Letters from India Volume I/From the Hon F H Eden to a Friend 4
My dear , I wrote to you very lately, but that is no reason why I should not write to you again. I dare say you have written to me since number four, and I should not wonder if you had been weak enough to put, or cause your letter to be put, into a ship, thinking that the most likely mode of getting a letter to India; but no ships ever happen to come here. We send a great many to England, and her conduct in returning none is unhandsome and unfair. If you were to catch a camel, fill two hampers with letters, and put them on its back, I believe he would find his way here, overland. The mercantile people here have some unknown means of carrying on communication with England. I suspect—I don’t positively know—but I strongly suspect that that is their method. They will feel pretty considerably surprised and baffled when they see our aristocratic, intellectual camel trotting among their mercenary trading herd.
Your heron’s plume, dearest! I’m so sorry and ashamed that it is not yet on its way to England; but it is no fault of mine, and you shall have it still. Our slowness here in procuring anything not immediately under our hand is supernaturally great.
The argala is too clever a bird to remain on this large, green, swampy tablecloth we call Bengal, when it can fly off to the hills, and on the hills only it is to be found; also, I believe each bird produces only two feathers of the kind you mention. It is more than a year since I have seen one accustomed thing, except the living things that came with me. Every now and then, the strangeness of everything around strikes me as if I had not now been used to it for months. Last evening, persuaded me, instead of going that tiresome straight carriage road, to come up with him, in his boat. He has six native rowers with scarlet and white dresses and scarlet caps; it looks like a very pretty sort of cockle-shell thing, on this grand river. Of course, when we had sent the carriages away, the tide turned out to be against us, and we arrived two hours later than we meant. I could not help thinking, as it grew dusk, and then dark, how strange any of you would have felt if you could have changed places with me for an hour.
The shores of the river between this and Calcutta have such a sameness we could not tell how much way we had made, but every now and then there was an outline of a temple, and the sound of the tom-toms and the screaming to the idols. Then some dark figures coming out of the jungle with lights, which they dropped in the water; if they floated past us, it was a good omen for them. Then a darker mass on the water, and that was a human body with vultures settled on it. Then, a large, bright flame on the shore, and that was a human body burning. Then a splash from a startled alligator. Then a cluster of moving stars would seem to surround the boat; these were fire-flies. Then, quite high up in the air, above the cocoa-nut trees, some supernatural looking globes of fire, something like moons detached from the sky; these are lamps of cocoa-nut oil drawn up to the top of bamboos and kept burning in the jungles for some religious purpose. Then a little thatched hut stationary on the water; that is an up-country boat, which has probably been three months making its way to Calcutta, advancing in the day and anchoring in the night, and from these boats there is generally a great sound of heathen voices. The boatmen seem to me to be the only natives who have any animal spirits.
The evenings are beautiful now, when the fogs are not too heavy; really cool enough to make me glad of a thick shawl. But all the year round, the sun is too hot for anyone to go out in the middle of the day. I have such a prodigy of a bird; I wish you could hear it talk and whistle.