Having heard of the safe arrival at the Vaal River, of my diamond venture which I mentioned in my second chapter, and being sanguine of its success, I determined to accept an offer to take charge, as government medical superintendent, of a detachment of time-expired coolies returning to India. It had always been a cherished wish of mine to see that historical land, and this presented a most favorable opportunity for me to gratify that desire.

After getting leave of absence from the Natal government, and securing the services of a locum tenens for my private practice, I started Feb. 10th, 1871, on a journey which proved so full of incident that I am irresistibly tempted to quote from letters which I wrote to my wife at the time describing the journey.

It is true that neither the sacred land of the Ganges nor “Araby the blest” is situated in Natal or the Cape Colony, and therefore the description of my adventures in these countries is not strictly appropriate to a journal of “Twenty Years in South Africa,” but as my experiences were at the time the comment of the Indian and Natalian press, I venture to reproduce them at the risk of any charges of wandering from my subject or of egotism, though I admit they might fairly enough be brought against me.

Bidding farewell to all at Verulam I spent the night in D’Urban, as the shipment of the coolies was not to take place until early next morning.

These immigrants, now homeward bound, had been the first shipped to the colony, arriving there by the Truro, Nov. 17th, 1860, ten years before, and were now returning in the Red Riding Hood, formerly one of the smartest tea clippers in the China trade. They were all got safely aboard by noon, though the skipper did not heave anchor until evening.

With a favorable wind we left the shores of Natal. What we suffered and endured, the characteristics of our passengers, our disappointing quarantine at Mauritius, our arrival at Madras, the continuation of the voyage to Calcutta and my own subsequent experience in Arabia, en route to Marseilles, the story of which is contained in the following letters, will, I trust, induce my readers to pardon the digression.

“My Dear ——: ‘A life on the ocean wave, a home on the rolling deep,’ sounds very exciting and spirit stirring when sung on shore, but all the excitement and enthusiasm vanish when one gets to sea on board a ship with some 400 coolies, men, women and children, as companions. Yet it was a sight worth seeing to behold the shipment at the outer anchorage when we left of the lame, the blind, the paralytic, the epileptic, the lepers without toes and the lepers without fingers.

“When the captain came off, he had got an absurd idea into his head that as he had been obliged by the surveyors to separate part of the hold for the women, that perforce the women must go there and leave their husbands. This I strenuously opposed, and was supported by Davis and Mason.^[16] Now as there are not any single women on board, such conduct on his part was preposterous. We telegraphed from the ship to Pietermaritzberg, and got back an answer: ‘Make an amicable arrangement’. The captain being simply obstinate, I became obstinate, too, when, after haggling about the matter for four hours, he gave in and I had my wish, and we got under way about six o’clock, losing an anchor in the attempt; there was a rolling sea on, but very fine weather otherwise, or I do not know what we should have done. The scene on deck it is impossible to describe! Women lay about like logs in helpless, speechless agony, children crying and yelling, and the men, of course, doing the best they could for themselves.

“I felt like Job, ‘leave me alone, for all is vanity.’ However, I recollected that old Job said this only when he was in the dumps, so I felt almost inclined to laugh at my own self-inflicted misery in taking the appointment.

“The whole of that week continued fine, and by degrees we got affairs into working order. The ‘tween decks,’ where the coolies are berthed, has port holes all along, and wind-sails are carried for ventilation, so that the air can be kept pretty fresh. On deck there is a large open kitchen built of brick, about twelve feet long and seven wide, where their food is cooked. I have two interpreters, two ‘sirdars,’ four cooks and six ‘topasses,’ or scavengers, under me. The coolies ‘fare sumptuously every day;’ they make most delicious curries of their allowance, which is rice, fish, tamarinds, turmeric, dholl, ghee, oil, mustard and pepper, as well as a sheep every Sunday. I can tell you they do not get such feeding in Natal. A meal such as I have described they get twice a day—at 9 A. M. and 3 P. M. At these times we get them all on deck, and they present a funny sight, the different family groups around their plates, helping themselves with their fingers out of the same pannikin. Here and there a wife, more attentive than the rest, feeds her husband, rolling the rice into balls and popping them into his mouth. Of course, among such a motley crew, we have some curious characters; one, styling himself ‘a Roman Catholic priest to his own countrymens’ is a curiosity—blind of one eye, a face with a sanctimonious leer, expressing, ‘What a fool you are to believe me,’ grizzly locks and a jagged beard, presenting a grotesquely solemn appearance. He sits day after day telling his beads and singing hymns. He has got a written paper with him to the following effect: ‘Gentlemens and Ladys, I beg to inform that I am a very poor old man; I have lost my sight and i can only see with my one eye and i have got small childrens to feed, so i hope gentlemens and kind ladys will help me and my childrens, it will be great favour to you, and God will bless you all and your families. I am your poor old man Antony, a Roman Catholic priest for my own countrymens.’

