File:Wanderings east of Suez in Ceylon, India, China and Japan (1907) (14766475325).jpg

Identifier: wanderingseastof00penf (find matches)
Title: Wanderings east of Suez in Ceylon, India, China and Japan
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Penfield, Frederic Courtland, 1855-1922
Subjects: East Asia -- Description and travel India -- Description and travel Sri Lanka -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : George Bell and Sons New York : Century co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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in India, the pilots of theHooghly have been esteemed as personages andthey have taken rank but slightly lower than offi-cers of the navy, and much ahead of ordinary com-mercial people and mariners. ^Vhen off duty inCalcutta the pilot goes to his club and drives onthe Maidan with other Anglo-Indians of quality,and never is seen about hotel bars and cafes likethe ruck of seafaring men having a spare day onshore. The Hooghly is charted practically every twen.ty-four hours, and on his way upstream the pilotgets his information pertaining to depths and barsby signals from stations on shore. The river pre-sents nothing of interest to the traveler until apoint twenty miles from Calcutta is reached;thereafter it is a stream of many attractions. For-tifications with visible native troops and an occa-sional red-coated English soldier occur fre-quently ; then come scores of enormous cotton andjute mills, attended by strange-looking stern-wheelsteamboats, most of them with huge cargo barges 206
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Indias Modern Capital on either side. At last Calcutta is in sight. Tallfactory chimneys and domed public buildings pro-nounce it a city of size and importance. The lasttwo miles of the journey are made through a flo-tilla of shipping, a bewildering medley of sailingvessels and steamers, flying the flags of all themaritime nations of the earth—all but the Starsand Stripes of Uncle Sam, Bombay, on the other side of India, and imme-diately on the sea, would make a better capitalthan Calcutta. But the malodorous city of theHooghly will probably ever be the seat of Bri-tains rule. While the names of Warren Hastings and Clivedominate the printed page dealing with modernIndia, Calcutta fairly throbs with recollections ofJob Charnock, the audacious Englishman whoraised the red flag of Britain just two hundred andseventeen years ago over a collection of mud hov-els and straw huts on the site of what to-day is thecapital of the Indian Empire. Charnock, perhaps the founder of Englandsrule in

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