Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/566

498 steaming, sailing, and pulling hither and thither, while the Bengalee boatmen keep up an unbroken jabber on every hand. The vessels in port are moored in tiers three deep, broadside to the shore, which slopes down, without wharves or docks, to the water's edge. Their cargoes are unloaded by lighters which lie alongside, and the officers, agents, and sailors, with a host of Hindu tradesmen, are continually passing and repassing in small boats called dingeys.

We had to anchor in the stream, for there was no berth vacant for our vessel near the ghats, as the landing-places are called. We had no difficulty, however, in procuring boats in which to reach the shore. The boatmen rowed in through bathers who were at once washing away the stains of the body and of the soul with the yellow but most sacred water of the river, and set us on shore near the spot on which stood the famous “Black-hole of Calcutta," where in one night a hundred and twenty Englishmen died, stifled, suffocated, and trampled to death, locked in a little cell, because the guards dared not disturb the sleep of an oriental despot to tell him that his prisoners would in a few hours be dead men. Now, how changed are all things in India! The descend-