“I give him an approving nod when I see him, a little grog to keep his throat moist, and in return get the advantage of his petitions to the Throne of Grace, morning, noon and night.

“The familiarity of these semi-Christians with Holy Writ is something ludicrous. ‘How are you getting on this morning, Interpreter?’ I said to-day. ‘Very well, thank you; by the favor of the Lord Christ first, and secondly by favor of your honor.’ You see the relative position I hold here. Another, an old woman, who boasts of ‘Coffee Lister’ as her former master, continually holds up to me a rotten old blanket and says: ‘Present from the Natal government; good government, very!’ but adds, if I will give her a blanket, she ‘will pray the good Lord for me, my wifes [sic] and my families.’ We have also tailors, barbers, washermen and jewelers with us, who all do a roaring trade.

“But to proceed with my description of the ship and its ‘cargo.’ It is hard work to make them keep clean; they seem to abhor cold water. There is, however, on board a strong force pump, which enables me to do my duty. Every other morning I have the men brought forward and stripped, then I have the sea water pumped on them ad libitum.

“As a body they have a large amount of money with them. The Calcutta coolies, especially some of them, have as much as £50, £70 and £100 each, one man has £300, showing very forcibly the result of industry and sobriety, or rather ‘taking care of the pence, and leaving the pounds to take care of themselves’! Domestic squabbles are of frequent occurrence. One little wretch of a woman leads a stalwart six-footer an awful life—all day long she is nagging at him, but at night she excels, for she yells, and shouts, and chatters, and cries, enough to deafen one. Last night she pealed out a regular triple bob-major from her belfry, but so discordantly that for the first time I had a patient in hospital! I relieved him for once of his better half, locking her up for the night by herself in the dark, to brew mischief for the morrow, and pull her own hair instead of that of her husband. She came out this morning, however, considerably subdued.

“Feb. 27th.—Since writing the above we have made scarcely any progress, and are just now drifting in an entirely opposite direction to the one we wish to take, and are some 600 miles distant from Mauritius.

“March 4th, 9 A. M.—Just arrived off Port Louis, have anchored, and the health officer has been alongside, and who should he be but an old fellow-student of mine. We were told that Paris capitulated on Jan. 26th, 1871, but nothing further, as we are quarantined because we have coolies on board. We have, however, from the Bell buoy a good view of the harbor and town of Port Louis, as well as of the Pieter Botte mountain, which, I believe, has been ascended two or three times. It has a curious summit, which it is almost an impossibility to ascend, though this has been accomplished by flying a kite over, and so getting ropes across. Things seem very different here from Natal, and on an older and more established footing. After waiting until 3 o’clock, no permit has come for us to go on shore, but water has come alongside, at least the authorities left it about 200 yards from us and we had to fetch it, all the crew leaving the water boat. Why such absurd regulations should exist, when our ship is perfectly healthy and from a healthy port, I cannot possibly understand. We might surely have all the plagues of Egypt on board, combined with a mixture of cholera, yellow fever and small-pox, to account for the way we are treated. They even float a letter to us, in a boat with a tow line; like Mr. Meagles in ‘Little Dorrit,’ it is enough to make one ‘Allong and Marshong,’ and fume and swear; but so it is.

“The master of the quarantine boat will come presently to get paid for the water, and he takes away any letters, and this among others....

