There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the
over-refined ones.
Pudd’nhead
Wilson’s New Calendar.
We sailed from Calcutta toward the
end of March; stopped a day at Madras; two or three
days in Ceylon; then sailed westward on a long flight
for Mauritius. From my diary:
April 7. We are far abroad upon
the smooth waters of the Indian Ocean, now; it is
shady and pleasant and peaceful under the vast spread
of the awnings, and life is perfect again ideal.
The difference between a river and
the sea is, that the river looks fluid, the sea solid usually
looks as if you could step out and walk on it.
The captain has this peculiarity he
cannot tell the truth in a plausible way. In
this he is the very opposite of the austere Scot who
sits midway of the table; he cannot tell a lie in
an unplausible way. When the captain finishes
a statement the passengers glance at each other privately,
as who should say, “Do you believe that?”
When the Scot finishes one, the look says, “How
strange and interesting.” The whole secret
is in the manner and method of the two men. The
captain is a little shy and diffident, and he states
the simplest fact as if he were a little afraid of
it, while the Scot delivers himself of the most abandoned
lie with such an air of stern veracity that one is
forced to believe it although one knows it isn’t
so. For instance, the Scot told about a pet
flying-fish he once owned, that lived in a little fountain
in his conservatory, and supported itself by catching
birds and frogs and rats in the neighboring fields.
It was plain that no one at the table doubted this
statement.
By and by, in the course of some talk
about custom-house annoyances, the captain brought
out the following simple everyday incident, but through
his infirmity of style managed to tell it in such a
way that it got no credence. He said:
“I went ashore at Naples one
voyage when I was in that trade, and stood around
helping my passengers, for I could speak a little
Italian. Two or three times, at intervals,
the officer asked me if I had anything dutiable
about me, and seemed more and more put out and
disappointed every time I told him no. Finally
a passenger whom I had helped through asked me
to come out and take something. I thanked
him, but excused myself, saying I had taken a whisky
just before I came ashore.
“It was a fatal admission.
The officer at once made me pay sixpence import-duty
on the whisky-just from ship to shore, you see; and
he fined me L5 for not declaring the goods, another
L5 for falsely denying that I had anything dutiable
about me, also L5 for concealing the goods, and
L50 for smuggling, which is the maximum penalty
for unlawfully bringing in goods under the value of
sevenpence ha’penny. Altogether, sixty-five
pounds sixpence for a little thing like that.”
The Scot is always believed, yet he
never tells anything but lies; whereas the captain
is never believed, although he never tells a lie, so
far as I can judge. If he should say his uncle
was a male person, he would probably say it in such
a way that nobody would believe it; at the same time
the Scot could claim that he had a female uncle and
not stir a doubt in anybody’s mind. My
own luck has been curious all my literary life; I
never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor
a truth that anybody would believe.
Lots of pets on board birds
and things. In these far countries the white
people do seem to run remarkably to pets. Our
host in Cawnpore had a fine collection of birds the
finest we saw in a private house in India. And
in Colombo, Dr. Murray’s great compound and commodious
bungalow were well populated with domesticated company
from the woods: frisky little squirrels; a Ceylon
mina walking sociably about the house; a small
green parrot that whistled a single urgent note of
call without motion of its beak; also chuckled; a
monkey in a cage on the back veranda, and some more
out in the trees; also a number of beautiful macaws
in the trees; and various and sundry birds and animals
of breeds not known to me. But no cat.
Yet a cat would have liked that place.
April 9. Tea-planting is the
great business in Ceylon, now. A passenger says
it often pays 40 per cent. on the investment.
Says there is a boom.
April 10. The sea is a Mediterranean
blue; and I believe that that is about the divinest
color known to nature.
It is strange and fine Nature’s
lavish generosities to her creatures. At least
to all of them except man. For those that fly
she has provided a home that is nobly spacious a
home which is forty miles deep and envelops the whole
globe, and has not an obstruction in it. For
those that swim she has provided a more than imperial
domain a domain which is miles deep and
covers four-fifths of the globe. But as for man,
she has cut him off with the mere odds and ends of
the creation. She has given him the thin skin,
the meagre skin which is stretched over the remaining
one-fifth the naked bones stick up through
it in most places. On the one-half of this domain
he can raise snow, ice, sand, rocks, and nothing else.
