The next morning, as we went on deck, the steamer was dropping down the river. The guns of Fort William were firing a salute; at Garden Reach we passed the palace of the King of Oude, where this deposed Indian sovereign still keeps his royal state among his serpents and his tigers. We were all day long steaming down the Hoogly. The country is very flat; there is nothing to break the monotony of its swamps and jungles, its villages of mud standing amid rice fields and palm groves. As we approach the sea the river divides into many channels, like the lagoons of Venice. All around are low lying islands, which now and then are swept by terrible cyclones that come up from the Bay of Bengal. At present their shores are overgrown with jungles, the home of wild beasts, of serpents, and crocodiles, of all slimy and deadly things, the monsters of the land and sea. Through a net-work of such lagoons, we glide out into the deep; slowly the receding shores sink till they are submerged, as if they were drowned; we have left India behind, and all around is only a watery horizon.
[8] There are not many Americans in Calcutta, and as they are few, we are the more concerned that they should be respectable, and not dishonor our national character. Sometimes I am told we have had representatives of whom we had no reason to be proud. We are now most fortunate in our Consul, General Litchfield, a gentleman of excellent character, who is very obliging to his countrymen, and commands in a high degree the respect of the English community. There is here also an American pastor, Dr. Thorburn, who is very popular, and whose people are building him a new church while he is absent on a visit to his own country; and what attracts a stranger still more, an excellent family of American ladies, engaged in the Zenana Mission, which is designed to reach Hindoo women, who, as they live in strict seclusion, can never hear of Christianity except through those of their own sex. This hospitable "Home" was made ours for a part of the time that we were in Calcutta, for which, and for all the kindness of these excellent ladies, we hold it in grateful remembrance.
In America we speak of the Far West, which is an undefined region, constantly receding in the distance. So in Asia there is a Far and Farther East, ever coming a little nearer to the rising sun. When we have done with India, there is still a Farther India to be "seen and conquered." On the other side of the Bay of Bengal is a country, which, though called India, and under the East Indian Government, is not India. The very face of nature is different. It is a country not of vast plains, but of mountains and valleys, and springs that run among the hills; a country with another people than India, another language, and another religion. Looking upon the map of Asia, one sees at its southeastern extremity a long peninsula, reaching almost to the equator, with a central range of mountains, an Alpine chain, which runs through its whole length, as the Apennines run through Italy. This is the Malayan peninsula, on one side of which is Burmah, and on the other, Siam, the land of the White Elephant.