this has, doubtless, greatly increased within the last ten years, but
of course admits of very varied estimate according to a man’s tastes
and idiosyncrasies. I _have_ known a subaltern live on 150 rupees a
month, which may be set down as the smallest possible sum for a single
man, and if you double that sum a young man should live comfortably on
it, without being able to indulge in any extravagancies. Many young
married couples live on this, but they must exercise great self-denial
to do so, and this of course is for current expenditure, and makes no
allowance (in their case at least) for first cost of furniture, horses,
travelling expenses, &c. The unit of coinage is the rupee, which,
though nominally worth 2_s._, is practically given wherever you would
in England give 1_s._, or even sometimes 6_d._ But, although this is
the case, there is some compensating advantage in the fact, that there
is not much temptation to extravagance in India, and that social life
in the up-country stations is on an easy and natural footing that
prevents any foolish ostentation on the one hand, or on the other, any
inability to mix in society on the ground of not being able to afford
it. This arises from two causes: First, that few men in India have
private fortunes, and anyone may know the amount of his neighbour’s
income by simple reference to the pay code. Secondly, that the society,
except in a few large places, is so limited that everyone who can make
himself or herself agreeable is welcome on that account, and can enjoy
hospitality freely without an uneasy sense of obligation arising from
inability to return it in kind. On the whole, I think Anglo-Indian
society is pleasant and agreeable; few men suffer from _ennui_, or
think everything a bore; most of the men are interested in their work
and talk a certain amount of shop—not more so, I think, than other men;
there are plenty of book clubs at all stations, and most people read a
good deal; there are few stations at which sport of some kind is not
procurable for those who have leisure for it; and those who can get two
or three months’ leave to travel in Cashmere or the Himalayahs will
certainly not sigh for Switzerland or the Alps.
While I am on the subject of society, let me disabuse you of the notion
still prevailing in the minds of many respectable people, as well as
second-rate novelists, that ladies in India are different from their
English sisters, and that, when young, they are shipped over to the
East like figs, to the market of Hymen. Such fables belong only to the
time when every Indian was a nabob, with no liver to speak of, and the
complexion of a China orange. Young ladies now go to India, I assure
you, for the same reason that other young ladies stay in England,—
because their fathers and mothers are there; and stray females, bent on
an independent matrimonial cruise, are, alas! things of the past. On
the other hand, while the one terrible drawback of Anglo-Indian life
is the continual separation of husband and wife, parents and children,
I am bold enough to say that those social relations—the former, at
any rate—are stronger even than in England, if only on this account,
that each is less independent of the other than at home. If Damon and
Phyllis have had a quarrel, Damon can’t go to his club, nor Phyllis run
to her mamma, to make matters worse; and when each has cooled or sulked
a little, Damon remembers the terrible time when they said good-bye
to their little ones at Southampton, and Phyllis recalls the intense
pleasure of again meeting her husband, after that cruel illness which
sent her home when he could not go with her; so they kiss and make
friends, and resolve to keep their tempers in better check in future.
* * * * *
I have often been asked how we travel in India? Well, where there
are no railways, and you have a good metalled road, you travel by
horse-dâk, as it is termed;—that is, you hire a carriage, which is a
four-wheeled cab slightly altered, and engage relays of horses at every
five or six miles; and by travelling all night to escape the heat, you
manage to accomplish 60 or 70 miles between dinner and breakfast-time
pretty comfortably, at a cost of about a shilling per mile.
The horses are an abominable set of brutes, and generally begin by
obstinately refusing to stir a step, or, perhaps, lying down in the
shafts. Then the native coachman, after patiently undoing the rotten
harness and getting the animal once more on his legs, addresses him by
all manner of endearing epithets. “Go on, my brother,” (horse doesn’t
move); “go on, my son, my brave, my hero,” (no result); a cut with
the whip, followed by a vicious kick from the horse. Coachee changes
his language—“Go on, you scoundrel—you villain;” a shower of blows, a
volley of abuse from the passenger inside, more kicks and plunges from
the horse, and finally, by the aid of the whole stable establishment,
who push behind, whack the horse, and simultaneously yell like fiends,
off you go at the rate of ten miles an hour, the horse never stopping
until he gets to the end of his stage.
