Chapter III: The Deccan (2)

At nine a.m. the sun is too hot; at five begins the cool afternoon. At nightfall a horror of deep gloom settles upon the world up there. The sun is as hot as Sind, the nights are cold. Here we again found the Petersons. We went off to look at the iron mines; this is the best iron, from which all the Damascus and Khorasán blades were made. It is soft and pliable, and when the blade is made they harden it. Richard brought away a lump of the iron, and Mr. Joyner, C.E., has since had it made into an inkstand as a remembrance, which always stood on Richard's writing-table, and which I keep now as a treasure. The bridle-paths, and the shady dingly walks of Mátherán, are far better than the broad carriage-roads of Máhábáleshwar, that, in spite of the lovely green, give you no shade. Besides, Society is always on duty up there. Tall carriages instead of basket chairs, and sables capped with black chimney-pots, look queer in the wild woods. There is none of the _abandon_ of the country.

The Dangar tribes linger here, the Thakurs cling to Mátherán, and the Kátkaris haunt the lowlands. After a few days here, which Lady Agnes Danyell made very pleasant to us, with drives and breakfasts and dinners, we started for our return journey. We were twelve hours getting down, stopping to admire Wali, and have some tea at Soorool. There was just enough moon to show us the dark and awful parts of the Gháts, and the windings of the woods and the very sharp turns suggested tigers, jackals, and brigands (which do not exist here). We arrived at the station at two in the morning, ate from our basket, got into the train, reached Lanáuli at seven, and were at Bombay by midday. I will not insert an account of the hill races and tribes, which would overload this book, but will insert it amongst my husband's "Labours," as he taught them to me.

GOA.

[Sidenote: _Goa and West India_.]

As soon as we arrived in Bombay we caught the "British Indian steamer" going down south, coasting along. They are middle-sized steamers, beautifully clean, good table, excellent wine, airy cabins, great civility, and fairly steady ships--which they have need to be in such a sea as is often on. The fares are extravagantly dear--£10 for a thirty-six hours' passage; but there is no opposition.

Richard had always such ready, sparkling wit, and it was never offensive nor hurtful. One day, as we were on board a ship, going to a rather uncivilized place, a Catholic Archbishop, and a Bishop with a Catholic party, stepped on board. My husband whispered, "Introduce me." I did so, and they became very friendly, and sat down to chat. The Archbishop was a very clever man, but no match for Richard. My husband began to chaff, and said, "My wife is the Jesuit of the family." "What a capital thing for _you!_" answered the Archbishop. Presently some apes were jumping about the rigging, so the Archbishop looked up and said playfully, "Well, Captain Burton, there are some of your ancestors." Richard was delighted; he pulled his moustache quietly, looking very amused and a little shy and apologetic, and said with that cool drawl of his, "Well, my lord, I at least have made a little progress, but--what about your lordship, who is descended from the angels?" The Archbishop roared; he was delighted with the retort, and treasures it up as a good story till this day.[1]

At nine at night we reached Vingorla; the coast is very bad and dangerous, and in the monsoon all but impossible. Vessels are often wrecked, so steamers never go near, but put boats off. We disembarked a Sister Marie (_fille de la Croix_), a young German nun, bound for some desolate spot where they are forming a convent for educating children, nursing the sick, and reclaiming the savage. This young, interesting-looking girl of about twenty had to make her own way up country; these are the true "Soldiers of Christ," and our hearts yearned to her as she calmly and smilingly bid us good-bye, and went over the ship's side.

Arrived opposite Goa, we were cast adrift in the open sea, as is usual, on account of an unbuoyed and doubtful shoal, and we had eight miles to row before we could reach Goa. You may imagine what that means in a storm. The mail agents must do this, monsoon weather as well, once a fortnight all the year through, and the return ships are in the dead of the night, besides living in a fœtid hole, where they get none of the comforts of life, and never see a soul.

The Portuguese manage to make every place look like Lisbon; actually the features of the country grow the same. There is the same abrupt entrance to the sea between mountainous cliffs, up a broad winding river or sea arm, with wooded rising banks, with the same white town perched on its banks, a perfect Santos in Brazil, which is 24º south of the Equator. We rowed a mile and a half of open sea, five miles of bay, and one and a half of winding river, to a little stone pier landing at Panjim (New Goa).

