had leisure to open,
and heard him commence a prayer for mercy which he was not permitted to
conclude. Another deponent observed an European making for a drain like a
scared water-rat, when some boatmen, armed with cudgels, cut off his retreat,
and beat him down dead into the mud."
The women and children who had been reserved from the massacre were imprisoned during a fortnight in a
small building, one story high—a cramped place, a slightly modified Black Hole of Calcutta. They
were waiting in suspense; there was none who could foretaste their fate. Meantime the news of the massacre
had traveled far and an army of rescuers with Havelock at its head was on its way—at least an army
which hoped to be rescuers. It was crossing the country by forced marches, and strewing its way with its own
dead men struck down by cholera, and by a heat which reached 135 deg. It was in a vengeful fury, and it
stopped for nothing neither heat, nor fatigue, nor disease, nor human opposition. It tore its impetuous way
through hostile forces, winning victory after victory, but still striding on and on, not halting to count results.
And at last, after this extraordinary march, it arrived before the walls of Cawnpore, met the Nana's massed
strength, delivered a crushing defeat, and entered.
But too late—only a few hours too late. For at the last moment the Nana had decided upon the massacre
of the captive women and children, and had commissioned three Mohammedans and two Hindoos to do the
work. Sir G. O. Trevelyan says:
"Thereupon the five men entered. It was the short gloaming of

