THE DAILY PROVINCE
SEPTEMBER 19, 1906

p.1

FORTY HINDUS WILL RETURN TO
INDIA
------------------CANNOT ENTER CANADA
------------------New Immigrants Are Dirty and Many Are Sick-Peculiar Traits of Men Who Refuse to Eat European
Food--Are Getting Jobs in Sawmills.

------------------Forced from the Promised Land by an iron railing, six feet of water and
an immigration department, a hundred Hindus are casting longing eyes at the
city of Vancouver this morning.
Down in the detention hospital eighty-five in far worse plight are trying
to deceive the Government officials into the belief that their diseases are mere
trifles after all. Some seventy more or less have come ashore, and are citizens
of British Columbia on probation. From the present outlook all those now on
board the boat will be allowed to land, forty of the men detained in the
hospital will be released, and forty will go back to that dear India. In all about
two hundred are here to stay as a result of the Empress’ last trip.
Cook Their Own Food.
Down on the boat the new arrivals are wondering what to make of it all.
The Elysium with its glod[Sic] paved streets is a hard place to get into. The
man who shipped them here did not tell them about this holdup just at the
journey’s end. They are wandering restlessly about on the after deck and in
the steerage way, talking in little groups or sitting on the rail of the vessel,
looking at the funny-looking Canadians who have come down to the wharf to
gaze at the funny-looking Hindus.

THE DAILY PROVINCE
SEPTEMBER 19, 1906

p.1

Last night the strangers lived on the deck around the fires they had
lighted. The weather was cold, and they sat close together to keep warm. This
morning the fires served to cook their food, as they have all throughout the
voyage. They insist upon cooking their own victuals, lest some foreign dirt get
into it. They are very particular what dirt they eat, these Hindus.
Mohammed Khan, who is an immigrant of long standing, is making trips
down to the boat at intervals and taking off his compatriots in detachments as
he finds work and lodgings for them. Yesterday he placed a large number. This
morning he got another dozen into remunerative positions, and this afternoon
he proposes to put forty of them where they can get the wherewithal to feed.
And to-morrow---THEY NEED BATHS.
“There will be work for more of my people in your big railroads and
your sawmills. But they are dirty,” he says with infinite disgust. “They do not
know how to live in your houses. They do not know how to take a bath. They
have no nice clothes to wear like your white people. And some of them are
sick. I wish some person would publish it wide across my land that my people
cannot come here if they have not three suits of clothes and three pairs of
boots, and six white shirts and a clean turban. And they should learn to take a
bath. Ah, they are dirty!”
Mohammed Khan is right. They are very dirty. There is a thick, heavy
odor flowing shoreward from the afterdeck of the Empress, and those who
know say it will continue to flow until the steerage is swabbed out with
chloride of lime.
Others Yet to Come.
Mohammed Khan, however, is sanguine. He says he will soon have them
all at work. Moreover, he will have them all take correspondence-school
courses in the art of taking a bath.

THE DAILY PROVINCE
SEPTEMBER 19, 1906

p.1

In the meantime the hundred odd on the boat are looking shoreward
talking to more fortunate countrymen who have succeeded in landing, and
patiently waiting for the time when they will be able to come down to the
wharf and sympathize with Hindu immigrants yet to come.