# Life in India/Travel in the Carnatic

PART V.
Travel in the Carnatic.
The American in India dwells not only in a strange land, and among a people of a strange tongue, but he also breathes a foreign atmosphere, and endures a foreign climate. He is and must be an exotic transplanted from his native soil, and, as an exotic, lives an unnatural life.
The constant heat to which residents of Madras are subjected is, to those who come from a cold climate, exceedingly trying. The mean temperature for the whole year is 84° of Fahrenheit's thermometer. It is not so much the heat of any one day, though that is often great, as the want of cool nights and bracing winters, the unbroken continuousness of the heat, that enfeebles them. When it is kept in mind that January, the coldest winter month in Madras, is hotter on an average of the twenty-four hours than the average of July in New ​York or Philadelphia, the difficulty of retaining health and vigour will be understood.
Those who in the course of trade or travel tarry for a short time in India, speak of the "luxuries of the East." These luxuries are often attempts to neutralize this ever-present heat, and to enable the foreigner to live and labour in a climate to which by birth and previous habits he is an entire stranger. To the New Englander, amid the hills of Massachusetts, the punkah, the bath, and the aid of servants might seem mere luxuries; but to the same New Englander in India they are no more luxuries than would be a coal fire or a greatcoat in December amid his native hills. They are means used to counteract or make amends for a debilitating climate.
Yet, though he take as many precautions and use as much prudence as he can consistently with his calling, the missionary cannot avoid the effects of this constant heat. He cannot expect to have that measure of vigour, elasticity, and activity which he might have enjoyed at home. Without this vigour, however, many persons will retain so much health and strength as to labour with effect for twenty, thirty, or forty years. There are now five ​ordained missionaries of the American Board of Foreign Missions who left America thirty-five and thirty-eight years since; nor are they behind their younger brethren in the zeal and constancy of their labours. Experience shows that the greater part of those who prove unable to endure the climate fail within five or six years after their arrival. If this period be past without serious loss of health, the prospect for labouring many years is very good. Our young men therefore need not look forward to a mission to India as a certain means of shortening life; nor should parents feel that sending their children thither is consigning them to an early grave.
It was our lot to prove of the number of those ill adapted to withstand the influences of an Indian climate. Again and again did sickness visit us, until there was little hope of a recovery of health and strength without a resort to a cooler climate. It was decided that we should visit the range of mountains known as the Neilgherry hills, to seek, in their more bracing atmosphere, a corrective for the weak​ness and ill health occasioned by a residence on the plains.
India, with its habits fixed by the authority of three thousand years, has been compelled by British supremacy to receive some novelties; one of these is the "transit bandy," the conveyance by which we were carried to the hills. The palankeen, which is both slow and expensive, has, within a few years past, been somewhat superseded in the carriage of passengers from Madras to Bangalore, Mysore, and the mountains, by this mode of travel. The transit bandy is a peculiar kind of vehicle. It is very nearly a palankeen on wheels, and more like a little omnibus without seats, and drawn by one horse or two bullocks, than any other American conveyance. On the level floor you lay a mattrass, with pillows or bundles to raise your head, and stow away in every corner and recess some article needed for the way. Should you trust to an imaginary “Arcot Hotel,” or “Mysore House" for entertainment, the bare walls of the travellers’ bungalow would sadly disappoint your expectations. Your transit bandy must be storehouse, pantry, wardrobe, and library, as well as bedroom, for the journey.
​Our luggage had been sent off some days before in bullock bandies, which were allowed about a month to get through the three hundred and sixty miles between us and the mountain-top, as they travel at somewhat less than railroad speed. Our own conveyance, drawn by a gaunt and rather unpromising horse, drew up before the door just at dusk, after a sultry day in March. We were soon housed in its close quarters, something in the style of two passengers in a steamboat birth on wheels. Off we started in fine style, gazed after by a gaping crowd of men and boys. Through the streets of Black-town, and out at the Elephant gate, we drove; but, alas! this rate of travel was too good to last. We foolishly looked for speed in India, and, like many wiser persons, were disappointed. Our horse was changed every five miles, and usually for the worse, so that morning found us not at Wallaja-pettah, as we had been promised, but far this side of it. Noon came with its glaring sun pouring forth floods of irresistible rays; but we were still toiling wearily on, wilted and well-nigh exhausted by the heat. So great was the difference of opinion, as to the rate at which we ought to go, between the driver and the horses, that the controversy ​sometimes brought us to a dead halt; one of the latter for some time was utterly unmoved by blows or persuasions, even resisting the hint of a rope tied to his leg to pull it forward; but at last he started under special inducements, and to our great satisfaction did not stop until he reached the stable of the next relay.