Hindostan—the hour when ladies take their evening drive. She who
had accosted the officer was standing in the doorway. With her were the
native doctor and two Hindoo menials. That much of the business might be
seen from the veranda, but all else was concealed amidst the interior gloom.
Shrieks and scuffing acquainted those without that the journeymen were
earning their hire. Survur Khan soon emerged with his sword broken off at
the hilt. He procured another from the Nana's house, and a few minutes after
appeared again on the same errand. The third blade was of better temper; or
perhaps the thick of the work was already over. By the time darkness had
closed in, the men came forth and locked up the house for the night. Then the
screams ceased, but the groans lasted till morning.
"The sun rose as usual. When he had been up nearly three hours the five
repaired to the scene of their labors over night. They were attended by a few
sweepers, who proceeded to transfer the contents of the house to a dry well
situated behind some trees which grew hard by. 'The bodies,' says one who
was present throughout, 'were dragged out, most of them by the hair of the
head. Those who had clothing worth taking were stripped. Some of the
women were alive. I cannot say how many; but three could speak. They
prayed for the sake of God that an end might be put to their sufferings. I
remarked one very stout woman, a half-caste, who was severely wounded in
both arms, who entreated to be killed. She and two or three others were
placed against the bank of the cut by which bullocks go down in drawing
water. The dead were first thrown in. Yes: there was a great crowd looking
on; they were standing along the walls of the compound. They were
principally city people and villagers. Yes: there were also sepoys. Three boys
CHAPTER LVIII. 61
were alive. They were fair children. The eldest, I think, must have been six or
seven, and the youngest five years. They were running around the well
(where else could they go to?), and there was none to save them. No one said
a word or tried to save them.'
"At length the smallest of them made an infantile attempt to get away. The
little thing had been frightened past bearing by the murder of one of the
surviving ladies. He thus attracted the observation of a native who flung him
and his companions down the well."
The soldiers had made a march of eighteen days, almost without rest, to save the women and the children, and
now they were too late—all were dead and the assassin had flown. What happened then, Trevelyan
hesitated to put into words. "Of what took place, the less said is the better."
Then he continues:
"But there was a spectacle to witness which might excuse much. Those who,
straight from the contested field, wandered sobbing through the rooms of the
ladies' house, saw what it were well could the outraged earth have
straightway hidden. The inner apartment was ankle-deep in blood. The
plaster was scored with sword-cuts; not high up as where men have fought,
but low down, and about the corners, as if a creature had crouched to avoid
the blow. Strips of dresses, vainly tied around the handles of the doors,
signified the contrivance to which feminine despair had resorted as a means
of keeping out the murderers. Broken combs were there, and the frills of
children's trousers, and torn cuffs and pinafores, and little round hats, and one
or two shoes with burst latchets, and one or two daguerreotype cases with
cracked glasses. An officer picked up a few curls, preserved in a bit of
cardboard, and marked 'Ned's hair, with love'; but around were strewn locks,
some near a yard in length, dissevered, not as a keepsake, by quite other
scissors."
The battle of Waterloo was fought on the 18th of June, 1815. I do not state this fact as a reminder to the
reader, but as news to him. For a forgotten fact is news when it comes again. Writers of books have the
fashion of whizzing by vast and renowned historical events with the remark, "The details of this tremendous
episode are too familiar to the reader to need repeating here." They know that that is not true. It is a low kind
of flattery. They know that the reader has forgotten every detail of it, and that nothing of the tremendous event
is left in his mind but a vague and formless luminous smudge. Aside from the desire to flatter the reader, they
have another reason for making the remark-two reasons, indeed. They do not remember the details
themselves, and do not want the trouble of hunting them up and copying them out; also, they are afraid that if
they search them out and print them they will be scoffed at by the book-reviewers for retelling those worn old
things which are familiar to everybody. They should not mind the reviewer's jeer; he doesn't remember any of
the worn old things until the book which he is reviewing has retold them to him.
I have made the quoted remark myself, at one time and another, but I was not doing it to flatter the reader; I
was merely doing it to save work. If I had known the details without brushing up, I would have put them in;
but I didn't, and I did not want the labor of posting myself; so I said, "The details of this tremendous episode
are too familiar to the reader to need repeating here." I do not like that kind of a lie; still, it does save work.
I am not trying to get out of repeating the details of the Siege of Lucknow in fear of the reviewer; I am not
leaving them out in fear that they would not interest the reader; I am leaving them out partly to save work;
CHAPTER LVIII. 62
mainly for lack of room. It is a pity, too; for there is not a dull place anywhere in the great story.
Ten days before the outbreak (May 10th) of the Mutiny, all was serene at Lucknow, the huge capital of Oudh,
the kingdom which had recently been seized by the India Company. There was a great garrison, composed of
about 7,000 native troops and between 700 and 800 whites. These white soldiers and their families were
probably the only people of their race there; at their elbow was that swarming population of warlike natives, a
race of born soldiers, brave, daring, and fond of fighting. On high ground just outside the city stood the palace
of that great personage, the Resident, the representative of British power and authority. It stood in the midst of
spacious grounds, with its due complement of outbuildings, and the grounds were enclosed by a
wall—a wall not for defense, but for privacy. The mutinous spirit was in the air, but the whites were not
afraid, and did not feel much troubled.
Then came the outbreak at Meerut, then the capture of Delhi by the mutineers; in June came the three-weeks
leaguer of Sir Hugh Wheeler in his open lot at Cawnpore—40 miles distant from
Lucknow—then the treacherous massacre of that gallant little garrison; and now the great revolt was in
full flower, and the comfortable condition of things at Lucknow was instantly changed.
There was an outbreak there, and Sir Henry Lawrence marched out of the Residency on the 30th of June to
put it down, but was defeated with heavy loss, and had difficulty in getting back again. That night the
memorable siege of the Residency—called the siege of Lucknow—began. Sir Henry was killed
three days later, and Brigadier Inglis succeeded him in command.
Outside of the Residency fence was an immense host of hostile and confident native besiegers; inside it were
480 loyal native soldiers, 730 white ones, and 500 women and children.
In those days the English garrisons always managed to hamper themselves sufficiently with women and
children.
The natives established themselves in houses close at hand and began to rain bullets and cannon-balls into the
Residency; and this they kept up, night and day, during four months and a half, the little garrison industriously
replying all the time. The women and children soon became so used to the roar of the guns that it ceased to
disturb their sleep. The children imitated siege and defense in their play. The women—with any
pretext, or with none—would sally out into the storm-swept grounds. The defense was kept up week
after week, with stubborn fortitude, in the midst of death, which came in many forms—by bullet,
small-pox, cholera, and by various diseases induced by unpalatable and insufficient food, by the long hours of
wearying and exhausting overwork in the daily and nightly battle in the oppressive Indian heat, and by the
broken rest caused by the intolerable pest of mosquitoes, flies, mice, rats, and fleas.
CHAPTER LVIII. 63
Six weeks after the beginning of the siege more than one-half of the original force of white soldiers was dead,
and close upon three-fifths of the original native force.
But the fighting went on just the same. The enemy mined, the English counter-mined, and, turn about, they
blew up each other's posts. The Residency grounds were honey-combed with the enemy's tunnels. Deadly
courtesies were constantly exchanged—sorties by the English in the night; rushes by the enemy in the
night—rushes whose purpose was to breach the walls or scale them; rushes which cost heavily, and
always failed.
The ladies got used to all the horrors of war—the shrieks of mutilated men, the sight of blood and
death. Lady Inglis makes this mention in her diary:
"Mrs. Bruere's nurse was carried past our door to-day, wounded in the eye.
To extract the bullet it was found necessary to take out the eye—a
fearful operation. Her mistress held her while it was performed."
The first relieving force failed to relieve. It was under Havelock and Outram; and arrived when the siege had
been going on for three months. It fought its desperate way to Lucknow, then fought its way through the city
against odds of a hundred to one, and entered the Residency; but there was not enough left of it, then, to do
any good. It lost more men in its last fight than it found in the Residency when it got in. It became captive
itself.
The fighting and starving and dying by bullets and disease went steadily on. Both sides fought with energy
and industry. Captain Birch puts this striking incident in evidence. He is speaking of the third month of the
siege:
CHAPTER LVIII. 64
"As an instance of the heavy firing brought to bear on our position this month
may be mentioned the cutting down of the upper story of a brick building
simply by musketry firring. This building was in a most exposed position. All
the shots which just missed the top of the rampart cut into the dead wall
pretty much in a straight line, and at length cut right through and brought the
upper story tumbling down. The upper structure on the top of the
brigade-mess also fell in. The Residency house was a wreck. Captain
Anderson's post had long ago been knocked down, and Innes' post also fell
in. These two were riddled with round shot. As many as 200 were picked up
by Colonel Masters."
The exhausted garrison fought doggedly on all through the next month October. Then, November 2d, news
came Sir Colin Campbell's relieving force would soon be on its way from Cawnpore.
On the 12th the boom of his guns was heard.
On the 13th the sounds came nearer—he was slowly, but steadily, cutting his way through, storming
one stronghold after another.
On the 14th he captured the Martiniere College, and ran up the British flag there. It was seen from the
Residency.
Next he took the Dilkoosha.
On the 17th he took the former mess-house of the 32d regiment—a fortified building, and very strong.
"A most exciting, anxious day," writes Lady Inglis in her diary. "About 4 P.M., two strange officers walked
through our yard, leading their horses"—and by that sign she knew that communication was established
between the forces, that the relief was real, this time, and that the long siege of Lucknow was ended.
The last eight or ten miles of Sir Colin Campbell's march was through seas of, blood. The weapon mainly
used was the bayonet, the fighting was desperate. The way was mile-stoned with detached strong buildings of
stone, fortified, and heavily garrisoned, and these had to be taken by assault. Neither side asked for quarter,
and neither gave it. At the Secundrabagh, where nearly two thousand of the enemy occupied a great stone
house in a garden, the work of slaughter was continued until every man was killed. That is a sample of the
character of that devastating march.
There were but few trees in the plain at that time, and from the Residency the progress of the march, step by
step, victory by victory, could be noted; the ascending clouds of battle-smoke marked the way to the eye, and
the thunder of the guns marked it to the ear.
CHAPTER LVIII. 65
Sir Colin Campbell had not come to Lucknow to hold it, but to save the occupants of the Residency, and bring
them away. Four or five days after his arrival the secret evacuation by the troops took place, in the middle of a
dark night, by the principal gate, (the Bailie Guard). The two hundred women and two hundred and fifty
children had been previously removed. Captain Birch says:
"And now commenced a movement of the most perfect arrangement and