If there is no road, as happens very often, you must be content with
the old-fashioned palanquin or doolie, a species of coffin with doors
at the sides, in which you are carried on men’s shoulders at an average
rate of three miles per hour, the bearers being changed every ten
miles. When I first landed in India, I travelled from Calcutta to
Allahabad, a distance of 500 miles, in this way, taking twelve days on
the road; the journey being now accomplished by rail in about twenty
hours.
After your night’s journey, in which you have probably accomplished
some 35 miles, you are glad to espy a solitary house—a dâk-bungalow, as
it is termed—in which you can get temporary rest and refreshment; so
the doolie is deposited in the verandah; the hot and dusty traveller,
who has hardly had a wink of sleep all night, emerges from the
inside of the coffin, and summons the native servant, who in white
robes and with a venerable grey beard, might sit for a portrait of
any of the Old Testament patriarchs. Then ensues something like the
following dialogue, which I must translate from the Hindustani, in
which it is spoken:—“What can I have for breakfast?” say you.—“Your
lordship can have everything.”—“Very well, then, bring me a
beef-steak.”—“Beefy-e-steak! nourisher of the poor! how can your slave
get any?”—“Well, then, a mutton chop.”—“Mutton-e-chāp! cherisher of the
humble! there are none left.”—“Well, what is there?”—“Perhaps, O great
king, there may be a fowl.”—“Then get it ready.” Exit the servant, and
in another minute you hear a violent _clucking_ in the back-yard, and
see the man in hot chase of a venerable cock, who evinces the strongest
disinclination to have his few remaining days curtailed to satisfy your
unholy hunger. But it is all of no use—he is captured; his head is
turned towards Mecca, and the Mahomedan cook, muttering “Bismillah,”
“in the name of God the compassionate and merciful,” cuts the fowl’s
throat, and in twenty minutes more it is smoking on your table.
And now my watch warns me that I have tried your patience long enough.
I have endeavoured to give you some idea of the nature of Anglo-Indian
life, and of that country which has so often been described as the
brightest jewel in the British Crown. But, after all, the only way
to know much of a country is to see it; and I often wonder that more
Englishmen do not pay a flying visit to India now that it is so
accessible. Many certainly do go there now-a-days for a short time,
and are, I am sure, well rewarded for their pains; but they are very,
very few in proportion to those who might go, if they only knew how to
set about it, and perhaps I cannot conclude my lecture better than by
taking you all a journey there on paper, just as if I were Mr. Cook,
and you were a party of tourists.
We start from the Waterloo Station and run down to Southampton, going
on board one of the fine steamers of the P. & O., as it is always
called, which I need not say is short for the Peninsular and Oriental
Steam Navigation Company. The mails are on board, the last good-byes
have been said, and we are steaming down Channel and across the Bay
of Biscay, until, on the fifth day, we cast anchor off the Rock of
Gibraltar. A few hours’ delay for coaling, and we run on to Malta,
and find ourselves in Valetta Harbour, wandering about the quaint old
town, eating oranges, buying lace, or examining the old church of St.
John, with its relics and monuments that carry us back to the middle
ages. Another three days’ run and we are landed at Alexandria, and
getting our first peep at the East from the top of a donkey. But the
train is ready, and we speed through the flat, fertile country watered
by the Nile, cross that muddy and venerable stream which has puzzled
all the geographers from Herodotus to Livingstone, get a glimpse of
the Pyramids in the distance, and cross that terrible desert which
is still what it was when Moses led the Israelites through it more
than 3000 years ago; and in twelve hours from the time of leaving the
Mediterranean, are on board the other mail steamer in the Red Sea. Six
days’ run takes us to its mouth, and we are anchored off Aden, a strong
military post built on a barren rock, where we stay a few hours for
coaling, and then enter on the last stage of our voyage. Five days’ run
across the Indian Ocean and we sight the magnificent harbour of Bombay;
and then a little steamer carries us all off to the shore, and we are
driving to Pallonjee’s Hotel under a fierce sun, tempered only by the
sea-breeze, and through streets thronged by motley crowds of natives,
in which the few white men are altogether lost.