“My Dear ——: In my letter to you from Mauritius, which I suppose you will have long ago received, you saw that I was much disappointed by not getting on shore through the quarantine regulations, which are very strictly carried out. Round about Mauritius there are several islands, viz., Flat Island, where a quarantine station is, Round Island, where a light-house stands 365 feet above the level of the sea, behind these Sugar Loaf Island, which rises with precipitous cliffs, and is merely a bare rock, also the Islôt Gabriel. In sailing without steam, vessels come to Port Louis at the windward side (east) of the island, and sail in a kind of channel between these islands and the mainland, as I will call it. We sighted the south corner of Mauritius about 4 P. M., but kept off until daybreak next morning (Saturday) when we made for our anchorage at the Bell buoy about three-quarters of a mile from the shore. The coasting round the island which we made was very pleasant. It was a beautiful sunshiny morning, with a gentle eight knots an hour breeze. We passed the Gunner’s Quoin, near which the English landed when they took the island from the French, Nov. 29th, 1810, and very close to it we went, within a stone’s throw. It is a large bluff which juts out with perpendicular cliffs all around. The water is deep enough, but it would be a frightful place to run against in the night. After rounding this headland we stood closer in, and got pretty views of the island, and the district of Pamplemouse, the background being closed in by the lofty mountains, of which the Pieter Botte forms one of the principal features, towering 2,676 feet above the sea like a Titanic obelisk. We could see the green fields where ‘de sugar cane grows,’ the mills with their smoky chimneys, the houses of the planters, with their steep thatched roofs, beautiful verandahs and grassy lawns, well cut and kept, running down in some places to the beach. As I gazed I pictured to myself the poor groaning coolies, doomed to sweat in the mills and to toil painfully in the fields; yet this even was a far easier task than to conceive how the ‘Reaper, whose name is Death,’ who during the last few years has been stalking through this island,^[17] could ever have used his sickle so keenly in such a pleasant place. We were soon at Port Louis, passing by a barque from Newcastle, N. S. W., and anchored just opposite a fort bristling with guns, over which the Union Jack, ‘The flag that’s braved a thousand years, the battle and the breeze,’ was proudly flying.

“‘From Hull, Hell and Halifax, “Good Lord deliver us,”’ the thieves in the good old days used to devoutly pray. If they could have had my experience their litany would have been ‘From all sailing ships, coolie ships and Scotch ships, “Spare us good Lord.”’ The captain of this ship is a Scotchman, his mate is Scotch too. The former seems impressed with the idea that every one he comes in contact with has a design upon him, and he is also morbidly impressed with the pleasing delusion that all government officers are his servants, paid to wait on him. I can here see and learn to my cost how to save money. The flour we are using is quite sour, but still the cask must be finished before another is opened; the potatoes are old and unfit to eat; the salt beef is salt indeed, and the tongues are positively rotten—so that to eat them is an impossibility—but when drowned in vinegar and encased in mustard it is wonderful what an active imagination might not fancy them to be. The butter is rancid; the tin soups splendid emetics; the biscuit so hard that my poor teeth refuse to do duty; the water so putrid that I find it advisable to hold my nose and gulp it down. This style of living has considerably reduced me, but I don’t grumble, as I see it would be useless, I rather chuckle internally. The mate is a young, pig-headed, uncouth block of humanity, that wants licking into shape with a cat-o’-nine tails, his principal delight consists in calling those under him very pet names indeed. The second mate is a decent fellow, young, a colonial, born in Tobago.

“We found we should have to remain three days before permission would be given us to go on shore, so we got some water off under quarantine regulations, having an officer in a boat sailing round and round us continually at a distance of 200 yards, to see that no one had any communication with us. With a glass we could see into portions of Port Louis. This town lies at the foot of an amphitheatre of hills, and seems quietly nestled under their protecting wings. On the one side of the town lies the fort, with earthworks for defence, on the other is the quarter inhabited by the black population, thousands of whose little shanties we could see, built on the slope of the hill, and surrounded with trees. Further on we had pointed out to us the railway company’s works and the railway, with a fine viaduct crossing a deep ravine. The Pieter Botte mountain, though not the highest in the island, is very conspicuous. We weighed anchor at 10:30 P. M., and got at last fair away for India. One event has occurred to break the monotony of our journey, viz., the death of an old coolie woman. Her body was committed to the deep without any religious ceremony the morning after her decease, so that now, instead of

