It is true that railway travelling is nowhere so luxurious as in
India, where a carriage has but two compartments, each holding as a rule
only two persons, though four can be accommodated by means of hanging
berths. Each compartment has a spacious bathroom attached, where you may
bathe as often as you please, and there are various contrivances for
ventilating and cooling the air. Nevertheless the heat is sometimes
unbearable, and a journey from Bombay to Calcutta direct during the warm
months is a severe trial to the strongest constitution. On this occasion
I had about forty-eight hours to travel, and I was resolved to get all
the rest in that time that the jolting made possible; for I knew that
once in the saddle again it might be days before I got a night's sleep.
And so we rumbled along, through the vast fields of sugar-cane, now
mostly tied in huge sheaves upright, through boundless stretches of
richly-cultivated soil, intersected with the regularity of a chess-board
by the rivulets and channels of a laborious irrigation. Here and there
stood the high frames made by planting four bamboos in a square and
wickering the top, whereon the ryots sit when the crops are ripening, to
watch against thieves and cattle, and to drive away the birds of the
air. On we spun, past Meerut and Mozuffernugger, past Umballa and
Loodhiana, till we reached our station of Julinder at dawn.
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