Before it is brought to the test let us explore that shell. To our eye, its external appearance is more pleasing than that of the building we just left. The one central and four terminal towers, with their open, kiosk-like tops, are really graceful, and the slender spires which surmount them are preferable to the sham of sheet-iron turrets. Thanks, too, to the necessity of projecting an annex for hydraulic engines from one side of the middle, the building is distinguished by the possession of a front. The main cornice is forty feet in height upon the outside; the interior height being seventy feet in the two main longitudinal avenues and forty feet in the one central and two side aisles. The avenues are each ninety feet in width, and the aisles sixty, with a space of fifteen feet for free passage in the former and ten in the latter. A transept ninety feet broad crosses the main building into that for hydraulics, bringing up against a tank sixty by one hundred and sixty feet, whereinto the water-works are to precipitate, Versailles fashion, a cataract thirty-five feet high by-forty wide.
The substitution of timber for iron demands a closer placing of the pillars. They are consequently but sixteen feet apart "in the row," the spans being correspondingly more contracted. This has the compensating advantage, æsthetically speaking, of offering more surface for decorative effect, and the opportunity has been fairly availed of. The coloring of the roof, tie-rods and piers expands over the turmoil below the cooling calm of blue and silver. To this the eye, distracted with the dance of bobbins and the whirl of shafts, can turn for relief, even as Tubal Cain, pausing to wipe his brow, lifted his wearied gaze to the welkin.
Machinery Hall has illustrated, from its earliest days, the process of development by gemmation. Southward, toward the sun, it has shot forth several lusty sprouts. The hydraulic avenue which we have mentioned covers an acre, being two hundred and eight by two hundred and ten feet. Cheek by jowl with water is its neighbor fire, safe behind bars in the boiler-house of the big engine; and next branches out, over another acre and more, or forty-eight thousand square feet, the domain of shoes and leather under a roof of its own.
Including galleries and the leather, fire and water suburbs, this structure affords more than fifteen acres of space. Over that area it rose like an exhalation in the spring and early summer of 1875. At the close of winter it existed only in the drawings of Messrs. Pettit & Wilson. Under the hands of Mr. Philip Quigley it was ready to shelter a great Fourth of July demonstration. This matches the rapidity of growth of its neighbor before described. The Main Building, designed by the same firm, had its foundations laid by Mr. R.J. Dobbins, contractor, in the fall of 1874, but nothing further could be done till the following spring. The first column was erected, an iron Maypole, on the first day of the month of flowers, and the last on the 27th of October. Three weeks later the last girder was in place. All had been done with the precision of machinery, no pillar varying half an inch from its line. Machinery, indeed, rolled the quadrant-shaped sections of each column and riveted their flanges together with hydraulic hammers; great steam-derricks dropped each on its appointed seat; and the main tasks of manual labor in either building were painting, glazing, floor-laying and erecting the ground-wall of masonry, from five to seven feet high, that fills in the outer columns all round to a level with the heads of theorists who, holding that la propriété c'est le vol, assert the propriety of theft.
Following Belmont Avenue, the Appian Way of the Centennial, to the north-west, we penetrate a mob of edifices, fountains, restaurants, government offices, etc., and reach the Agricultural Building—the palace of the farmer. The hard fate of which he habitually complains—that of being thrust into a corner save when he is wanted for tax-paying purposes—does not forsake him here. The commission does not tax him, however, and the boreal region whereto he and his belongings are consigned is in no other way objectionable than as not being nearer the front. The building is worthy of a Centennial agricultural fair. Five hundred and forty by eight hundred and twenty feet, with ten acres and a quarter under roof, it equals the halls of a dozen State cattle-shows, The style is Gothic, the three transepts looking like those of as many cathedrals stripped of the roof, the extrados taking its place. The nave that spits them is a hundred and twenty-five feet wide, with an elevation of seventy-five feet. An ecclesiastical aspect is imparted by the great oriel over the main entrance, and the resemblance is aided by a central tower that suggests the "cymbals glorious swinging uproarious" in honor of the apotheosis of the plough. The materials of this bucolic temple are wood and glass. The contract price was $250,000. Its contents will be more cosmopolitan than could have been anticipated when it was planned. Germany claims five thousand feet and Spain six thousand. Among other countries, tropical America is fully represented.
