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Updated: May 3, 2025
That is to say, its Moslem houses are heavy and dark, and as comfortless as so many tombs; its streets are crooked, rudely and roughly paved, and as narrow as an ordinary staircase; the streets uniformly carry a man to any other place than the one he wants to go to, and surprise him by landing him in the most unexpected localities; business is chiefly carried on in great covered bazaars, celled like a honeycomb with innumerable shops no larger than a common closet, and the whole hive cut up into a maze of alleys about wide enough to accommodate a laden camel, and well calculated to confuse a stranger and eventually lose him; every where there is dirt, every where there are fleas, every where there are lean, broken-hearted dogs; every alley is thronged with people; wherever you look, your eye rests upon a wild masquerade of extravagant costumes; the workshops are all open to the streets, and the workmen visible; all manner of sounds assail the ear, and over them all rings out the muezzin's cry from some tall minaret, calling the faithful vagabonds to prayer; and superior to the call to prayer, the noises in the streets, the interest of the costumes superior to every thing, and claiming the bulk of attention first, last, and all the time is a combination of Mohammedan stenches, to which the smell of even a Chinese quarter would be as pleasant as the roasting odors of the fatted calf to the nostrils of the returning Prodigal.
The stenches of Calcutta are numerous and pervading, surely; but the tourist who has crawled up the Bay of Bengal in a caravel of the Peninsular & Oriental Company cheerfully accepts them. The "P. & O." line is one of Britain's venerated institutions; consequently English people would as soon commit a felony as criticize this antiquated concern.
The witness gave a description of the tank, not picturesque, but doubtless true, and into this tank all kinds of refuse seem to have been thrown, so that the vilest of foul stenches were emitted. Platt began his cross-examination of poor Hodge by asking him in his most coaxing manner to describe the character and nature of the various stenches.
Yet I am taught only to despise such things as lying, deceitfulness, hypocrisy, and uncleanness in fact, stenches of the heart and mind, and not to think too much about these, but, passing on, drop out the recollection of them in thoughts of finer things.
Peking carts, line upon line, thrown down and heaped up to block the enemy's long-expected charges; and on all sides were such stenches and refuse all the flotsam and jetsam cast up by our sea of troubles. Until then I did not realise how many carcases, fragments of broken weapons, empty cartridge cases, broken bottles, torn clothing, and a hundred other things were lying about.
The whole place was littered with old German equipment, and whilst wading and splashing along through the water I saw such things, and such stenches assailed my nostrils, as I shall not easily forget. Dotted all over the place, half in and half out of the mud and water, were dead bodies. But why recount the horrors of the scene? Imagine the sights and the smell.
They said, "To the senses of others they are like the stinks arising from dunghills, the stenches from dead bodies, and the scents from stale urine." And it was asked them, "Are those things delightful to you?" They said, "Most delightful." And reply was made, "Then you are like unclean beasts which wallow in such things."
The perspective is seldom free of them, and from time to time the air is tainted with their breath, which is now one of the most characteristic stenches of civilization. They share equally with other vehicles the drives in the parks, though their speed is tempered there to the prevalent pace.
And in no part of China more than in Szech'wan and Yün-nan is greater discomfort experienced. If these are steady it is lucky, if unbroken it is the exception; there are never more. Rats ran round and over me in profusion, and, of course, the best room being invariably nearest to the pigsties, there were the usual stenches.
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