and will continue to do so, I think, until the sea is called upon to deliver up its dead, as we buried her in about 1,600 to 2,000 fathoms of water, the bottom of which I do not suppose she will ever reach. She has one son on board, who takes the matter very calmly, Mahomed in the Koran giving good hopes of the future bliss of the faithful, of which she, I am sure, was one, praying devoutly every morning with her face turned to Mecca. In fact, these people would put to shame thousands of Europeans in the way they observe their religious rites. Going along the deck at sunrise, I can see some with their faces turned to Mecca, others worshipping the sun, looking intently at it, and returning thanks that they are permitted to see his glorious light once more, others calling on the beneficent deity, Vishnu, whereas I am afraid those who ought to know better omit to do anything of the sort.

“March 27th.—Since writing last we have had three more deaths—a man, a woman and a child. Before they were committed to the deep they were neatly sewn up in long canvas bags. The man, when he was put overboard, seemed unwilling to leave us. He got caught on a chain level with the waves, and at the speed we were going, with his back bent tightly across it, he stuck for a long time, it seeming impossible to shake him off! The poor woman was a Christian, and my Roman Catholic friend came to the front in full force. It was quite refreshing to see the energy he exhibited and the gusto with which he repeated his prayers and told his beads. He evidently seemed to appreciate the opportunity which providence had afforded him of showing his peculiar powers. I do not know whether you have seen any one buried at sea, but on me the peculiar, solemn plash which the body gives when it touches the water, has even a more impressive effect than when the earth thrown on a coffin-lid rattles a doleful accompaniment to the refrain, ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust.’

“31st.—Weather is still continuing very calm. The coolies yesterday determined to make a grand offering to the Deity. All shades of religious opinions merged their differences, Mussulmen, Brahmins, Christians, all contributing something to propitiate the Almighty Power which ‘unseen they feel.’ You may laugh, but I also contributed, when after a prayer to Allah and his prophet Mahomed, we all shouted a grand ‘Hurrah!’—an unanimous shout it was. After this the money offering was tied up in a bag and fastened to the top of the mainmast, in ‘sure and certain hope’ of a fair wind resulting. Strange to say, such has followed, and this morning we are bowling along at ten knots an hour.

“April 8th.—Yesterday we sighted Ceylon, and during the day sailed slowly past it at a good distance from its shores, which with a glass I could see to be magnificently wooded. The first conquerors of Ceylon were Portuguese, the Dutch took it from them, and the English in turn drove out the latter, and have held it ever since, which, mutatis mutandis, is about the history of all our colonies.

“The highest mountain in Ceylon is called Adam’s Peak, about 7,000 feet above the sea, which we could see dimly in the far background. Nearer us, we saw ‘Westminster Abbey,’ some 2,000 feet high, and much closer to the coast. We are now within 300 miles of Madras.

“April 11th.—Madras is a splendid place to look at from shipboard. I go ashore this morning. Surf-boats came early alongside, curious looking things, about forty feet long, very light, not drawing more than two feet of water, and manned by thirteen to sixteen coolies, with long oars. We saw also some catamarans, these being made of three logs of wood just tied together, and it is perfectly astonishing to see how they go along over the surf, paddled by two Hindoos. Well, the captain and myself went ashore, to dance attendance at the halls of the great. How it would open some of the Natal people’s eyes if they could only see how things are done here! to see the Hindoo clerks in the merchants’ houses, in the custom-house, everywhere; fine tall men, some young, some old and venerable, all arrayed in spotless white, with matchless turbans.

“The luxury, the silent evidence of wealth and prosperity which one sees everywhere, is very great in contrast with poor little Natal. The office of the agent of the ship is as grand a building as the D’Urban court-house, and far more luxuriously fitted up, punkahs playing all day, and diffusing a cooling breeze. Nobody thinks of walking; in cabs and carriages by hundreds the black and white are all riding. It is rather curious to see the old chimney pot again; it seems the correct thing here for ‘dress,’ that is the band and the park after the sea breeze sets in, say at 5 P. M. I went this afternoon to the people’s park to see the menagerie. They possess some splendid lions, tigers, jackals, monkeys, etc., but I could not stop to hear the band, as my time was limited.