Besides this indoor portion of the world's farm-steading, a barnyard of correspondent magnitude is close at hand, where all domestic animals will be accommodated, and the Weirs, Landseers and Bonheurs will find many novelties for the portfolio. A race-track, too, is an addendum of course. What would our Pan-Athenaic games be without it?
From this exhibition of man's power over the fruits of the earth and the beasts of the field we cross a ravine where the forest is allowed to disport itself in ignorance of his yoke, and ascend another eminence where floral beauty, gathered from all quarters of the globe, is fed in imprisonment on its native soil and breathes its native climate. We predict that woman will seek her home among the flowers on the hill rather than in the atelier specially prepared for her in the valley we have passed. Her tremendous struggles through the mud, while yet the grounds were all chaos, to get sight of the first plants that appeared in the Horticultural Building, left no doubt of this in our mind.
No site could have been more happily chosen for this beautiful congress-hall of flowers. It occupies a bluff that overlooks the Schuylkill a hundred feet below to the eastward, and is bounded by the deep channels of a pair of brooks equidistant on the north and south sides. Up the banks of these clamber the sturdy arboreal natives as though to shelter in warm embrace their delicate kindred from abroad. Broad walks and terraces prevent their too close approach and the consequent exclusion of sunlight.
For the expression of its purpose, with all the solidity and grace consistent with that, the Moresque structure before us is not excelled by any within the grounds. The curved roofs of the forcing-houses would have the effect upon the eye of weakening the base, but that, being of glass and showing the greenery within, their object explains itself at once, and we realize the strong wall rising behind them and supporting the lofty range of iron arches and fretwork that springs seventy-two feet to the central lantern. The design of the side portals and corner towers may be thought somewhat feeble. They and the base in its whole circuit might with advantage have been a little more emphasized by masonry. The porticoes or narrow verandahs above them on the second story are in fine taste. The eruption of flag-poles is, of course, a transient disease, peculiar to the season. They have no abiding-place on a permanent structure like this, and will disappear with the exposition.
Entering from the side by a neat flight of steps in dark marble, we find ourselves in a gayly-tiled vestibule thirty feet square, between forcing-houses each a hundred by thirty feet. Advancing, we enter the great conservatory, two hundred and thirty by eighty feet, and fifty-five high, much the largest in this country, and but a trifle inferior in height to the palm-houses of Chatsworth and Kew. A gallery twenty feet from the floor will carry us up among the dates and cocoanuts that are to be. The decorations of this hall are in keeping with the external design. The woodwork looks out of place amid so much of harder material; but there is not much of it.
Outside promenades, four in number and each a hundred feet long, lead along the roofs of the forcing-houses, and contribute to the portfolio of lovely views that enriches the Park. Other prospects are offered by the upper floors of the east and west fronts; the aërial terrace embracing in all seventeen thousand square feet. The extreme dimensions of the building are three hundred and eighty by one hundred and ninety-three feet. Restaurants, reception-rooms and offices occupy the two ends. The contractor who has performed his work so satisfactorily is Mr. John Rice.
A few years hence this winter-garden will, with one exception to which we next proceed, be the main attraction at the Park. It will by that time be effectively supplemented by thirty-five surrounding acres of out-door horticulture, to which the soil of decomposed gneiss is well suited.
Passing from the bloom of Nature, we complete our circuit with that which springs from the pencil, the chisel and the burin. Here we alight upon another instance of inadequate calculation. That the art-section of the exposition would fill a building three hundred and sixty-five by two hundred and ten feet, affording eighty-nine thousand square feet of wall-surface for pictures, must, when first proposed, have struck the most imaginative of the projectors as a dream. The actual result is that it proved indispensably necessary to provide an additional building of very nearly equal dimensions, or three hundred and forty-nine by a hundred and eighty-six feet, to receive the contributions offered; and this after the promulgation of a strict requirement that "all works of art must be of a high order of merit." Half the space in the extension had been claimed by Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Austria and Italy before ground was broken for its foundation; and recent demands at home have rendered necessary a further projection of the wings, with the effect of giving to the building the form of a Greek cross.
