Rest after Labor
LIFE IN CANTONMENTS.
Very bright and pretty, in the early springtime of
the year 1857, were the British cantonments of Sandynugghur.
As in all other British garrisons in India, they stood
quite apart from the town, forming a suburb of their
own. They consisted of the barracks, and of a
maidan, or, as in England it would be called, “a
common,” on which the troops drilled and exercised,
and round which stood the bungalows of the military
and civil officers of the station, of the chaplain,
and of the one or two merchants who completed the
white population of the place.
Very pretty were these bungalows, built entirely upon
the ground floor, in rustic fashion, wood entering
largely into their composition. Some were thatched;
others covered with slabs of wood or stone. All
had wide verandas running around them, with tatties,
or blinds, made of reeds or strips of wood, to let
down, and give shade and coolness to the rooms therein.
In some of them the visitor walked from the compound,
or garden, directly into the dining-room; large, airy,
with neither curtains, nor carpeting, nor matting,
but with polished boards as flooring. The furniture
here was generally plain and almost scanty, for, except
at meal-times, the rooms were but little used.
Outside, in the veranda, is the real sitting-room
of the bungalow. Here are placed a number of
easy-chairs of all shapes, constructed of cane or
bamboo—light, cool, and comfortable; these
are moved, as the sun advances, to the shady side
of the veranda, and in them the ladies read and work,
the gentlemen smoke. In all bungalows built for
the use of English families, there is, as was the
case at Sandynugghur, a drawing-room as well as a
dining-room, and this, being the ladies’ especial
domain, is generally furnished in European style, with
a piano, light chintz chair-covers, and muslin curtains.
The bedroom opens out of the sitting-room; and almost
every bedroom has its bathroom—that all-important
adjunct in the East—attached to it.
The windows all open down to the ground, and the servants
generally come in and out through the veranda.
Each window has its Venetian blind, which answers
all purposes of a door, and yet permits the air to
pass freely.
The veranda, in addition to serving as the general
sitting-room to the family, acts as a servants’
hall. Here at the side not used by the employers,
the servants, when not otherwise engaged, sit on their
mats, mend their clothes, talk and sleep; and it is
wonderful how much sleep a Hindoo can get through
in the twenty-four hours. The veranda is his
bedroom as well as sitting-room; here, spreading a
mat upon the ground, and rolling themselves up in
a thin rug or blanket from the very top of their head
