pitality demanded this, but it was
the financial ruin of the Chota Sahib, depending solely on his modest
salary.

At Scottpore I went in strong for vegetable, fruit and flower gardening,
and not without success. Visitors came from a distance to view the
flower-beds and eat my green peas, and I really think that I grew as
fine pineapples and bananas as were produced anywhere. The pineapple of
good stock and ripened on the plant is, I think, the most exquisite of
all fruits. A really ripe pine contains no fibre. You cut the top off
and sup the delicious mushy contents with a spoon.

In such a hot, steamy climate as we had in these tea districts, the
rapidity of growth of vegetation is, of course, remarkable. Bamboos
illustrate this better than other plants, their growth being so much
more noticeable, that of a young shoot amounting to as much as four
inches in one night. It sometimes appeared to my imagination that the
weeds and grass grew one foot in a like period, especially when short of
labour. The planter usually takes a pride in the well-cultivated
appearance of the garden in his charge; but how can one be proud if the
weeds overtop the bushes? It may be appropriate here to note that
eighty-five per cent. of the twenty-four hours' growth of plants occurs
between 12 p.m. and 6 a.m.; during the noon hours the apparent growth
almost entirely ceases.

Garden coolies are generally Hindoos and are imported from far-off
districts. The local peasantry of Bengal are mostly Mohammedans and do
not work on tea-gardens, except on such jobs as cutting jungle,
building, etc. They speak a somewhat different tongue, so that we had to
understand Bengali as well as Hindustani. I may mention here that as
Hindoos regard an egg as defiling, and Mohammedans despise an eater of
pork, our love for ham and eggs alienates us from both these classes;
what beasts we must be! The Hindoos and the Bengal Mussulmans are
characterized by cringing servility, open insolence, or rude
indifference. Contrast with this the Burmese agreeableness and
affability, or the bearing of the Rajput and the Sikh. In those days the
natives cringed before the Sahib Log much more than they do now. Then
all had to put their umbrellas down on passing a sahib, and all had to
leave the side-walk on the white man's approach; not that the law
compelled them to do so, it was simply a custom enforced by their
masters, in the large cities as well as in the mofussil.

We th