MR & MITCHELL ON CALCUTTA

Oamaru Mail, Volume X, Issue 4206, 6 September 1888, Page 3

MR & MITCHELL ON CALCUTTA

Mr Robert Mitchell, daring a cisml conversation with one of oar representatives on Tuesday last, related the following facts and incidents connected with his recent trip to India:— At Garden Beach, where tho horses wets landed, Is a perfect forest of masts •11 the way to Calcutta—a distance of 4 miles. The vessel cannot steam, but must drift down with the tide. There is a firm In Calcutta that accommodates horses. They bed down about 1500 horses, and they employ about 1200 coolies, to whom they pay four annas (4i) per day. A day or two after the horses had been landed, they were swam across a tank aboot half an acre in extent and coolies s?ram alongside and jumped on their back?. When they emerged, the coolies slipped over the cruppoca and let them go. This is the usual mode of dealing with horaes, and seems to be a sort of breaking-in process. The statement that grey or roan horses will not sell in Calcutta is erroneous. The firm already referred to hate 500 horses In vehicles for pnblic hire, and they employ 100 blacksmiths aud two veterinary surgeons, all of whom are natives. Ia shoeing a horse, one man holds the animal, another holds the foot, and a third drives In the nails. The shoeing, notwithstanding the expenditure of so mnch labor, is badly done. The inside of the hoof is all taken oat, and the result is the production of an oyster hoof and a contracted heel. There appears to be no explanation to account for this exceptional treatment of horses. Another prevailing fallacy ia that hones are short-lived in India. My Indian boy servant, wBo could talk a little English, showed me horses that were from 17 to 20 years old, and they still looked able for work. I witnessed the cremation of seven Hindoos on a pyre sccordiug to the usages of the people. Notwithstanding the protest of the priest, who said, "Tod shoald not see this, sahib," I watch for two hoars the progress of the flames, till the bodies were so charred as to be unrecognisable. I obtained leave to be present by paying the priest a rupee (Is 44), which was transformed into pice, and divided amongst his sabordlnates. On returning to my hotel, I heard that the chief mate of the Brenner was down with fever, and had been lodged In the hospital. I hired a native vehicle, and proceeded thither, and the jonrney cccnpied an honr and a half, for, the payment being by time—l2 annas, equal to Is, an hoar—and not by distance—the driver made the most of his job by adopting a circuitous route, after the fashion of London cabmen. In the tramcars a passenger may go five miles for six pice (IJd). The hones have iroD collars, and ■an hats to protect them from the excessive heat. The trams are patronised almost solely by Hindoos—clerks, barristers, etc. —and beggars accost the paneogen at every stage, amongst which are poor wretches afflicted with blindness, lameness and leprosy. The hotel at which I stayed was very large, and was open from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. There were black servants —bearers, and waiters, or " boys." There were also three barmaids, one Polish, another Bussian, and another French, who did nothing bat talk to the caatomen, play billiards, or anything else, with them, and kick the pnnkah boy if he did not poll the affair according to their ideas. The barmaids served no liqaors—the boys did that, and the mode of payment U by bill, which is daly receipted by the native clerk, who gets seven rupees per month, which Is the pay of the other servants all roand. The "baksheesh" system is rife at every tarn. There seems to be no systematic provision for the poor; bat the hospital building and the arrangements are excellent. Every night the band plays on the esplanade, and it ia then that one gets a peep at the European population and the fashionable class so. The whole European population seems to be terribly enervated by the climate. They have a washed out appearance and are so listless that they' seem incapable of even tying their own shoes. Mr Mitchell give 3 Calcutta a most damaging character, both as regards its social life and climatic drawbacks. The whole community seems to reek with an excess of luxury that is so wanton that it Is incapable of gratification, and with a poverty and servility that dopresses the spirit and disgusts the beholder. As to the climate, there aro only threo months of the year daring which existence is tolerable. Mr Mitchell arrived in the damp season, as the rains were coming on—the happy " boil" period, when these timehonored eruptions appear without fear or favor. Just prior to that period numbers of people of every class, but mostly Europeans, died of either sunstroke or apoplexy, one of the sailors of the steamer (the Tekapo) succumbed to cholera after six hours' illness. The pooi fellow was carried ashore barefooted, and one of the other sailors told the doctor that he wonld bring his boots to-morrow ; bat the doctor replied, " Never mind his boots; he'll want them no more." Mr Mitchell assares as that he was glad to tarn bis back on the great Indian city, and take the steamer ones more on her return to Otago, where the climate and people were more after bis style. He is unable to tell us anything about the resalt of the horse venture, as the horses had not been sold when he left. He also tells as that he has forwarded a poem to the Witness, graphically descriptive of his opinions regarding Calcutta, its climate and its social life, which'will probably appear in this week's issne, and that it is his intention to deliver a lecture, in which he will give an account of what he aaw, felt, and heard in a country that provides ■o many surprises of one kind and another for the European visitor.