To my mind a full-rigged
ship is the most beautiful object man has ever devised, and when
the dusk was falling, with every spar and rope outlined in black
against the vivid crimson of the short-lived Indian sunset, the
long line of shipping made a glorious picture. Nineteen years
later every sailing-ship had disappeared from the Hooghly, and in
their place were rows of unsightly, rusty-sided iron tanks, with
squat polemasts and ugly funnels vomiting black smoke. A tramp-
steamer has its uses, no doubt, but it is hardly a thing of
beauty. Ichabod! Ichabod!
Calcutta is fortunate in having so fine a lung as the great
stretch of the Maidan. It has been admirably planted and laid out,
with every palm of tree of aggressively Indian appearance
carefully excluded from its green expanse, so it wears a curiously
home-like appearance. The Maidan is very reminiscent of Hyde Park,
though almost double its size. There is one spot, where the Gothic
spire of the cathedral emerges from a mass of greenery, with a
large sheet of water in the foreground, which recalls exactly the
view over Bayswater from the bridge spanning the Serpentine.
Pages:
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400