.and tormented my arms; but I hoped for another rest
m eighteen hours’ time—a short stay at a Central Indian
station I had visited in December, and remembered for
the beauty of its immemorable flowers. A weary-eyed
figure stopped me as I was leaving the carriage. “ You
must not stay here, we have cholera.” The train moved
on.
This, then, was the glorious East, the other side
of the shield, unseen, unguessed at by itinerant
M.P.s and cold-weather visitors. Punkahs are a
pleasing pretence when the weather is little warmer
than an ordinary English summer’s day, playing
a t the tropics, as the G.T. gaily remarks as he
sips iced sodas in an easy lounge with a thermometer
that scarcely touches 86, but somewhere
the furnaces are being stoked. Swiftly and suddenly
the short cold season is superseded by monotonous
months of sweltering sunshine. Will the ra'ns never
come to put an end to the suspense? And sometimes
they come, but as a mockery. A shower or two, a sense
of slight relief, and the awful fact is borne in that the
rains have again failed, the monsoon will not break,
there can be no change till heavy snows on those stern
guardians of Upper India bring some slight alleviation
to the weary watchers on the far-distant plains.
My journey to Bombay was accomplished to a sad,
monotonous refrain, a death song sung by suffering
people beneath a pitiless sun. A description of these
things savours of exaggeration; having seen them
silence seems the only course. Certain ills must be
borne, and it is best not to make them too evident, otherwise
none could bear to face them; for that reason folk
at home do not have much mention of this side of Indian
life.
Bombay was unbearably self-conceited over its cool
climate. I t described itself as cold, and in proof thereof
went about clad in serge .suits and light woollen coats
and skirts. The steaminess they do not mind, and after
the frying pans I had been in, 92 and 93 were a pleasant
change.
Then the voyage, and to those who desire comfort
and coolness I do not advise a return home in July.
Though on shore its effects had been small, on the
ocean the monsoon was terribly obvious, and a close
cabin for five days at a stretch is not conducive to
enjoyment.
Wearily the days passed; most of the servants were
down with fever from the close air resulting from
battened-down hatches, and it was a weak, wan company
that re-visited the decks, at Aden and compared notes
over experienpes that had been of a deadly monotonous
character.
I t was hot in the Bed Sea, but the change to open
ports and tranquil decks was blissful, and sleeping in
long chairs in the open air, catching whatever of breeze
the dawn brought, carried me back pleasantly to my
camping days and the joys of a star-lit canopy. The
colouring of the banks is a never-ceasing pleasure, and
the gorgeous blue of the sea, and the brilliant rainbows
to be discovered in every wave that breaks against the
side of the steamer, the flights of swallows like flying
fish, the gambols of the huge schools of porpoises all
these things help to fill the long hours with images of
beauty and small but absorbing interests after being
shut up between four very compressed walls.
Then came Port Said, with its reek of hot insanitary
soil, its repelling flashy shows and shops, and its loafing