This building is on the rear, or north side, of Memorial Hall, and is the first portion of the fine-art department that meets the eye of one coming from Horticultural Hall. It is of comparatively temporary character, being built of brick instead of the solid granite that composes the pile in front of it. Its architectural pretensions are of course inferior. It is the youngest of all the exposition buildings, the present spring witnessing its commencement and completion. The drying of such green walls in such manner as to render them safe for valuable pictures has been compassed by the use of "asbestos" brick, which is said to be fire- as well as water-proof. Failure in this regard would be of the less moment, inasmuch as a great proportion of the contents will be drawings and engravings. In interior plan the extension will closely imitate the main building.
Memorial Hall, as its name implies, contemplates indefinite durability. What Virginia and Massachusetts granite, in alliance with Pennsylvania iron, on a basis of a million and a half of dollars, can effect in that direction, seems to have been done. The façade, designed by Mr. Schwarzmann, is in ultra-Renaissance; the arch and balustrade and open arcade quite overpowering pillar and pediment. The square central tower, or what under a circular dome would be the drum, is quite in harmony with the main front so tar as proportion and outline are concerned; but there is too much blank surface on the sides to match the more "noisy" details below it. This apart, the unity of the building is very striking. That its object, of supplying the best light for pictures and statuary, is not lost sight of, is evidenced by the fact that three-fourths of the interior space is lighted from above, and the residue has an ample supply from lofty windows. The figures of America, Art, Science, etc. which stud the dome and parapet were built on the spot, and will do very well for the present. The eagles are too large in proportion, and could easily fly away with the allegorical damsels at their side.
The eight arched windows of the corner towers, twelve and a half by thirty-four feet, are utilized for art-display. Munich fills two with stained glass: England also claims a place in them. The iron doors of the front are inlaid with bronze panels bearing the insignia of the States; the artist prudently limiting himself to that modest range of subjects in recognition of the impossibility of eclipsing Ghiberti at six months' notice. Thirty years is not too much time to devote to completing the ornamentation of this building. Five, seven or ten millions of people will pass through it in the course of its first year, and among them will be some capable of making sound suggestions for its finish. The wisdom that comes from a multitude of counsels will remain to be sifted. Then will remain the creation of the artists who are to carry the counsels into execution. We shall be fortunate if the next three decades bring us men thoroughly equal to the task.
It would be an unpardonable neglect of the maxim which enjoins gratitude to the bridge that carries us safely over were we to complete our tour of the exposition structures without a glance at the graceful erections, diverse in magnitude and design, which overleap the depressions so attractive to the student of the picturesque and so trying to the pedestrian. The æsthetic capabilities of bridge architecture are very great, and a fine field is here offered for their display. The flat expanses of Hyde Park, the Champs de Mars and the Prater could afford no such exhibition. The ground and the buildings became, perforce, two sharply distinct things; and the blending into unity of landscape and architecture could be but imperfectly attained. Here the case is very different. With the aid of an art that embraces in its province alike the fairy trellis and the monumental arch and pilaster, the lines of Memorial Hall and other permanent edifices may be led over the three hundred acres appropriated to the exposition. From the foundation of a bridge-pier to the crowning statue of America, the artist finds an uninterrupted range.
The work of his foster-brother, the artisan, has certainly been well done. The structures we have been traversing are, in their way, works of art—very worthy, if not the choicest conceivable, blossoms of our century-plant. For fitness, the quality that underlies beauty throughout Nature from the plume to the tendril and the petal, they have not been surpassed in their kind. Every flange, bolt, sheet and abutment has been well thought out. Whatever the purpose, to bind or to brace, to lift or to support, everything tells.
The Koutab Minar, which I had first viewed nine miles off from one of the little kiosquelets crowning the minarets of the Jammah Masjid, improved upon closer acquaintance. One recognizes in the word "minaret" the diminutive of "minar," the latter being to the former as a tower to a turret. This minar of Koutab's—it was erected by the Mussulman general Koutab-Oudeen-Eibeg in the year 1200 to commemorate his success over the Rajpút emperor Pirthi-Raj—is two hundred and twenty feet high, and the cunning architect who designed it managed to greatly intensify its suggestion of loftiness by its peculiar shape. Instead of erecting a shaft with unbroken lines, he placed five truncated cones one upon another in such a way that the impression of their successively lessening diameters should be lengthened by the four balconies which result from the projection of each lower cone beyond the narrower base of the cone placed on it—thus borrowing, as it were, the perspective effects of five shafts and concentrating them upon one. The lower portion, too, shows the near color of red—it is built of the universal red sandstone with which the traveler becomes so familiar—while the upper part reveals the farther color of white from its marble casing. Each cone, finally, is carved into reeds, like a bundle of buttresses supporting a weight enormous not by reason of massiveness, but of pure height.
