"5. The problem of preserving Egypt, Syria, the Levant, and Europe from

cholera is to be resolved only through the strictest surveillance,

by competent men, over pilgrims bound from India to the Hejaz, and

to Egypt from the Red Sea ports--Jeddah, Rais, Rabegh, Yambu, Líth,

Gonfodah, Jisán, Hodaydah, Lohayah, Mocha, etc.

"6. The question is complicated by the existence of choleraic foci,

which may be termed secondary and local, as opposed to primitive or

original, where the epidemic has lingered, and possibly has incubated

till again exasperated by occult conditions--telluric, atmospheric, or

hygienic. This fact demands increased measures of surveillance. They

may not be thoroughly satisfactory, but because we cannot close all the

doors we need not leave all the largest open.

"7. At the period of embarking from the Red Sea ports, where _bakshish_

is the key to most consciences, the local Health Office and the

member of the Sanitary Council annually sent from Stamboul after the

International Conference of 1866 should be assisted by a special

commission of European physicians, who could, moreover, modify and

improve the different 'Passenger Acts.'

"8. 'Long Desert,' a march of twenty-one days, is the best of _cordon

sanitaires_, alone able to 'purge' infected caravans.

"9. _Ergo_, when the Hejaz is attacked by cholera the sea-road should

be peremptorily closed to all pilgrims, an operation whose difficulties

have been greatly and needlessly exaggerated; nor should it be reopened

till after at least one pilgrimage season has passed away without

accident.

"To these wise conclusions I would add a truth. All quarantinary

measures are unpopular with Moslems, who regard them as inventions

of the evil one, or, as the vulgar say, 'flying in the face of

Providence.' Moreover, at Mecca it is every man's interest to conceal

the outbreak; and there is always a danger of the earliest cases

finding their way to Jeddah before the existence of cholera is

suspected at the port. Indeed, clean bills have been given under such

circumstances. Evidently, the only remedy for this evil is to make the

special sanitary commission of European physicians meet annually at

Mecca.

"Now, if such great meteoric changes can be effected by a mere riband

of water let into the sand, what will happen when we submerge a great

part of the African Sáhara (whose eastern limits are unknown), and

thereby create a sea, perhaps, bigger than the Mediterranean? We

cannot calculate the possible amount of climatic modification which

such a new offset of the Atlantic might induce; and some clever men

think that the Sáhara Sea is likely to affect many parts of the

Mediterranean basin, and even the whole southern seaboard of Europe,

with changes which may be deleterious in the extreme. The scirocco

from Africa is the summer wind _par excellence_ of the 'White Sea,' as

the Arabs call it, blowing through half the year, and that half the

most dangerous--if we submerge the desert, say with a foot or two of

water upon rotting vegetation, what will its effect be upon the world's

health?

* * * * *

"A new Passenger Act is, I believe, about to appear; let us hope that

it will abate one part of the nuisance. At present we can never feel

safe on board these crowded cattle-pens. An epidemic might break out

any moment; in case of shipwreck all would be lost; and even if the

screw were injured, or the main shaft were to break, hundreds on board

would die of starvation.

"Each ship should be compelled to carry a condensing apparatus

and cooking-ranges, calculated to accommodate the pilgrims; while

one passenger per two tons (registered) should be the maximum of

freightage. Before departure, the devotees ought to be severally and

carefully inspected by the Port Surgeons; at Aden the health officer

should take them in charge; and in case of infectious disease having

appeared on the voyage, they should be quarantined at Perim or at the

Kumarán Islands, off Lohayya. No one after a certain age should be

allowed to embark--the Korán allows him to send a substitute; and the

same is the case with the infirm and with invalids. Each person should

prove that he carries at least four hundred rupees in ready money, and

that he has left with his family sufficient to support it according

to its station: such is the absolute order of the Hanafi school, to

which all these Bengalis belong. On arriving at Jeddah, all should take

out passports from her Majesty's Consulate, paying a fee of one rupee

per head, and the same for _visas_ after return: the French and the

Dutch charge a dollar. Proclamations in Hindostani and Persian should

be issued at the several Presidencies, and be published in the local

papers every year before the annual preparations for the pilgrimage

begin. I am certain that all sensible Hindí Moslems would be grateful

for a measure relieving them from exorbitant charities, and from the

reproach that Hindustan is the 'basest of kingdoms;' whilst we should

only be doing our duty,--a little late, it is true, but better now than

neglecting till the evil shall have become inveterate. That everlasting

incuriousness and _laissez-aller_ of the Anglo-Indian are the only

reasons why precautions were not taken twenty-five years ago.

_The Massacre._

"I took some trouble to investigate the causes which led to the

horrible massacre of June 15, 1858. This is far from being an old tale

of times which will not return; it is an example of what may occur any

day in the present excited state of the Moslem world. Moreover, the

conditions under which it occurred are precisely those of the present

moment, and an ugly symptom has just appeared.[7] The village _moplah_

(Malabar Moslem), who murdered Mr. Conolly, has been allowed to escape

from surveillance at Jeddah, to embark at Líth, and probably to return

to India _viâ_ Makalla in Hadramant. But as popular memory in England

is short upon such subjects, it is necessary to give a _résumé_ of the

facts.

