Chapter II: Part 2

[Sidenote: 8. Shwe Dagon Pagoda, from across the Royal Lakes.] [Sidenote: 9. The Shwe Dagon Pagoda, Rangoon.] [Sidenote: 10. Images of the Sitting Buddha.] [Sidenote: 11. Earning Merit at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda.] Rangoon, apart from its chief Pagoda, is a modern city. Fifty years ago it was a village. To-day it has a quarter of a million people. A wharf-fronted road, the Strand, follows the shore of the main river for several miles. Up the Pegu tributary to the east for several other miles are many rice mills with tall chimneys throwing out black smoke. The harbour is busy with shipping. There are great timber yards, and there are oil mills, for the products of Burma are, first and foremost, rice, and then timber, especially great logs of teak—harder than oak, and then petroleum. Back from the Strand is a well kept town, with broad streets at right angles, though as yet there are few really impressive buildings to compare with the public buildings of Madras. There is a beautiful group of lakes, the Royal Lakes, set in wooded public grounds, and across these is the finest view of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, like a great hand-bell placed on a low hill. This pagoda is said to be the most frequented in the Buddhist world, for it has as relics eight hairs of Gautama, the founder of the Buddhist religion. It began some two thousand years ago as a small village fane. In successive ages the original structure has been encased afresh and afresh, until as the result of work done in the days of Queen Elizabeth, the great pagoda was completed which is now the glory of Rangoon. It rises to a height of nearly 400 feet, and is solid, there being no chamber within. The brickwork of which it is built makes a series of steps or ledges, so that it would be possible to climb for some distance up the spire. The whole is plated with gold-leaf, and the gilding is constantly renewed by pious devotees, who thus earn merit. The word “Shwe” in the name of this pagoda signifies golden. On the summit is a “hti,” or umbrella, of exquisite workmanship and material. It is said to have cost sixty thousand pounds. In the vane are 5,000 gems—diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. The base of the pagoda is surrounded first by shrines of varying sizes, and then by a flagged courtyard, which again is fringed with canopies and halls opening towards the pagoda, with many carved screens and arches, and innumerable shrines and altars, and images of Gautama. Flights of steps roofed over with teak descend from the courtyard, and one of the lower entries is guarded by great grotesque figures, partly lion and partly griffin, made of plastered bricks. We see one of them in this view. Then we have two very interesting pictures: the one represents three images of the Sitting Buddha from one of the shrines on the flagged courtyard at the foot of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, and the other shows a pilgrim “earning merit” by putting gold leaf on to the pagoda itself.

[Sidenote: 12. The Sule Pagoda, Rangoon.] There is another considerable pagoda in the city, the Sule Pagoda. We have it here, with a corner of a building adjacent of European architecture, the Municipal Offices. Observe the watering of the streets by hand labour.

[Sidenote: 13. A Typical Burman.] [Sidenote: 14. Burmese Gambling, Rangoon.] The Burmese are a short, sturdy people, merry and happy, and akin rather to the Japanese in temperament than to the people of the Indian Peninsula. The features of their faces are obviously Mongolian. They have the oblique eyes of the Chinaman. Here is a typical Burman with a rose coloured wrap round his head. The Burmese women, whose praises have been sung through the world, are dainty and, according to a more or less Chinese standard, not infrequently beautiful. They love to clothe themselves in silks of brilliant and delicate hue. Excessive industry is certainly not a failing of the race, yet there are no poor. We have here a group of Burmese gamblers at Rangoon. The theatres play all night and the spectators go home by daylight. The “pwe,” or show, consists invariably of three parts—a prince, a princess, and a clown; it may be compared with our traditional harlequinade. Both Indians and Chinese are migrating to Burma in great numbers, but agricultural work is still chiefly in native hands.

[Sidenote: 15. Elephants lifting Teak.] [Sidenote: 16. Elephants Pushing Teak.] [Sidenote: 17. Tusker Elephant.] [Sidenote: 18. Tusker Elephant lifting Teak.] [Sidenote: 19. The Same.] One of the most curious and typical sights of Rangoon is that of elephants manipulating the great logs of teak wood in the timber yards. The logs are cut in the forests of the north of Burma, and are floated for hundreds of miles down the Irawaddy in large rafts, until they are stranded at a creek near Rangoon, called Pazundaung. Elephants are then employed for the purpose of moving and piling up the logs. The male elephant is very powerful and has strong tusks, on which he carries the logs, preventing them from falling with his trunk, but the female elephants are not so strong, and do not as a rule lift the logs off the ground, but merely drag them, or push them with the head. We have here two cow elephants, the one forty years old and the other seventy. We have them here again, one of them at the command of her rider pushing the logs forward with her head. In the next scene is a male elephant with tusks. He is fifty years old, and we realise his power in the next two views, where we see him poising on his tusks a great tree trunk. These huge animals are fed entirely on a grass which grows along the banks of the Irawaddy not far from Rangoon. Machinery is now taking the place of elephants in the timber yards, and Rangoon is, therefore, likely to lose one of its most interesting sights.

[Sidenote: 20. A Rice Mill, Rangoon.] [Sidenote: 21. The Same.] While we are on the river front let us glance also at a rice mill, where a process equivalent to thrashing is carried out, the grain being separated from the husk. The black smoke is from the paddy husks used to supply the motive power of the mill. Paddy, or unthrashed rice, is mostly brought to Rangoon by water, though more than a million and a half tons now come annually by rail. After the milling process is complete, the rice is packed into bags for shipment all over the world.

