which are stronger than the B. C. S.; but,
for diffused, soul-sickening expansiveness, the reek of Calcutta beats
both Benares and Peshawar. Bombay cloaks her stenches with a veneer of
assafoetida and tobacco; Calcutta is above pretence. There is no
tracing back the Calcutta plague to any one source. It is faint, it is
sickly, and it is indescribable; but Americans at the Great Eastern
Hotel say that it is something like the smell of the Chinese quarter in
San Francisco. It is certainly not an Indian smell. It resembles the
essence of corruption that has rotted for the second time--the clammy
odour of blue slime. And there is no escape from it. It blows across the
_maidan_; it comes in gusts into the corridors of the Great Eastern
Hotel; what they are pleased to call the "Palaces of Chowringhi" carry
it; it swirls round the Bengal Club; it pours out of by-streets with
sickening intensity, and the breeze of the morning is laden with it. It
is first found, in spite of the fume of the engines, in Howrah Station.
It seems to be worst in the little lanes at the back of Lai Bazar where
the drinking-shops are, but it is nearly as bad opposite Government
House and in the Public Offices. The thing is intermittent. Six
moderately pure mouthfuls of air may be drawn without offence. Then
comes the seventh wave and the queasiness of an uncultured stomach. If
you live long enough in Calcutta you grow used to it. The regular
residents admit the disgrace, but their answer is: "Wait till the wind
blows off the Salt Lakes where all the sewage goes, and _then_ you'll
smell something." That is their defence! Small wonder that they consider
Calcutta is a fit place for a permanent Viceroy. Englishmen who can
calmly extenuate one shame by another are capable of asking for
anything--and expecting to get it.

If an up-country station holding three thousand troops and twenty
civilians owned such a possession as Calcutta does, the Deputy
Commissioner or the Cantonment Magistrate would have all the natives off
the board of management or decently shovelled into the background until
the mess was abated. Then they might come on again and talk of
"high-handed oppression" as much as they liked. That stink, to an
unprejudiced nose, damns Calcutta as a City of Kings. And, in spite of
that stink, they allow, they even encourage, natives to look after the
place! The damp, drainage-soaked soil is sick with the teeming life of a
hundred years, and the Munic