All Portuguese India is only a strip of about seventy miles long, and very narrow, which they would do much better to sell to the British Government; for of all the God-forgotten, deserted holes, a thousand years behind the rest of the creation, I have never seen anything to equal Goa, and I pitied from my heart the charming, kindly, gentle, hospitable people who have to live there. I have lived in sandy deserts, in primeval forests; I have suffered hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fatigue, privation, and danger, and thought it charming; but I hated the sort of life at Goa. It is dead, and there is nothing to reward one; only we were here for a purpose.

[Sidenote: _Life there_.]

There are three Goas, full of history and romance. There is the Inquisition to study, and there is the tomb of St. Francis Xavier.

No. 1 is the _old_ Hindú Goa, now called San Lourenço, about six miles from Panjim (New Goa), upon the winding river, and two miles to the southward of Old Goa, or Goa Velha. It is only marked by a salt plain, and two hills with a church upon each, and a bit upon the plain. It is pretty healthy, and no one knows why it was deserted. Old Goa, or Goa Velha, is that of St. Francis Xavier; it is nine and a half kilometres from Panjim, by a good road along the winding river--a most picturesque locality, full of history, Catholic tradition, and the scene of the infamous Inquisition. It was deserted on account of malaria and fever for New Goa (called Panjim), where we landed, and where the few personages who are obliged to be there vegetate, except with an occasional change to Cazalem, the six cottages on the open beach of the bay corresponding to our Barra at Santos.

In Panjim are the barest necessaries of life; there is no inn, no travellers' bungalow, no tents, and you must sleep in your filthy open boat and have fever. Kind-hearted Samaritans (Mr. and Mrs. Major) gave us their only small spare room and spare single bed. I had, luckily, one of those large straw Pondicherry reclining chairs and a rug, so we took the bed in turns, night about, the other in the chair. It is the worst climate we were ever in, and we know pretty bad ones. The thirst was agonizing. All the drinks were hot (no ice); the more you drank the more you wanted. The depression was fearful, and never a breath of air _even at night_. The blazing sun poured into our little room all day, and baked it quite red-hot for the night. I used to look upon the people who lived there as miracles--a truly purgatorial preparation for death.

We found for hire only one small _gári_, a small open wooden cart with room for two; the wheels wobbled, the spring on one side was broken, the lamps dangled, there was a deal box for the driver, the harness was old rusty chains tied together with bits of string. Our coachman and footmen were two little boys with something round their loins. The pony was broken down by mange, starvation, and sores. I insisted on keeping him myself. He was put into a comfortable shed in Mr. Major's garden, and had as much as ever he could eat and drink, and was groomed daily. We started at dawn, for at nine it is too hot. At first the pony had to be led by a rope by No. 1 boy. We used the whip gently and mercifully from the cart, and the wheels had to be rolled round by No. 2 boy and a help; but as soon as his sores healed, and he began to resume a respectable appearance, he followed me about like a dog, and looked after me with almost human eyes; and if he stopped needlessly after that, the _gharawála_ running in front of him for a moment was enough, without any whip or any rope. He trod his old forage underfoot with contempt and used it as litter.

Richard was very fond of collecting native music from various parts of the world, and we tried very hard to get them to treat us to some of the music of Portugal and Brazil; but they are foolishly ashamed of it, and will only sing in French and Italian, which does not suit their voices. It would be difficult to find an uglier or meaner-looking race than the people here. Black Christians are a mixed breed of European and Indian blood. The _mestiços_ (Eurasians) or mixed breed compose the mass, the Government officials are mostly from Portugal. The white families settled here, native Portuguese, were called _castissos_. The few who consider themselves pure Portuguese are very proud of it. The officials from Portugal are, of course, pure, but the descendants of the first great families have intermixed with the natives.