[Sidenote: 22. A Burmese Railway Train.] We will take train and run by the Burmese Sittang Railway over the broad levels of the delta, passing through fields from which the paddy has recently been cut. Only the ears are lopped off, and the straw is burnt as it stands. The Burmans are mostly yeomen, each owning his cattle and doing his own work in the field. Beyond Pegu we follow the Sittang River, with hill ranges low on the eastern and western horizons, until we come to Mandalay, once capital of the independent kingdom of Upper Burma. This kingdom was annexed to India in 1885 at the conclusion of the third Burmese war. Mandalay is the last of three capitals a few miles apart, which at different times in the past century have been the seat of the Burmese kings. Amarapura, a few miles to the south, was the earliest, and Ava, a few miles to the west, was the capital from 1822 to 1837.

[Sidenote: 23. The 450 Pagodas from Mandalay Hill.] At Mandalay we are again on the banks of the Irawaddy. There is a hill in the northern suburbs several hundred feet in height, from which we may look over the city. The houses are so buried in foliage that, seen from the height, the place appears almost like a wood of green trees. The square Dufferin Fort, with walled and moated boundary, and sides more than a mile in length, is distinguishable in the centre, but for the rest there is none of the ordinary panorama of a European city. One striking feature, however, lies at our feet, a little to one side. It is a square group of 450 white pagodas, with a more considerable gilded pagoda in the centre. Beside each of these pagodas there stands a large stone, and on these stones are inscribed quotations from the sacred books of the Buddhists. In the distance to the southeast are the hills inhabited by the Shan tribes.

[Sidenote: 24. The Moat, Fort Dufferin.] [Sidenote: 25. King Thebaw’s Palace.] [Sidenote: 26. The Aindaw Temple, Mandalay.] [Sidenote: 27. Maker of Temple Htis, Mandalay.] The Dufferin Fort was built around the Palace of King Thebaw, the last of the Burmese dynasty. It is enclosed by a square of red walls pierced by three gates on each side, each gate bearing a pointed pagoda-like super-structure. Without there is a broad moat, a hundred yards wide, with lotus plants, floating in it like water lilies. This moat is crossed by five wooden bridges. Inside the walls is the King’s Palace, of which we have here the spire, surmounted by a “hti” finial. This spire is called by the Burmese the “Centre of the Universe,” since it is in the centre of Mandalay, which they claim as in the centre of the world. A “hti” we may observe again at the summit of the great Aindaw Temple in the south of Mandalay, and here we have one before it has left the home of its maker.

[Sidenote: 28. The Queen’s Palace.] [Sidenote: 29. The Verandah of King Thebaw’s Palace.] [Sidenote: 30. Entrance to the Arakan temple, Mandalay.] We return to the Fort, and to the palaces within it. This is the Queen’s Palace, a very beautiful building of gilded teak, exquisitely carved, and here is the verandah where King Thebaw in 1885 surrendered to the British generals. He was taken away to India, and there he still lives under surveillance on the Malabar Coast. Here we have the entrance to the Arakan Temple, specially venerated by Buddhists, for it contains a great image of Gautama, over twelve feet high, made of brass. Pilgrims gain merit by placing gold leaf upon this figure. This is the building which Kipling spoke of as the Moulmein Pagoda; it is not, however, a pagoda, which is a solid spire, but a temple.

[Sidenote: 31. Sappers and Miners, Fort Dufferin.] [Sidenote: 32. Crossing the Moat, Fort Dufferin.] [Sidenote: 33. A Garrison Family.] Burma has been gradually annexed to India as the result of three successive wars. The first ended in 1826, and then the low-lying coastal strips known by the names of Tenasserim and Arakan were taken, and also the great valley of the Brahmaputra, known as Assam. In 1852 the country of Pegu, or Lower Burma, comprising the delta of the Irawaddy, was annexed, but Upper Burma round Mandalay remained independent. The last king of Mandalay was Thebaw, a notorious tyrant, guilty of the most horrible atrocities. Being anxious to maintain his independence, he intrigued with the French in the lands of Tonkin and Annam to the east of Burma, and as a result brought upon himself the conquest of his country in the time when Lord Dufferin was Viceroy of India. It took fully ten years to reduce Burma to order, for the land was infested with dacoits or robbers, as it is still in some of the remoter districts. Every village in those days was defended by a palisade. Here we have two views of a party of troops in Fort Dufferin, with the King’s Palace in the background, and then a family scene in the married quarters of the garrison. The Burman does not make a good soldier, for he has very little sense of discipline. Even the police of the province are for the most part Gurkhas, Sikhs, and Punjabi Musulmans.

[Sidenote: 34. The Bazaar, Mandalay.] [Sidenote: 35. The Flower and Seed Market, Mandalay Bazaar.] The Bazaar or market of Mandalay, as in every other Indian city, is the centre of public life. Externally it is of little interest, having been constructed since the conquest, but internally it is an epitome of the varied peoples who have thronged of late into the growing centres of Burmese trade. Here is a scene in the fruit market; but it is the silk market which delights the Burmese lady, who will be seen there accompanied by her maid, making purchases and enjoying the touch of more than she buys, as in similar places in Europe. The most striking contrast which is presented by Burma to one accustomed to Indian life is the freedom of the women, who move about unveiled. In Burma, under the Buddhist religion, we have neither seclusion of women nor the distinctions of caste. The city of Mandalay has a population of about 190,000, so that it is now smaller than the upstart Rangoon.