The group of ruins about the Koutab Minar was also very fascinating to me. The Gate of Aladdin, a veritable fairy portal, with its bewildering wealth of arabesques and flowing traceries in white marble inlaid upon red stone; the Tomb of Altamsh; the Mosque of Koutab,—all these, lying in a singular oasis of trees and greenery that forms a unique spot in the arid and stony ruin-plain of Delhi, drew me with great power. I declared to Bhima Gandharva that it was not often in a lifetime that we could get so many centuries together to talk with at once, and wrought upon him to spend several days with me, unattended by servants, in this tranquil society of the dead ages, which still live by sheer force of the beautiful that was in them.
"Very pretty," said my companion, "but not by force of the beautiful alone. Do you see that iron pillar?" We were walking in the court of the Mosque of Koutab, and Bhima pointed, as he spoke, to a plain iron shaft about a foot in diameter rising in the centre of the enclosed space to a height of something over twenty feet. "Its base is sunken deeper in the ground than the upper part is high. It is in truth a gigantic nail, which, according to popular tradition, was constructed by an ancient king who desired to play Jael to a certain Sisera that was in his way. It is related that King Anang Pal was not satisfied with having conquered the whole of Northern India, and that a certain Brahman, artfully seizing upon the moment when his mind was foolish with the fumes of conquest, informed him there was but one obstacle to his acquisition of eternal power. 'What is that?' said King Anang Pal.—'It is,' said the Brahman, 'the serpent Sechnaga, who lies under the earth and stops it, and who at the same time has charge of Change and Revolution.—'Well, and what then?' said King Anang Pal.—'If the serpent were dead there would be no change,' said the Brahman.—'Well, and what then?' said King Anang Pal.—'If you should cause to be constructed a great nail of iron, I will show you a spot where it shall be driven so as to pierce the head of the serpent.' It was done; and the nail—being this column which you now contemplate—was duly driven. Then the Brahman departed from the court. Soon the king's mind began to work, to question, to doubt, to harass itself with a thousand speculations, until his curiosity was inflamed to such a degree that he ordered the nail to be drawn out. With great trouble and outlay this was done: slowly the heavy mass rose, while the anxious king regarded it. At last the lower end came to his view. Rama! it was covered with blood. 'Down with it again!' cries the joyful king: 'perhaps the serpent is not yet dead, and is escaping even now.' But, alas! it would not remain stable in any position, pack and shove howsoever they might. Then the wise Brahman returned. 'O king,' said he, in reply to the monarch's interrogatories, 'your curiosity has cost you your kingdom: the serpent has escaped. Nothing in the world can again give stability to the pillar or to your reign.' And it was true. Change still lived, and King Anang Pal, being up, quickly went down. It is from this pillar that yon same city gets its name. In the tongue of these people dilha is, being interpreted, 'tottering;' and hence Dilhi or Delhi. It must be confessed, however, that this is not the account which the iron pillar gives of itself, for the inscription there declares it to have been erected as a monument of victory by King Dhara in the year 317, and it is known as the Lâth (or pillar) of Dhara."
Next day we took train for Agra, which might be called Shah Jehan's "other city," for it was only after building the lovely monument to his queen—the Taj Mahal—which has made Agra famous all over the world, that he removed to Delhi, or that part of it known as Shahjehanabad. Agra, in fact, first attained its grandeur under Akbar, and is still known among the natives as Akbarabad.
"But I am all for Shah Jehan," I said as, after wandering about the great citadel and palace at the south of the city, we came out on the bank of the Jumna and started along the road which runs by the river to the Taj Mahal. "A prince in whose reign and under whose direct superintendence was fostered the style of architecture which produced that little Mouti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) which we saw a moment ago—not to speak of the Jammah Masjid of Delhi which we saw there, or of the Taj which we are now going to see—must have been a spacious-souled man, with frank and pure elevations of temper within him, like that exquisite white marble superstructure of the Mouti Masjid which rises from a terrace of rose, as if the glow of crude passion had thus lifted itself into the pure white of tried virtue."
