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Tall Sikhs, whose hair and beards have never known scissors or razor, and who stride along with a swagger and high-caste dignity; effeminate Cingalese; Hindoo clerks, smirking, conceited and dandified too, according to their own notions; almost naked palkee-bearers, who nevertheless, if there is the slightest shower, put up an umbrella to protect their shaven crowns; up-country girls with rings in their noses and rings on their toes; little Bengalee beauties; Parsees, Chinese, Greeks, Jews and Armenians, in every variety of costume, are to be seen bargaining on the quays, chaffering in the bazaars, loading and unloading the ships, trotting along under their water-skins, driving their bullock-carts, smoking their hookahs or squatting in the shade.
Here was Musafferabad, the whole place a confused jumble of wheeled traffic caught up by the big landslip in front. Passing, amid the chatter and clamour of men and beasts, through the medley of bullock-carts and ekkas that crowded every available space, we hauled the carriage through the bed of a watercourse whose bridge was broken.
Early on the morning of the last day of January, a motley group of natives were busy striking the tents, and loading the bullocks, bullock-carts and elephants: these proceeded on the march, occupying in straggling groups nearly three miles of road, whilst we remained to breakfast with Mr. F. Watkins, Superintendent of the East India Coal and Coke Company, who were working the seams.
Suddenly the road is filled with a long line of bullock-carts. You swing your little pony sharply to one side, barely escaping the big wooden hub of the first cart.
Some of the white horses in the processions are painted in parts, sky-blue, and some are decked with saffron-yellow. In the ranks are covered bullock-carts with peep-holes, in which ride the women of the harem. Mingled with these are men bearing banners with Hindoo mottoes and ludicrous caricatures, half human and half animal.
Down the silent deserted road came three bullock-carts piled high with boxes and escorted by a ragged regiment of ex-sepoys, ex-police, mutineers, almost a battalion from the forces of the wild Border State neighbouring Gungapur. A small crowd of variously armed uniformless men preceded the escort and carts, while a large one followed them.
After the day's work was done, the midshipmen often got leave ashore, and enjoyed the scene of bustle and confusion which reigned there. Enormous numbers of pack animals and bullock-carts were at work, and even at this early period of the campaign the immense superiority of the French arrangements over the English was manifest.
Except where there are rivers or roads suitable for bullock-carts or pack bullocks, they do nearly all the carrying trade of Perak, carrying loads on "elephant tracks" through the jungle. An elephant always puts his foot into the hole which another elephant's foot has made, so that a frequented track is nothing but a series of pits filled with mud and water.
I was the best off in the inn by far; the others must have been colder, certainly had worse food to eat, and yet to me it was all the height of utmost cheerlessness. And I know a man who would do this even, despite the ruts: he takes a delight in running over dogs and small boys, damaging rickshaws, bumping into bullock-carts, and so on he would have done it with liveliest freedom.
The continuous roar of traffic in the busy streets, the crowded tram-cars, the motors and taxis jostling the ancient bullock-carts, the surging crowds in the semi-Europeanised native quarters, even the pall of smoke that tells of many modern industrial activities are not quite so characteristic of new India as, when I was last there, the sandwich-men with boards inviting a vote for this or that candidate in the elections to the new Indian Councils.
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