EXIT

I arrived in Bombay on the last day of 1919 and embarked at Calcutta for Japan on the evening of February 17th, seven weeks later. But to embark at Calcutta is not to leave it, for we merely dropped down the river a short distance that night, and for the next day and a half we were in the Hooghli, sounding all the way. It is a difficult river to emerge from; nor do I recommend any one else to travel, as I did, on a boat with a forward deck cargo of two or three hundred goats on the starboard side and half as many monkeys on the port, with a small elephant tethered between and a cage of leopards adjacent. These, the property of an American dealer in wild animals, were intended for sale in the States; all but one of the leopards, which, being lame, he had decided to kill, to provide a "robe" for his wife. Nothing could be more different than the careless aimless activities of the monkeys I had seen among the trees between Agra and Delhi and scampering over the parapets of Benares, all thieves and libertines with a charter, and the restriction of these poor cowering mannikins, overcrowded in their cages, with an abysmal sorrow in their eyes. Many died on the voyage, and I think the Indian Government should look into the question of their export very narrowly.