Monier-Williams - Modern India and the Indians

THE good ship Venetia, which took me to India on the occasion of my first expedition to the East, entered the Bay of Biscay on the 15th of October, 1875. Equinoctial gales had been raging for several days previously, and the Atlantic rollers, coming broadside on, soon discriminated between the passengers, instituting a process of natural selection, which resulted in the survival of those alone who were fittest to do justice to the diurnal bill of fare provided by the Peninsular and Oriental Company with a punctuality and regularity altogether weatherproof.

To be sure our decks were crowded with a motley assemblage of men, women, and children of all sorts and conditions; for examplea Duke and Prince of the Blood Royal, an Italian Countess, a general officer or two, some A. D. C.'s, several captains, one clergyman, numerous Indian civilians of various types, stations, and degrees, from judges of the High Court to the greenest of probationers just escaped out of the clutches of the Civil Service Examiners, sundry male odditieslong-bearded, short-bearded, and beardless, wived and wifelessdivers eccentric husbandless females of uncertain ages and vague antecedents, a few solitary wives on their way to join their husbands, one or two flirting bachelors, a bevy of pretty unmarried girls, a troop of young engineers from Cooper'sHill, a batch of serious commercial men, an unpleasant pack of obstreperous children, and a residuum of unsortable nondescripts, not to speak of a heterogeneous crew of English sailors, Lascars, Negroes, and Chinamen. None of this miscellaneous collection of human beings made their presence felt so plainly as the children. Sea-sickness is a powerful leveller and merciless humiliator, but was powerless either to repress or depress the children. Their self-assertion was only aggravated by the prostrate condition of their natural guardians. Indian nurses easily succumb, and are generally very attenuated and miserable in appearance; but the opposite extreme is occasionally exemplified. We had one Ayah on board, who was quite a curious specimen of abnormal portliness and unnatural hypertrophy. Another was a tall graceful woman attired in a long red robe, gold necklace, bracelets and bangles. Notwithstanding her ladylike mien, she was, of course, a woman of very low caste, probably a Mhr (or Dhe). She had some very peculiar blue cross lines tattooed on her forehead between the eyebrows, and a similar mark on one temple. Like all Indian women of her station, she had invested all her savings in ornaments, and carried them on her person.

Our fourth night at sea brought us opposite the mouth of the Tagus, and in sight of the Lisbon lights. At daybreak next day we were approaching Cape St. Vincent.

Life is made up of compensations. Our patient endurance of four miserable days was rewarded by a grand spectacle. Noble cliffs rose to a great height out of the sea, some glowing with red tints as if covered with heather, others frowning with black crags, and shelving suddenly into perpendicular precipices or scarps of dark granite, riddled with countless holes and caverns by the sheer force of the Atlantic. Here and there isolated needlelike rocks, and others of fantastic shapes, separated from the cliffs by seething channels, stood out from the mainland, or seemed to thrust themselves forward as if tocourt the first dash of the waves which covered their sides with sheets of foam. In the distance were lofty mountains, whose gilded summits appeared loftier through the morning mist which still clung to them. Cape St. Vincent has a lighthouse and telegraph station. We hoisted our signals, and our approach was instantly notified at Gibraltar.