Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/178

 and he would salaam quite as low and consider himself well paid.

Too much baggage in traveling is proverbially a nuisancebut no one can travel in India without a rasai (a stuffed cotton quilt), a pillow and a railway rug. The distances are long, and although even in winter the heat at midday is oppressive, at night it is quite cool. The difference in temperature between midday and midnight is excessive. Every one here wears a solar topee, a hat made of pith half an inch thick, but very light, ventilated around the head, and shaped sometimes like an antique helmet, but more frequently resembling a wooden chopping-bowl. Around it is wound a puggree of white cambric, or thin lawn. Though very odd in appearance to a stranger, this is by far the most comfortable headgear for a tropical climate I have ever seen. One is allowed all the luggage free that will go under the seat or can be piled in the rack overhead, but trunks have to be registered and receipted for by a very complicated system and paid for at a high rate of transportation. Baggage checks, as well as Pullman sleeping carp, are unknown anywhere in the world except in America. My first night on the train was anything but comfortable, although the misery of sitting up all night was mitigated by an arrangement peculiar to these India carriages, of raising the cushion behind the seat and strapping it to the roof, thus affording shelves for four persons. The first-class carriages are never crowded, and I have frequently rode hundreds of miles with a whole compartment to myself. In this train there are nine fourth-class cars, each of is crowded with at least forty natives, but not more than twenty Europeans all told.

As I described to an English fellow-trader this morning, the luxury of our drawing-room and sleeping cars he seemed much interested and surprised; but I was somewhat annoyed at a slight raising of the eyebrows, as if he thought I was drawing a long bow.

Our course was to the north-west, up the valley of the Ganges, five hundred and forty mile to Benares, a journey of about twenty-four hours, including stoppages. The country is very level, and thoroughly cultivated. This valley for fifteen hundred miles is the most populous and fertile in India, but every crop depends on irrigation by the numerous canals; and wells with