The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-08-07
Cheap Prices and Primitive AccOmmoda.
tions Prevail in That Country.

G. w, Stevens in the London Mail.
The native has taken up with en-
thusiasm the recreation of railway
travelling, and the Indian railways are
accordingly admirable. They lack only
one point of excellence, and that is
exactly what the European wants and
the native does not-speed. The white
man is often in hurry, the native
never; the Indian trains strolls ac-
cordingly at decorous 20 miles an
hour The sahib may get impatient,
but 1t is lightning to people whose ma
tional conveyance is a bullock cart.
The native troubles himself nothing
about time tables; he goes to the sta
ton and sits down until the train
comes. And the amount of native traf-
fic is neutrality-suspicious. even
though 1t costs him about a farthing
mile. The station yard and the road
beyond are fair by day and a doss
house by night: at the opening of the
gates the roaring, jabbering platform
recalls the breaking of the crowd when
the lord mayors show has gone by.
The third class carriages are even as
crates of fowls; some stand on the
seats, some lie on the floor. You see
only a jungle of heads and legs and
arms projected vaguely out of no.
where; at night the compartment is
a heap of sack-colored bundles, that
might indifferently be men or mail
bags.
Your own Indian railway carriage is
not unlike the Indian house. 1t has
space and all Indispensable for exist
ing in bad climate, but little of finish
or establishment. In Europe the Sleep
ing car mimics the drawing room; in
India, where often the drawing room
is but hating place in a perpetual
journey, sleeping car Is merely a car
you can sleep very well in. To it, as
everywhere in India, you bring your
own bedding and your own servants
to lay it out. You take your meals at
stations by the way; IL there is no re-
freshment room at the right time and
place. you bring your food with you.
The European train is like hotel: the
Indian like camp. Your servant piles
in your canvas bundle of bedding, your
battered dressing case, your hatbox,
your dispatch box, your topf, your stick,
your flask, your tiffin basket, your over
coat your cricket bat, your gun and
your dog; you insert yourself among
them and away you go.
The Indian train may not be sump-
tuously caprisOned, but it is workman
like to the uttermost hat peg. On the
meterSauge lines you are little
cramped at night inevitably: on the
broad gauge there is far more dress ng,
washing and shaving space than On
any line in Europe or America
Against the hot weather screens of
boarding hang from the carriage roof
| to midway down the window: these
stall off some of the dust. while most
| of the windows are smoked to cool the
| glare. Ice can be had at important
| stations during the hot months. An
other vast convenience is the railway
waiting room, in one of which, on the
| Northwestern railway, 1 am at this
moment concluding this letter. ! ar
| rived at o'clock. and took cup o.
| tea; while / drank that shave and q
hot bath We're preparing in the wait.
| ing room; while took those, breakfast
was cooking in the kitchen. ! wen
| forth and did what / came here for
| now, having an hour to spare, l minis,
! ter to your mind at better chair ano
table and room altogether than, doubt
| you will find in any hotel in India.
In short, your Briton Is not at al
! the conservative creature that at nome