[Sidenote: 36. Ferryshaw Siding, near Mandalay.] [Sidenote: 37. Mora.] [Sidenote: 38. Katha.] Let us make a voyage up the Irawaddy to the border of the Chinese Empire. This is a river scene a short way above Mandalay, with a group of white pagodas conspicuous on the bank, and here is a village scene. There follows a view at Katha, a large straggling village on the Irawaddy, remarkable for its many pagodas, most of them ruined. The majority of the Burmese pagodas are thus dilapidated for the reason that there is considered to be no merit in merely restoring an existing Buddhist shrine. The wealthy devotee prefers therefore to erect a new pagoda. The Shwe Dagon is an exception, for it contains sacred relics.

[Sidenote: 39. Raft on the Irawaddy.] [Sidenote: 40. On the Irawaddy.] [Sidenote: 41. In the defile between Katha and Bhamo.] [Sidenote: 42. The Same.] [Sidenote: 43. Burmese Children.] [Sidenote: 44. Cart with solid Wheels.] [Sidenote: 45. Lacquer Workers.] Here we have a raft of bamboos and teak logs floating down the river, and then a typical river craft with a great oar for a rudder. Our steamer must progress with care, measuring the depths with bamboo poles at either bow. None the less, navigation extends for more than nine hundred miles from the sea. From Mandalay to Katha the bank of the river is in most places low and sandy, but between Katha and Bhamo there are striking defiles, where the ground rises with wooded fronts from the water’s edge. There is population along the banks the whole way, as is evidenced by the pagodas amid the vegetation. Here are three little Burmese villagers, and then a rustic cart with solid wheels, and here a picture showing the process of the famous lacquer work of Burma. A “shell” is first made of very thin and finely plaited bamboo, and this is covered with a pigment which, when dry, is softened on a primitive lathe. Then red lacquer is put on by hand, and the bowl is dried in the sun. When dry it is buried for some days in order that it may harden. Finally it is engraved, and often inlaid with gold.

[Sidenote: 46. Bhamo from the Irawaddy.] [Sidenote: 47. China Street, Bhamo.] [Sidenote: 48. Kachin Women, Bhamo.] [Sidenote: 49. Houses at Bhamo.] We approach Bhamo, at the head of the Irawaddy navigation, lying low along the bank of the river, twenty miles from the Chinese frontier. There are naturally many Chinese at Bhamo. This is China Street. Here, on the other hand, is a group of Kachin women, heavy-faced, in picturesque costume. The Kachins are the hill tribes of the northern frontier of Burma, as the Shans are of the eastern frontier and the Chins of the western. Until quite recently the Kachins often raided the caravans passing from Bhamo to China. They are now becoming civilised under British rule. The Burmese people proper, of ancient civilisation, are a relatively small population confined to the valley and the delta. Here we see a row of houses at Bhamo, raised high upon piles. The change which has come over Burma since the British occupation may be appreciated from the fact that twenty years ago it was no uncommon sight on the voyage up from Katha to Bhamo to see along the river banks, and on rafts floating down the river, the dead bodies of Kachins who had been tortured to death under the terrible rule of the kings of Mandalay.

[Sidenote: 50. The Gokteik Gorge and Bridge.] [Sidenote: 51. Native House, Hsipaw.] [Sidenote: 52. The Bazaar, Hsipaw.] From Mandalay a railway runs eastward into the Shan country. At one point this line crosses a gorge by a steel bridge, nearly half a mile long and over 800 feet above the water of the stream. The bridge is so light in design that its great size and real solidity are difficult to grasp. Beyond this bridge we come to the chief place of the Shans, Hsipaw. Here are a couple of scenes in Hsipaw, the one of a Shan house, the other of a Shan market.

[Sidenote: 53. Pagan.] [Sidenote: 54. The Ananda Temple, Pagan.] [Sidenote: 55. The Ananda Temple, nearer view of the west side.] [Sidenote: 56. Buddha Image at Pagan.] To realise the antiquity and the splendour of early Burmese civilisation, we must descend the Irawaddy below Mandalay to a place called Pagan. There, for some ten miles beside the river, and for three miles back from its bank, are the ruins of a great capital which flourished about the time of the Norman Conquest of England. From the centre of the ruined city it is impossible to point in any direction in which a pagoda or a temple is not visible. We have here a general view of the remains, and then the Ananda Temple, seen in the midst of a bank of vegetation, from which at various points rise other smaller red and white ruins. The Ananda Temple was built more than eight hundred years ago by the Thatons, the original inhabitants of the country, who were overcome by the invading Burmans. Some thirty thousand of these Thatons were brought to Pagan as slaves, and set to build the pagodas and temples, just as during the captivity in Egypt the Israelites were employed in building the pyramids. Here is the Ananda Temple close at hand, white and glittering in the sunshine, as though built of sugar. If we enter the great portal—there are three other portals similar, for the plan of the building is that of a cross—we find facing us a huge image of the Buddha, over ten yards in height.

Buddhism was developed from Hinduism. It originated as a revolt from the excessive ritualism of the Brahmans. We have seen that Hinduism became an all-embracing system of religious ritual and social organisation, but that alongside, as it were, of this process there was evolved a philosophical system based upon two theories: the belief in a Universal Soul as the centre of reality, and the belief in the ultimate identity of the Individual and the Universal Soul. In the sixth century before Christ India was seething and fermenting with spiritual thought. A great teacher was called for, and such a one was given to the world in Gautama, the Buddha, that is to say, the Enlightened or Awakened One.

