and more, perhaps, than its habitual patrons
among our compatriots are generally aware.
For familiarity certainly breeds carelessness, if
not contempt. From force of habit men get
wretchedly localised in strange lands, and look
upon novelty as a thing of routine, and beauty
as a matter of course. Still, it must be
confessed that the great object in making an
Indian railway seems to be to make it as
much like an English one as possible. The
stations, to be sure, exhibit more architectural
variety than those at home. Sometimes you
see a pure Indian bungalow, thatch and all;
at others, you light upon a refreshing imitation
of a Swiss cottage, with palm and plantain
trees in pleasing incongruity. Now and then
an Elizabethan erection meets the eye, and the
British barn is not without its representatives.
But this, like the native bungalow, is generally
a temporary arrangement; the majority of the
stations being of the Swiss cottage description,
at least on those lines which have come under
my observation. I refer more particularly to
the East Indian Railway, which commences in
Calcutta, and of this, a very short trip upon
paper will give a general idea.

You cannot start from Calcutta direct, that
is to say, by the railway. The Hooghley has
never yet found an engineer bold enough to
bridge it, or perhaps I should say, clever enough
to persuade those who would have to pay for
it, that he can perform the work. For the
stream is not only very broad at Calcutta, but
strong, and what is worse, uncertain. So there
is nothing for it but to cross by the ferry-boat,
which in justice it must be said, is as much like
a bridge as a ferry-boat can ever hope to be, as
regards length, and is, moreover, propelled by
steam. On the other side, you find the railway
terminus—a building of some architectural
pretensions—close at hand, as if it had been
waiting for you, and close to that the railway hotel,
which I am told is now very large and very
good—it was very small and very bad when I
knew it.

Railways will be like one another wherever
they are laid down. There is no helping it.
So will locomotives. The names of the latter
in the vicinity of the platform—one of them
waiting for the train which is to take us up,
and others steaming away in the approved
manner, as if to get rid of their superfluous
energies—suggest the East only in their names.
One is probably called "Punjab," a second
"Ganges," a third, perhaps, "Dalhousie." The
carriages are much the same in outward
appearance to those seen any day at Euston-
square or Paddington; but when inside you
cannot fail to notice that there is a great deal
of open-work near the roofs, intended for
ventilation, and by no means too much to
answer the purpose. They are divided into
first, second, and third class, as in England, and
lately I believe a fourth class has been added,
to suit the "lower still" of the lowest depths
of native society. For, contrary to general
expectation and particular prophecy, the natives
are the great patrons of the rail. They
would never use the railway, said some old
Indians. It would destroy their caste to
mix, and caste-ification would be of course
impossible. The event proved what most
residents in India have found from experience,
that convenience and economy are more
powerful than caste in the long run. Certain it is
that the railway is found curiously consonant
with both the habits and the exchequer of
the Hindoos, and that caste takes its chance.
The native is proverbially patient, or it may be
merely disinclined to exertion; and he hates
paying a pice more than he is obliged to pay.
The railway to him affords a maximum of
comfort, and a minimum of cheapness—he is
its devoted patron. With his bundle, his brass
drinking-vessel, and, maybe, his lahtee, or
wooden staff, he will go all over the world—
that is to say his world—and the only anxiety
that seems to attend him in his new mode of
travel is to be in time. Accordingly he always
arrives at the station long before the period for
starting, and—I here allude to him in his
collective capacity—forms an immense crowd
waiting to be let in. The doors opened, the
rush is tremendous, and has to be repressed by
main force, at the hands of the European police
and officials. An amount of punching and
driving which in England would lead to scores
of actions for assault and battery, and legions
of letters to the Times, is absolutely necessary
before the dense mass can be brought
up to the pay place. Here they all howl
at once, holding their proffered price above
their heads while they push for precedence.
Those nearest to the money-taker evince a
disposition to bargain in reference to the fare,
for no Hindoo seems to understand that a price
may be fixed, and admit of no abatement. A
little more official action here becomes necessary;
and, one by one, the members of the mob are
made to deposit their mites and receive their
tickets, after which they are pushed, punched, or
propelled, towards the train. Then comes another
rush for places. The third and fourth class
carriages are soon filled, in the European sense of
the term, but the occupation of the vehicles has
only just begun. Nobody knows what a
portmanteau will hold until its capacity is tested;
and the carriages appear to have a similarly
expansive gift. Batch after batch crowd in,
until the passengers are as closely packed as
sardines, or negroes in the hold of a slaver
making the Middle Passage. It can scarcely be
considered the fault of the authorities that
public inconvenience is thus provided for. The
public will be incommoded; they will not be
comfortable; and if they like the sardine
arrangement, why should the railway company
object? They shake down somehow, when the
train is in motion, and form as agreeable a
company as a crowd of human beings, half
undressed, with brown or black skins, in a high
state of perspiration, and copiously oiled, can
well be with the thermometer at a hundred and
twenty degrees.