ic, pleasant, and
hospitable inhabitants, will ever regret it, and the wayfarer will
return home with the consciousness of having been in contact with an
intensely virile race, only now beginning to realise its own strength.

CHAPTER X

Calcutta--Hooghly pilots--Government House--A Durbar--The sulky
Rajah--The customary formalities--An ingenious interpreter--The sailing
clippers in the Hooghly-Calcutta Cathedral--A succulent banquet--The
mistaken Ministre--The "Gordons"--Barrackpore--A Swiss Family Robinson
aerial house--The child and the elephants--The merry midshipmen--Some
of their escapades--A huge haul of fishes--Queen Victoria and
Hindustani--The Hills--The Manipur outbreak--A riding tour--A wise old
Anglo-Indian--Incidents--The fidelity of native servants--A novel
printing-press--Lucknow--The loss of an illusion.

Lord Lansdowne had in 1888 been transferred from Canada to India, and
in May of that year he left Ottawa for Calcutta, taking on the way a
three months' well-earned holiday in England. Two of his staff
accompanied him from the vigorous young West to the immemorially old
East.

He succeeded as Viceroy Lord Dufferin, who had also held the
appointment of Governor-General of Canada up to 1878, after which he
had served as British Ambassador both at Petrograd and at
Constantinople, before proceeding to India in 1884.

Lord Minto, too, in later years filled both positions, serving in
Canada from 1898 to 1904, and in India from 1905 to 1910.

Whether in 1690 Job Charnock made a wise selection in fixing his
trading-station where Calcutta now stands, may be open to doubt. He
certainly had the broad Hooghly at his doors, affording plenty of water
not only for trading-vessels, but also for men-of-war in cases of
emergency. Still, from the swampy nature of the soil, and its proximity
to the great marshes of the Sunderbunds, Calcutta could never be a
really healthy place. An arrival by water up the Hooghly unquestionably
gives the most favourable impression of the Indian ex-capital, though
the river banks are flat and uninteresting. The Hooghly is one of the
most difficult rivers in the world to navigate, for the shoals and
sand-banks change almost daily with the strong tides, and the white
Hooghly pilots are men at the very top of their profession, and earn
some L2000 a year apiece. They are tremendous swells, and are perfectly
conscious of the fact, coming on board with their native servants and