Gautama was born on the frontiers of Nepal at the foot of the great Himalaya range about the year 557 before Christ. He was the only son of a chief or king. At the age of eighteen he was married to the daughter of the chief of a neighbouring clan, and a son was born to him. But the yearnings of a reformer were stirring within Gautama, and he could not rest. So one night in secret he left his wife and infant and went out into the world a wanderer in search of “that inward illumination on ‘great matters,’ which was the cherished dream of every thinker in that memorable era.” He followed to no purpose the paths of metaphysical speculation, of mental discipline, and of ascetic rigour, and at last on one eventful night, as he sat under the Bodhi Tree at Gaya, in Behar, “he reaped the fruit of his long spiritual effort, the truth of things being of a sudden so clearly revealed to him that from henceforth he never swerved for a moment from devotion to his creed and to the mission that it imposed upon him.”

The truth which Buddha discovered and preached to humanity was that the salvation of man lay not in sacrifices and ceremonial, nor in penances, but in spiritual effort and a holy life, in charity, forgiveness, and love. The sages of Hinduism had taught as a doctrine for the few that the Universal Soul is the only reality, and is therefore the real self of every man. Buddha gave to the world a system by which the truth of this doctrine could be realised in the life of an ordinary man.

The four-fold truth on which Buddha’s whole scheme hinges may be expressed as follows:—Life on earth is full of suffering; suffering is generated by desire; the extinction of desire involves the extinction of suffering; the extinction of desire, and therefore of suffering, is the outcome of a righteous life. But how is desire with the suffering which it generates to be extinguished? The answer of Buddhism is that the eightfold path which leads to the extinction of suffering is by “Right Belief, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Effort, Right Means of Livelihood, Right Remembrance and Self-discipline, Right Concentration of Thought.” In Buddha’s system, as he himself gave it to the world, doctrines and beliefs are of secondary importance. Fully alive to the truth that “what we do, besides being the outward and visible sign of our inward and spiritual state, reacts naturally and necessarily on what we are, and so moulds our character and controls our destiny,” he formulated for his followers a simple system of moral rules, obedience to which would set them on the path which leads to salvation. On this path there are successive stages, and each of these stages is marked by the breaking of some of the fetters which bind man to earth and to self, and when all the fetters are at last broken then the Holy One, as he is now called, has reached his goal. In other words, he has attained to that state which Buddhists call Nirvana, a state of “perfect knowledge, perfect love, perfect peace, and therefore of perfect bliss.”

The Buddhist system emphasises the importance of education and discipline. All over Burma there are schools conducted by Buddhist monastic orders at which instruction is gratuitously given to boys in the vernacular of the country, and one rarely finds a native of Burma who cannot read and write his own language. It is also part of the religious discipline of every Burman boy that he should become a novice in a monastic order and live for a time the life of a monk. The aim of this training is to teach obedience and self-control, and thus in these days of change, when strange and disintegrating influences are at work in the East, the Burman retains, to a certain extent at all events, his simplicity and his kindly faith. To appreciate the influence of Buddhism in Burma let us remember that a Buddhist priest is supported entirely by gifts in kind, and never touches a coin.

For some centuries Buddhism made great progress in India, the land of its birth; but in the end Hinduism re-asserted itself, and to-day there are very few Buddhists in India proper, though in Burma nearly all the people are of that faith. This is the chief cause of the difference in almost every respect between Burma and India. In the Ananda Temple, as we have seen, there are four images of Buddha, for it is the tradition of the religion that before Gautama there were in former ages of the world three other teachers who reached enlightenment and were therefore called Buddha.

[Sidenote: 57. The Wilderness of Bricks, Pagan.] [Sidenote: 58. Gadawpalin Temple, Pagan.] [Sidenote: 59. Vultures on a ruined Temple at Pagan.] [Sidenote: 60. Cactus at Pagan.] [Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 6.] Here, still at Pagan, is the so-called Wilderness of Bricks, with the Ananda Temple in the distance to the right. Then we have the entry to one of the other temples, and then yet another Pagan ruin with vultures on the summit. Finally we have a scene of tall cactus growth, also at Pagan, for this city stands in what is known as the Dry Belt of Burma. The map shows us that two ranges of mountains extend northward, respectively to east and west of the Irawaddy valley. The winds of summer and autumn blow from the southwest, from the sea, bringing moisture which falls in heavy rains on the west sides of the mountains and over the delta. At Rangoon there is an annual rainfall of over one hundred inches, or more than three times the rainfall of London. To the east of the western range, however, as we leave the delta on our journey up the river, there is a low-lying district near Pagan, which is screened from the sea winds by the continuous mountain ridge, and here the rainfall is small, as little as twenty inches in the year, but the climate is hot and evaporation is rapid. In this district, therefore, cactus is the typical vegetation, but elsewhere in Burma are rich crops or the most luxuriant forests of leafy trees. These forests supply the teak wood, which is floated down the river. They are full of game, and the haunt of poisonous snakes. Wild peacocks come from the woods to feed on the rice when it is ripe, and tigers are not unknown in the villages. Only a few years ago a tiger was shot on one of the ledges of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in the midst of Rangoon.

Notwithstanding the age of some of its temples and pagodas, Burma is in the main a new country, in which Nature is still masterful. It is the largest of the provinces under the Government of India, but all told it contains but ten million people—Burmese, Chinese, Hindus, and the Hill Tribes.

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LECTURE III.

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=BENGAL.=

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THE MONSOONS.

