Through India and Burmah with Pen and Brush, Classics To Go

Excerpt: "Down came the rain, sudden, heavy and terrible, seeming to quell even the sea's rage and whelming those defenceless hundreds of dark-skinned voyagers in new and more dreadful misery. Terrors were upon them, and in abject wretchedness and hopeless struggle men, women and children spread every strip of their belongings over their bodies and even used for shelter the very mats upon which they had been lying. What trouble a Hindoo will take to keep his body from the rain! Extremely cleanly and fond of unlimited ablutions he yet detests nothing so much as a wetting from the sky, and now, wholly at the mercy of the elements, do what they would, no human ingenuity availed to keep these wretched people dry. It was the season of the rice harvest, when {2} South India coolies swarm over to Burmah much as the peasantry of Mayo and Connemara used to crowd to England every summer. If anybody is really anxious to remember that there are paddy fields in Burmah he should cross the Bay of Bengal in December."