No answer from the assembly, but a
Dane or a German wants to know whether the _Myra_ is "up" yet. A dry,
red-haired man gives her exact position in the river--(How in the world
can he know?)--and the probable hour of her arrival. The grave debate
drifts into a discussion of a recent river accident, whereby a big
steamer was damaged, and had to put back and discharge cargo. A burly
gentleman who is taking a constitutional down Lal Bazar strolls up and
says: "I tell you she fouled her own chain with her own forefoot. Hev
you seen the plates?" "No." "Then how the ---- can any ---- like you
---- say what it ---- well was?" He passes on, having delivered his
highly flavored opinion without heat or passion. No one seems to resent
the garnish.

Let us get down to the river and see this stamp of men more thoroughly.
Clarke Russell has told us that their lives are hard enough in all
conscience. What are their pleasures and diversions? The Port Office,
where live the gentlemen who make improvements in the Port of Calcutta,
ought to supply information. It stands large and fair, and built in an
orientalised manner after the Italians at the corner of Fairlie Place
upon the great Strand Road, and a continual clamour of traffic by land
and by sea goes up throughout the day and far into the night against its
windows. This is a place to enter more reverently than the Bengal
Legislative Council, for it controls the direction of the uncertain
Hugli down to the Sandheads, owns enormous wealth, and spends huge sums
on the frontaging of river banks, the expansion of jetties, and the
manufacture of docks costing two hundred lakhs of rupees. Two million
tons of sea-going shippage yearly find their way up and down the river
by the guidance of the Port Office, and the men of the Port Office know
more than it is good for men to hold in their heads. They can without
reference to telegraphic bulletins give the position of all the big
steamers, coming up or going down, from the Hugli to the sea, day by
day, with their tonnage, the names of their captains and the nature of
their cargo. Looking out from the verandah of their office over a
lancer-regiment of masts, they can declare truthfully the name of every
ship within eye-scope, with the day and hour when she will depart.

In a room at the bottom of the building lounge big men, carefully
dressed. Now there is a type of face which belongs almost exclusively to
Bengal Cavalry officers--majors for ch