[Sidenote: 1. Map of Bengal.] From Burma we take steamer again and cross the sea to Bengal, the Metropolitan Province of India. The heart of Bengal is one of the largest deltas in the world, a great plain of moist silt brought down by the rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra from the Himalaya mountains. But along the borders of the Province, and especially to the west, much hill country is included.

The map shows to the north the high tableland of Tibet, edged by the Himalaya range, whose southern slopes descend steeply, but with many foot hills, to the level, low-lying plains of the two great river valleys. Eastward of Bengal there is a ridge, rising to heights of more than six thousand feet, densely forested, which separates the Irawaddy valley of Burma from the plains of India. This ridge throws out a spur westward, which near its end rises a little into the Garo hills. The deeply trenched narrow valley of the Brahmaputra, known as the Assam Valley, lies between the Garo hills and the Himalayas. Away in the west of Bengal is another hill spur, bearing the name of Rajmahal, which forms the northeastern point of the plateau of Southern India. The Ganges flows through the plain bounded southward by this plateau and northward by the Himalayas. A broad lowland gateway is left between the Garo and the Rajmahal hills, and through this, on either hand, the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers turn southward and converge gradually until they join to form the vast Megna estuary. The country which lies west of the Megna is the Ganges delta, traversed by many minor channels which branch from the right bank of the river before it enters the Megna. East of the Megna is another deltaic land whose silt is derived in the main from the Garo hills. It is said that the highest rainfall in the world occurs in these hills, when the monsoon sweeps northward from the Bay of Bengal and blows against their southern face. The rainfall on a single day in the rainy season is often as great as the whole annual rainfall of London. Little wonder that there is abundance of silt for the formation of the fertile plains below.

The approach to the coast, as may be concluded from this geographical description, presents little of interest. As you enter the Hooghly river, the westernmost of the deltaic channels, you see broad grey mud banks, with here and there a palm tree. From time to time, as the ship passes some more solid ground, there are villages of thatched huts surrounded by banana plantations with tall broad green leaves.

[Sidenote: 2. Approaching Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 3. Coolie Emigrant Ship on the Hooghly.] [Sidenote: 4. The Hooghly at Calcutta, showing the High Court.] [Sidenote: 5. The Same.] Calcutta, the chief port and capital of India, is placed no less than eighty miles up the Hooghly, on the eastern bank. As we approach it we pass mills and factories with tall chimneys throwing out black smoke. A steamer crosses us, outward bound, carrying, as we are told, coolies going to work in South Africa; for the basin of the Ganges, unlike Burma, is one of the most densely peopled lands in the world, and sends forth annually some thousand emigrants. At last we find ourselves amid a throng of shipping, and our steamer ties up to a buoy in the turbid river, with the great city of Calcutta on the eastern bank, and the large industrial town of Howrah on the western bank, and not a hill in sight round all the horizon, only the great dome of the Post Office rising white in the sunshine.

[Sidenote: 6. Plan of Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 7. Palm Avenue, Calcutta Botanical Gardens.] Let us examine the plan of this mighty city with more than a million inhabitants, second in the Empire in population, and one of the twelve largest towns in the world. The Hooghly flows southward. On its eastern bank stands Fort William, a fortress which with its outworks occupies a space of nearly a thousand acres. Around, to the north, the east, and the south of the fort, is a wide green plain, the Maidan, separating the fort from the city. From north to south the Maidan extends for some two miles, and it is about a mile broad from east to west. In its southern end is the racecourse, where are held at Christmas time the races, the principal social event of Calcutta life. To the east of the Maidan is the European quarter, with its hotels, and clubs, and private houses. To the north, in a garden, is Government House, the residence of the Viceroy of India. Beside Government House, and also facing the Maidan, are the High Court of Justice and the Town Hall. Behind Government House is Dalhousie Square, occupied by a green, in the centre of which is a large tank. Facing this square is the Bengal Government Secretariat, between which and the river are the Post Office and the Customs House. Away to the north is the great native city. One bridge only connects Calcutta with the industrial town of Howrah, where are jute mills and great engineering works. In Howrah also is the terminus of the East Indian Railway. A hundred years ago Howrah was but a small village; to-day it contains some 160,000 people. Finally to the south of Howrah on the west bank of the river are the celebrated Botanical Gardens, containing many great palms, and most notable of all a banyan tree whose circumference measures nearly a thousand feet. North of Calcutta, and on the east bank of the Hooghly, is Barrackpur, with the country house of the Viceroy of India. There is a military cantonment at Barrackpur, and also a garrison in Fort William.

[Sidenote: 8. The Howrah Bridge, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 9. Scene from the Howrah Bridge.] Nothing impresses the stranger in Calcutta more than the density of life in this populous city, the focus of a great and fertile province. At no spot is it more evident than on the Howrah Bridge, where from morning to night a close throng crosses and re-crosses. From the approach to the bridge we look down on a crowd bathing in the muddy but sacred water. Cheek by jowl with the busy commercial traffic of the bridge, we have here the religion of the East. Purified by the bath, and clothed again, the bather sits in the crowd while for a few pies, or say a farthing, his sect mark is painted afresh on his forehead.