A walk of a mile—during which my companion reviewed the uglinesses as well as the beauties of the great Mogol reign with a wise and impartial calmness that amounted to an affectionate rebuke of my inconsiderate effusiveness—brought us to the main gate of the long red stone enclosure about the Taj. This is itself a work of art—in red stone banded with white marble, surmounted by kiosques, and ornamented with mosaics in onyx and agate. But I stayed not to look at these, nor at the long sweep of the enclosure, crenellated and pavilioned. Hastening through the gate, and moving down a noble alley paved with freestone, surrounded on both sides with trees, rare plants and flowers, and having a basin running down its length studded with water-jets, I quickly found myself in front of that bewilderment of incrustations upon white marble which constitutes the visitor's first impression of this loveliest of Love's memorials.
I will not describe the Taj. This is not self-denial: the Taj cannot be described. One can, it is true, inform one's friends that the red stone platform upon which the white marble mausoleum stands runs some nine hundred and sixty feet east and west by three hundred and twenty north and south; that the dome is two hundred and seventy feet high; that the incrustations with which the whole superstructure is covered without and within are of rock-crystal, chalcedony, turquoise, lapis-lazuli, agate, carnaline, garnet, oynx, sapphire, coral, Pannah diamonds, jasper, and conglomerates, brought respectively from Malwa, Asia Minor, Thibet, Ceylon, Temen, Broach, Bundelcund, Persia, Colombo, Arabia, Pannah, the Panjab, and Jessalmir; that there are, besides the mausoleum, two exquisite mosques occupying angles of the enclosure, the one built because it is the Moslem custom to have a house of prayer near the tomb, the other because the architect's passion for symmetry demanded another to answer to the first, whence it is called Jawab ("the answer"); that out of a great convention of all the architects of the East one Isa (Jesus) Mohammed was chosen to build this monument, and that its erection employed twenty thousand men from 1630 to 1647, at a total cost of twelve millions of dollars; and, finally, that the remains of the beautiful queen variously known as Mumtazi Mahal, Mumtazi Zemani and Taj Bibi, as well as those of her royal husband, Shah Jehan, who built this tomb to her memory, repose here.
But this is not description. The only way to get an idea of the Taj Mahal is—to go and see it.
"But it is ten thousand miles!" you say.
"But it is the Taj Mahal," I reply with calmness. And no one who has seen the Taj will regard this answer as aught but conclusive.
But we had to leave it finally—it and Agra—and after a railway journey of some twelve hours, as we were nearing Allahabad my companion began, in accordance with his custom, to give me a little preliminary view of the peculiarities of the town.
"We are now approaching," he said, "a city which distinguishes itself from those which you have seen by the fact that besides a very rich past it has also a very bright future. It is situated at the southern point of the Lower Doab, whose fertile and richly-cultivated plains you have been looking at to-day. These plains, with their wealth, converge to a point at Allahabad, narrowing with the approach of the two rivers,—the Ganges and the Jumna—that enclose them. The Doab, in fact, derives its name from do, "two," and ab, "rivers." But Allahabad, besides being situated at the junction of the two great water-ways of India—for here the Jumna unites with the Ganges—is also equally distant from the great extremes of Bombay, Calcutta, and Lahore, and here centres the railway system which unites these widely-separated points. Add to this singular union of commercial advantages the circumstance—so important in an India controlled by Englishmen—that the climate, though warm, is perfectly wholesome, and you will see that Allahabad must soon be a great emporium of trade."
"Provided," I suggested, "Benares yonder—Benares is too close by to feel uninterested—will let it be so."
"Oh! Benares is the holy city. Benares is the blind Teiresias of India: it has beheld the Divine Form, and in this eternal grace its eyes have even lost the power of seeing those practical advancements which usually allure the endeavors of large cities. Allahabad, although antique and holy also, has never become so wrapped up in religious absorption."
On the day after our arrival my companion and I were driven by an English friend engaged in the cultivation of indigo to an indigo-factory near the town, in compliance with a desire I had expressed to witness the process of preparing the dye for market.
"Not long ago," I said to our friend as we were rolling out of the city, "I was wandering along the banks of that great lagoon of Florida which is called the Indian River, and my attention was often attracted to the evidences of extensive cultivation which everywhere abounded. Great ditches, growths of young forests upon what had evidently been well-ploughed fields within a century past, and various remains of settlements constantly revealed themselves. On inquiry I learned that these were the remains of those great proprietary indigo-plantations which were cultivated here by English grantees soon after Florida first came under English protection, and which were afterward mournfully abandoned to ruin upon the sudden recession of Florida by the English government."