So the valuable part of his inheritance really consists
of but a single fifth of the family estate; and out
of it he has to grub hard to get enough to keep him
alive and provide kings and soldiers and powder to
extend the blessings of civilization with. Yet
man, in his simplicity and complacency and inability
to cipher, thinks Nature regards him as the important
member of the family in fact, her favorite.
Surely, it must occur to even his dull head, sometimes,
that she has a curious way of showing it.
Afternoon. The captain has been
telling how, in one of his Arctic voyages, it was
so cold that the mate’s shadow froze fast to
the deck and had to be ripped loose by main strength.
And even then he got only about two-thirds of it
back. Nobody said anything, and the captain went
away. I think he is becoming disheartened .
. . . Also, to be fair, there is another word
of praise due to this ship’s library: it
contains no copy of the Vicar of Wakefield, that strange
menagerie of complacent hypocrites and idiots, of
theatrical cheap-john heroes and heroines, who are
always showing off, of bad people who are not interesting,
and good people who are fatiguing. A singular
book. Not a sincere line in it, and not a character
that invites respect; a book which is one long waste-pipe
discharge of goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities;
a book which is full of pathos which revolts, and
humor which grieves the heart. There are few
things in literature that are more piteous, more pathetic,
than the celebrated “humorous” incident
of Moses and the spectacles. Jane Austen’s
books, too, are absent from this library. Just
that one omission alone would make a fairly good library
out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.
Customs in tropic seas. At 5
in the morning they pipe to wash down the decks, and
at once the ladies who are sleeping there turn out
and they and their beds go below. Then one after
another the men come up from the bath in their pyjamas,
and walk the decks an hour or two with bare legs and
bare feet. Coffee and fruit served. The
ship cat and her kitten now appear and get about their
toilets; next the barber comes and flays us on the
breezy deck. Breakfast at 9.30, and the day begins.
I do not know how a day could be more reposeful:
no motion; a level blue sea; nothing in sight from
horizon to horizon; the speed of the ship furnishes
a cooling breeze; there is no mail to read and answer;
no newspapers to excite you; no telegrams to fret
you or fright you the world is far, far
away; it has ceased to exist for you seemed
a fading dream, along in the first days; has dissolved
to an unreality now; it is gone from your mind with
all its businesses and ambitions, its prosperities
and disasters, its exultations and despairs,
its joys and griefs and cares and worries. They
are no concern of yours any more; they have gone out
of your life; they are a storm which has passed and
left a deep calm behind. The people group themselves
about the decks in their snowy white linen, and read,
smoke, sew, play cards, talk, nap, and so on.
In other ships the passengers are always ciphering
about when they are going to arrive; out in these
seas it is rare, very rare, to hear that subject broached.
In other ships there is always an eager rush to the
bulletin board at noon to find out what the “run”
has been; in these seas the bulletin seems to attract
no interest; I have seen no one visit it; in thirteen
days I have visited it only once. Then I happened
to notice the figures of the day’s run.
On that day there happened to be talk, at dinner,
about the speed of modern ships. I was the only
passenger present who knew this ship’s gait.
Necessarily, the Atlantic custom of betting on the
ship’s run is not a custom here nobody
ever mentions it.
I myself am wholly indifferent as
to when we are going to “get in”; if any
one else feels interested in the matter he has not
indicated it in my hearing. If I had my way
we should never get in at all. This sort of
sea life is charged with an indestructible charm.
There is no weariness, no fatigue, no worry, no responsibility,
no work, no depression of spirits. There is
nothing like this serenity, this comfort, this peace,
this deep contentment, to be found anywhere on land.
If I had my way I would sail on for ever and never
go to live on the solid ground again.
One of Kipling’s ballads has
delivered the aspect and sentiment of this bewitching
sea correctly:
“The
Injian Ocean sets an’ smiles
So
sof’, so bright, so bloomin’ blue;
There
aren’t a wave for miles an’ miles
Excep’
the jiggle from the screw.”
April 14. It turns out that
the astronomical apprentice worked off a section of
the Milky Way on me for the Magellan Clouds.