The mesquin rhubarb-coloured race are dressed in a scanty dirty-white bit of decency, or the refuse of European rag-shops. A great sign of respectability is the top hat. The poorest man who considers himself a Portuguese twenty times removed, will wear a seedy patched black coat and a black tile in a cocoanut-forest-hut to distinguish himself from the natives, as a mark of respectability. The shabby demi-semi-civilization, the enervating climate, the poverty, the utter uninterestedness of everything, bears the curse of the Inquisition. They bear, however, one mark of St. Francis Xavier's teaching, who was a true gentleman (Hidalgo), besides being a saint. He preached courteousness, and the manners of the lower orders are excellent. The merest beggar has the manners of a gentleman; the poor all doff their caps as you pass, and seem formed to exchange civilities with Europeans. Richard found them just as he left them thirty years ago, the women scolding, making a noise almost like pig-killing, the children whining and crying as if they were perpetually teething, the animals starved and ill-treated.

There is no escaping the heat of Goa; no ice, no punkahs, no tatties. The houses have no verandahs, have no shade, all white paint, and the sun bakes the walls the first hour it comes out. There is no milk and no servants. They export annually twenty-eight thousand _excellent_[2] servants, but they won't stay there.

If any extraordinary law could oblige anybody to live here, they should bring a dozen tents, and pitch them under the trees, half a dozen good horses, a tent servant, a first-rate cook who could market, a groom, and a general servant and messenger. They should make a contract with the British Indian steamers to supply them with everything, keep a steam launch to go out and meet those steamers. But if any one were rich enough to do all that, they would not live at Goa. However, we were most lucky to have found the kind Majors.

[Sidenote: _What to see_.]

Richard had to revisit old scenes, and I had my work to do amongst the old Portuguese manuscripts at Old Goa. This must have been once a very extensive City, and you are deluded by its magnificent appearance, until you find yourself wandering in utter desolation in a City of the Dead, amongst Churches and old Monasteries; the very rustling of the trees, the murmur of the waves, sounded like a dirge for the departed grandeur of the City. The Church and House of the Bom Jesus belonged to the Society of Jesus, was dedicated to Xavier, and given to the Jesuits in 1584, till they were expelled in 1761, when it was given to the Lazarists. The Jesuits were the first to pioneer civilization to all lands, to choose healthy sites, to build tanks, to teach the people, and how badly they have been rewarded! Here the new Governors are invested, and here they are buried if they die during the term of office.

The body of St. Francis Xavier is in a magnificently carved silver sarcophagus placed on a splendid base of black marble. On the sarcophagus are beautifully cast alto-relievi, representing the various acts of his life and death, all surmounted by a gold and silver top. The actual body of the saint is inside, in a gold shell, and is shown to the people once in a century on the 3rd of December. The last time was in 1878; the body was found in its normal state of freshness. There is a real old portrait of him in oils outside his chapel, done in 1552. A print found in rags in a convent dusthole is so like it, that I put it together, brought it home, and had it copied.

We used always to leave our vehicle here, and have the pony taken out and fed, watered, and rested, whilst we scrambled all the day over the hills, looking at the different remnants of Churches and Monasteries.

The site of the once so-called "Holy Office" is on the right hand of the Cathedral and the Archbishop's Palace, a heap of ruins, covered with luxuriant growth, and poisonous plants and thorns; not one stone left upon another; not a wholesome shrub springs between the fragments of masonry which, broken and blackened with decay, are left to encumber the soil, as unworthy of being removed, or contaminating another building with their curse. You must not think we walked through comfortable paved streets to these different buildings, of which I only mention two, but there were dozens. We scrambled through woods, over hill and dale, and the distances tell us how large Goa must have been, especially ascending a stony Scala Santa through briars and brambles to the place where the victims used to be scourged. There was the chapel where Xavier first started a school and a chapel for converting and preaching, where he used to educate children; and hard by was the well where he took his morning bath. It is like the Arab's "City with impenetrable gates, still, without a voice or cheery inhabitant; the owl hooting in its quarters, and night-birds skimming in circles in its ruins, and the raven croaking in its great thoroughfare-streets, as if bewailing those that had been in it." How thirsty we used to be! But at the sight of a bit of silver, boys would climb the trees like monkeys, pick off cocoanuts, chop off the little round piece at the top, and hand them to us to drink. How beautifully white the inside of the nut; how refreshing the milk, clean and cold as ice! Each nut containing enough to quench the greatest thirst, leaving a refreshing coolness in the mouth, throat, and interior. In a dry, parched, thirsty land without water, there is drink for you at the top of the trees that shade you--harmless drink, iced by nature.

