And over all is
the pitiless sun, hot even now, before breakfast, but soon to be
unbearable.
I was not sorry when the voyage ended and we returned to the Maharajah's
Guest House for a little repose and refreshment, before visiting the
early Buddhist stronghold at Sarnath, the "Deer Park," where the Master
first preached his doctrine and whither his five attendants sought a
haven after they had forsaken him. Drifting about its ruins and
contemplating the glorious capital of the famous Asoka column--all that
has been preserved--I found myself murmuring the couplet,--
With a friendly Buddhist priest I seek respite from
the strife
And manifold anomalies which go to make up life--
but the odds are that even the early Buddhists were not immune.
CALCUTTA
Calcutta and Bombay are strangely different--so different that they can
only be contrasted. Bombay, first and foremost, has the sea, and I can
think of nothing more lovely than the sunsets that one watches from the
lawn of the Yacht Club or from the promenade on Warder Road. Calcutta
has no sea--nothing but a very difficult tidal river. Calcutta, again,
has no Malabar Hill. But then Bombay has no open space to compare with
the Maidan; and for all its crowded bazaars it has no street so
diversified and interesting as Harrison Road. It has no Chinatown. Its
climate is enervating where that of Calcutta, if not bracing--and no one
could call it that--at any rate does not extract every particle of
vigour from the European system.
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