We were glad enough, at two o'clock, to reach Wallaja-pettah and to exchange our close bandy for the comfortable shelter of a roof, and to receive a warm welcome from our associates in the missionary work stationed at this place. Two months earlier they had left Madras to commence a new station in this populous district. How sorely preachers of the gospel are here needed, (and of all the presidencies of India, Madras is best supplied,) will be seen from the fact that from Madras to Arcot, and from Arcot on to Bangalore, a distance of two hundred miles upon the great highway from the sea to the interior, there was not, at that time, one missionary of any society, English or American. And, in almost any direction, you might go one or two hundred miles north or south of this line without finding anywhere a Christian missionary. All is darkness, unillu​mined even by the little taper lights of isolated missionary stations.
Wallaja-pettah contains some twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and is an unusually prosperous native town. It is enriched by an extensive inland commerce; and the neatness of its streets, and the comfortable appearance of its houses, give evidence of its prosperity. From the interior, grains, indigo, and other products are brought here and bought by the Wallaja-pettah merchants, by whom they are sent on to Madras. This town is a great mart for the areca-nut, which is often spoken of by writers on India as “betel,” or “betel-nut.” It is a nut with an intensely bitter taste, the fruit of a tall and beautiful palm, with a trunk but four or five inches in diameter, and crowned by a tuft of brilliant leaves. The nut is cut in slices, and one piece laid upon the pungent peppery betel-leaf, with a little moist lime and tobacco. These are wrapped in the leaf and chewed, very much as tobacco is chewed by some Americans. This practice is almost universal. Boys, men, and women, all chew; and they would as soon give up their rice as relinquish their “vittely-pakku," or betel. It stains ​the saliva and mouth of a blood-red colour, injures the teeth, and gives to the women especially a disgusting appearance. The beautiful white teeth of some of the Christians who have renounced this indulgence form a pleasant contrast to the red lips and black teeth of the heathen around them.
Having been refreshed by the hospitality of our friends, we resumed our journey on the evening of the succeeding day. At the eastern end of the main street, as you enter the town, stands the preaching-bungalow of the missionary; as you go out at its western end, you see the tall pagoda of the heathen temple. Life and death are thus set before its people; but heathenism, alas! has all the power of a long possession of the land and of those who dwell in it. Nothing but confidence in the unchangeableness of the purposes and promises of God enables the Christian to see by faith the time when India shall submit to Christ. To human view the prospect would be most dark without the light of these precious promises. We need not wonder that ungodly men scoff at the impotency of our efforts; but we, who count Him faithful that promised, see by faith the time when India shall cast her idols to the moles and ​bats, and bow before the throne of Jehovah, the one true God.
Three miles from Wallaja-pettah you reach Arcot, and there cross the Palar River. Now, as when I had previously crossed this river, its bed was a vast field of sand. On arriving at its bank, our horse was unharnessed, not that we might take a boat, but for our bandy to be dragged across by men. From a village on the bank of the river, some twenty or thirty men, each with but a strip of cloth about his middle, rushing out with ropes in their hands, fastened them to our bandy. Tugging, straining, and shouting, they dragged it through the deep sand to the opposite shore. The pay for this service, which was about seventy cents to be divided among the whole, seemed a small sum for so many, but was a full compensation, and entirely satisfactory to them. At any time, on the arrival of a traveller's bandy, they throw down every thing, and run to secure the job.
On our return from the hills, we recrossed the Palar when it was dry almost from shore to shore; but on the next day, when I accompanied Mr. S. to preach on the opposite side of the river, it was an unbroken stream of tur​bid water, rolling silently along, and full half a mile in width. We were hardly able to ford it on horseback. Rain had fallen among the hills farther up, and in a single night, to use an Indian phrase, “the river had come down." This is characteristic of Indian rivers. You may pass a beautiful stream, with the water just wetting the hoofs of your horse, in the morning, and in the afternoon find it an impassable river or a swollen and foaming torrent. In such a case the traveller is compelled often to sit down and quietly wait until “the river has run by.” The rain which has filled the channel with water ceases, and the flood subsides, allowing a renewal of intercourse between the opposite sides of the stream. Where such obstacles are common, a primitive sort of ferry-boat is made by covering a large circular bamboo basket with raw ox-hide. In one of these a dozen persons may embark, and be ferried across with safety by means of a rope stretched from bank to bank.
Buffalo-cart in the Mysore. p.393.