successful generalship—the withdrawal of the whole of the various
forces, a combined movement requiring the greatest care and skill. First, the
garrison in immediate contact with the enemy at the furthest extremity of the
Residency position was marched out. Every other garrison in turn fell in
behind it, and so passed out through the Bailie Guard gate, till the whole of
our position was evacuated. Then Havelock's force was similarly withdrawn,
post by post, marching in rear of our garrison. After them in turn came the
forces of the Commander-in-Chief, which joined on in the rear of Havelock's
force. Regiment by regiment was withdrawn with—the utmost order
and regularity. The whole operation resembled the movement of a telescope.
Stern silence was kept, and the enemy took no alarm."
Lady Inglis, referring to her husband and to General Sir James Outram, sets down the closing detail of this
impressive midnight retreat, in darkness and by stealth, of this shadowy host through the gate which it had
defended so long and so well:
"At twelve precisely they marched out, John and Sir James Outram remaining
till all had passed, and then they took off their hats to the Bailie Guard, the
CHAPTER LVIII. 66
scene of as noble a defense as I think history will ever have to relate."
CHAPTER LIX.
CHAPTER LIX. 67
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
We were driven over Sir Colin Campbell's route by a British officer, and when I arrived at the Residency I
was so familiar with the road that I could have led a retreat over it myself; but the compass in my head has
been out of order from my birth, and so, as soon as I was within the battered Bailie Guard and turned about to
review the march and imagine the relieving forces storming their way along it, everything was upside down
and wrong end first in a moment, and I was never able to get straightened out again. And now, when I look at
the battle-plan, the confusion remains. In me the east was born west, the battle-plans which have the east on
the right-hand side are of no use to me.
The Residency ruins are draped with flowering vines, and are impressive and beautiful. They and the grounds
are sacred now, and will suffer no neglect nor be profaned by any sordid or commercial use while the British
remain masters of India. Within the grounds are buried the dead who gave up their lives there in the long
siege.
After a fashion, I was able to imagine the fiery storm that raged night and day over the place during so many
months, and after a fashion I could imagine the men moving through it, but I could not satisfactorily place the
200 women, and I could do nothing at all with the 250 children. I knew by Lady Inglis' diary that the children
CHAPTER LIX. 68
carried on their small affairs very much as if blood and carnage and the crash and thunder of a siege were
natural and proper features of nursery life, and I tried to realize it; but when her little Johnny came rushing, all
excitement, through the din and smoke, shouting, "Oh, mamma, the white hen has laid an egg!" I saw that I
could not do it. Johnny's place was under the bed. I could imagine him there, because I could imagine myself
there; and I think I should not have been interested in a hen that was laying an egg; my interest would have
been with the parties that were laying the bombshells. I sat at dinner with one of those children in the Club's
Indian palace, and I knew that all through the siege he was perfecting his teething and learning to talk; and
while to me he was the most impressive object in Lucknow after the Residency ruins, I was not able to
imagine what his life had been during that tempestuous infancy of his, nor what sort of a curious surprise it
must have been to him to be marched suddenly out into a strange dumb world where there wasn't any noise,
and nothing going on. He was only forty-one when I saw him, a strangely youthful link to connect the present
with so ancient an episode as the Great Mutiny.
By and by we saw Cawnpore, and the open lot which was the scene of Moore's memorable defense, and the
spot on the shore of the Ganges where the massacre of the betrayed garrison occurred, and the small Indian
temple whence the bugle-signal notified the assassins to fall on. This latter was a lonely spot, and silent. The
sluggish river drifted by, almost currentless. It was dead low water, narrow channels with vast sandbars
between, all the way across the wide bed; and the only living thing in sight was that grotesque and solemn
bald-headed bird, the Adjutant, standing on his six-foot stilts, solitary on a distant bar, with his head sunk
between his shoulders, thinking; thinking of his prize, I suppose—the dead Hindoo that lay awash at his
feet, and whether to eat him alone or invite friends. He and his prey were a proper accent to that mournful
CHAPTER LIX. 69
place. They were in keeping with it, they emphasized its loneliness and its solemnity.
And we saw the scene of the slaughter of the helpless women and children, and also the costly memorial that
is built over the well which contains their remains. The Black Hole of Calcutta is gone, but a more reverent
age is come, and whatever remembrancer still exists of the moving and heroic sufferings and achievements of
the garrisons of Lucknow and Cawnpore will be guarded and preserved.
In Agra and its neighborhood, and afterwards at Delhi, we saw forts, mosques, and tombs, which were built in
the great days of the Mohammedan emperors, and which are marvels of cost, magnitude, and richness of
materials and ornamentation, creations of surpassing grandeur, wonders which do indeed make the like things
in the rest of the world seem tame and inconsequential by comparison. I am not purposing to describe them.
By good fortune I had not read too much about them, and therefore was able to get a natural and rational focus
upon them, with the result that they thrilled, blessed, and exalted me. But if I had previously overheated my
imagination by drinking too much pestilential literary hot Scotch, I should have suffered disappointment and
sorrow.
I mean to speak of only one of these many world-renowned buildings, the Taj Mahal, the most celebrated
construction in the earth. I had read a great deal too much about it. I saw it in the daytime, I saw it in the
moonlight, I saw it near at hand, I saw it from a distance; and I knew all the time, that of its kind it was the
wonder of the world, with no competitor now and no possible future competitor; and yet, it was not my Taj.
My Taj had been built by excitable literary people; it was solidly lodged in my head, and I could not blast it
out.
I wish to place before the reader some of the usual descriptions of the Taj, and ask him to take note of the
impressions left in his mind. These descriptions do really state the truth—as nearly as the limitations of
language will allow. But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange
descriptive words in such a way that they will not inflate the facts—by help of the reader's imagination,
which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing, and do the bulk of it at that.
I will begin with a few sentences from the excellent little local guide-book of Mr. Satya Chandra Mukerji. I
take them from here and there in his description:
"The inlaid work of the Taj and the flowers and petals that are to be found on
all sides on the surface of the marble evince a most delicate touch."
That is true.
"The inlaid work, the marble, the flowers, the buds, the leaves, the petals, and
the lotus stems are almost without a rival in the whole of the civilized world."
"The work of inlaying with stones and gems is found in the highest perfection
in the Taj."
Gems, inlaid flowers, buds, and leaves to be found on all sides. What do you see before you? Is the fairy
structure growing? Is it becoming a jewel casket?
"The whole of the Taj produces a wonderful effect that is equally sublime
and beautiful."
Then Sir William Wilson Hunter:
CHAPTER LIX. 70
"The Taj Mahal with its beautiful domes, 'a dream of marble,' rises on the
river bank."
"The materials are white marble and red sandstone."
"The complexity of its design and the delicate intricacy of the workmanship
baffle description."
Sir William continues. I will italicize some of his words:
"The mausoleum stands on a raised marble platform at each of whose corners

