Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 16]
standards they are depraved even from a very early age.
10 a.m. First batch of 500 left on barges (4) for the shore. F.A. and Signallers left at 3.15 p.m. after a wait of an hour and a half. We saw a big hospital ship and exchanged hurrahs for it was Australia bound. We marched along the Esplanade through the European quarter and the most respectable part of the native quarter to the Barracks. How the Authorities love to impress the natives! The native policeman as typical of the Oriental seen for the first time strikes one as something between a grotesque humorositie and a very influential bully. They perambulated up and down the route we took to the extreme terror of the small urchins.
The notables of the town were radiant in cerise skirts and other unmentionable colors that contrasted as vividly and grotesquely as a rainbow bordered with solid emerald green. The human element about the decoration made it possible to see it humorously and not in any sense critically.
The roads we saw were excellent and the rickshaws seemed dapper and quite smart compared with the rare, dilapidated carriages we saw, with their European occupants pale and anaemic looking.
The men were very anxious for a glass of beer (the ship being "dry") but the mug (one only) of treacly-looking English "beer" nearly made them sick---many indeed took their's outside and after tasting it threw it away.
The Sergeants' Mess was a very elaborate affair. I had