Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1899-05-29

G. w. Stevens, the correspondent
who made himself famous in the Gre
co-Turkish war, writes to the London
Mail as follows:
There are three Calcuttas- the
winter capital of India, the metropolis
of the largest white population in the
country, and perhaps the highest
packed human sardines tin in the
world
AS you see it first it is the only
British town in India. Both as seat
OF government and center of European
population, it has taken on an English
aspect, which you do not find else
where. Not only are the buildings
English, but they are English build
ings of good standing. The preva-
lent style is eighteenth century CLASH
CAL and the color is that buff white of
Regent street Almost every house
has it's portico, it's Doric or Ionic pill
lars it's balustraded roof. In the
flthiest quarters you will come on
such houses, grimy, peeling, tumbling
to pieces-the homes of forgotten
Sahibs, now forlorn islands in a tur-
bid sea of bamboo shanties. Calcutta,
you can see, has not merely a history;
every town in India has that; but
British history.
It's history, indeed, and it's greatness
are all British; wherein it is unique
among Indian cities. 1t is not the
cradle of British India; the cradle was
Surat, which was opened to British
trade in 1912, and in the imperial Ii
brary at Calcutta you reverence as
the oldest achives of British India the
letters of the Surat factors and the list
otherwise obscure, Va, Heart, is
branded to eternity as drinking soft.
1t was in 1857 that the company
came to Calcutta, and named Fort
William after the Dutch king, who
came two years later In those days,
and long after, the distinction be-
tween the imperial and commercial
was not; dispatches then were letters
from "the gentlemen at Port St.
David's," and the gentleman who now
becomes an honorable member Of
council then aspired to the Office of
export warehouse keeper. Only when
Warrane Hastings became first gov
ernor-general of Bengal, in 1774, with
a vague superintendent over Madras
and Bombay, did Calcutta begin to be
imperial.
The year before FIT. William had
been finished, and still remains-a
ludicious anchronism now, for what
need could there be of a fort in Ben
gal?-but an imposing document of
Anglo-Indian history. An octagon
of fosse and grass grown rampant,
bastion and curtain and sally port,
with the governors buff white
Georgian house standing up out of it;
it stands there to remind you of what
nowadays you might easily forget;
there lived strong men before the
Northwest frontier.
North and east of The fort spreads
the Madam, which is Arabic and Per-
sian and Hindustani for fiat open
space. To the profane mind the broad
expenses of burnt grass-abOut a mile
and a half square suggest Chaplain
common in August; but the MADAM is
much more. At one corner is a race
course, elsewhere tennis courts, golf
links, bicycle tracks, cricket pitches,
riding roads. It is an exercise ground
for horses and dogs, playground for
children and a fashionable promenade
for all Calcutta.
In the evening, when the sky is red
over the factory smoke beyond the
Hugh, and the spars and tackle of the
ships and banks are silhOuetted on it
like diagrams, the unending file of
carriages rolls up and down the bal
ustrated Red road, or fingers over the
river to watch the cool sunset.
Then the band plays in the Eden
Gardens, and Calcutta promenades at
ease till it is time to dress for din
ner. The MADAM is very English
Chaplain common, Hyde Park and
Sandown Park all in one--a necessity
of English life. And the statues with
which it is starred everywhere-Har-
dinge, Lawrence, Mayo, Outram,
Dufferin, Roberts-are also part of the
life, the imperial life of British India.
Yet the life, the thirty-five years
resident will tell you, is not what it
was. In the old pictures you see
Chowringhee, the great street along
the Madam, range of pillared bun
galows; now much of it is red brick
stores, hotels, boarding houses. In
the pictures the sahib drives in a
chariot often with four horses. Now
he uses a victoria or dog cart. Com
fort, groan the elder men, is dying out
of Calcutta. In the sixties, when it
took four months to come out, men
found it worth while to settle down in
India and make it their home.
Now it is very rare to find a man
who has been ten years on end in the
country, though in Calcutta and
among the platers of Behar and AS
sam you will still find those who have
not seen home for fifteen and twenty