rises a tall and slender minaret of graceful proportions and of exquisite
beauty. Beyond the platform stretch the two wings, one of which is itself a
mosque of great architectural merit. In the center of the whole design the
mausoleum occupies a square of 186 feet, with the angles deeply truncated so
also form an unequal octagon. The main feature in this central pile is the
great dome, which swells upward to nearly two-thirds of a sphere and tapers
at its extremity into a pointed spire crowned by a crescent. Beneath it an
enclosure of marble trellis-work surrounds the tomb of the princess and of
her husband, the Emperor. Each corner of the mausoleum is covered by a
similar though much smaller dome erected on a pediment pierced with
graceful Saracenic arches. Light is admitted into the interior through a double
screen of pierced marble, which tempers the glare of an Indian sky while its
whiteness prevents the mellow effect from degenerating into gloom. The
internal decorations consist of inlaid work in precious stones, such as agate,
jasper, etc., with which every squandril or salient point in the architecture is
richly fretted. Brown and violet marble is also freely employed in wreaths,
scrolls, and lintels to relieve the monotony of white wall. In regard to color
and design, the interior of the Taj may rank first in the world for purely
decorative workmanship; while the perfect symmetry of its exterior, once
seen can never be forgotten, nor the aerial grace of its domes, rising like
marble bubbles into the clear sky. The Taj represents the most highly
elaborated stage of ornamentation reached by the Indo-Mohammedan
builders, the stage in which the architect ends and the jeweler begins. In its
magnificent gateway the diagonal ornamentation at the corners, which
satisfied the designers of the gateways of Itimad-ud-doulah and Sikandra
mausoleums is superseded by fine marble cables, in bold twists, strong and
handsome. The triangular insertions of white marble and large flowers have
in like manner given place to fine inlaid work. Firm perpendicular lines in
black marble with well proportioned panels of the same material are
effectively used in the interior of the gateway. On its top the Hindu brackets
and monolithic architraves of Sikandra are replaced by Moorish carped
arches, usually single blocks of red sandstone, in the Kiosks and pavilions
which adorn the roof. From the pillared pavilions a magnificent view is
obtained of the Taj gardens below, with the noble Jumna river at their farther
end, and the city and fort of Agra in the distance. From this beautiful and
splendid gateway one passes up a straight alley shaded by evergreen trees
cooled by a broad shallow piece of water running along the middle of the
path to the Taj itself. The Taj is entirely of marble and gems. The red
sandstone of the other Mohammedan buildings has entirely disappeared, or
rather the red sandstone which used to form the thickness of the walls, is in
CHAPTER LIX. 71
the Taj itself overlaid completely with white marble, and the white marble is
itself inlaid with precious stones arranged in lovely patterns of flowers. A
feeling of purity impresses itself on the eye and the mind from the absence of
the coarser material which forms so invariable a material in Agra
architecture. The lower wall and panels are covered with tulips, oleanders,
and fullblown lilies, in flat carving on the white marble; and although the
inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very brilliant when looked at closely,
there is on the whole but little color, and the all-prevailing sentiment is one of
whiteness, silence, and calm. The whiteness is broken only by the fine color
of the inlaid gems, by lines in black marble, and by delicately written
inscriptions, also in black, from the Koran. Under the dome of the vast
mausoleum a high and beautiful screen of open tracery in white marble rises
around the two tombs, or rather cenotaphs of the emperor and his princess;
and in this marvel of marble the carving has advanced from the old
geometrical patterns to a trellis-work of flowers and foliage, handled with
great freedom and spirit. The two cenotaphs in the center of the exquisite
enclosure have no carving except the plain Kalamdan or oblong pen-box on
the tomb of Emperor Shah Jehan. But both cenotaphs are inlaid with flowers
made of costly gems, and with the ever graceful oleander scroll."
Bayard Taylor, after describing the details of the Taj, goes on to say:
"On both sides the palm, the banyan, and the feathery bamboo mingle their
foliage; the song of birds meets your ears, and the odor of roses and lemon
flowers sweetens the air. Down such a vista and over such a foreground rises
the Taj. There is no mystery, no sense of partial failure about the Taj. A thing
of perfect beauty and of absolute finish in every detail, it might pass for the
work of genii who knew naught of the weaknesses and ills with which
mankind are beset."
All of these details are true. But, taken together, they state a falsehood—to you. You cannot add them
up correctly. Those writers know the values of their words and phrases, but to you the words and phrases
convey other and uncertain values. To those writers their phrases have values which I think I am now
acquainted with; and for the help of the reader I will here repeat certain of those words and phrases, and
follow them with numerals which shall represent those values—then we shall see the difference
between a writer's ciphering and a mistaken reader's:
Precious stones, such as agate, jasper, etc.—5.
With which every salient point is richly fretted—5.
First in the world for purely decorative workmanship—9.
The Taj represents the stage where the architect ends and the jeweler begins—5.
The Taj is entirely of marble and gems—7.
Inlaid with precious stones in lovely patterns of flowers—5.
The inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very brilliant (followed by a most important modification which
the reader is sure to read too carelessly)—2.
CHAPTER LIX. 72
The vast mausoleum—5.
This marvel of marble—5.
The exquisite enclosure—5.
Inlaid with flowers made of costly gems—5.
A thing of perfect beauty and absolute finish—5.
Those details are correct; the figures which I have placed after them represent quite fairly their individual,
values. Then why, as a whole, do they convey a false impression to the reader? It is because the
reader—beguiled by, his heated imagination—masses them in the wrong way. The writer would
mass the first three figures in the following way, and they would speak the truth
Total—19
But the reader masses them thus—and then they tell a lie—559.
The writer would add all of his twelve numerals together, and then the sum would express the whole truth
about the Taj, and the truth only—63.
But the reader—always helped by his imagination—would put the figures in a row one after the
other, and get this sum, which would tell him a noble big lie:
559575255555.
You must put in the commas yourself; I have to go on with my work.
The reader will always be sure to put the figures together in that wrong way, and then as surely before him
will stand, sparkling in the sun, a gem-crusted Taj tall as the Matterhorn.
I had to visit Niagara fifteen times before I succeeded in getting my imaginary Falls gauged to the actuality
and could begin to sanely and wholesomely wonder at them for what they were, not what I had expected them
to be. When I first approached them it was with my face lifted toward the sky, for I thought I was going to see
an Atlantic ocean pouring down thence over cloud-vexed Himalayan heights, a sea-green wall of water sixty
miles front and six miles high, and so, when the toy reality came suddenly into view—that beruiled
little wet apron hanging out to dry—the shock was too much for me, and I fell with a dull thud.
Yet slowly, surely, steadily, in the course of my fifteen visits, the proportions adjusted themselves to the facts,
and I came at last to realize that a waterfall a hundred and sixty-five feet high and a quarter of a mile wide was
an impressive thing. It was not a dipperful to my vanished great vision, but it would answer.
CHAPTER LIX. 73
CHAPTER LIX. 74
I know that I ought to do with the Taj as I was obliged to do with Niagara—see it fifteen times, and let
my mind gradually get rid of the Taj built in it by its describers, by help of my imagination, and substitute for
it the Taj of fact. It would be noble and fine, then, and a marvel; not the marvel which it replaced, but still a
marvel, and fine enough. I am a careless reader, I suppose—an impressionist reader; an impressionist
reader of what is not an impressionist picture; a reader who overlooks the informing details or masses their