[Sidenote: 10. Calcutta from Howrah across the Hooghly.] The buildings of Calcutta are worthy of the capital rank of the city, but they are of European design, for Calcutta is a modern city. Fort William was so named from King William III., in whose reign, little more than two centuries ago, Job Charnock, a factor or commercial representative of the East India Company, bought the little village Kalikata, probably so named from a local shrine of the goddess Kali. There he built, on the site of the present Customs House, the first Fort William. Within ten years the population had grown to some ten thousand, and it has never ceased growing to this day, although at one time, in the middle of the eighteenth century, there was an episode in the history of the place which for a time somewhat checked its advance. Suraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, quarrelled with the English at Fort William, and finally attacked them. Most of them escaped down the river, but a hundred and forty-six were taken prisoners when Fort William fell, and were confined for a night in a small cell measuring 22 feet by 14 feet, and some 18 feet high. It was at the end of the hot season, and only twenty-three of the prisoners came out alive the next morning. This tragedy is known in history as the Black Hole of Calcutta. Soon afterwards Colonel Clive, the same Clive who as a Captain defended Arcot in the south of India, arrived with reinforcements and recaptured Calcutta. Fort William was rebuilt on a larger scale, and in a position a little south of the original site.

Suraj-ud-Daulah quarrelled with the East India Company again, and Clive led an army against him into the north of Bengal, and defeated him and his French allies in the famous battle of Plassey. The British force amounted to only three thousand men, of whom but two hundred were English, whereas the Nawab had an army of nearly forty thousand. In 1765 the whole of Bengal was annexed by the East India Company, and from 1772 was ruled from Calcutta. Suraj-ud-Daulah’s capital had been at a place called Murshidabad, a hundred miles to the north of Calcutta.

[Sidenote: 11. Black Hole Monument, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 12. The Marble Pavement, Black Hole, Calcutta.] Here, at the corner of Dalhousie Square, is the Black Hole Monument, erected by Lord Curzon when Viceroy of India, in the year 1902, upon the site of the original monument which was set up by one of the twenty-three survivors; and here is a marble pavement marking the exact position of the Black Hole.

[Sidenote: 13. Bengal Government Office, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 14. The High Court, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 15. Eastern Gateway, Government House, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 16. Government House, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 17. The Same.] [Sidenote: 18. Imperial Museum, Calcutta.] We have next the great red brick building in Dalhousie Square known as the Bengal Secretariat. Not far away are the public offices of the Government of India, but most of the staff are removed to Simla in the hills during the hot and rainy seasons. Here, facing the Maidan, is the frontage of the Supreme Court of Justice, with a fine tower nearly two hundred feet high, which we saw just now from the Hooghly. Next is the eastern gateway to the grounds of Government House, and here is Government House itself, with the Union Jack flying above it, and Indian sentries on guard. It was built a little more than a hundred years ago, and contains the throne of Tippu Sultan, the tyrant of Mysore, of whom we heard in the first lecture. Opposite Government House, on the Maidan, is the Jubilee Statue of Victoria, the Queen-Empress of India, which was unveiled in the year 1902. Here we have a more distant view of Government House, as seen from the Maidan, with a statue of one of the Viceroys in the foreground. Next, in Chowringhee road, is the Imperial Museum, a fine building with a valuable Gallery of Antiquities.

[Sidenote: 19. Musulmans at Prayer in the Maidan.] [Sidenote: 20. Ochterlony Monument, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 21. Calcutta from the Ochterlony Monument.] [Sidenote: 22. Race Course, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 23. St. Paul’s Cathedral, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 24. Tiretta Bazaar Street, Calcutta.] Let us walk round the Maidan, and note the curiously mingled life upon it. Here, for instance, are Musulmans at prayer, an impressive sight that may be witnessed every evening. Here we are at the foot of the Ochterlony monument, a column erected in honour of Sir David Ochterlony, a successful general in the wars with Nepal. From the top of it we have a fine view over the city. Notice Government House and the High Court. At the other end of the Maidan is the racecourse and polo ground, to which we have already referred, and here amid the trees in the southeastern corner, beside the tank, is the spire of the English Cathedral. Here, in contrast, is a view in the native city. The streets are with a few exceptions very narrow, as in most southern cities where the sunshine is dreaded and where shade is essential to comfort.

[Sidenote: 25. Jute Mills, Howrah.] [Sidenote: 26. A Workshop in Iron Foundry at Howrah.] [Sidenote: 27. The same, Plate Girders.] [Sidenote: 28. Workpeople bathing at Howrah.] Now we cross to Howrah, to the great jute mills, where the jute fibre grown up country is spun and woven in competition with the jute manufacture of Dundee. In these mills you will find that the machinery bears the names of Dundee and Leeds makers, for the industry is relatively new in India, and has not yet reached the stage of manufacturing its own machinery. Next we pass into the engineering works of Messrs. Burn and Co., where some five thousand natives and some sixty Europeans are employed in the steel industry. Here are plate girders made in these works for railway bridge building, and here in this same industrial town of Howrah are people bathing after work in the jute mills.

Let us recount the essence of what we have seen—the Hooghly channel from the ocean, bearing inward the European ships; the Shrine of the Goddess Kali; the Fort which protected the factory of the East India Company; the Monument of the Black Hole; Government House and the Secretariat, whence the vast empire is ruled; the Cathedral and the Racecourse of the white rulers; the Courts of Justice, which, more than any military power, betoken the essence of British rule in India; the Native City with its narrow ways and crowded life drawn from the surrounding agricultural plain; the Howrah Bridge with the steel and jute mills beyond, which imply a vast incoming change in the economic life of this eastern land; and the Botanic Gardens with their wealth of vegetation typifying the ultimate resources of India—the tropical sunshine and the torrential rains.