“The collector of customs and the port doctor are coming off to-morrow morning at 7 o’clock to pass the coolies. I expect the captain will want me to go with him to Calcutta.

“My Dear ——: I hope you have received a note informing you of my coming on here from Madras. I will now endeavor to follow my own footsteps over again on paper. On the Tuesday morning I landed at Madras. It is a large city, built right on the sea-beach, facing the rolling surf; it seems a mystery that anybody should ever have thought of founding a city on such a site, but in the days when the old East India Company was merely a mercantile, cotton buying and speculating firm, before it thought, by mixing itself in native broils, to increase its power, this was done, as much, no doubt as anything for the purpose of opposing some of the aggressions which the French at Pondicherry, some sixty miles to the south, were then making, for the French taught us the plan of ‘protecting’ the natives. It was entirely in this Presidency that Lord Clive, from being a mere clerk, achieved his early renown, and managed before he was twenty-seven to retire on £40,000 a year.

“Well, the town and suburbs extend some four or five miles along the beach. Talk about hardening the D’Urban streets, but to harden these must have cost a mint of money. They are all around for miles as level as a billiard table, or if you would prefer the simile, as flat as a grave-stone—the game, you know, gets finished at both places! The merchants’ offices, post-office, telegraph office, Supreme Court, are all near the pier, and to the rear and southward of these is the native town. These public buildings are all fine ones, though the dust and glare give the outside of them a parched appearance; inside, however, they are got up ‘regardless of expense.’ Comfort must be thought of in this climate. Further still to the south, say a mile, is Fort St. George. This is the first fort I have been in, and it seemed to my inexperienced eye to be impregnable, bastion on bastion, fosse on fosse. The fort is lit with gas, and inside, which comprises, I should imagine, some thousands of acres, there are the government buildings, mint, soldiers’ quarters and arsenal. Here during the mutiny came all the white people and the Eurasians, as they call half-castes. There is also an American Ice Co., with a magnificent ice-house some 200 feet high.

“Then I went to a native bazaar, where you may buy anything from a work on medicine down to a pair of slippers. I was much struck with the familiarity of these natives with English, nearly every man talks it, and the hundreds of carriage drivers all speak it well. I afterward visited the Mount Road, where all the aristocratic shops are, and where the elite do dwell, saw the governor’s house, then the general hospital, a fine building, which I went round with Dr. Chipperfield, a very nice man, who pointed me out many interesting cases. On Sunday morning, at half-past five, I was on the pier to catch the ship’s boat, got on board, and we set sail at once. While I was waiting Lord Napier, the Governor, came down with his staff; he looked quite pale and worn.

“It was most interesting to watch the Mausurah boatmen on their catamarans, shooting through the surf, and difficult to realize that before the building of the pier at Madras everybody and everything had to be landed through this surf; now this pier, which is of light iron girder work, projects beyond, and passengers and cargo can be landed on it, which is a great convenience. Guessing roughly, it is 600 to 700 yards long, and during a terrible typhoon which raged here some two years ago a French vessel ran right through the middle of it.

“Our captain, going up the Bay of Bengal, got very drunk. He managed to crawl out of his berth yesterday the first time since leaving Madras. As the fellow is detested, it afforded amusement (as his suffering was self-inflicted) to hear him sighing, hiccoughing and groaning with remorse of mind and stomach, unable to eat, afraid to drink and just strong enough to call in whispers ‘Steward.’ I advised a little brandy, ‘a hair of the dog that bit him,’ but recollecting his greed, on second consideration, I thought it would be a double lesson and that I could inflict a little more mental torture by ordering champagne, stimulating his stomach and teaching his pocket a lesson at the same time. We have fine weather this morning, but contrary winds, and are tacking about, whilst tugs are provokingly steaming past us, and puffing at us as if in derision.

