ABSTRACT
It was naturally, then, with a pleasant feeling of anticipation that we took our way ‘up-country.’ We started from the Howrah terminus of the East Indian Railway, then open to Raneegunge, a distance of 120 miles; and it may be premised that the characteristic features, according to the example here furnished, of a ‘railway station’ in India, would afford Mr. Frith, who has immortalized the subject in England, a fresh and lively theme for his pencil. The native mind does not take matters easy while travelling, and the presence of a leisurely person on the platform is quite a phenomenon. The place is therefore a Babel of sound and confusion, in which the varied tones of manhood mingle with the shrill call of women and children, more or less lost to one another in the crowd. Dark eyes flash, dishevelled turbans stream, and white togas flow, in the impatient rush for places, as if such hot haste afforded the only chance of securing them, while the staff of railway porters, called chokydars or police, stylishly attired at Howrah in black cloth edged with yellow (exchanged for a white cotton dress in the hot season), red turban, and leathern belt adorned with a large brass buckle, glide among the throng directing the more bewildered passengers, or swelling the tumult by rapping with official canes the knuckles of the unmanageable and refractory.
