A RAILWAY IN THE EAST

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1502, 24 October 1885, Page 4

A RAILWAY IN THE EAST

A new railway in a strange land is a curious mixture. Everything is so unsuited to everything else; the enus of the earth are met together in such a perplexing way that the * hole thiu? appears like a bit tumbled out of an extra vaganz% Close at hand an engine stands puffing in a business like way ejecting upon a camel's hump a stack of sleepers (iron) is bein<g used as a couch by half-a-dozen sleep ers (Asiatic men) ; the unloading of a waggon of wiggrm coal is being superintended by a gentleman in a full dress of white turban and string of beads. A station is erected, upon various doors of which are to be seen the announcements so familia" < us all—Station-master's Office,' ak-room," &c. ; while a few paces off'is a stretch of tangled jungle, whose principal inhabitants are some lively tigers, one of which carried off the fi-.-ket-collector lately as he was t.nkin:' his evening walk Under the tierce sunshine stretches the lately-laid line of rails, fresh from Birmingham, now almost as hot as when they issued from the furnace, and which poss°s a trade-mark representing a polar be? r perched on an iceberg. Among such an assemblage i of dissimilar parts we must exp- ct to find strange personages, each a little kosmos of conflicting elements. Behold yon balf-naked dirty piece of humanity, stretched out and snoring; on the floor of the " Station-master's ; Office." It is that important individual himself, manifested in his pristine' form and his natural condition. Buti in an hour or two, when a train has I to be started or received, he will ap-! pear on the platform in the company's j uniform, pocket-book and pencil in band, ready to afford or deny iuforma-1 tion, according to the status of the inquirer, with a perfect command of the idiomatic English peculiar to railways, wide awake and sober as a ! judge or more so. lie can to 1 ! you every change along a line for hundreds : of miles, every fa r e, and every by-law. And when his daily wo-k is done, lie doffs everything official or European at the same instant that ho duffs his uniform, and retires to his wife and family as complete an Oriental as the smallest and oiliest baby among : them. But pictuersqueness apart, there is no doubt that a railway in such regions is, as Artemus Ward has it, "a swee boon." It is a delicious relief to 101 l at something like

ease iu even the hottest first-class carriage after a long drive in a jolting bullock-cart or rattling pony-tonga. There is a dear familiar aspect, to us Europeans, afforded by the paraphernalia of the most outlandish of stations; and the much-anathema-tised steam-whistle is hateful only when we hear it too frequently. I can well remember with what joy I sawafter a two years residence in an Italian district innocent ot railroads, the long embankments and neat cuttinge which indicated the presence of civilisation. —Bright Days.