Madras has more than half a million inhabitants, and it looked well from the steamer: handsome villas, beautiful tropical trees, and hull forests of cactus ablaze with their gorgeous blossoms. It bein' Sunday whilst on our way from Madras to Calcutta the captain read service, and afterwards made his Sunday inspection of the crew. The sailors and cooks wuz Hindus, the stewards English and Scotch. The crew had on short white trousers, long white jackets and white caps, all on 'em wuz barefooted. We sailed acrost the Bay of Bengal, where I spoze Bengal tigers wuz hidin' in the adjacent jungles, though we didn't meet any and didn't want to. And so on to the Hoogly River; one of the mouths of the Ganges, and on to Calcutta. Calcutta is over four thousand milds from Hongkong. And oh, my heart! how fur! how fur from Jonesville. Most fourteen thousand milds from our own vine and apple trees and the children. It made my head turn round so that I tried to furgit it. CHAPTER XXI As we approached Calcutta we seemed to be travellin' through big gardens more beautiful than our own country can boast of; rich, strange, tropical trees and shrubs and flowers grew luxuriant around the pleasant villas. The English district with its white two-story houses made me think some of an American village. We went to the Great Eastern Hotel, right opposite the gardens of the Viceroy's palace. We had pleasant rooms that would have been pretty hot, but great fans are swung up in our room and the hired help swing 'em by a rope that goes out into the hall. It beats all how much help there is here, the halls seemed full on 'em, but what would our hired help say if we made 'em dress like these Hindus? They wear short pantaloons that don't come down to their knees and then they wind a long strip of white cloth round their thighs and fasten it round their waist, leavin' their right shoulder and arm bare naked. An American family of four livin' in Calcutta have thirty servants, ten of 'em pullin' at these punkeys or fans. They don't eat in the house of their employer; but in a cabin outside.