Here, There and Everywhere   By: Frederick Spencer Hamilton (1856-1928)

BY

LORD FREDERIC HAMILTON

TO MY GALLANT CANADIAN FRIEND GERALD RUTHERFORD, M.C. OF WINNIPEG

FOREWORD

So kindly a reception have the public accorded to "The Days Before Yesterday" that I have ventured into print yet again.

This is less a book of reminiscences than a recapitulation of various personal experiences in many lands, some of which may be viewed from unaccustomed angles.

The descriptions in Chapter VIII of cattle working and of horse breaking on an Argentine estancia have already appeared in slightly different form in an earlier book of mine, now out of print.

F. H.

London, 1921.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

An ideal form of travel for the elderly A claim to roam at will in print An invitation to a big game shoot Details of journey to Cooch Behar The commercial magnate and the station master An outbreak of cholera Arrival at Cooch Behar Palace Our Australian Jehu The shooting camp Its gigantic scale The daily routine "Chota Begum," my confidential elephant Her well meant attentions My first tiger Another lucky shot The leopard and the orchestra The Maharanee of Cooch Behar An evening in the jungle The buns and the bear Jungle pictures A charging rhinoceros Another rhinoceros incident The amateur Mahouts Circumstances preventing a second visit to Cooch Behar

CHAPTER II

Mighty Kinchinjanga The inconceivable splendours of a Himalayan sunrise The last Indian telegraph office The irrepressible British Tommy An improvised garden An improvised Durbar hall A splendid ceremony A native dinner The disguised Europeans Our shocking table manners Incidents Two impersonations; one successful, the other the reverse I come off badly Indian jugglers The rope trick The juggler, the rope, and the boy An inexplicable incident A performing cobra scores a success Ceylon "Devil Dancers" Their performance The Temple of the Tooth The uncovering of the Tooth Details concerning An abominable libel Tea and coffee Peradeniya Gardens The upas tree of Java Colombo an Eastern Clapham Junction The French lady and the savages The small Bermudian and the inhabitants of England

CHAPTER III

Frenchmen pleasant travelling companions Their limitations Vicomte de Vogue The innkeeper and the ikon An early oil burning steamer A modern Bluebeard His "Blue Chamber" Dupleix His ambitious scheme A disastrous period for France A personal appreciation of the Emperor Nicholas II A learned but versatile Orientalist Pidgin English Hong Kong An ancient Portuguese city in China Duck junks A comical Marathon race Canton Its fascination and its appalling smells The malevolent Chinese devils Precautions adopted against "Foreign devils" The fortunate limitations of Chinese devils The City of the Dead A business interview

CHAPTER IV

The glamour of the West Indies Captain Marryat and Michael Scott Deadly climate of the islands in the eighteenth century The West Indian planters Difference between East and West Indies "Let us eat and drink, for to morrow we die" Training school for British Navy A fruitless voyage Quarantine Distant view of Barbados Father Labat The last of the Emperors of Byzantium Delightful little Lady Nugent and her diary of 1802 Her impressions of Jamaica Wealthy planters Their hideous gormandising A simple morning meal An aldermanic dinner How the little Nugents were gorged Haiti Attempts of General Le Clerc to secure British intervention in Haiti Presents to Lady Nugent Her Paris dresses described Our arrival in Jamaica Its marvellous beauty The bewildered Guardsman Little trace of Spain left in Jamaica The Spaniards as builders British and Spanish Colonial methods contrasted

CHAPTER V

An election meeting in Jamaica Two family experiences at contested elections Novel South African methods Unattractive Kingston A driving tour through the island The Guardsman as orchid hunter Derelict country houses An attempt to reconstruct the past The Fourth Form room at Harrow Elizabethan Harrovians I meet many friends of my youth The "Sunday" books of the 'sixties "Black and White" Arrival of the French fleet Its inner meaning International courtesies A delicate attention Absent alligators The mangrove swamp A preposterous suggestion The swamps do their work Fever A very gallant apprentice What he did

CHAPTER VI

The Spanish Main Its real meaning A detestable region Tarpon and sharks The isthmus The story of the great pearl "La elegrina" The Irishman and the Peruvian The vagaries of the Southern Cross The great Kingston earthquake Point of view of small boys Some earthquake incidents "Flesh coloured" stockings Negro hysteria A family incident, and the unfortunate Archbishop Port Royal A sugar estate A scene from a boy's book in real life Cocoa nuts Reef fishing Two young men of great promise

CHAPTER VII

Appalling ignorance of geography amongst English people Novel pedagogic methods "Happy Families" An instructive game Bermuda A waterless island A most inviting archipelago Bermuda the most northern coral atoll The reefs and their polychrome fish A "water glass" Sea gardens An ideal sailing place How the Guardsman won his race A miniature Parliament Unfounded aspersions on the Bermudians Red and blue birds Two pardonable mistakes Soldier gardeners Officers' wives The little roaming home makers A pleasant island The inquisitive German naval officers "The Song of the Bermudians"

CHAPTER VIII