New-York tribune., 1903-04-05
INDIA and RUSSIA.
Interesting Notes of TraUel in Both
Countries.

WINTER INDIA, BY Eliza Ruhamah scijmore.
SFo pp- xvi, Ss1- The Century Company.
THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY From St
Petersburg to Pekin. By Michael Myers Shoe
maker. limo pp. viii, 243. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
The winter in India, is the season Of the tour
ist, and Miss Scdnore takes the title of her
book from this time of sightseeing and incon-
Venlence Travelling is not of the degree of
comfort demanded by European, still less per
maps, that by American. And rs for the
hotels. a book could probably be written on
Hotel India" in distinction from the impress
sion OF the land made on the visitor who is
blessed with friends to entertain him. The an
sWer Of visitor to Calcutta who was advised
by the Niceroy to go to see the Black Hole, puts
the case concisely. Il have need to, your
exceilency,' was the reply. Il live there now
Room IS, -- Hotel" At every stage in the
journey there is a glimpse in this book never
too profoundly despairing but not lacking in
tensity. Of the inconveniences of life as a tran
sient. People come back from Shan-si or
Teheran with the same sad boast of having
dured the worst hotels in the world The honors
may be divided, but certainly India has its own
rank in the matter. At a much commended hotel
in Delhi the rooms had no windows.
The drawing room was A muddle of broken
furniture, of dusty and disorderly draperies;
the dining mira grant and time stained
and the ranager-there are no landlords or inn
keepers British realms any more-a listless,
depressed. poor white creature definite failure
in life. who roameI the poTtiCO in paJamas a"u
long ulster, smoking German student pipe.
At Kalka the hotel was little better than
stable only in that it had not yet been used for
horses There the party spread their bedding
III chill. Whitewashed, stone fOored rooms open
ing upon a stone porch, and next day found it
a struggle both to get and 10 eat the breakfast
The worst coffee in India was brought. with
:
plate-this at perhaps the only hotel IN lIdla
ever patronized by the official class, and Whlch
the smart and luXuTy-loving and discalnfuI must
endure twice a year if they 20 10 Slilld- west
ern civilization in India. taking the hotel as us
index, is at lowest ebb in kalka-
After this up-country experience the hotel at
Bombay seemed by contrast d palace of com
fort
That hotel whose corridors are strewn with
servants and their rolls Of bedding the?r pots
pines and traps. servants who gabhle ana
smoke eat and sleep. dress and undreSS each
before his employers door. as unconcernedly as
in their own serais: that hotel of hard and
hillO, ky beds. which all ones winter aCcufhu-
Iation Of raZais cannot soften, that hotel whose
partition walls stop two feet from the ceiling
where every room has an outer balcony and an
inner dark bathroom, whose primitive plumbing
puts the American N fear Tor ms HE.
These drawbacks in comfort are in the nat
ure Of minor details, it is true, and one may do
injustice to this book to oyeremph&size them;
but they are to be reckoned with 10y the tour
ist That in spite Of them India with all its
melancholy, is land Of absorbing interest
hardly need be said. IT, the autho remarks
1t can hardly be said with uteralness that one
enjoys India" one nay take pleasure in her re
cital Of a seasons travel there.
Ia Lahore the English army people and civil
servants brought Kipling vividly to the mind