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We landed with him in his Oram-bay, a large native boat, pulled by twelve men, who kept time by striking their round-bladed paddles against the gunwale between every stroke. On landing, the prettiest sight possible awaited us.
The anchor was hardly let go, when the monotonous sound of a tom-tom gave notice of the approach of some chief; and shortly afterwards, a boat, carrying a huge Dutch flag, was seen pulling towards the brig, with a great many round-bladed paddles. Seated in state, in the stern sheets, was an old man dressed in a long black serge coat and trousers, with a white shirt and handkerchief.
Hindu beggars, so dirty that they seemed to have returned to dust before death; three fakirs, armed with round-bladed daggers with which they were wounding themselves apparently in the most reckless manner, so as to send streams of blood flowing to the ground, and redly tattooing the ashes with which their naked bodies were covered; Parsees with their long noses curving over their moustaches, clothed in white, sending one's thoughts back to Ormuz, to Persia, to Zoroaster, to fire-worship and to the strangeness of the fate which drove them out of Persia more than a thousand years ago, and which has turned them into the most industrious traders and most influential citizens of a land in which they are still exiles; Chinese, Afghans the Highlanders of the East Arabs, Africans, Mahrattas, Malays, Persians, Portuguese half-bloods; men that called upon Mohammed, men that called upon Confucius, upon Krishna, upon Christ, upon Gotama the Buddha, upon Rama and Sita, upon Brahma, upon Zoroaster; strange carriages shaded by red domes that compressed a whole dream of the East in small, and drawn by humped oxen, alternating with palanquins, with stylish turnouts of the latest mode, with cavaliers upon Arabian horses; half-naked workmen, crouched in uncomfortable workshops and ornamenting sandal-wood boxes; dusky curb-stone shopkeepers, rushing at me with strenuous offerings of their wares; lines of low shop-counters along the street, backed by houses rising in many stories, whose black pillared verandahs were curiously carved and painted: cries, chafferings, bickerings, Mussulman prayers, Arab oaths extending from "Praise God that you exist" to "Praise God although you exist;" all these things appealed to the confused senses.
Propelling a gufa was an art in itself, for in the hands of the uninitiated it merely spun around without advancing a foot in the desired direction. The natives used long round-bladed paddles, and made good time across the river. Crossing over in one was a democratic affair, especially when the women were returning from market with knots of struggling chickens slung over their shoulders.
The men who do the chief work in the mine, that is, cut out the coal from the bed or seam, are the "hewers." Dick's father was a hewer. They have only two tools a short pick, and a round-bladed spade; with a big basket, or "corve," into which they put the coal, and a gauze-wire lantern. Suppose a passage first cut; then they hew out chambers on either side, each about twelve feet wide.
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