A man of more experience in the business showed one
of them to me last night. It was small and faint
and delicate, and looked like the ghost of a bunch
of white smoke left floating in the sky by an exploded
bombshell.
Wednesday, April 15. Mauritius.
Arrived and anchored off Port Louis 2 A. M. Rugged
clusters of crags and peaks, green to their summits;
from their bases to the sea a green plain with just
tilt enough to it to make the water drain off.
I believe it is in 56 E. and 22 S. a hot
tropical country. The green plain has an inviting
look; has scattering dwellings nestling among the
greenery. Scene of the sentimental adventure
of Paul and Virginia.
Island under French control which
means a community which depends upon quarantines,
not sanitation, for its health.
Thursday, April 16. Went ashore
in the forenoon at Port Louis, a little town, but
with the largest variety of nationalities and complexions
we have encountered yet. French, English, Chinese,
Arabs, Africans with wool, blacks with straight hair,
East Indians, half-whites, quadroons and
great varieties in costumes and colors.
Took the train for Curepipe at 1.30 two
hours’ run, gradually uphill. What a contrast,
this frantic luxuriance of vegetation, with the arid
plains of India; these architecturally picturesque
crags and knobs and miniature mountains, with the
monotony of the Indian dead-levels.
A native pointed out a handsome swarthy
man of grave and dignified bearing, and said in an
awed tone, “That is so-and-so; has held office
of one sort or another under this government for 37
years he is known all over this whole island
and in the other countries of the world perhaps who
knows? One thing is certain; you can speak his
name anywhere in this whole island, and you will find
not one grown person that has not heard it.
It is a wonderful thing to be so celebrated; yet look
at him; it makes no change in him; he does not even
seem to know it.”
Curepipe (means Pincushion or Pegtown,
probably). Sixteen miles (two hours) by rail
from Port Louis. At each end of every roof and
on the apex of every dormer window a wooden peg two
feet high stands up; in some cases its top is blunt,
in others the peg is sharp and looks like a toothpick.
The passion for this humble ornament is universal.
Apparently, there has been only one
prominent event in the history of Mauritius, and that
one didn’t happen. I refer to the romantic
sojourn of Paul and Virginia here. It was that
story that made Mauritius known to the world, made
the name familiar to everybody, the geographical position
of it to nobody.
A clergyman was asked to guess what
was in a box on a table. It was a vellum fan
painted with the shipwreck, and was “one of Virginia’s
wedding gifts.”
April 18. This is the only country
in the world where the stranger is not asked “How
do you like this place?” This is indeed a large
distinction. Here the citizen does the talking
about the country himself; the stranger is not asked
to help. You get all sorts of information.
From one citizen you gather the idea that Mauritius
was made first, and then heaven; and that heaven was
copied after Mauritius. Another one tells you
that this is an exaggeration; that the two chief villages,
Port Louis and Curepipe, fall short of heavenly perfection;
that nobody lives in Port Louis except upon compulsion,
and that Curepipe is the wettest and rainiest place
in the world. An English citizen said:
“In the early part of this century
Mauritius was used by the French as a basis from
which to operate against England’s Indian merchantmen;
so England captured the island and also the neighbor,
Bourbon, to stop that annoyance. England
gave Bourbon back; the government in London did
not want any more possessions in the West Indies.
If the government had had a better quality of geography
in stock it would not have wasted Bourbon in
that foolish way. A big war will temporarily
shut up the Suez Canal some day and the English ships
will have to go to India around the Cape of Good Hope
again; then England will have to have Bourbon
and will take it.
“Mauritius was a crown colony
until 20 years ago, with a governor appointed
by the Crown and assisted by a Council appointed by
himself; but Pope Hennessey came out as Governor
then, and he worked hard to get a part of the
council made elective, and succeeded. So now
the whole council is French, and in all ordinary matters
of legislation they vote together and in the
French interest, not the English. The English
population is very slender; it has not votes enough
to elect a legislator. Half a dozen rich French
families elect the legislature. Pope Hennessey
was an Irishman, a Catholic, a Home Ruler, M.P.,
a hater of England and the English, a very troublesome
person and a serious incumbrance at Westminster; so
it was decided to send him out to govern unhealthy
countries, in hope that something would happen
to him. But nothing did. The first experiment
was not merely a failure, it was more than a failure.