From Bombay, the Great Indian Peninsular Railway will take you 600
miles in about twenty-five hours to Jubbulpore, up the steep inclines
of the Western Ghat mountains, and through the dense jungles and
undulating hills of Central India.
Another run of 220 miles takes you to Allahabad, the modern capital of
the North-west Provinces, situated at the confluence of the Ganges and
Jumna, a great military and civil station, but dusty and disagreeable.
Here resides the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-west Provinces,
a territory larger than France, with 30,000,000 inhabitants. From
Allahabad we may travel south-east to Calcutta, 600 miles distant,
passing Benares, the holy city; Patna, famous for opium; and many
others; or north-west to Agra, Delhi, and Lahore; the last, 700 miles
distant, the capital of the Punjab, where resides another of our great
pro-consuls, as Macaulay calls them, _viz._ the Lieutenant-Governor of
the Punjab.
All these great cities are well worth a visit, containing, as they do,
many interesting ruins and architectural remains of the old Hindoo and
Mahomedan rulers of the country. Beyond Lahore, where the railway at
present terminates, a fine road 260 miles long, will take the traveller
across the classic streams of the Punjab, famous for Alexander the
Great’s campaigns, up to Peshawur, on the extreme north-west boundary
of the empire, where a force of 8000 men keeps watch over the fierce
and turbulent races of the neighbouring mountains.
From Umballa, on the Punjab Railway, if the traveller strikes to
the east, a good road of 40 miles will take him to the foot of the
Himalayahs, whence he can ascend to Simla, situated amongst its groves
of pines and rhododendrons, 8000 feet above the sea; and thence through
some of the finest mountain scenery in the world, to Cashmere or
Thibet, or the frontier of China.
You may vary the homeward route by visiting Calcutta, Madras, and
Ceylon, or by going down the Indus to Kurrachee, and thence back to
Bombay.
And over all these distances, and through this vast country, the
traveller may journey as safely as in any part of Europe, in a healthy,
enjoyable climate, if he chooses the proper time, and with his mind
expanded by the contemplation of scenery differing widely from anything
in the West, and of a state of social and national life which the
most superficial glance will assure him is utterly foreign to all his
previous experiences.
That, I think, is the chief good of all travel. The experience it
brings lifts us out of our old grooves of thought, widens our narrow
ideas, teaches us that as God has not made us all with the same
coloured skins, so he has given us varieties of national character,
which are admirable from their very diversity, and do not make us the
less members of one common family, in which He is the great Father of
us all.
* * * * *
For purposes of administration and government India is divided as
follows:—The Viceroy and Governor-General of course rules over all,
making his head-quarters at Calcutta in the cold weather, and at Simla
in the summer. Under him are the Governors of Madras and Bombay, the
Lieutenant-Governors of Bengal, the North-west Provinces and the
Punjab, with their seats of government at Calcutta, Allahabad, and
Lahore respectively; the Chief Commissioners of Oudh, the Central
Provinces, Central India, and British Burmah, residing at Lucknow,
Nagpore, Indore, and Rangoon; and the Commissioners of Mysore,
Hyderabad, and Scinde. Some idea of the extent and importance of these
provincial commands may be formed if we consider that Bengal proper,
for example, is as large as Germany, and numbers 60 millions of
inhabitants.
With regard to the Public Works of the country, their control and
direction are confided to a separate department of the State, known
as the Public Works Department, at the head of which is a Secretary,
styled the Secretary to the Government of India in the P. W. D., and
who is, in effect, the consulting engineer and professional adviser to
the Viceroy and his council. He is assisted by Deputy-Secretaries for
the separate branches of Irrigation, Railways, and Military Buildings.
To the head-quarters of each local government is similarly attached
a Secretary, who is at once the mouthpiece and professional adviser
of the Lieutenant-Governor or Chief Commissioner, and who, as Chief
Engineer, is also head of the whole public works establishment of his
province.