sum improperly, and gets only a large splashy, general effect—an effect which is not correct, and
which is not warranted by the particulars placed before me particulars which I did not examine, and whose
meanings I did not cautiously and carefully estimate. It is an effect which is some thirty-five or forty times
finer than the reality, and is therefore a great deal better and more valuable than the reality; and so, I ought
never to hunt up the reality, but stay miles away from it, and thus preserve undamaged my own private mighty
Niagara tumbling out of the vault of heaven, and my own ineffable Taj, built of tinted mists upon jeweled
arches of rainbows supported by colonnades of moonlight. It is a mistake for a person with an unregulated
imagination to go and look at an illustrious world's wonder.
I suppose that many, many years ago I gathered the idea that the Taj's place in the achievements of man was
exactly the place of the ice-storm in the achievements of Nature; that the Taj represented man's supremest
possibility in the creation of grace and beauty and exquisiteness and splendor, just as the ice-storm represents
Nature's supremest possibility in the combination of those same qualities. I do not know how long ago that
idea was bred in me, but I know that I cannot remember back to a time when the thought of either of these
symbols of gracious and unapproachable perfection did not at once suggest the other. If I thought of the
ice-storm, the Taj rose before me divinely beautiful; if I thought of the Taj, with its encrustings and inlayings
of jewels, the vision of the ice-storm rose. And so, to me, all these years, the Taj has had no rival among the
temples and palaces of men, none that even remotely approached it it was man's architectural ice-storm.
Here in London the other night I was talking with some Scotch and English friends, and I mentioned the
ice-storm, using it as a figure—a figure which failed, for none of them had heard of the ice-storm. One
gentleman, who was very familiar with American literature, said he had never seen it mentioned in any book.
That is strange. And I, myself, was not able to say that I had seen it mentioned in a book; and yet the autumn
foliage, with all other American scenery, has received full and competent attention.
The oversight is strange, for in America the ice-storm is an event. And it is not an event which one is careless
about. When it comes, the news flies from room to room in the house, there are bangings on the doors, and
shoutings, "The ice-storm! the ice-storm!" and even the laziest sleepers throw off the covers and join the rush
for the windows. The ice-storm occurs in midwinter, and usually its enchantments are wrought in the silence
and the darkness of the night. A fine drizzling rain falls hour after hour upon the naked twigs and branches of
the trees, and as it falls it freezes. In time the trunk and every branch and twig are incased in hard pure ice; so
that the tree looks like a skeleton tree made all of glass—glass that is crystal-clear. All along the
underside of every branch and twig is a comb of little icicles—the frozen drip. Sometimes these
pendants do not quite amount to icicles, but are round beads—frozen tears.
The weather clears, toward dawn, and leaves a brisk pure atmosphere and a sky without a shred of cloud in
it—and everything is still, there is not a breath of wind. The dawn breaks and spreads, the news of the
storm goes about the house, and the little and the big, in wraps and blankets, flock to the window and press
together there, and gaze intently out upon the great white ghost in the grounds, and nobody says a word,
nobody stirs. All are waiting; they know what is coming, and they are waiting waiting for the miracle. The
minutes drift on and on and on, with not a sound but the ticking of the clock; at last the sun fires a sudden
CHAPTER LIX. 75
sheaf of rays into the ghostly tree and turns it into a white splendor of glittering diamonds. Everybody catches
his breath, and feels a swelling in his throat and a moisture in his eyes-but waits again; for he knows what is
coming; there is more yet. The sun climbs higher, and still higher, flooding the tree from its loftiest spread of
branches to its lowest, turning it to a glory of white fire; then in a moment, without warning, comes the great
miracle, the supreme miracle, the miracle without its fellow in the earth; a gust of wind sets every branch and
twig to swaying, and in an instant turns the whole white tree into a spouting and spraying explosion of
flashing gems of every conceivable color; and there it stands and sways this way and that, flash! flash! flash! a
dancing and glancing world of rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, the most radiant spectacle, the most
blinding spectacle, the divinest, the most exquisite, the most intoxicating vision of fire and color and
intolerable and unimaginable splendor that ever any eye has rested upon in this world, or will ever rest upon
outside of the gates of heaven.
By, all my senses, all my faculties, I know that the icestorm is Nature's supremest achievement in the domain
of the superb and the beautiful; and by my reason, at least, I know that the Taj is man's ice-storm.
In the ice-storm every one of the myriad ice-beads pendant from twig and branch is an individual gem, and
changes color with every motion caused by the wind; each tree carries a million, and a forest-front exhibits the
splendors of the single tree multiplied by a thousand.
It occurs to me now that I have never seen the ice-storm put upon canvas, and have not heard that any painter
has tried to do it. I wonder why that is. Is it that paint cannot counterfeit the intense blaze of a sun-flooded
jewel? There should be, and must be, a reason, and a good one, why the most enchanting sight that Nature has
created has been neglected by the brush.
Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth. The describers of the Taj have used
the word gem in its strictest sense—its scientific sense. In that sense it is a mild word, and promises but
little to the eye-nothing bright, nothing brilliant, nothing sparkling, nothing splendid in the way of color. It
accurately describes the sober and unobtrusive gem-work of the Taj; that is, to the very highly-educated one
person in a thousand; but it most falsely describes it to the 999. But the 999 are the people who ought to be
especially taken care of, and to them it does not mean quiet-colored designs wrought in carnelians, or agates,
or such things; they know the word in its wide and ordinary sense only, and so to them it means diamonds and
rubies and opals and their kindred, and the moment their eyes fall upon it in print they see a vision of glorious
colors clothed in fire.
These describers are writing for the "general," and so, in order to make sure of being understood, they ought
to use words in their ordinary sense, or else explain. The word fountain means one thing in Syria, where there
is but a handful of people; it means quite another thing in North America, where there are 75,000,000. If I
were describing some Syrian scenery, and should exclaim, "Within the narrow space of a quarter of a mile
square I saw, in the glory of the flooding moonlight, two hundred noble fountains—imagine the
spectacle!" the North American would have a vision of clustering columns of water soaring aloft, bending
over in graceful arches, bursting in beaded spray and raining white fire in the moonlight-and he would be
deceived. But the Syrian would not be deceived; he would merely see two hundred fresh-water
springs—two hundred drowsing puddles, as level and unpretentious and unexcited as so many
door-mats, and even with the help of the moonlight he would not lose his grip in the presence of the
exhibition. My word "fountain" would be correct; it would speak the strict truth; and it would convey the strict
truth to the handful of Syrians, and the strictest misinformation to the North American millions. With their
gems—and gems—and more gems—and gems again—and still other
gems—the describers of the Taj are within their legal but not their moral rights; they are dealing in the
strictest scientific truth; and in doing it they succeed to admiration in telling "what ain't so."
CHAPTER LIX. 76
CHAPTER LX.
SATAN (impatiently) to NEW-COMER. The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the
best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
We wandered contentedly around here and there in India; to Lahore, among other places, where the
Lieutenant-Governor lent me an elephant. This hospitality stands out in my experiences in a stately isolation.
It was a fine elephant, affable, gentlemanly, educated, and I was not afraid of it. I even rode it with confidence
