The Himalaya Mountains.—Returning Southward.—Lucknow and Calcutta.—Foretells the Great Rebellion.—Embarks for China.—Visit to the Mountains of Penang.—The Chinese at Singapore.—Arrival at Hong-Kong.—Joins the Staff of the U. S. Commissioner.—Scenes about Shanghai.—The Nanking Rebellion.—Life in Shanghai.—Enlists in the Navy.—Commodore Perry’s Expedition. From Delhi Mr. Taylor travelled northward through a country well subjugated, which, under English direction, was made fertile and safe for travellers. His way lay toward the sunnier resort of the invalids and wealthy Europeans, which lay far up in the Himalaya Mountains, where the snow never melted and where the hot, miasmatic winds of the plains cannot follow the fugitive. At Roorkee, while lying in his palanquin, he caught his first glimpse of the Himalayas, and felt that crushing sense of awful sublimity which fills the soul of every new spectator. Towers that the arch of heaven seems to rest upon, white and gleaming as the purest pearl, rise one behind the other, until the farthest are lost in the haze of intervening space. Titanic pillars of snow, so grand, so mighty, so expressive of the most gigantic forces known or imagined by man, how can language convey their immensity? It is useless to attempt it. For you may talk, and talk, of mountains and the glorious[222] sunsets that enamel them in roseate tints, yet no one will shed tears or feel a tremor of awe. But he who beholds them for the first time lets the tears unnoticed fall, and trembles as if thrust suddenly into the personal presence of the Almighty. Such a sense of humility, of abject unworthiness, takes possession of the beholder, that the soul labors heavily under the oppressive load, and the body shrinks from a nearer approach. There is nothing so powerful for driving atheism or egotism out of a man as the near view of the Himalayas or Andes or Rocky Mountains. The noblest races of the world have been reared in the wild regions of lofty mountains, and none so tenaciously revere their Maker, or so willingly sacrifice themselves for their friends or their God as the natives of the mountain passes.
Mr. Taylor approached the highest range as near as the heights of Landowr, which is about sixty miles from the snowy peaks of the loftiest range, and is itself so high as to hold the snow the greater part of the year. There he saw the gorgeous illumination of those heavenly snow-fields, when the sun was setting and when it seems as if a universe was in a blaze, while its lurid glare shone full upon those stupendous monuments of the earthquake’s titanic power. Mr. Taylor gazed upon those masses of the purest white, as twilight began to hide their outlines, and thought that, as he said in one of his lectures, “within three hundred miles of me are mightier mountains than these!”
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Having seen the mountains and checked his old desire to stand on top of the highest one, he turned about and started southward for Calcutta, taking the first day’s journey on an elephant kindly loaned him by a new-found friend. He journeyed thence in the horse-carts of that time, via Meerut and Cawnpore, to Lucknow, where he was entertained in a most royal manner by the English officials. After examining that great metropolis of the interior, he hurried on to Benares and thence by quick relays to the great city of Calcutta.
With a peculiar faculty for foreseeing the effect of certain influences on human nature, Mr. Taylor foretold the approaching mutiny. He saw that the English treated the natives with habitual indignity. He saw that three-quarters of the earnings of the people was taken by the government. He saw that the English were in a great minority. He saw that the Sepoy regiments were good soldiers. He saw that influential positions were held by dangerously powerful natives. And he declared that a rebellion was not only possible, but probable.
Four years later began that great rebellion among the natives, which became one of the bloodiest and cruelest contests known in the annals of history. Chiefs and princes who received Mr. Taylor cordially during his visit, were afterwards executed for treason. Fortresses, temples, and cities, which he visited were[224] shattered and torn by the shots of contending armies. Oppression and aristocratic pride resulted, as it naturally would, in horrid carnage and an impoverished treasury. Mr. Taylor’s words of warning as they appeared in America, were probably never read in England, or if they were read, were scouted as the fears of one who did not understand the “permanency of a despotism.”
Although his stay was short in Calcutta, his description of the people, the dwellings, the shipping, and social customs was one of the most clear and complete to be found in print. One who reads it sees the city, the river, the verdant plains, and the sea spread out before him, and becomes acquainted with the shop-keepers, police, Parsees, Arabs, Hindoos, Chinese, and Europeans, that made up the motley throngs. True to his patriotic purpose, he gave the commerce of the port such attention as the interests of our merchants required.
From Calcutta he proceeded by an English steamer to Penang on the coast of the Malay Peninsula. It is a delightful locality, and is as beautiful in situation and vegetation as its clove and nutmeg trees are fragrant. There again he gratified his taste for climbing a mountain, and spent nearly his whole time ascending to the signal station on the highest peak of the peninsula. It was the only place he visited in which he left unseen the attractive nooks, grottos, waterfalls, and jungles, and chose instead the less interesting[225] experience. It was a source of regret to him afterward, that he did not spend the few hours he had, in the lowlands and on the mountain-sides rather than at their tops. Every traveller who has visited Penang could detect the error. Yet, Mr. Taylor set down in his account of his visit more valuable information and a more graphic outline of the landscape than any traveller appears to have done, notwithstanding the beautiful falls of Penang are visited by thousands yearly.
 
NATIVE COTTAGES IN THE TROPICS.
 
Accompanying the steamer in its usual route, Mr. Taylor stopped at Singapore, at the extre............