The moonlit scenery of the distant bay smiles in all eternal Nature's loveliness upon the dull-grey piles of ruined, desolate habitations, the short-lived labours of man; delicately beautiful are the dark hills, clothed with semi-transparent mist, the little streams glistening like lines of silver over the opposite plain, and the purple surface of the creek stretched at our feet. Musically, the mimic waves splashing against the barrier of stone, and the soft whisperings of the night breeze, alternately rose and fell with the voice of the waters.

During all our drives and long walks we were chiefly struck by the poverty of the people and the unhealthiness of the air: but we were healthy and strong, and we did not mind it. We drove once to a large village called Ribandar for the purpose of seeing the Convent of the Misericordia. Here are closely kept under strict surveillance, both religious and civil, seventy orphan girls of all colours, class, and ages, educated by the nuns, and who, when grown up, remain in the house till they receive an offer of marriage. They look like birds in a cage, and I pitied them; for, with the world full of nice pretty girls and spontaneous love affairs, who would think of going to the World's End to overhaul this cage of forgotten captives? Richard gives a rather amusing account of his visit to this convent when he was a young lieutenant thirty years before.[3]

We had two nice boat expeditions; one to Mr. Major's coffee plantation, in which is a petrified forest, and one to Seroda; each expedition occupying two or three days.

Seroda is a Hindú town of houses, pagodas, tombs, tanks, lofty parapets, and a huge flight of steps, people, trees, and bazars, all massed together. It is fearfully hot, dirty, and shut in on all sides. In old days it was a nursery for _Nach_ girls.

[Sidenote: _The Inquisition_.]

Goa is well worth visiting, its history well worth learning. It is one of those kingdoms that has been; that grew, reigned in magnificence, declined, and is now a pauper. I studied its history on the spot in Portuguese, and I thought that none of the English books upon it are worth reading. I cannot give an account of it here, for the reason of overweighting my book, but of all its grandeur there are only two interests attaching to its name that _last_--one infamous, the Inquisition; the other glorious, the poor Jesuit, St. Francis Xavier. The Inquisition practically ceased in 1732, and was officially effaced in 1812, being abolished by the interference of the British Government, and its offices were shut up in the reign of the Count of Sarzedas, who was Viceroy from 1807 to 1816; but for eighty years the Inquisition had been _only a name_.

The religious history of Goa is even more striking than its civil Government. It seems to have been a sort of sacerdotal republic--a huge collection of Churches and Convents in a desert place. The province was in its meridian, both civil and religious, 324 years ago. In 1571 it contained 150,000 practical Catholics, and owned half a million of subjects in Portuguese India, and in Old Goa alone there were 200,000 inhabitants. It only _absolutely_ flourished during a space of 135 years. How it must have been cursed by the victims of the tortures of the Inquisition, till God heard their cry, and avenged their blood, so that not one stone remains upon another, whilst the only thing that lives is the shrine of the one saint and gentleman, Xavier, and the tomb of the Christian hero, João da Castro--as if God had preserved them to shine out as everlasting treasures from the ruins of crime! Xavier was the apostle of the Indies; his mission was to reform the manners of Europeans in the Indies, whose lives were a disgrace to the Christian profession, and on the other hand to preach the gospel to the pagan population of the East. There is no space in this book to give an interesting account of him and his works, but he went to India in April, 1541, and was thirty-five years of age. He only lived ten years, and there was no Inquisition in his time. They used to call him the "God of Nature."

[Sidenote: _Xavier's Death_.]

