CHAPTER X. 



PATNA DURING THE MUTINY. 



HEN the "third year" came round, nearly three 

 thousand years ago, we may imagine what an eager 

 crowd of Canaanites and Jews assembled on the 

 Phoenician shore to see the ships unload their cargo 

 of ivory, apes, and peacocks* just arrived from India. 

 What yarns the sailors must have spun about the 

 wonders they had seen, and even "King Solomon, in 

 all his glory," may fairly have waxed impatient to hear the latest 

 news about those mysterious eastern regions beyond the sea. 



But since the introduction of the great civilizer— steam, the voyage 

 to India has so often been described, that I have heard not a few 

 declare there is no room for further writing on the subject. As well 

 may it be said that the alphabet has been exhausted, and there is no 

 material to form new words, or that the notes of music have already 

 supplied every possible change of tune ; but a facile pen to describe 



* Since writing the above, it occurs to me that I am out of my depth, for I have no idea where Tarshish is, 

 or was, and ahhough I was among the first to go down the Suez Canal in a steam launch, I forgot it was not 

 open in Solomon's time, and should doubt ships doubling the Cape for the sake of "a whole wilderness of 

 monkeys." Still the servants of Hiram must have gone to India for peacocks, although my old friend Bewick 

 says they are common in many parts of Africa. 



I should perhaps have hesitated to betray my ignorance here had not my neighbour. Colonel Barrow, a 

 member of the Royal Geographical Society, told me that he can throw no light on the Tarshish question. 



