From Edinburgh to India & Burmah

... Went this morning with Krishnaswami of Madras--Krishna is my "Boy," and is aged about forty--to Army and Navy Stores for clothes. The thinnest I could get at home feel very...

Seven hundred and eight miles we have come to-day from the sea, a regular Argo trip, yet we are far from wearied, and, allowed a day to stop here and there, would willingly proc...

Lives there a man who has sat by the riverside at mid-day in the glen, with a pipe and a cup, and a fish in the bag, the air hot and full of the sound of running waters, and the...

AGRA.--I find India generally speaking is a little vexatious, and think that perhaps the youth who stays at home may after all score over the youth who is sent to roam. There is...

December ...--We left "Locksley Hall" at 7.30, and D. came to station to see us off and to give last instructions to the servants about catering for us. We have to train all nig...

This is the broad gauge Madras line. The cars run as smoothly as oil on water--I can write perfectly well, or as well us usual to be exact,--and there is gas, electric light, fa...

Dharwar Station is not so unlike one we know within two and a half miles of the centre of Scotland. It is almost the same size but there is no village. Though not imposing, I un...

2nd February.--There was a river mist this morning, the sun shining through, and we "slept in" for there was no engine to awaken us. When we did awaken, it was to the tune of re...

From the train to Rangoon, you see very little of the country: we felt rather unhappy in it after the comfort of the steamer. A native stationmaster lost half our luggage for us...

January 7th.--We danced--I danced with ladies in Gainsborough hats, their feathers tickling my eye, in pork pie hats, and Watteaus, and picture hats like sparrows' nests; and th...

Bombay.--I've travelled these three weeks with people who have lived in India, and I have been brought up on Indian books and Indian home letters, and in one way and another hav...

Thayet Myo, January 20th.--After leaving Prome we have a good long wait here; we have the Prince's mails on board. Their Royal Highnesses are coming down river from Mandalay, so...

We started at break of day and didn't get home till after sunset and then had to dine at the old Fort and witness a Kachin Pwé in the moonlight till the small hours.

17th January.--On the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company's S.S. "Java"--after our British India S.S. experience it is delightful, the quiet utterly soothing. It is hot it is true--hot a...

Channapatna.--This is the third station south of Bangalore. It is just the place for an artist to come to to paint, and a mere step from Bombay. There's a Dak bungalow where he...

I have had a delightful fishing day; at an early hour found myself again at the shore, nominally to paint, but in truth because it was hot and stuffy in town, and the thought of...

Here beginneth another week of observations. To begin with, I purchased E. H. A.'s "Tribes on my Frontier," feeling that a groundwork of study in this writer's popular books was...

30th January 1906.--Fog--6 o'clock A.M.--half daylight, and the anchor chain comes clanking on board--a cheery sound, the steady clink clank of the pall-pin in the winch--a comf...

There is a frightful crush on board. It would take years to consider all the faces. Numbers of ladies are going out to join their husbands after having taken their children home...

Wake for the sun has scattered into flight The stars before it from the field of night; Drives night along with it, and strikes The Rajah's palace with a shaft of light--

about India; how the pictures unfold themselves all hot and new to me, and coloured, and at fifty to sixty miles an hour! Won't mental indigestion wait on good appetite!

LONDON TO TILBURY.--If I am to write notes about a journey to the Far East, I must not miss out the exciting part between Grosvenor Square and Liverpool Street Station. The exci...

Kalychet, 10th February.--It seems quite a long time since we were last night in the plains, in mist and haze and moonlight. It rained, and was very damp indeed during the night...

I believe this is the 5th. These 'chits' help one to remember dates; they are little cards presented you when you order soda water or wine, or are solicited for subscriptions to...

Dined at our hostlerie; in every direction vistas of uniforms, ladies' dresses, maharajahs, rajahs, turbans, and jewels, the marble pillars and the arches of blue night over the...

The Canal.--If I had not seen Mr Talbot Kelly's book on Egypt I could hardly have believed it possible that the delicate schemes of colour we see in the desert as we pass throug...

Sunday, 28th.--The steamer blows a second time, and the friends and relations of our traders, sisters, cousins, and aunts get ashore across the flat or barge alongside, and the...

Some time ago I wrote a book about a voyage in a whaler to the far south, to a white, silent land where the sun shines all day and night and it is quiet as the grave and beautif...

Our first day with a blue sky at sea--my word it is blue, impossibly blue, and the sun is beaming! We have had a quiet night, so everyone is very contented. On our left the Span...

MONDAY--a rolling tumbling sea, soft grey and white, and misty-wet decks with shimmering reflections--a day when even a great liner such as this feels a little shut off from the...

Dear B,--There are still a few minutes before old Sol gets his face under cover, so I am going to let you know of my first great day's Indian Shikar! It was A.1. from start to f...

The horsemen were mostly civilians such as two of our friends in these bachelor quarters, and very smart they looked in their neat white uniforms and white helmets with a glitte...

There was a knocking and a calling "What ho--within there!" and I got up in the grey dawn and found my cousins outside our carriage, looking rather chilled. A native stationmast...

We have "seen the New Year in," in a way, perhaps not quite so jollily as at home, but well enough however. And as we went to sleep, we did hear a little cheering, some jovial n...

4th.--Half-an-hour's drive across the town brought us to the harbour, and then we had a hot walk to the end of the wharf. Such a struggle there was at the slip down to the small...

Yesterday afternoon we did a little preparation for our trek into China. Mr Kohn, the storekeeper in Bhamo, imports to the East, the essentials of western civilization (in my op...

Good-bye to Dharwar, we are on the move again, the comparatively cold-weather tourists take the road south to Bangalore. We jog along at a respectable rate, not too fast and not...

The above notes and remarks, full of hope, were written with a little impatience to be "on the water." Now, after two hours scrambling through jungle to and from the river, I've...

The D. C. Bungalow is certainly very nice, bar _The Mystery_. The roses are splendid, in masses; and orchids hang everywhere. I suppose the interest in them at home accounts for...

I don't know very well how we did all our packing and got away from the Taj Hotel to the train, but we did it somehow; and possibly may become inured to the effort after six or...