In April, 1552, he set sail with a little band of apostles for an expedition to China. A shipwreck drove them to Malacca, where they were persecuted and detained. The Governor sent Xavier's vessel, the _Santa Cruz_, to trade at the island of San Chan (Sancian), off the coast of China, with orders to erect no buildings, save shelters of mats and branches. Xavier resolved to embark with the three companions he had kept back--a Chinese, a young Indian, and a lay brother, and after great storms and difficulties Sancian was reached--a desolate sandy region invested only by tigers. To please the Governor of Malacca, the merchants and men on board all turned against Xavier; they denied him sufficient food, and he was struck down by fever.

One morning of late November, 1552, amidst a breaking surf, a boat was lowered from the ship's side, and made towards the island where they had abandoned Xavier. The lay brother, the Chinese, the Indian, and one Portuguese merchant named Alvarez, ascended a sandy hillock and hurried to the prostrate body of a man. There, on a bed of sand, lay the great apostle of the Indies, his head, grey with toil and suffering, exposed to wind and sun. His face was flushed with fever, his thin hands clasped his crucifix, and beside him was a little knapsack containing the necessaries for Mass. They bore him to a shed of mats and leaves; they bled him, but, being ignorant, pricked a vein which only produced convulsions, and the operation was twice repeated. He was delirious, and muttered only, "My Lord and my God! Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! O most Holy Trinity! Queen of Heaven, show thyself a Mother!" He came to his senses, smiling sweetly, and thanking those around him, and told them his end was near. At two o'clock on Friday, December 2nd, 1552, he kissed his crucifix, and saying, with a gleam of joy upon his face, "In Thee, O Lord, I have hoped; let me not be confounded for ever," life departed. He was forty-six years of age, and these events happened 343 years ago.

What makes the freshness of the body at the present time extraordinary, is that the merchant Alvarez put the body in a large Chinese chest, filled up with unslaked lime to consume the flesh, and they buried it, set up a cross, and two heaps of stones at the head and feet. The following 17th of February, two months and a half later, by the Captain's orders, the coffin was uncovered; but when the lime was taken off, the body was found ruddy and flesh-coloured as though asleep, and on making a puncture the blood flowed, and the priestly vestments were unhurt. In June it was taken to Malacca, where the whole place (except the Governor who had persecuted him, whose name was D'Atayde, and who mocked at it) came to meet it in procession; then it was conveyed to Goa, and all Goa went twenty miles out to sea to receive the body, with great pomp and ceremony. This happened on the 15th of March, 1554. He was already canonized by the people, but Pope Paul V. beatified him, and he was canonized by Gregory XV. in 1622, and promulgated by Urban VIII.

This place had a great attraction for Richard, and this was the third pilgrimage he had made here since 1844.

Baldæus, a Protestant, in his "History of the Indies," says, "Had Xavier been of the same religion as ourselves, we should have esteemed and honoured him as another St. Paul;" and he concludes his elegy thus: "Oh that it had pleased God that, being what you were, you had been, or might have been, one of us!" Hakluyt, a Protestant, and Tavernier, a Huguenot, and many other Protestants, speak equally in his praise.

In 1221 the Inquisition was introduced by Pope Innocent IV., and in 1255 by Pope Alexander III. It found little favour in France, Italy, and Germany; but in the thirteenth century it crept into Spain; but it was in Portugal where it grew and flourished, and in 1478 became cruel. In the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Torquemada, the great Chief Inquisitor, worked it up to its maximum of full energy and bloodthirsty ferocity; but it did not reach Goa till 1560, eight years after the death of Xavier. This vile institution is said to have existed two hundred and fifty years, and the last person burnt was a Jesuit named Malagrida, about 1732. Every writer says that Goa was the very worst City of the Inquisition. It was used for all manner of private spites, and political intrigues under the name of religion. It was this that caused the Portuguese to lose India, as no one who could fly from it would run the risk of staying, and ships did not even like to call in port. We were very much impressed by the booming of the Cathedral bell, which had tolled so many to their _auto da fé_.

