Produced by Karen Fabrizius, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
So kindly a reception have the public accorded to "The Days Before
Yesterday" that I have ventured into print yet again.
This is less a book of reminiscences than a recapitulation of variouspersonal experiences in many lands, some of which may be viewed fromunaccustomed angles.
The descriptions in Chapter VIII of cattle-working and ofhorse-breaking on an Argentine estancia have already appeared inslightly different form in an earlier book of mine, now out of print.
London, 1921.
An ideal form of travel for the elderly—A claim to roam at will inprint—An invitation to a big-game shoot—Details of journey to CoochBehar—The commercial magnate and the station-master—An outbreak ofcholera—Arrival at Cooch Behar Palace-Our Australian Jehu—Theshooting camp—Its gigantic scale—The daily routine—"Chota Begum,"my confidential elephant—Her well-meant attentions—My firsttiger—Another lucky shot—The leopard and the orchestra—TheMaharanee of Cooch Behar—An evening in the jungle—The buns and thebear—Jungle pictures—A charging rhinoceros—Another rhinocerosincident—The amateur Mahouts—Circumstances preventing a second visitto Cooch Behar
Mighty Kinchinjanga—The inconceivable splendours of a Himalayansunrise—The last Indian telegraph office—The irrepressible BritishTommy—An improvised garden—An improvised Durbar hall—A splendidceremony—A native dinner—The disguised Europeans—Our shockingtable-manners—Incidents—Two impersonations; one successful, theother the reverse—I come off badly—Indian jugglers—Therope-trick—The juggler, the rope, and the boy—An inexplicableincident—A performing cobra scores a success—Ceylon "DevilDancers"—Their performance—The Temple of the Tooth—The uncoveringof the Tooth—Details concerning—An abominable libel—Tea andcoffee—Peradeniya Gardens—The upas tree of Java—Colombo an EasternClapham Junction—The French lady and the savages—The small Bermudianand the inhabitants of England
Frenchmen pleasant travelling companions—Their limitations—Vicomtede Vogue—The innkeeper and the ikon—An early oil-burning steamer—Amodern Bluebeard—His "Blue Chamber"—Dupleix—His ambitious scheme—A disastrous period for France—A personal appreciation of theEmperor Nicholas II—A learned but versatile Orientalist—PidginEnglish—Hong-Kong—An ancient Portuguese city in China—Duck junks—Acomical Marathon race—Canton—Its fascination and its appallingsmells—The malevolent Chinese devils—Precautions adoptedagainst—"Foreign devils"—The fortunate limitations of Chinesedevils—The City of the Dead—A business interview
The glamour of the West Indies—Captain Marryat and MichaelScott—Deadly climate of the islands in the eighteenth century—TheWest Indian planters—Difference between East and West Indies—"Let useat and drink, for to-morrow we die"—Training-school for BritishNavy—A fruitless voyage—Quarantine—Distant view of Barbados—FatherLabat—The last of the Emperors of Byzantium—Delightful little LadyNugent and her diary of 1802—Her impressions of Jamaica—Wealthyplan