through the crowded lanes of the native city, where it scared all the horses out of their senses, and where
children were always just escaping its feet. It took the middle of the road in a fine independent way, and left it
to the world to get out of the way or take the consequences. I am used to being afraid of collisions when I ride
or drive, but when one is on top of an elephant that feeling is absent. I could have ridden in comfort through a
regiment of runaway teams. I could easily learn to prefer an elephant to any other vehicle, partly because of
that immunity from collisions, and partly because of the fine view one has from up there, and partly because
of the dignity one feels in that high place, and partly because one can look in at the windows and see what is
going on privately among the family. The Lahore horses were used to elephants, but they were rapturously
afraid of them just the same. It seemed curious. Perhaps the better they know the elephant the more they
respect him in that peculiar way. In our own case—we are not afraid of dynamite till we get acquainted
with it.
We drifted as far as Rawal Pindi, away up on the Afghan frontier—I think it was the Afghan frontier,
but it may have been Hertzegovina—it was around there somewhere—and down again to Delhi,
to see the ancient architectural wonders there and in Old Delhi and not describe them, and also to see the
scene of the illustrious assault, in the Mutiny days, when the British carried Delhi by storm, one of the
marvels of history for impudent daring and immortal valor.
We had a refreshing rest, there in Delhi, in a great old mansion which possessed historical interest. It was built
by a rich Englishman who had become orientalized—so much so that he had a zenana. But he was a
broadminded man, and remained so. To please his harem he built a mosque; to please himself he built an
English church. That kind of a man will arrive, somewhere. In the Mutiny days the mansion was the British
general's headquarters. It stands in a great garden—oriental fashion—and about it are many
noble trees. The trees harbor monkeys; and they are monkeys of a watchful and enterprising sort, and not
much troubled with fear. They invade the house whenever they get a chance, and carry off everything they
don't want. One morning the master of the house was in his bath, and the window was open. Near it stood a
pot of yellow paint and a brush. Some monkeys appeared in the window; to scare them away, the gentleman
threw his sponge at them. They did not scare at all; they jumped into the room and threw yellow paint all over
him from the brush, and drove him out; then they painted the walls and the floor and the tank and the
windows and the furniture yellow, and were in the dressing-room painting that when help arrived and routed
them.
CHAPTER LX. 77
CHAPTER LX. 78
Two of these creatures came into my room in the early morning, through a window whose shutters I had left
open, and when I woke one of them was before the glass brushing his hair, and the other one had my
note-book, and was reading a page of humorous notes and crying. I did not mind the one with the hair-brush,
but the conduct of the other one hurt me; it hurts me yet. I threw something at him, and that was wrong, for
my host had told me that the monkeys were best left alone. They threw everything at me that they could lift,
and then went into the bathroom to get some more things, and I shut the door on them.
At Jeypore, in Rajputana, we made a considerable stay. We were not in the native city, but several miles from
it, in the small European official suburb. There were but few Europeans—only fourteen but they were
all kind and hospitable, and it amounted to being at home. In Jeypore we found again what we had found all
about India—that while the Indian servant is in his way a very real treasure, he will sometimes bear
watching, and the Englishman watches him. If he sends him on an errand, he wants more than the man's word
for it that he did the errand. When fruit and vegetables were sent to us, a "chit" came with them—a
receipt for us to sign; otherwise the things might not arrive. If a gentleman sent up his carriage, the chit stated
"from" such-and-such an hour "to" such-and-such an hour—which made it unhandy for the coachman
and his two or three subordinates to put us off with a part of the allotted time and devote the rest of it to a lark
of their own.
We were pleasantly situated in a small two-storied inn, in an empty large compound which was surrounded by
a mud wall as high as a man's head. The inn was kept by nine Hindoo brothers, its owners. They lived, with
their families, in a one-storied building within the compound, but off to one side, and there was always a long
pile of their little comely brown children loosely stacked in its veranda, and a detachment of the parents
wedged among them, smoking the hookah or the howdah, or whatever they call it. By the veranda stood a
palm, and a monkey lived in it, and led a lonesome life, and always looked sad and weary, and the crows
bothered him a good deal.
The inn cow poked about the compound and emphasized the secluded and country air of the place, and there
was a dog of no particular breed, who was always present in the compound, and always asleep, always
stretched out baking in the sun and adding to the deep tranquility and reposefulness of the place, when the
crows were away on business. White-draperied servants were coming and going all the time, but they seemed
only spirits, for their feet were bare and made no sound. Down the lane a piece lived an elephant in the shade
of a noble tree, and rocked and rocked, and reached about with his trunk, begging of his brown mistress or
fumbling the children playing at his feet. And there were camels about, but they go on velvet feet, and were
proper to the silence and serenity of the surroundings.
The Satan mentioned at the head of this chapter was not our Satan, but the other one. Our Satan was lost to us.
In these later days he had passed out of our life—lamented by me, and sincerely. I was missing him; I
am missing him yet, after all these months. He was an astonishing creature to fly around and do things. He
didn't always do them quite right, but he did them, and did them suddenly. There was no time wasted. You
would say:
"Pack the trunks and bags, Satan."
"Wair good" (very good).
CHAPTER LX. 79
Then there would be a brief sound of thrashing and slashing and humming and buzzing, and a spectacle as of
a whirlwind spinning gowns and jackets and coats and boots and things through the air, and then with bow
and touch—
"Awready, master."
It was wonderful. It made one dizzy. He crumpled dresses a good deal, and he had no particular plan about the
work—at first—except to put each article into the trunk it didn't belong in. But he soon
reformed, in this matter. Not entirely; for, to the last, he would cram into the satchel sacred to literature any
odds and ends of rubbish that he couldn't find a handy place for elsewhere. When threatened with death for
this, it did not trouble him; he only looked pleasant, saluted with soldierly grace, said "Wair good," and did it
again next day.
He was always busy; kept the rooms tidied up, the boots polished, the clothes brushed, the wash-basin full of
clean water, my dress clothes laid out and ready for the lecture-hall an hour ahead of time; and he dressed me
from head to heel in spite of my determination to do it myself, according to my lifelong custom.
He was a born boss, and loved to command, and to jaw and dispute with inferiors and harry them and bullyrag
them. He was fine at the railway station—yes, he was at his finest there. He would shoulder and plunge
and paw his violent way through the packed multitude of natives with nineteen coolies at his tail, each bearing
a trifle of luggage—one a trunk, another a parasol, another a shawl, another a fan, and so on; one article
to each, and the longer the procession, the better he was suited—and he was sure to make for some
engaged sleeper and begin to hurl the owner's things out of it, swearing that it was ours and that there had
been a mistake. Arrived at our own sleeper, he would undo the bedding-bundles and make the beds and put
everything to rights and shipshape in two minutes; then put his head out at, a window and have a restful good
time abusing his gang of coolies and disputing their bill until we arrived and made him pay them and stop his
noise.
Speaking of noise, he certainly was the noisest little devil in India—and that is saying much, very
much, indeed. I loved him for his noise, but the family detested him for it. They could not abide it; they could