"They are ruins of interest to me," said our English friend, "for one of them—perhaps some one that you beheld—represents the wreck of my great-great-grandfather's fortune. He could not bear to stay among the dreadful Spaniards and Indians; and so, there being nobody to sell to, he simply abandoned homestead, plantations and all, and returned to England, and, finding soon afterward that the East India Company was earnestly bent upon fostering the indigo-culture of India, he came here and recommenced planting. Since then we've all been indigo-planters—genuine 'blue blood,' we call ourselves."
Indigo itself had a very arduous series of toils to encounter before it could manage to assert itself in the world. The ardent advocates of its azure rival, woad, struggled long before they would allow its adoption. In 1577 the German government officially prohibited the use of indigo, denouncing it as that pernicious, deceitful and corrosive substance, the Devil's dye. It had, indeed, a worse fate in England, where hard names were supplemented by harsh acts, for in 1581 it was not only pronounced anathema maranatha by act of Parliament, but the people were authorized to institute search for it in their neighbors' dye-houses, and were empowered to destroy it wherever found. Not more than two hundred years have passed since this law was still in force. It was only after a determined effort, which involved steady losses for many years, that the East India Company succeeded in re-establishing the culture of indigo in Bengal. The Spanish and French in Central America and the West Indies had come to be large growers, and the production of St. Domingo was very large. But the revolt in the latter island, the Florida disasters and the continual unsettlement of Mexico, all worked favorably for the planters of India, who may now be called the indigo-producers of the world.
The seed is usually sown in the latter part of October in Bengal, as soon as the annual deposit of the streams has been reduced by drainage to a practicable consistency, though the sowing-season lasts quite on to the end of November. On dry ground the plough is used, the ryots, or native farm-laborers, usually planting under directions proceeding from the factory. There are two processes of extracting the dye, known as the method "from fresh leaves" and that "from dry leaves." I found them here manufacturing by the former process. The vats or cisterns of stone were in pairs, the bottom of the upper one of each couple being about on a level with the top of the lower, so as to allow the liquid contents of the former to run freely into the latter. The upper is the fermenting vat, or "steeper," and is about twenty feet square by three deep. The lower is the "beater," and is of much the same dimensions with the upper, except that its length is five or six feet greater. As the twigs and leaves of the plants are brought in from the fields the cuttings are placed in layers in the steeper, logs of wood secured by bamboo withes are placed upon the surface to prevent overswelling, and water is then pumped on or poured from buckets to within a few inches of the top. Fermentation now commences, and continues for fourteen or fifteen hours, varying with the temperature of the air, the wind, the nature of the water used and the ripeness of the plants. When the agitation of the mass has begun to subside the liquor is racked off into the lower vat, the "beater," and ten men set to work lustily beating it with paddles (busquets), though this is sometimes done by wheels armed with paddle-like appendages. Meanwhile, the upper vat is cleaned out, and the refuse mass of cuttings stored up to be used as fuel or as fertilizing material. After an hour and a half's vigorous beating the liquor becomes flocculent. The precipitation is sometimes hastened by lime-water. The liquor is then drained off the dye by the use of filtering-cloths, heat being also employed to drain off the yellow matter and to deepen the color. Then the residuum is pressed in bags, cut into three-inch cubes, dried in the drying-house and sent to market.
The dry-leaf process depends also upon maceration, the leaves being cropped from the ripe plant, and dried in the hot sunshine during two days, from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon.
On the next day, at an early hour in the morning, my companion and I betook us to the Plain of Alms. I have before mentioned that Allahabad, the ancient city of Prayaga, is doubly sanctified because it is at the junction of the Jumna and the Gauges, and these two streams are affluents of its sanctity as well as of its trade. The great plain of white sand which is enclosed between the blue lake-like expanses of the two meeting rivers is the Plain of Alms. In truth, there are three rivers which unite here—the Ganges, the Jumna and the Saravasti—and this thrice-hallowed spot is known in the Hindu mythologic system as the Triveni.
"But where is the third?" I asked as we stood gazing across the unearthly-looking reaches of white sand far down the blue sweep of the mysterious waters.
