town, and at the regiments of palm trees three miles away that marked
the coast of Wellesley Province. The air was soft and heavy with
laziness, and at the ship's side were boat-loads of much jewelled
Madrassis--even those to whom Besant has alluded. A squall swept across
the water and blotted out the rows of low, red-tiled houses that made up
Penang, and the shadows of night followed the storm.

I put my twelve-inch rule in my pocket to measure all the world by, and
nearly wept with emotion when on landing at the jetty I fell against a
Sikh--a beautiful bearded Sikh, with white leggings and a rifle. As is
cold water in a thirsty land so is a face from the old country. My
friend had come from Jandiala in the Umritsar district. Did I know
Jandiala? Did I not? I began to tell all the news I could recollect
about crops and armies and the movements of big men in the far, far
north while the Sikh beamed. He belonged to the military police, and it
was a good service, but of course it was far from the old country. There
was no hard work, and the Chinamen gave but little trouble. They had
fights among themselves, but "they do not care to give _us_ any
impudence;" and the big man swaggered off with the long roll and swing
of a whole Pioneer regiment, while I cheered myself with the thought
that India--the India I pretend to hold in hatred--was not so far off,
after all.

You know our ineradicable tendency to damn everything in the mofussil.
Calcutta professes astonishment that Allahabad has a good dancing floor;
Allahabad wonders if it is true that Lahore really has an ice-factory;
and Lahore pretends to believe that everybody in Peshawar sleeps armed.
Very much in the same way I was amused at seeing a steam tramway in
Rangoon, and after we had quitted Moulmein fully expected to find the
outskirts of civilisation. Vanity and ignorance were severely shocked
when they confronted a long street of business--a street of two-storied
houses, full of _ticca-gharies_, shop signs, and above all
_jinrickshaws_.

You in India have never seen a proper _'rickshaw_. There are about two
thousand of them in Penang, and no two seem alike. They are lacquered
with bold figures of dragons and horses and birds and butterflies: their
shafts are of black wood bound with white metal, and so strong that the
coolie sits upon them when he waits for his fare. There is only one
coolie, but he is strong, and he runs just as well as six bell-men. He
ties u