I forgot those doleful and unhumorous conspirators among people who
fervently believed in the place; but afterwards the memory left a bad
taste in my mouth. Cities, like women, cannot be too careful what sort
of men they allow to talk about them.
Time had changed Vancouver literally out of all knowledge. From the
station to the suburbs, and back to the wharves, every step was strange,
and where I remembered open spaces and still untouched timber, the
tramcars were fleeting people out to a lacrosse game. Vancouver is an
aged city, for only a few days previous to my arrival the Vancouver
Baby - i.e. the first child born in Vancouver - had been married.
A steamer - once familiar in Table Bay - had landed a few hundred Sikhs
and Punjabi Jats - to each man his bundle - and the little groups walked
uneasy alone, keeping, for many of them had been soldiers, to the
military step. Yes, they said they had come to this country to get work.
News had reached their villages that work at great wages was to be had
in this country. Their brethren who had gone before had sent them the
news. Yes, and sometimes the money for the passage out. The money would
be paid back from the so-great wages to come. With interest? Assuredly
with interest.. Did men lend money for nothing in any country? They
were waiting for their brethren to come and show them where to eat, and
later, how to work. Meanwhile this was a new country. How could they say
anything about it? No, it was not like Gurgaon or Shahpur or Jullundur.
The Sickness (plague) had come to all these places. It had come into the
Punjab by every road, and many - many - many had died. The crops, too, had
failed in some districts. Hearing the news about these so-great wages
they had taken ship for the belly's sake - for the money's sake - for the
children's sake.
'Would they go back again?'
They grinned as they nudged each other. The Sahib had not quite
understood. They had come over for the sake of the money - the rupees,
no, the dollars. The Punjab was their home where their villages lay,
where their people were waiting. Without doubt - without doubt - they
would go back. Then came the brethren already working in the
mills - cosmopolitans dressed in ready-made clothes, and smoking
cigarettes.
'This way, O you people,' they cried. The bundles were reshouldered and
the turbaned knots melted away. The last words I caught were true Sikh
talk: 'But what about the money, O my brother?'
Some Punjabis have found out that money can be too dearly bought.
There was a Sikh in a sawmill, had been driver in a mountain battery at
home. Himself he was from Amritsar. (Oh, pleasant as cold water in a
thirsty land is the sound of a familiar name in a fair country!)
'But you had your pension. Why did you come here?'
'Heaven-born, because my sense was little. And there was also the
Sickness at Amritsar.'
(The historian a hundred years hence will be able to write a book on
economic changes brought about by pestilence. There is a very
interesting study somewhere of the social and commercial effects of the
Black Death in England.)
On a wharf, waiting for a steamer, some thirty Sikhs, many of them
wearing their old uniforms (which should not be allowed) were talking at
the tops of their voices, so that the shed rang like an Indian railway
station. A suggestion that if they spoke lower life would be easier was
instantly adopted. Then a senior officer with a British India medal
asked hopefully: 'Has the Sahib any orders where we are to go?'
Alas he had none - nothing but goodwill and greetings for the sons of
the Khalsa, and they tramped off in fours.
It is said that when the little riot broke out in Vancouver these
'heathen' were invited by other Asiatics to join in defending themselves
against the white man. They refused on the ground that they were
subjects of the King. I wonder what tales they sent back to their
villages, and where, and how fully, every detail of the affair was
talked over. White men forget that no part of the Empire can live or die
to itself.
Here is a rather comic illustration of this on the material side. The
wonderful waters between Vancouver and Victoria are full of whales,
leaping and rejoicing in the strong blue all about the steamer. There
is, therefore, a whalery on an island near by, and I had the luck to
travel with one of the shareholders.
'Whales are beautiful beasts,' he said affectionately. 'We've a contract
with a Scotch firm for every barrel of oil we can deliver for years
ahead. It's reckoned the best for harness-dressing.'
He went on to tell me how a swift ship goes hunting whales with a
bomb-gun and explodes shells into their insides so that they perish at
once.
'All the old harpoon and boat business would take till the cows come
home. We kill 'em right off.'
'And how d'you strip 'em?'
It seemed that the expeditious ship carried also a large air-pump, and
pumped up the carcass to float roundly till she could attend to it. At
the end of her day's kill she would return, towing sometimes as many as
four inflated whales to the whalery, which is a factory full of modern
appliances.