“Saturday, April 22d.—When I wrote the foregoing yesterday, I did not anticipate such a night as we have just passed. Anchored in these roads (Saugor) for the night; at about 8 P. M. a regular north easter came on. In my life, so far, I have never experienced anything like it; it was accompanied by thunder and lightning. The crashes of thunder made the ship groan again, and the lightning was like a continuous exhibition of lime-light, the flashes succeeding one another with such terrible quickness that I could, I think, have read with ease, excepting that perhaps the light might have been too luridly bright. Then the wind, I cannot describe—when I tell you that it whistled through the bare rigging so that I could not hear myself speak on the poop, may give you some faint idea of its power. The moaning and sighing was painfully weird and dismal, reminding me of my feelings long ago, when first reading ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ where Legree is worked upon by the moaning in the keyhole up stairs; but to add to all this were the cries and entreaties of the coolies to obtain freedom, the captain having battened them down in their quarters. Well, it blew strong and stronger, faces began to get long and longer, the captain looked as if he would give anything to get the tug, which in his meanness he had that afternoon refused, and I began to think that what appears to be to man’s advantage may in the long run prove his ruin, and to wish that I had stopped in Madras.

“The anchor began to drag, excitement increasing, all hands to let down a second, I knew too well we had not a third (you will recollect we lost it at Natal), so now our hopes were centred in either the gale moderating, or the anchors holding true. The worst thing for us was the wind was against the tide, and tended to make us run over our anchors and snap the cables. After about two hours’ anxiety the wind gradually declined, but the thunder and lightning continued all night. This morning we have taken the tug for £50 to Calcutta, some sixty miles, so if all is well we shall be there to-night. ‘They that go down to the sea in ships, see the wonders of the deep!’

“Sunday, 23d.—We did not get down to Calcutta last night on account of a two hours’ detention in the river by another squall, and we anchored about seven miles to the south. This morning we started at 4 A. M. and arrived at the coolie depot at 7 A. M. The Protector was not long in coming on board, and in an hour the ship was emptied of its living, noisy, restless, filthy freight. Here ends the first chapter of my coolie experiences, and the second will never open.

“India is a wonderful country, and Calcutta is a prince of cities, ought I to say queen? It is lit with gas, and water is laid on to the dwellings, up stairs and down; the houses are simply magnificent, and here a man can see that it is possible not only to exist, but to live. From Saugor to Calcutta, say 100 miles or more, as far inland as I could see, the river’s banks were inhabited by a teeming population. I speak truly when I say that every inch of ground was occupied. This delta must give support to thousands upon thousands. It is easy in observing this dense population to see how cholera, fever and dysentery must play frightful havoc when they rage amongst it, and to picture what terrible loss of life the failure of one season’s rice crop would produce. The country is exceedingly low and flat, and there is an embankment at each side of the river to restrain any extraordinary rise. In the great cyclone in 1864 there was a great storm wave forty feet high which swept over the whole of this country—a regular deluge, the only wonder was how even one soul escaped. The pilot told me that he came down next day in a steamer, and though the river is a mile wide at Diamond Harbor, and continues to increase seaward, he could see nothing but the dead bodies of men, women and children, cattle and horses. From his description the sight must have been a truly appalling one. Ships drawing some fourteen feet and twenty feet water were driven three miles inland and left high and dry.

“I have been driving about all day seeing the streets, shops, etc.; there are here 25,000 white and more than a million colored inhabitants. There is no such thing as walking, as the sun is overpowering, and you feel as if it would knock you down, so powerful is it. The Government House, where Lord Mayo resides, is a magnificent palace. He and all the aristocracy are gone away to Simla, in the Himalayas, for the hot season. I also visited the museum, but it is badly kept, and there is not much to see, but the native bazaars are the most wonderful places that I ever was in—narrow streets, full of small shops, each crammed with merchandise of every description. A man, to all appearance caged in a den, turns out and shows you cashmere shawls worth thousands of rupees, another one jewelry, another silks, another Japan and China curiosities—the business done being astonishing. I have made up my mind to take a trip up country before I leave India, and visit the principal memorable scenes of the Indian mutiny—Cawnpore, Arrah, Lucknow, Agra, not omitting the Holy City of Benares, the head centre of Brahminism, to which all good Hindoos make a pilgrimage at least once in their lives.