"Thereby hangs a tale," replied my companion. "It is invisible here, but I will show you what remains of it presently when we get into the fort. Here is a crowd of pilgrims coming to bathe in the purifying waters of the confluence: let us follow them."
As they reached the shore a Brahman left his position under a great parasol and placed himself in front of the troop of believers, who, without regard to sex, immediately divested themselves of all clothing except a narrow cloth about the loins, and followed him into the water. Here they proceeded to imitate his motions, just as pupils in a calisthenic class follow the movements of their teacher, until the ceremonies of purification were all accomplished.
"A most villainous-faced penitent!" I exclaimed as one of their number came out, and, as if wearied by his exertions, lay down near us on the sand.
Bhima Gandharva showed his teeth: "He is what your American soldiers called in the late war a substitute. Some rich Hindu, off somewhere in India, has found the burden of his sins pressing heavily upon him, while at the same time the cares of this world, or maybe bodily infirmities, prevent him from visiting the Triveni. Hence, by the most natural arrangement in the world, he has hired this man to come in his place and accomplish his absolution for him."
Striking off to the westward from the Plain of Alms, we soon entered the citadel of Akbar, which he built so as to command the junction of the two streams. Passing the Lâth (pillar) of Asoka, my companion led me down into the old subterranean Buddhistic temple of Patal Pouri and showed me the ancient Achaya Bat, or sacred tree-trunk, which its custodians declare to be still living, although more than two thousand years old. Presently we came to a spot under one of the citadel towers where a feeble ooze of water appeared.
"Behold," said my friend, "the third of the Triveni rivers! This is the river Saravasti. You must know that once upon a time, Saravasti, goddess of learning, was tripping along fresh from the hills to the west of Yamuna (the Jumna), bearing in her hand a book. Presently she entered the sandy country, when on a sudden a great press of frightful demons uprose, and so terrified her that in the absence of other refuge she sank into the earth. Here she reappears. So the Hindus fable."
On our return to our quarters we passed a verandah where an old pedagogue was teaching a lot of young Mussulmans the accidence of Oordoo, a process which he accomplished much as the "singing geography" man used to impart instruction in the olden days when I was a boy—to wit, by causing the pupils to sing in unison the A, B, C. Occasionally, too, the little, queer-looking chaps squatted tailor-wise on the floor would take a turn at writing the Arabic character on their slates. A friendly hookah in the midst of the group betrayed the manner in which the wise man solaced the labors of education.
On the next day, as our indigo-planter came to drive us to the Gardens of Chusru, he said, "An English friend of mine who is living in the Moffussil—the Moffussil is anywhere not in Calcutta, Bombay or Madras—not far from Patna has just written me that word has been brought from one of the Sontal villages concerning the depredations of a tiger from which the inhabitants have recently suffered, and that a grand hunt, elephant-back, has been organized through the combined contributions of the English and native elephant-owners. He presses me to come, and as an affair of this sort is by no means common—for it is no easy matter to get together and support a dozen elephants and the army of retainers considered necessary in a great hunt—I thought perhaps you would be glad to accompany me."
Of course I was; and Bhima Gandharva, though he would not take any active part in the hunt, insisted upon going along in order to see that no harm came to me.
On the next day, therefore, we all took train and fared south-eastward toward Calcutta, as far as to Bhagalpur, where we left the railway, sending our baggage on to Calcutta, and took private conveyance to a certain spot among the Rajmahal Mountains, where the camp had been fixed by retainers on the day before. It was near a village of the Sontals, which we passed before reaching it, and which was a singular-enough spectacle with its round roofed huts and a platform at its entrance, upon which, and under which, were ghastly heaps of the skulls of animals slain by the villagers. These Sontals reminded me of the Gónds whom I had seen, though they seemed to be far manlier representatives of the autochthonal races of India than the former. They are said to number about a million, and inhabit a belt of country some four hundred miles long by one hundred broad, including the Rajmahal Mountains, and extending from near the Bay of Bengal to the edge of Behar. So little have they been known that when in the year 1855 word was brought to Calcutta that the Sontals had risen and were murdering the Europeans, many of the English are said to have asked not only Who are the Sontals? but What are the Sontals?
The more inaccessible tops of the same mountains, the Rajmahal, are occupied by a much ruder set of people, the Mâlers, who appear to have been pushed up here by the Sontals, as the Sontals were themselves pressed by the incoming Aryans.