The common carts used for the transportation of goods from the interior, which constantly pass the traveller on this road, are many of them exceedingly primitive in their construction. A pole is attached to a simple frame running upon two solid wheels, made sometimes of a circular cut from a tree, sometimes of two pieces clamped together. The yoke merely lies upon the necks of the cattle without being fastened, except that a pin at each extremity keeps it from slipping off. These bandies are drawn sometimes by oxen, sometimes (as in the accompanying illustration) by domesticated buffaloes, whose hairless hide is mercilessly belaboured by the driver. These ​clumsy, heavy, creaking, groaning vehicles take weeks to pass over the distance that would be crossed in a day by the rail-car. In nothing is India more deficient than in means of intercourse. With the exception of a few main lines, the roads are mere tracks through sandy plains or over rocks and hills. It is not to be wondered at, that, with such roads, such cattle, such carts, and such easiness of disposition, the Hindu bandy-man should not be a swift courier. They are greatly outstripped by the coolies, who with boxes on their heads, weighing sixty pounds, travel twenty miles or more a day, often for distances of many hundred miles.
Fifteen miles from Arcot brought us to Vellore, a town used as a station for British troops, well fortified, and, for many generations past, a stronghold of the chieftains of Southern India. About the fort is a deep ditch filled with water from the Palar River, and inhabited by many alligators. These scaly monsters serve as a complete guard; for no one dares to venture through the moat, lest he should find himself in their capacious and well-armed jaws.
Vellore is famous for a most fearful tragedy which was here enacted less than fifty years ​since, (in 1806.) The sons of Tippoo, who were kept in a liberal confinement in this fort after the overthrow of their father's kingdom, were regarded with deep interest by the Mohammedans, who lost their power with the dynasty of Tippoo. This source of trouble, combined with an injudicious regulation as to the dress of the sepoys, (native soldiers in the service of England,) lead to a dissatisfaction which ended in a rising of the sepoys against the English troops.
In the dead of night, two battalions of the native soldiery surrounded the barracks of the English force, and poured in upon them a fatal fire through every door and window. At the same time, the sentries, the soldiers of the guard, and the sick in the hospital were cruelly murdered. The sepoys rushed in upon the affrighted victims, shot down those who attempted to escape, and plundered the officers' quarters. But they had not done their work so effectually as they hoped. A fugitive escaped, and flying to Arcot bore the tidings of the slaughter of his comrades. A regiment of British dragoons, burning with a desire to save or avenge their countrymen, hastened from Arcot to Vellore, charged through the ​unguarded gates of the fort, and cut down, without mercy, the mutineers, who were so much engrossed with their deeds of blood and rapine, that they had neglected all means of defence. Six hundred men were slain on the spot, and two hundred more dragged from the concealments to which they had fled, and shot. The sons of Tippoo were soon after removed to Calcutta, far from the scenes and friends of their father's rule.
We now were drawing near the foot of the Eastern Ghauts, a range of highlands running up into craggy granite peaks, which stretches along the eastern side of India, parallel to the sea. The road grew hilly and rough, and our horse was replaced by a pair of bullocks, more able to draw us up the mountain passes leading to the elevated table-land of the Mysore. Up hill and down we went, and up and down, but more up than down, until, on the second day, we had left the ascent behind us, and entered upon the plateau reaching from the Eastern to the Western Ghauts, and varying from eighteen hundred to three thousand feet in its elevation above the sea. This journey, through steep passes, with granite hills on the right and left, and masses of rock rolled into ravines, trans​ported us in thought to the granite hills of New England; but the similarity stopped here. In place of neat villages and towns, with the white spire of the Christian church peeping out from among the trees, the school-house beside it, and the pastor's dwelling just beyond, we found jungly deserts, with intervals of cultivation, towns of close-clustering huts, temples to Siva, Vishnu, Ganesha, and other false gods; while the hill-tops were crowned with idolatrous shrines or ancient forts, the scenes of many a bloody strife, now falling to ruins.
After reaching the level of the table-land, our journey was over a beautiful rolling country, dotted with villages and cultivated fields, to the city of Bangalore, where we tarried for three weeks, preparatory to entering the cooler air of the Blue Mountains of Coimbatoor.
* ↑ Of these, two have died during the present year, 1855.
* ↑ In the illustration, the driver, as is very customary, is walking beside the pole of the bandy and between the buffaloes, to urge them on by blows, cries, and pushes. The shaved head and coodamy or queue will be noticed. An European, if thus exposed, would soon be prostrated by a sunstroke. A native in better circumstances is walking under the shelter of a palm-leaf umbrella, and a cooly is trotting by with a tin box upon his head. In the background are natives seated on the piol of a small house.