Subordinate to him are the Superintending Engineers, who may either
have general charge of all the public works of a large district, or,
as is more generally the case, are in special charge of some large
work, such as a Canal or a Railway. Under the superintending engineers
are the Executive Engineers, who are, in effect, the working units of
the system. An executive engineer may have a range of new Barracks to
build, a line of Road 80 to 100 miles long to keep in repair, or 30
or 40 miles of Canal or Railway to lay out and construct, and for the
actual execution of this work he is primarily the responsible man.
If the work is a new one, he has to prepare the detailed designs and
working drawings under the advice and guidance of his superintendent,
to frame the estimates, and to write the reports. When sanctioned, he
has to lay out the work, and to find the workmen or contractors to
execute it, to control the expenditure, to submit monthly accounts and
progress reports, and to conduct a tolerably large correspondence.
He will probably have two or three Assistant-engineers, five or six
European Overseers, and eight or ten native Sub-Overseers, besides an
Office establishment of clerks and accountants.
All the above officials, from the grade of Chief Engineer down to that
of Assistant-Engineer, inclusive, are indifferently drawn from officers
of the Royal Engineers; Artillery or Line Officers trained at Roorkee;
Civil Engineers sent out from England; civilians (European and Native)
trained at Roorkee. The promotion from one grade to another is partly
by merit and partly by seniority, and has nothing whatever to do with
military rank; but care has generally been taken not to have a Royal
Engineer officer serving departmentally under his junior.
It may interest some of you if I trace the probable career of a young
Royal Engineer, sent to India, say, to what is still called (though
improperly) the Bengal Presidency. On landing at Bombay, and reporting
himself to the military authorities, he will be directed to proceed
to Roorkee, where he will have to do duty with the Bengal Sappers and
Miners for a year. This is the order at present, the idea being that
in the interval he will acquire some knowledge of the language and of
the customs of the country, and, if he is wise, he will make good use
of his time; for until he can speak Hindustani pretty fluently, he
will find himself very helpless, and all but useless. Roorkee is the
head-quarters of the Bengal Sappers, and virtually the head-quarters of
the Royal Engineers in the Bengal Presidency. The college over which
I have, for some years, had the honour of presiding is at the same
station, but is in no way connected with the Sappers, being a public
works institution under the civil government, while the Sappers are of
course under the Commander-in-Chief.
The Thomason College has been founded about twenty-five years, and now
contains about 250 students. There is an engineer class, consisting
of a few Artillery and Line officers, and some thirty civilians,
who undergo a two years’ training to fit them for the posts of
Assistant-Engineers in the P. W. Dept.; another class of officers, who
stay only seven months, and are trained for the Quartermaster-General’s
Department; a class of soldiers who are trained as Overseers; and a
large native class, who are educated as Sub-Overseers, Sub-Surveyors,
Estimators, and Draftsmen. Besides the Principal, there are two Royal
Engineer Assistants on the staff, two civil Professors of Mathematics
and Experimental Science, and two sets of subordinate Masters for the
lower classes. There are also a library, model room, and museums in the
college, and an excellent press, whence a good many useful works have
issued, chiefly relating to Indian engineering.
The Bengal Sappers and Miners are a fine body of men, consisting of
twelve companies of native soldiers, recruited from the best and most
warlike tribes in Upper India, who have done excellent service wherever
they have been employed. Besides their own native officers, English
non-commissioned officers are attached to the companies. There is a
Commandant, Adjutant, Superintendent of Instruction, and Superintendent
of the Park and Field Train, and four doing-duty officers, who are
all Royal Engineers, besides the new arrivals attached temporarily to
the corps. About half the men are at head-quarters, the remainder in
detached companies at Peshawur and elsewhere on the frontier. There
is a very fair park and pontoon train attached; also workshops and
schools. The men are skilful and intelligent, excellent workmen and
good soldiers.
Roorkee also possesses a Foundry and Workshops belonging to Government,
which are interesting as having been the first of the kind erected in
India, twenty-four years ago, before the introduction of railways. The
workmen are all natives, and some of them are remarkably clever and
intelligent. They will make anything for anybody, from an iron bridge
or a steam engine, down to a railway key; and they turn out excellent
spirit levels, prismatic compasses, and so forth. Near Roorkee are
also all the greatest works of the Ganges Canal.