not get reconciled to it. It humiliated them. As a rule, when we got within six hundred yards of one of those
big railway stations, a mighty racket of screaming and shrieking and shouting and storming would break upon
us, and I would be happy to myself, and the family would say, with shame:
"There—that's Satan. Why do you keep him?"
And, sure enough, there in the whirling midst of fifteen hundred wondering people we would find that little
scrap of a creature gesticulating like a spider with the colic, his black eyes snapping, his fez-tassel dancing,
his jaws pouring out floods of billingsgate upon his gang of beseeching and astonished coolies.
I loved him; I couldn't help it; but the family—why, they could hardly speak of him with patience. To
this day I regret his loss, and wish I had him back; but they—it is different with them. He was a native,
and came from Surat. Twenty degrees of latitude lay between his birthplace and Manuel's, and fifteen hundred
between their ways and characters and dispositions. I only liked Manuel, but I loved Satan. This latter's real
name was intensely Indian. I could not quite get the hang of it, but it sounded like Bunder Rao Ram Chunder
Clam Chowder. It was too long for handy use, anyway; so I reduced it.
When he had been with us two or three weeks, he began to make mistakes which I had difficulty in patching
up for him. Approaching Benares one day, he got out of the train to see if he could get up a misunderstanding
with somebody, for it had been a weary, long journey and he wanted to freshen up. He found what he was
after, but kept up his pow-wow a shade too long and got left. So there we were in a strange city and no
CHAPTER LX. 80
chambermaid. It was awkward for us, and we told him he must not do so any more. He saluted and said in his
dear, pleasant way, "Wair good." Then at Lucknow he got drunk. I said it was a fever, and got the family's
compassion, and solicitude aroused; so they gave him a teaspoonful of liquid quinine and it set his vitals on
fire. He made several grimaces which gave me a better idea of the Lisbon earthquake than any I have ever got
of it from paintings and descriptions. His drunk was still portentously solid next morning, but I could have
pulled him through with the family if he would only have taken another spoonful of that remedy; but no,
although he was stupefied, his memory still had flickerings of life; so he smiled a divinely dull smile and said,
fumblingly saluting:
"Scoose me, mem Saheb, scoose me, Missy Saheb; Satan not prefer it, please."
Then some instinct revealed to them that he was drunk. They gave him prompt notice that next time this
happened he must go. He got out a maudlin and most gentle "Wair good," and saluted indefinitely.
Only one short week later he fell again. And oh, sorrow! not in a hotel this time, but in an English gentleman's
private house. And in Agra, of all places. So he had to go. When I told him, he said patiently, "Wair good,"
and made his parting salute, and went out from us to return no more forever. Dear me! I would rather have
lost a hundred angels than that one poor lovely devil. What style he used to put on, in a swell hotel or in a
private house—snow-white muslin from his chin to his bare feet, a crimson sash embroidered with gold
thread around his waist, and on his head a great sea-green turban like to the turban of the Grand Turk.
He was not a liar; but he will become one if he keeps on. He told me once that he used to crack cocoanuts
with his teeth when he was a boy; and when I asked how he got them into his mouth, he said he was upward
of six feet high at that time, and had an unusual mouth. And when I followed him up and asked him what had
become of that other foot, he said a house fell on him and he was never able to get his stature back again.
Swervings like these from the strict line of fact often beguile a truthful man on and on until he eventually
becomes a liar.
His successor was a Mohammedan, Sahadat Mohammed Khan; very dark, very tall, very grave. He went
always in flowing masses of white, from the top of his big turban down to his bare feet. His voice was low. He
glided about in a noiseless way, and looked like a ghost. He was competent and satisfactory. But where he
was, it seemed always Sunday. It was not so in Satan's time.
CHAPTER LX. 81
Jeypore is intensely Indian, but it has two or three features which indicate the presence of European science
and European interest in the weal of the common public, such as the liberal water-supply furnished by great
works built at the State's expense; good sanitation, resulting in a degree of healthfulness unusually high for
India; a noble pleasure garden, with privileged days for women; schools for the instruction of native youth in
advanced art, both ornamental and utilitarian; and a new and beautiful palace stocked with a museum of
extraordinary interest and value. Without the Maharaja's sympathy and purse these beneficences could not
have been created; but he is a man of wide views and large generosities, and all such matters find hospitality
with him.
We drove often to the city from the hotel Kaiser-i-Hind, a journey which was always full of interest, both
night and day, for that country road was never quiet, never empty, but was always India in motion, always a
streaming flood of brown people clothed in smouchings from the rainbow, a tossing and moiling flood, happy,
noisy, a charming and satisfying confusion of strange human and strange animal life and equally strange and
outlandish vehicles.
CHAPTER LX. 82
And the city itself is a curiosity. Any Indian city is that, but this one is not like any other that we saw. It is
shut up in a lofty turreted wall; the main body of it is divided into six parts by perfectly straight streets that are
more than a hundred feet wide; the blocks of houses exhibit a long frontage of the most taking architectural
quaintnesses, the straight lines being broken everywhere by pretty little balconies, pillared and highly
ornamented, and other cunning and cozy and inviting perches and projections, and many of the fronts are
curiously pictured by the brush, and the whole of them have the soft rich tint of strawberry ice-cream. One
cannot look down the far stretch of the chief street and persuade himself that these are real houses, and that it
is all out of doors—the impression that it is an unreality, a picture, a scene in a theater, is the only one
that will take hold.
Then there came a great day when this illusion was more pronounced than ever. A rich Hindoo had been
spending a fortune upon the manufacture of a crowd of idols and accompanying paraphernalia whose purpose
was to illustrate scenes in the life of his especial god or saint, and this fine show was to be brought through the
town in processional state at ten in the morning. As we passed through the great public pleasure garden on our
way to the city we found it crowded with natives. That was one sight. Then there was another. In the midst of
the spacious lawns stands the palace which contains the museum—a beautiful construction of stone
which shows arched colonnades, one above another, and receding, terrace-fashion, toward the sky. Every one
of these terraces, all the way to the top one, was packed and jammed with natives. One must try to imagine
those solid masses of splendid color, one above another, up and up, against the blue sky, and the Indian sun
turning them all to beds of fire and flame.
Later, when we reached the city, and glanced down the chief avenue, smouldering in its crushed-strawberry
tint, those splendid effects were repeated; for every balcony, and every fanciful bird-cage of a snuggery
countersunk in the house-fronts, and all the long lines of roofs were crowded with people, and each crowd was
CHAPTER LX. 83
an explosion of brilliant color.
Then the wide street itself, away down and down and down into the distance, was alive with
gorgeously-clothed people not still, but moving, swaying, drifting, eddying, a delirious display of all colors
and all shades of color, delicate, lovely, pale, soft, strong, stunning, vivid, brilliant, a sort of storm of sweetpea
blossoms passing on the wings of a hurricane; and presently, through this storm of color, came swaying and
swinging the majestic elephants, clothed in their Sunday best of gaudinesses, and the long procession of
fanciful trucks freighted with their groups of curious and costly images, and then the long rearguard of stately
camels, with their picturesque riders.
For color, and picturesqueness, and novelty, and outlandishness, and sustained interest and fascination, it was
the most satisfying show I had ever seen, and I suppose I shall not have the privilege of looking upon its like
again.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 6