He proved to be more of a disease himself than
any he was sent to encounter. The next
experiment was here. The dark scheme failed
again. It was an off-season and there was
nothing but measles here at the time. Pope
Hennessey’s health was not affected. He
worked with the French and for the French and
against the English, and he made the English
very tired and the French very happy, and lived to
have the joy of seeing the flag he served publicly
hissed. His memory is held in worshipful
reverence and affection by the French.
“It is a land of extraordinary
quarantines. They quarantine a ship for
anything or for nothing; quarantine her for 20 and
even 30 days. They once quarantined a ship
because her captain had had the smallpox when
he was a boy. That and because he was English.
“The population is very small;
small to insignificance. The majority is
East Indian; then mongrels; then negroes (descendants
of the slaves of the French times); then French;
then English. There was an American, but
he is dead or mislaid. The mongrels are the
result of all kinds of mixtures; black and white,
mulatto and white, quadroon and white, octoroon
and white. And so there is every shade of
complexion; ebony, old mahogany, horsechestnut, sorrel,
molasses-candy, clouded amber, clear amber, old-ivory
white, new-ivory white, fish-belly white this
latter the leprous complexion frequent with the
Anglo-Saxon long resident in tropical climates.
“You wouldn’t expect a
person to be proud of being a Mauritian, now would
you? But it is so. The most of them have
never been out of the island, and haven’t
read much or studied much, and they think the
world consists of three principal countries Judaea,
France, and Mauritius; so they are very proud
of belonging to one of the three grand divisions
of the globe. They think that Russia and Germany
are in England, and that England does not amount
to much. They have heard vaguely about
the United States and the equator, but they think
both of them are monarchies. They think Mount
Peter Botte is the highest mountain
in the world, and if you show one of them a picture
of Milan Cathedral he will swell up with satisfaction
and say that the idea of that jungle of spires
was stolen from the forest of peg-tops and toothpicks
that makes the roofs of Curepipe look so fine
and prickly.
“There is not much trade in books.
The newspapers educate and entertain the people.
Mainly the latter. They have two pages of large-print
reading-matter-one of them English, the other French.
The English page is a translation of the French
one. The typography is super-extra primitive in
this quality it has not its equal anywhere.
There is no proof-reader now; he is dead.
“Where do they get matter to
fill up a page in this little island lost in
the wastes of the Indian Ocean? Oh, Madagascar.
They discuss Madagascar and France. That
is the bulk. Then they chock up the rest
with advice to the Government. Also, slurs upon
the English administration. The papers
are all owned and edited by créoles French.
“The language of the country
is French. Everybody speaks it has
to. You have to know French particularly
mongrel French, the patois spoken by Tom, Dick,
and Harry of the multiform complexions or
you can’t get along.
“This was a flourishing country
in former days, for it made then and still makes the
best sugar in the world; but first the Suez Canal severed
it from the world and left it out in the cold and next
the beetroot sugar helped by bounties, captured the
European markets. Sugar is the life of Mauritius,
and it is losing its grip. Its downward course
was checked by the depreciation of the rupee for
the planter pays wages in rupees but sells his crop
for gold and the insurrection in Cuba and
paralyzation of the sugar industry there have given
our prices here a life-saving lift; but the outlook
has nothing permanently favorable about it. It
takes a year to mature the canes on the
high ground three and six months longer and
there is always a chance that the annual cyclone will
rip the profit out of the crop. In recent times
a cyclone took the whole crop, as you may say; and
the island never saw a finer one. Some of the
noblest sugar estates in the island are in deep difficulties.
A dozen of them are investments of English capital;
and the companies that own them are at work now, trying
to settle up and get out with a saving of half the
money they put in. You know, in these days, when
a country begins to introduce the tea culture, it
means that its own specialty has gone back on it.
Look at Bengal; look at Ceylon. Well, they’ve
begun to introduce the tea culture, here.
“Many copies of Paul and Virginia
are sold every year in Mauritius. No other book
is so popular here except the Bible. By many
it is supposed to be a part of the Bible. All
the missionaries work up their French on it when they
come here to pervert the Catholic mongrel. It
is the greatest story that was ever written about
Mauritius, and the only one.”