The Rev. Dr. Claude Buchanan, Vice-Provost of the College of Fort William of Calcutta, went there in 1808, and worried the Inquisitors considerably, which he could afford to do, as Buchanan's regiment, the 78th Highlanders, was at Panjim, only eight miles off, and would have blown the Inquisitors and their Holy Office into the air if he had been touched. Even Buchanan said that "Xavier was counted a first-rate man _even_ amongst the English." He was there after it had been abolished in 1770, but it was re-allowed under great restrictions in the reign of Donna Maria (1779), until its final and total abolition. Colonel Adams of the 78th, when Buchanan went up to Old Goa, said, half in joke, half in earnest, "If we don't hear from you in three days, I shall march the 78th up and take the Inquisition by assault."

[Sidenote: _The Inquisition perishes_.]

Buchanan _did_ forget to write, and, at the end of three days, the Colonel sent him a note begging of him to come down to Panjim every night to sleep in the fortress (a ride of eight miles), on account of the unhealthiness of Goa. In 1812 the letters of the King from Lisbon ordered liberty of conscience and total annihilation of the Inquisition, being, as the King said, "so terrifying to all nations, so contrary to the true spirit of the Institution, so opposed to the original pious intention of his august and royal ancestors." The Conde de Sarzedas wrote thanking the King, and begging that he might also burn the enormous quantity of processes and documents, _as too great scandals would result_ therefrom; so we have lost about forty thousand _procés_, inexhaustible matter for historians, novelists, and dramatic writers, showing the manners and customs of those centuries in Portuguese India.

It only shows what the Catholic religion is, and that "Hell's gates cannot prevail against Christ's Church," when the Faith could stand unmoved and flourish under three centuries of this tribunal of fire and woe, composed of serpents in its own bosom, traitors in the camp; worse than internal civil war, covering even its own members with infamy. From this monster's brutal claw all fled,--Godliness, Manliness, and Nature.

Moreover, Arabs, Persians, Armenians, Jews, and Indians found the Christian God even more cruel than Brahma or Allah; they deserted the country and commerce, and fled from low envy, vile cowardice, and calumny, which dealt brutally and safely--like vivisection--not with crime alone, but with the most trivial actions of their home-life. Sufficed a little success in an enterprise, a few more thousands, a gallant action winning praise, a rise in the social scale, public esteem for a good work done,--anything that raised a man above his fellows was quite enough.

It is, perhaps, the same now, _as far as evil tongues and pens can wag_, and will always be, and people wince with moral pain; but it breaks no bones, scorches no skin, and the object of envy may still breathe fresh air and light, and enjoy life and liberty, though a few _soi-disant_ friends may fall away. Nay, the fact of being of a different race, tongue, and creed, a variance of opinion, family rivalries, an unhappy love, a little spite or jealousy,--all was turned to account, all was of use to denounce one's enemy _on a religious ground_. It was enough for a "familiar" to open his mouth to make people lose their judgment and reason.

I have had a sight of all the documents existing, exclusively Goanese, by the present descendants of the Inquisitors, and the authorities of that time.

We had a charming Portuguese dinner with Dr. Da Gama. Our last evening Mr. Major took us an excursion in his boat to Cazalem. We coasted along for an hour and sang glees under a fine moon, accompanied by a heavy swell, and we were carried ashore through the surf on native shoulders, and passed a very merry evening.

[Sidenote: _Sea Journey to Suez_.]

At last the time came round for us to leave Goa. The steamers are due once a fortnight, but this one was long past her time. At last we had a telegram to say, "The steamer would pass Goa at midnight." We started in a large open boat in the evening with Mr. Major, his secretary, four men to row and one to steer. We rowed down the river in the evening, and then across the bay for three hours against wind and tide to open sea, bow on to heavy rollers, and at last reached the mouth of the bay, where is the fort. We remained bobbing about in the sea, in the trough of the big waves, for a considerable time. A violent storm of rain, thunder, and lightning came on, and Mr. Major proposed we should put back to the fort, at the entrance of the bay, and take shelter under some arches, which we did. Then we went to sleep, leaving the secretary and the _boatwála_ to watch for the steamer.