As we arrived at the camp I realized the words of our English friend concerning the magnitude of the preparations for a tiger-hunt undertaken on the present scale. The tents of the sportsmen, among whom were several English army officers and civil officials, besides a native rajah, were pitched in a beautiful glade canopied by large trees, and near these were the cooking-tents and the lodging-places of the servants, of whom there was the liberal allowance which is customary in India. Through the great tree-trunks I could see elephants, camels and horses tethered about the outskirts of the camp, while the carts, elephant-pads and other impedimenta lying about gave the whole the appearance of an army at bivouac. Indeed, it was not an inconsiderable force that we could have mustered. There were fifteen or twenty elephants in the party. Every elephant had two men, the mahaut and his assistant; every two camels, one man; every cart, two men; besides whom were the kholassies (tent-pitchers), the chikarries (native huntsmen to mark down and flush the tiger), letter-carriers for the official personages, and finally the personal servants of the party, amounting in all to something like a hundred and fifty souls. The commissary arrangements of such a body of men and beasts were no light matter, and had on this occasion been placed by contract in the hands of a flour-and-grain merchant from Patna. As night drew on the scene became striking in the extreme, and I do not think I felt the fact of India more keenly at any time than while Bhima Gandharva and I, slipping away from a party who were making merry over vast allowances of pale ale and cheroots, went wandering about under the stars and green leaves, picking our way among the huge forms of the mild-countenanced elephants and the bizarre figures of the camels.
On the next day, after a leisurely breakfast at eight—the hunt was to begin at midday—my kind host assigned me an elephant, and his servants proceeded to equip me for the hunt, placing in my howdah brandy, cold tea, cheroots, a rifle, a smooth-bore, ammunition, an umbrella, and finally a blanket.
"And what is the blanket for?" I asked.
"For the wild-bees; and if your elephant happens to stir up a nest of them, the very best thing in the world you can do is to throw it incontinently over your head," added my host, laughing.
The tiger had been marked down in a spot some three miles from camp, and when our battle-array, which had at first taken up the line of march in a very cozy and gentleman-militia sort of independence, had arrived within a mile of our destination the leader who had been selected to direct our movements caused us all to assume more systematic dispositions, issued orders forbidding a shot to be fired at any sort of game, no matter how tempting, less than the royal object of our chase, and then led the way down the glade, which now began to spread out into lower and wetter ground covered by tall grasses and thickets. The hunt now began in earnest. Hot, flushed, scratched as to the face by the tall reeds, rolling on my ungainly animal's back as if I were hunting in an open boat on a chopping sea, I had the additional nervous distraction of seeing many sorts of game—deer, wild-hogs, peafowl, partridges—careering about in the most exasperating manner immediately under my gun-muzzle. To add to my dissatisfaction, presently I saw a wild-hog dash out of a thicket with her young litter immediately across our path, and as my elephant stepped excitedly along one of his big fore feet crunched directly down on a beautiful little pig, bringing a quickly-smothered squeak which made me quite cower before the eye of Bhima Gandharva as he stood looking calmly forward beside me. So we tramped on through the thickets and grasses. An hour passed; the deployed huntsmen had again drawn in together, somewhat bored; we were all red-faced and twig-tattooed; no tiger was to be found; we gathered into a sort of circle and were looking at each other with that half-foolish, half-mad disconsolateness which men's faces show when they are unsuccessfully engaged in a matter which does not amount to much even after it is successfully achieved,—when suddenly my elephant flourished his trunk, uttered a shrill trumpeting sound, and dashed violently to one side, just as I saw a grand tiger, whose coat seemed to be all alive with throbbing spots, flying through the air past me to the haunches of the less wary elephant beside which mine had been walking. Instantly the whole party was in commotion. "Bagh! bagh!" yelled the mahauts and attendants: the elephants trumpeted and charged hither and thither. The tiger seemed to become fairly insane under the fusillade which greeted him; he leapt so desperately from one side to the other as to appear for a few moments almost ubiquitous, while at every discharge the frantic natives screamed "Lugga! lugga!" without in the least knowing whether he was hit (lugga) or not, till presently, when I supposed he must have received at least forty shots in his body, he fell back from a desperate attempt to scale the back of the rajah's elephant, and lay quite still.