Roorkee is a pleasant and healthy station, and many of the young
officers stay voluntarily with the Sappers for more than the regular
year, as their departmental promotion counts all the same. But
generally speaking, before the year is out, the young officer will
read in the Gazette of India one fine morning that his services have
been placed at the disposal of the P.W. Dept.; and in the next Gazette
that he is posted to such or such a province; then a week later, in
the local Gazette of that province, he will be posted to a particular
circle, and the superintending engineer of that circle will desire him
to report himself to some particular executive engineer. The day after
his arrival he will find himself employed according to the nature of
the work, either surveying and levelling, or drawing plans and making
calculations, or in a tent in the middle of the jungles superintending
the building of a bridge, with not a soul that can speak a word of
English within 30 miles of him. For the next four or five years he will
probably be changed about a good deal from one work to another; and if
he has proved himself efficient, will then find himself an executive
engineer of the fourth grade, and in charge of a division; while, after
running through the four executive grades, another ten years or so may
carry him on to the higher grade of a superintending engineer.
Generally speaking, a new arrival can select his own line of
departmental service, which will depend on his tastes and
circumstances. If he has been weak enough to get married before
going out, or if he is fond of society, he will select the Military
Buildings’ branch, so that he may live in a station; and if he has a
speciality for architecture, I should strongly recommend him to do
this, for there is a great want of men in that line in India. If,
however, he is fond of hard work and knocking about in the jungles, and
doesn’t mind a solitary life, he will prefer the Irrigation or Railway
branch, and I do not think he will regret his choice, for no man fond
of his profession could desire more interesting work, and in the
construction of a new line of Canal or Railroad he will every day find
scope for his talent or ingenuity or readiness of resource.
Not a few men enter the Survey, which is, however, quite a separate
department, divided into three branches,—the Trigonometrical,
Topographical, and Revenue,—and the promotion in it proceeds _pari
passu_ with that of the Public Works Department.
It may be asked, what are the relations of a Royal Engineer officer,
in a department so miscellaneously constituted, to the Civil Engineers
and Line officers, with whom he has to work? I think they are generally
very friendly and agreeable, and though, of course, it is pleasanter to
serve under one’s own brother officers, yet the various members of the
department work harmoniously together, and the promotions are generally
very fairly made, energetic and clever men being pushed on well.
You will observe that I have said nothing about military engineering
works except barracks; in fact, there is very little work of that
kind in India. Like the Romans of old, we encamp our troops in open
cantonments instead of shutting them up in forts, and what forts there
are in the country, for the magazines and arsenals, are almost all
old native forts. Of harbour defence works we have scarcely any, for
the simple reason that there are scarcely any harbours, except at
Bombay, where the subject has recently had much attention directed
to it. Whatever military engineering work is required is therefore
done as a civil work by the Public Works Department, and all Royal
Engineer officers virtually work as civilians, except in the event of
war, when those required are at once ordered off to join the army;
and though doubtless an officer’s knowledge of military details may
be considerably weakened by his long absence from military duty in
civil employment, yet the very nature of that employment engenders
a quickness and fertility of resource and a sense of responsibility
which go far to compensate for that deficiency, and the men who blew in
the Cashmere Gate at Delhi, and laid out the defences of the Lucknow
Residency, at any rate found their knowledge of military engineering
sufficient for the purpose.
What I have already said as to the importance of the work entrusted
to every young Government civilian in India applies almost as much to
the young Engineer. He will find himself almost immediately entrusted
with responsibility, and, before long, in charge of work that he could
not expect to have confided to him in England until many years of
service had rolled over his head. But with work and responsibility of
this nature, he will find great interest and no small anxiety; he will
have to look after or do nearly everything himself, without the aid
of clever contractors, skilled clerks of the works, and intelligent
foremen; he will probably have to train his own subordinates, to work
with very inefficient plant, and to trust to his own resources every
day, and under circumstances calculated to try his mother-wit, his
common sense, and clear-headedness, above all, his patience and temper,
in a way he never calculated on. No sort of knowledge will come amiss
to him; he may even have to be his own doctor, and to physic his whole
establishment, or to commence work by turning wholesale provision
merchant in order to supply his workmen in some barren district.