CHAP. III - MADRAS TO CALCUTTA

Summary

Spending but a single day in Madras—an inferior Columbo—I passed on to Calcutta with a pleasant remembrance of the air of prosperity that hangs about the chief city of what is still called by Bengal civilians “The Benighted Presidency.” Small as are the houses, poor as are the shops, every one looks well-to-do, and everybody happy, from the not undeservedly famed cooks at the club to the catamaran men on the shore. Coffee and good government have of late done much for Madras.

The surf consists of two lines of rollers, and is altogether inferior to the fine-weather swell on the west coast of New Zealand, and only to be dignified and promoted into surfship by men of that fine imagination which will lead them to sniff the spices a day before they reach Ceylon, or the pork and molasses when off Nantucket light-ship. The row through the first roller in the lumbering Massullah boat, manned by a dozen sinewy blacks, the waiting for a chance between the first and second lines of spray, and then the dash for shore, the crew singing their measured “Ah! lah! lálala!—ah! lah! lálala!” the stroke coming with the accented syllable, and the helmsman shrieking with excitement, is a more pretentious ceremony than that which accompanies the crossing of Hokitika bar, but the passage is a far less dangerous one.