a miserable muddle. The French passengers smiled
derisively at the inefficacy or rather total absence of any system of
embarkation of passengers, and the Americans opened their eyes! Always
they repeat on board--"Why, you first class passengers don't pay us." On
the Irrawaddy river boats they say this too, but they make you jolly
comfortable for all that.

It was six hours of struggle, mostly in the sun, before I got our things
into our cabin, and half our luggage lay on deck for the night with
natives camping on it! The officers on board were very pleasant and
agreeable, as they were on board the last British India boat we were on,
but the want of method in getting passengers and their baggage off the
wharf and into boats and on board was almost incredible....[38] There
was a vein of amusement, I remember, when I can get my mind off the
annoying parts of our "Embarkation." I got a chanter from a Chinese
pedlar in the street in the morning--heard the unmistakeable reedy notes
coming along the street as I did business in the the cool office of
Messrs Cook & Co., and leaving papers and monies went and met the
smiling Chinese pedlar of sweetmeats who sold me his chanter. The
position of the notes is the same as on our chanter, and the fingering
is the same; afterwards on board when I played a few notes on it the
beady black eyes of the Ghurkas in the waist sparkled, and they pulled
out their practice chanters from their kit at once--and there we
were!--and the long-legged, almond-eyed Sikhs on their baggage looked on
in languid wonder.

[38] Getting off at Calcutta was indescribable--if possible worse than
the embarkation--_a sauve qui peut_.

Would you like a description of Calcutta? I wish I could give it. It was
a little different from what I expected, smaller, and yet with ever so
much more life and bustle on the river than I'd expected. Commerce
doesn't go slow on account of heat, and here, as in Burmah, I was
surprised to see so much picturesque lading and unlading of cargoes
going on by the river banks, and the green grass and trees running from
the banks into the town. But we will jump Calcutta, I think, it is too
big an order; but before going on may I say that the architecture is, to
my mind, better than it is said to be. In Holdich's "India" it is
unfavourably compared with that in Bombay, but do you know, I almost
prefer the classic style of Calcutta to the scientific rococco Bombay
architecture, but I offe