[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 1.] Now let us run northward by the East Bengal Railway for some three hundred miles to Darjeeling, the hill station of Calcutta, as Ootacamund is the hill station of Madras. We traverse the dead level of the plain with its thickly set villages and tropical vegetation. There are some seven hundred and fifty thousand villages in India, and these village communities are the real India, for only about ten per cent. of the total population is contained in the cities. Yet Bengal in its present limits, which exclude Eastern Bengal, has a population of more than fifty millions, on an area slightly smaller than that of the United Kingdom. Now the total population of the United Kingdom is only some forty-four millions, and of these forty-four millions fully one-third inhabit some forty large cities. Britain is therefore mainly industrial, whereas India is mainly agricultural, nine-tenths of all the people in India being supported by occupations connected with agriculture. From such statistics some idea may be gained of the density of the agricultural population of Bengal, a Province with one great city only, as greatness of cities is measured in our British Islands.

The rule of these village-dotted plains is the main daily business of the Indian Government. A great Province like Bengal is divided into Districts, each of them about as large as the English county of Lincolnshire or a little larger. On the average each of them contains from half a million to a million and a half of population. There are some 250 of such Districts in British India, that is to say in that greater part of India which is administered directly by British officials. In each District there is a chief executive officer, styled the Collector or Deputy Commissioner. He is the head of the District administration, and he is also the principal Magistrate in the District. Under the Collector there is a staff of Executive Officers, British and Indian, of whom the chief are the Assistant Collector, the Deputy Collector, the Superintendent of Police, the Engineer, and the Civil Surgeon. The Collector is so called because in the days of the old East India Company his main function was to collect revenue. In his other capacity of Magistrate, he is the head of the Magisterial Courts of the District. The laws which he and his assistants administer are made by the Viceroy in Council, and in a subordinate way by the Lieutenant-Governors and their Councils in the various Provinces. The Collector does not decide civil suits. These, as well as all serious criminal cases, come before Civil Judges of different grades, who are independent of the Collector.

Therefore we find in India that essential division of the Legislature, Judicature, and Executive which is the chief security of freedom in all British communities. Subject to the law and to the instructions of the superior Provincial Officers, the District Collector is, however, supreme, except in the Civil Courts of his District. He it is who alone for the vast majority of the Indian population represents the Raj or Rule of the King-Emperor. Between the Collectors and the Lieutenant-Governors are intermediate controlling officers known as Commissioners, who superintend Divisions or groups of several Districts.

The Higher Civil Service of India, recruited by competitive examination in England, consists of some twelve hundred officials—the Commissioners, the Collectors of the Districts, and some of the Assistant Collectors. The seniors of the Civil Service man the Provincial and Supreme Governments of India. Only the Governor-General and the Governors of Madras and Bombay are selected from outside the Indian Civil Service and sent out from Britain.

The Collector is constantly touring his District, in order that he may know it from personal investigation. A good Collector may become very popular, and may do much to make his District prosperous. It is a great position which may thus be held by young Englishmen of, say, thirty years of age. They are rulers of a million people at an age when their brothers of the professional classes at home are struggling to establish themselves as young barristers or doctors or clergymen.

It must not be thought, however, that the Government of India, either in its Legislative, Judicial, or Executive capacities, is wholly British, and alien from the subject population. The Legislative Councils of the Governor-General and also of the Lieutenant-Governors in the Provinces contain elected Indian representatives, both Hindu and Musulman. The provincial Councils have, in fact, non-official majorities. Only in the Council of the Governor-General is there an official majority. Many of the Judges even of the High Courts are Indian, either Hindu or Musulman. In the Executive some of the Collectors of Districts are Indian, and also the great majority of the assistant officials, who in the aggregate are an immense number.

[Sidenote: 29. Darjeeling Railway, Chinbatti Loop.] [Sidenote: 30. Darjeeling Railway, Loop No. 4.] [Sidenote: 31. Darjeeling.] As we think over these things we are continuing our journey northward. We must change from train to steamer as we cross the Ganges. The passage of the river occupies about twenty minutes from one low-lying bank to the other. Then, as we traverse the endless rice fields with their clumps of graceful bamboo, the hills become visible across the northern horizon. We run into a belt of jungle, and change to the mountain railway, which carries us up the steep hill front with many a turn and twist. There is tall forest on the lower slopes, of teak and other great trees, hung thickly with creepers. Presently the wood becomes smaller, and we enter the tea plantations with their trim rows of green bushes. Far below us, at the foot of the steep forest, spreads to the southern horizon the vast cultivated plain. Trees of the fir tribe now take the place of leafy trees, and we rise to the ridge top on which is placed Darjeeling, a settlement of detached villas in compounds or enclosures, hanging on the steep hill slopes. Darjeeling is about seven thousand feet above sea level, on a ridge overlooking northward the gorge of the Rungeet River.

[Sidenote: 32. Kinchinjunga, from Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 33. The Himalaya.] [Sidenote: 34. Mount Everest.] In the early morning, if we are fortunate in the weather and rise before the sun, we may see from Darjeeling, over the valley to north of the hill ridge on which we stand, and over successive ridge tops beyond, the mighty snow range of the Himalayas, fifty miles away, with the peak of Kinchinjunga, more than five miles high, dominating the landscape. Behind it, a little to the west, and visible from Tiger Hill near Darjeeling, though not from Darjeeling itself, is Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, five and half miles high. The glittering wall of white mountains, visible across the vast chasm and bare granite summits in the foreground, seems to hang in the sky as though belonging to another world. The broad distance, and the sudden leap to supreme height, give to this scene a mysterious and almost visionary grandeur. It is, however, only occasionally that the culminating peaks can be seen, for they are often veiled in cloud.

