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It was from Madras that the British power set forth on its unpremeditated course of conquest which was destined ultimately to reach from Tuticorin to the Himalayas. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the Madras Presidency has been in the fortunate position of having no history. Its northern rivals call it despitefully the "benighted" Presidency.
After passing the Bight of Negombo, we soon enter the harbor of Colombo, and as we do so, an English mail steam packet is passed whose decks are crowded with coolies bound for Tuticorin, a port two hundred miles away, across the Gulf of Manaar. The planters of Ceylon import these dusky laborers from southern India at harvest time, when the tea and coffee fields yield their annual product.
Being connected by rail with northern India, if there were depth of water sufficient for steamers to make a landing here, without lying five miles off shore, Tuticorin would certainly become an important Indian port. It was New Year's Day when we landed, and was apparently being celebrated in an humble way by the few people whom we saw.
Still another way is to take the semi-weekly steamer from Colombo to Tuticorin, in southern India, then zigzag about the continent of Asia until he makes Paumben. Then it is a matter of only a few days when there will be a boat crossing to the pearl-camp. This is the surest way of getting to Marichchikkaddi; but it is like making the journey from New York to Boston by way of Bermuda.
"No, Sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all finished. Even the Burra Malum of the Nerbudda said once at Tuticorin " "Bah! Go! I am busy." "I, also!" said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance. "May I take the light dinghy now and row along the spurs?" "To hold them with thy hands? They are, I think, sufficiently heavy." "Nay, Sahib. It is thus.
Tuticorin is a quaint old place of very little importance, dingy and dilapidated. It is represented to have twenty thousand inhabitants, but one would not have set the figure at more than half that number. There is still something done here in the pearl fisheries, though the most active stations are situated some thirty miles up the coast.
Temples centuries in age and in utter ruin came into view now and again, as they had done in the south, between Tuticorin and Madras, and here, as there, they were frequently adjacent to a cluster of low mud hovels. From the branches of the trees flitted birds of such fantastic shapes and plumage as to cause exclamations of surprise.
From Peshawur, the extreme frontier post in the north, which commands the Kyber Pass, leading into, Afganistan, to Tuticorin, the southern terminus of the system, it is 3,400 miles by the regular railway route, via Calcutta, and seven days and night will be necessary to make the journey under ordinary circumstances. Troops could be hurried through more rapidly.
Sometimes it was from the South that he came from south of Tuticorin, whence the wonderful fire-boats go to Ceylon where are priests who know Pali; sometimes it was from the wet green West and the thousand cotton-factory chimneys that ring Bombay; and once from the North, where he had doubled back eight hundred miles to talk for a day with the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House.
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