At 1.30 I was awoke by the sound of a gun booming across the water. I sprang up and roused the others; but the storm was so heavy we could see no lights, and returned to sleep. We ought to have gone off when the gun fired; the ship had been laying to for us for three-quarters of an hour. If the ship went without us, we should have lost our passage to Europe, we should have been caught in the monsoon, we should have had to return another fortnight to Goa, of which we were heartily tired, and knew by heart, only to renew the same a fortnight hence. We were soon under way again, and by-and-by saw the lights of the steamer about three miles off. Knowing the independence of these captains, the monopoly, and the futility of complaints, and seeing that my husband and Mr. Major slept, I began to be very disagreeable with the boat-hook. I got the secretary to stand in the bows and wave a lamp on a pole. I urged the _boatwálas_ with perpetual promises of _bakshish_. Everybody else was leaving it to Kismet. Our kind host had been holloaing at the _boatwálas_ the whole evening because the boat was dirty, and making them bale out the horrid-smelling bilge water, and now we wanted him, he was sound asleep and as good as gold. "Can't you shout?" I cried to him; "they might hear you. You can shout loud enough when nobody wants you to." At last, after an hour's anxiety, we reached the ship, and heavy seas kept washing us away from the ladder. No one had the energy to hold on to the rope, or to take the boat-hook to keep us to her, so at last I did it myself; my husband roaring with laughter at their supineness, and at me making myself so disagreeably officious and energetic. An English sailor threw me a rope. "Thanks," I said, as I took advantage of an enormous wave to spring on to the ladder. "I am the only man in the boat to-night." All came on board with us, and we had a parting stirrup-cup, and said farewell, and often after, our good host and his wife used to write to me, and call me the "only man in the boat."

We had been six months in India, and had made the most of it, and the day of departure came round. We were glad and sorry--glad to leave the intolerable heat, to escape the coming monsoon; sorry to leave the ever-increasing interest and the daily accumulating friends. We generally chose Austrian-Lloyd's steamers. They owned at that time a fleet of sixty-nine keel, covering twenty-two different lines, reasonable in charges. An Italian _cuisine_, everything clean, with a certain style and refinement. They are safe ships, and their sailors, mostly Dalmatians, are a brave seafaring race, quiet, docile, and sober, stalwart, honest, and civil, and mind their ship in a storm.

On calm nights, say a delightful evening with balmy air, crescent moon, with its attendant star, our Dalmatian crew sing better than many a usual opera chorus, though quite untutored. They are thorough sailors, gay in fine weather, hard-working and brave in the worst of storms, and never drink. I know nothing pleasanter than a voyage in Austrian-Lloyd's in fine weather with few passengers. This time, however, we were physically uncomfortable. The boats were not fitted for regular English passengers from India. They steam very slow--eight knots an hour. They then carried no stewardess or doctor; they do now. Then they had no ice or soda-water, no skylight for wind-sails, only one awning instead of three, no punkahs and tatties. I believe all that is changed. So we were seventeen English passengers, and we fried alive in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

The average English people, if not made comfortable at sea, are as troublesome as a mustard plaster--nothing was right. They wanted their huge lumps of beef and mutton four times a day; they ate up all the provisions like locusts, and drank the cellar dry almost before we got to Aden. What would last Italians and Greek six weeks, does not last an Englishman one.

Italians and Greeks have quite another form of being troublesome. They would send every half-hour for the captain to ask if there is any danger; if the sea and wind are going down; to say that they feel very bad, and ask him what they shall take. He, with the greatest good nature, instead of giving them the hearty "blessing" that ours would, recommends a little _eau sucrée_, and says we shall be in smooth water in another hour, though he knows quite well that the glass is down, and that we are going straight into a gale, which will last several days.

Richard and I were exceedingly comfortable, as we always were, and it amused us to hear "our boys," as we called our English fellow-passengers, swearing at the Triestine stewards in Hindostani, and talking louder and louder in the hopes of being understood. We used to hear all day shouts of, "Where is Captain Burton? where is Mrs. Burton?" We were wanted to interpret. We were the connecting link between Austrian-Lloyd's and the discontented Britishers. But at last we all became exceedingly jolly. We slept on deck in rows, and read and talked. In the evening we sang glees and duets. We women abolished toilette for white tea-gowns.

