The Portland daily press., 1888-08-01
The Great sanyan Tree Of calcutta.

correspondence of New York Times.l
Inc great sight of Calcutta is unques-
uonably its splendid Botanical Garden. ON
'ne iurther shore of the Hooghly, and the
giant panyan tree which stands in the midst
Oh Its palms and bamboos like a king amid
MS courtiers. 1t is true that the fve-mile
drive thither across the Canning Bridge
and through the endless bazaars of Howrah
(the Brooklyn of Calcutta) is anything but an
easy enterprise to achieve satisfactorily. If
you start in the morning the whole journey
there and back is one long martrydom to a
heat and dust and glare which only those
who have been in India can fully appreciate.
III you start in the evening you arrive Just in
time to see the whole garden vanish from
your eyes into the deepening darkness of
night, and have to console yourself perfOrce
with the time-honored joke. There was
nothing to be seen, and saw it thoroughly"
The latter result attended the first effort
which we ourselves made to reach the re-
nowned banyan, and bazaar happening to be
unusually full that night, our homeward
drive through it in the dark, with an accom-
panlment of shouting and whp-cracking
worthy of royal progress" wildly recalled
Sir George Irevelyan's famous definition Of
NIL! as "a monosyllable used by cabmen
over deaf people,"
But such spectacle as the monster tree of
Calcutta is well worth double journey, and
our second attempt was more fortunate than
our first Starting from our hotel at D. m.
we reached the garden little before g. and
had already driven more than half way
across it when our 'gharri" (carriage) halted
suddenly at the entrance of long straight
auenue fanked by two ranges of lofty trees,
and our Bengal driver, pointed to the far
end OF it with his lean, brown forefnger,
said impressively, "Dekho, burra gach wahan
hai9 Nook, there is the big tree.)
We followed the pointing finger with our
eyes, but saw nothing except thick grove
OF small trees, in which the path seemed to
lose itself, and this was ali we could make
out till we got within about 100 yards of it,
Then to our amazement, we found that the
supposed grove was all one giant tree, and
that Its countless trunks " ere nothing more
than the shoots which it had sent down into
the earth from each of its mighty boughs, to
take root there and spring up again till the
whole plantation was covered. After walk
ing in many yards beneath one huge bough,
and nothing that this giant was only one
among scores--some of which, although SO
vast and ponderous as to need supports of
solid brlckwork, seem mere twigs compared
with the enormous mass of the parent stem
Il began to have q clearer idea of the real
size OF this vegetable Goliath than / could
ever have gained from the inscription at
tached to one of the largest branches stating
that the girth of its trunk is AZ feet, that the
circumference OF its crown is $50 feet. and
tnat IL mas sent down into the earth 252 sac
rial roots"
The same inscription tells you that the
tree is more than 100 years old. When it
was first planted Warren Hastings was turn
his face homeward to figure in the greatest
political trial which England had seen since
Cromwell and his grim comrades sat in
judgement upon ''the man Charles Stewart"
Two-thrds of India and the whole of Bur-
nah were still independent of the British
crown. Frederick the Great was still reign
ing In Berlin. The French revolution lay
hid in the unknown future, and the battle Of
American independence, though nobly
fought, was not yet won. And It may be
that when not one stone of Calcutta shall
remain upon another, and when tigers shall
prowl and vultures Shrek over the ruins of
the ViceroJ's palace, the giant tree shall
stapc and uprear amid vast solitude those
mighty boughs that once shaded the brayest
men and fairest women Of India, a silent
great empire whose childhood was coeval
with its own.