"Bombay: Fresh fruit for his invalids, iced sherberts for all hands, enormous meals, the marvels of the East; marble palaces, no doubt; the Parsee's silent towers; the offices for the Commissioners of the former French Settlements, counters and factories on the Malabar coast; the Residence of Mr. Commissioner Canning." (P.189)
That is the expected -- in the next chapter we see the real.
"Fresh Fruit for the invalids, to be sure, and enormous meals for those who had time to eat them; but apart from the omnipresent smell and a little arrack that came aboard by stealth, the wonders of the East, the marble palaces, remained distant, half guessed objects for the Surprise." [bold my own] (p.190)
It's interesting (and telling) that P O'B uses the same phrase twice, the 'marvels of the East'; He, like so many others before him, is using Orientalist stock images, renting a crowd, as Achebe would say. And his last line, about how the crew of the Surprise will remain in the dark about what India really looks like, says a lot about how those stock images are transfered -- by ignorance and a lack of original data.
Quotes from O'Brian, Patrick. "HMS Surprise" Reprinted WW Norton and Co, New York, 1991.
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