by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 6 ***
***** This file should be named 5813-h.htm or 5813-h.zip *****

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.net/5/8/1/5813/
Produced by David Widger
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions

will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
CHAPTER LX. 84
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial

redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free

distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.net/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be

used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"

or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
CHAPTER LX. 85
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived

from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted

with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
CHAPTER LX. 86
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.net),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any

money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
CHAPTER LX. 87
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days

of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable

effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right

of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a

defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
CHAPTER LX. 88
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of

electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive

Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit

501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
CHAPTER LX. 89
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.

Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:

Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg

Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide

spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we

have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
CHAPTER LX. 90
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm

concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.net
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
CHAPTER LX. 91

Following The Equator, Part 6 by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Following The Equator, Part 6 by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Following The Equator, Part 6 by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

FOLLOWING

A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD

Benares a Religious Temple—A Guide for

A Curious Way to Secure Salvation—The

Still in Benares—Another Living

Rail to Calcutta—Population—The "City of

On the Road Again&mdash;Flannels in

On the Road Again&mdash;The

India the Most Extraordinary Country on

The Great Mutiny&mdash;The Massacre in

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Sri 108 Matparamahansrzpairivrajakacharyaswamibhaskaranandasaraswati.

And suppose we found this paragraph in the newspapers:

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

"With the exception of a very occasional woodenshod peasant, nobody was

"At last a vigorous fellow of thirty-five arrived, dry and comfortable,

But to get back to India&mdash;where, as my favorite poem says&mdash;

"Every prospect pleases,

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

"Thereupon the five men entered. It was the short gloaming of

On the 12th the boom of his guns was heard.

Next he took the Dilkoosha.

"And now commenced a movement of the most perfect arrangement and

scene of as noble a defense as I think history will ever have to relate."

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Then Sir William Wilson Hunter:

"The materials are white marble and red sandstone."

Sir William continues. I will italicize some of his words:

"The mausoleum stands on a raised marble platform at each of whose corners

Precious stones, such as agate, jasper, etc.&mdash;5.

With which every salient point is richly fretted&mdash;5.

First in the world for purely decorative workmanship&mdash;9.

The Taj is entirely of marble and gems&mdash;7.

Inlaid with precious stones in lovely patterns of flowers&mdash;5.

The vast mausoleum&mdash;5.

This marvel of marble&mdash;5.

The exquisite enclosure&mdash;5.

Inlaid with flowers made of costly gems&mdash;5.

A thing of perfect beauty and absolute finish&mdash;5.

You must put in the commas yourself; I have to go on with my work.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

"Pack the trunks and bags, Satan."

"Wair good" (very good).

"There&mdash;that's Satan. Why do you keep him?"

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 6

***** This file should be named 5813-h.htm or 5813-h.zip *****

Produced by David Widger

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions

subject to the trademark license, especially commercial

*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm

On the Road Again—Flannels in

On the Road Again—The

The Great Mutiny—The Massacre in

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

But to get back to India—where, as my favorite poem says—

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Precious stones, such as agate, jasper, etc.—5.

With which every salient point is richly fretted—5.

First in the world for purely decorative workmanship—9.

The Taj is entirely of marble and gems—7.

Inlaid with precious stones in lovely patterns of flowers—5.

The vast mausoleum—5.

This marvel of marble—5.

The exquisite enclosure—5.

Inlaid with flowers made of costly gems—5.

A thing of perfect beauty and absolute finish—5.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

"There—that's Satan. Why do you keep him?"

* This file should be named 5813-h.htm or 5813-h.zip *

* START: FULL LICENSE *