After a very pleasant time, albeit very rough weather, Richard and I left the ship at Suez, and were soon surrounded by a little band of Richard's old friends of Mecca days. We put off, with them, afterwards to the Arabian shore, to rest after our journey at "Moses' Wells," about three miles in the Arabian desert--the scene of poor Palmer, Gill, and Charington's departure. It was a lovely scene, with its blue sea, yellow sands, azure sky, and pink and purple mountains. The sun was hot, but the pure desert air blew in our faces, as we went across the sand to the picturesque spot. The wells or springs are surrounded by tropical verdure, intermingled with Fellah huts. The most romantic spot of all is a single tiny spring, under an isolated palm tree, standing all alone on a little hillock of sand and desert, far from all else, as if that tree and that spring had been created for each other to live alone. It was delightful after India and the rough voyage. We took our _kayf_ there with the Arabs, who gave us delicious coffee and _narghílehs_, and we rode camels. We were there at the time of Abdul Assiz's death.

[Sidenote: _After a Stay in Egypt, to Trieste_.]

After stopping some time at Cairo, Alexandria, and Ramleh, we embarked for Trieste on another Lloyd's, which carried Jamrach and his menagerie. During our stay in Cairo, we saw a great deal of poor Marquis de Compiègne (afterwards shot in a duel), Dr. Schweinfürth, and Marietta Bey and the Bulak Museum; poor John Wallis, legal Consul, once editor of the _Tablet_; Baron de Kremer, our old Austrian colleague at Damascus, afterwards Minister of Finance at Vienna (now dead). We found the voyage very cold, even in July, after India. We first went to Candia, passing Gavdo, Cape Spaltra, the two islands Cerigotto and Cerigo.

We glide by Cape Matapan on the Greek coast. We passed Cabrera and Sapienza. We leave the lighthouse on Strophades to the left, and reach Zante, which is a lovely island, with a large picturesque town, and where mareschino is made. We run between Cephalonia and Ithaca (of Ulysses); then we change the Greek coast for Acarnania, and pass Santa Maura, or Leucadia, with "Sappho's Leap." We changed then to the Albanian coast, gloriously green to the water's edge, with, cliff and cave, with the Cimariote hills, and its wild people and their lawless legends behind them. We passed two islands, Anti Paxo and Paxo, to Corfú. After we leave Corfú, we coast along Albania, passing Capo Linguetta and Isole Sasseno; then we changed to the Dalmatian coast, to Bocca di Cattaro and Ragusa, afterwards the islands of Lagosta and Cazza; then Lissa, where two great battles were fought, one 13th of March, 1811, and the other 20th of July, 1866. Then we passed the islands of Spalmadore, Lesina, Incoronati, and Grossa; then Punta Biancha, and the island of Sansego. Here we changed to Istria, and are upon our own ground, beginning with Punta di Promontore and Pola, our great Austrian naval station, with its Coliseum and interesting ruins. Then Rovigno and Parenzo, harbour towns on the coast. At Punto Salvore we enter our own "Gulf of Trieste," passing Pirano, which we can see from our own windows, and finally Trieste. The coming into Trieste is very sweet from the sea. The beautiful little City, nestled in its corner in the mountains at the very top of the Adriatic, seemed to us the greenest and most beautiful spot we had ever beheld, after hot India and barren Egypt and Arabia. The hills plumaged to the sea, dotted with white villages and villas; Miramar standing well out to sea in the warm haze; the splendid Carniola Mountains on the opposite side, still slightly tipped with snow, were most refreshing to our eyes, and we settled down in our little home with a feeling of rest, and enjoyed our ever-warm reception from our Trieste friends after our sea voyage.

[1] I put this story in the _New Review_ last November. Hardly had I done so when it was claimed by an American for Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. It could hardly have happened to two men, and Richard was much too witty to need to copy. It happened at eleven o'clock on the 22nd of April, 1876. I was present, saw it with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears, and thinking it too good to be forgotten wrote it down there and then. The Archbishop and I mentioned it in letters a few months ago.--I. B.

[2] Richard always took Goanese boys on his wildest travels, and they were always true to him.

[3] "Goa and the Blue Mountains," which will later be in the "Uniform Library."--I. B.