[Sidenote: 35. Tibetan Woman.] [Sidenote: 36. Nepali Ladies.] The people of Sikkim in the hills beyond Darjeeling are Highlanders of Mongolian stock and not Indian. They are of Buddhist religion like the Burmans, and not Hindu or Musulman like the inhabitants of India. They are small, sturdy folk, with oblique cut eyes, and a Chinese expression, and they have the easy-going humorous character of the Burmans, though not the delicacy and civilization of those inhabitants of the sunny lowland. They and the kindred and neighbour Tibetans rarely wash, and the women anoint their faces with a mixture of pigs’ blood, which gives them a dark and mottled appearance. Here we have in colour a portrait of a Tibetan woman, and then a group of Nepali ladies, with various head ornaments.

[Sidenote: 37. Political Map of India, distinguishing Bengal, Eastern Bengal and Assam, Nepal, and Bhutan.] It is an interesting fact that these hill people should belong to the race which spreads over the vast Chinese Empire. That race here advances to the last hill brinks which overlook the Indian lowland. The political map of this portion of India illustrates a parallel fact. While the plains are administered directly by British officials, the mountain slopes descending to them are ruled by native princes whose territories form a strip along the northern boundary of India. North of Assam and Bengal we have in succession from east to west, in the belt of hill country, the lands of Bhutan, Sikkim, and Nepal. From Nepal are recruited the Gurkha Regiments of the Indian army, the Gurkhas being a race of these same hill men, of small stature and sturdy agility, of Hindu religion, but of more or less Mongolian stock, and therefore intermediate between the Tibetans and the Hindus.

[Sidenote: 38. The Bazaar, Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 39. The same—Nepali Vegetable Sellers.] [Sidenote: 40. Man carrying Fodder, Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 41. Sikkim Peasants.] [Sidenote: 42. Native Loom, Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 43. Village in Sikkim.] [Sidenote: 44. The same.] Here we have a typical market scene in Darjeeling. Notice the women doing coolie work. Next are vegetable sellers in the Darjeeling Bazaar, and here is a man carrying fodder. The man with his back turned is a Lepcha of Sikkim. Then we have a group of Sikkim peasants drinking the native beer, made from marwa, a kind of millet. They draw it up through straws from cups made of bamboo. Next we see a native working a hand loom, and then a village in Sikkim. Here in the same village we see a woman carrying baggage.

[Sidenote: 45. Lama Monastery, near Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 46. The same—Devil Dancers.] [Sidenote: 47. The same—interior.] [Sidenote: 48. The Amban Dance, Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 49. The same—another view.] Near Darjeeling there is a small Buddhist monastery, a two-storey building of which we have here a view. Notice the semi-circle of tall poles, with linen flags, on which prayers are inscribed. By the entrance are a number of prayer-wheels fastened to the wall. Outside the monastery are men wearing the costumes of devil dancers, such as are used in Buddhist religious ceremonies of these parts. There are long trumpets placed against the door post. Let us glance for a moment within this monastery, and see the hideous wooden masks, and the silk dresses of the priestly dancers. Two scenes follow, from Darjeeling itself, of an elaborate dance by Tibetan peasants called the Amban dance. The lions and dragons are each made of two men, whose bodies are hung with white yak hair and tails. They have grotesque heads, with enormous eyes and gaping mouths, from which hang large scarlet tongues. So we obtain some idea of the stage of barbarism in which the hill tribes remain.

[Sidenote: 50. North Bengal Mounted Rifles, Lebong.] [Sidenote: 51. The same—Sword Pegging.] [Sidenote: 52. Coolies at Darjeeling.] In contrast with these scenes are now two slides illustrating the volunteer service of the white tea planters. Of these the second shows tent-pegging on the Lebong parade ground, above the Rungeet river. This form of tent-pegging is with a sword, and not with the more usual lance. Here is a scene showing Darjeeling coolies returned from work in the tea gardens.

[Sidenote: 53. The Rungeet Gorge.] [Sidenote: 54. The same.] [Sidenote: 55. The Rungeet Bridge, Sikkim.] [Sidenote: 56. A Himalayan Glacier.] [Sidenote: 57. Glacier-fed Torrent in the Himalaya.] [Sidenote: 58. Cane Bridge in the Himalaya.] Finally we have two views in the gorge of the Rungeet river, between Darjeeling and Sikkim, with precipitous sides, and then a glimpse of the Rungeet bridge. The Rungeet drains from the hills of Darjeeling, and from the snow mountains beyond, into a tributary of the Ganges. Several hundred such torrents burst in long succession through deep portals in the Himalayan foot hills and feed the great rivers of the plain, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges. They are perennial rivers, for they originate in the melting of the glaciers, and the Himalayan glaciers cover a vast area, being fed by the monsoon snows. Nearly all the agricultural wealth of Northern India owes its origin to the summer monsoon.

[Sidenote: 59. Map of the Himalayan River System.] To understand the fundamental conditions governing the Indian climate let us examine the two concluding maps of this lecture. On the first of them all the country with an elevation of more than fifteen hundred feet is coloured with a dark brown, and that with a lower elevation is coloured a light brown. A great angle of the Indian lowland is seen to project northward into the Asiatic upland. For fifteen hundred miles the Himalaya limits the lowland with a gracefully curving mountain edge, and from this edge there flow the series of tributaries which gather to the rivers Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. Beyond, to the south, are seen in dark brown the higher portions of the Deccan plateau.