"The innovation of appointing European Consuls to Jeddah, the 'Gate of

the Holy City,' was resented by the Moslems, both on the grounds of

religion and of private interests, especially when protected foreign

subjects began to absorb the greater parts of the commerce. Several

_ballons d'essai_ were launched. In 1848 an attempt was made to

assassinate, near the Medinah Gate, M. Fulgence Fresnel, the famous

Arabist, who was often consulted upon questions of casuistry by the

D.D.'s of Mecca. The criminal was saved by a certain Abdullah Muhtásib,

a Fellah of Lower Egypt, who began life as a baker, and who rose to

be farmer of the _octroi_ and Chief of the Police; thus being able to

bribe and bully _à discretion_. In 1849, Mr. Consul Ogilvie was openly

insulted in the bazar, and obtained no redress. During my first visit

to Jeddah, Mr. Consul Cole had avoided all troubles by his firmness

and conciliatory manners; but, after his departure, the so-called 'War

of the Sherífs' (1854) suggested a grand opportunity for despoiling

the Christians. Abdullah Muhtásib again appeared as the villain of the

play. He was, however, arrested, and exiled to Masáwwah by the _Wali_

of the Hejaz, Namik Pasha.

"In 1856 Abdullah Muhtásib returned triumphant from his exile, and

the Sepoy war of 1857 once more offered him a tempting opportunity.

Actively assisted by his son, he brought into the plot the Kadi (Abd

el Kadir Effendi), the Sayyid el Amúli, the Shaykh Bagafur, Abdullah

Bakarum, and the wealthy merchant Yusuf Banaji. Presently, in June,

1858, during the height of the pilgrimage, it became known that

Captain Pullen, H.M.S. _Cyclops_, intended to carry off the _Irania_,

an English ship upon which Turkish colours had been hoisted. Abdullah

Muhtásib and his friends met at the Custom-house _café_, and sat, _en

permanence_, to direct the issue of their conspiracy. At two p.m. on

June 15, the ship was worked out, the boats of the _Cyclops_ left, and

the coast was clear.

"Violent harangues in the bazar roused the cry of 'Death to the

Infidel!' The plot burst like a barrel of gunpowder, and at six p.m.

the massacre began. The Sayyid el Amúli took charge of Mr. Page, whom

he beheaded with his own hand; the body was thrown into the streets

to be hacked to pieces by the mob; the house was plundered, and the

flagstaff was torn up. M. Sabatier, however, is in error when he

reports that the English dragoman and _kawwás_ were murdered: one died

lately, and the other, a very old man, is still living.

"Meanwhile, two bands of ruffians attacked the other objects of their

hate. One rushed to the French Consulate, and broke in the doors when

they were closed by the _kawwás_. Madame Eveillard was first stabbed,

and then her husband was cut down, despite the heroic defence of the

daughter, Mdlle. Elsie, who, after seizing one of the chief murderers

by the beard, and severely biting his arm, was wounded by a yataghan in

the face. She and the lady's-maid, saved by the tardy arrival of the

_kaimmakám_ (commandant) and two Government _kawwáses_, were taken from

the blood-bespattered home to a Turkish house. Monsieur Emérat,[8] the

Chancellor, after bravely fighting for fifteen minutes, was preserved

in the same way, and, sabred in three places, was led by his faithful

Algerian, Haji Mahommed, to the quarters of Hasan Bey, commanding the

artillery. M. de Lesseps was, therefore, misinformed about Mdlle.

Eveillard saving herself by drawing the cushions of the divan over her

body, and by simulating death whilst the murderers slashed at her legs.

He says nothing of the _kaimmakám_, and he attributes the honour of

saving the two lives to a negro boy and the old Algerine soldier.[9]

The flagstaff was torn down, the tricolour trampled upon, and the

Consulate given over to plunder.

"The other band rushed to the house of Sabá Mascondi, the richest

of the Greek merchants, and therefore the most obnoxious of all the

Christians. My husband well remembers this amiable and inoffensive man.

He had been repeatedly warned, but he refused to believe a massacre

possible till he and his party, some twenty men, mostly from Lemnos,

met one evening. At length, when it was reported that the Consulates

were being pillaged, three of them went out to inquire. Meanwhile the

armed mob rushed in, and instantly cut down eight; the rest jumping out

of the windows, and flying over the terraces and down the street, to

reach the sea. Poor Sabá veiled his head, and also tried to escape. M.

Sabatier heard two accounts of his death: one was that he was killed in

the house of the English dragoman (an error); the other, that he was

recognized in his rude disguise by the son of Abdullah Muhtásib, who

blew out his brains with a pistol. This is a fact.

"The French Consul-General also relates that the _Cyclops_, anchored

only three miles off, perceiving a tumult in the town, armed her boats

and sent them to find out the cause; that the crews were fired upon,

and that they returned, without further action, to their ship. It

is hard to believe this. A few shells thrown into Jeddah would have

cleared every street in half an hour. No justification was wanted for

resenting so gross an insult, and instant measures might have saved

some unhappy lives. But in those days we were still under the glamour

of that most unfortunate Crimean War, and modern England does not, as a

rule, encourage her officers to incur any manner of responsibility.

"The first act of retribution was on the early morning of July 25, when

the _Cyclops_, at the distance of twenty-five hundred yards, bombarded

Jeddah for two hours. This was repeated till noon on the 26th, when

the new Governor-General, Namik Pasha, arrived. The people, of course,

evacuated the town; a few houses were injured, a minaret was knocked

crooked, and some fifteen boats were destroyed.

"Presently France, who, whatever may have been her sins of omission

and commission, has ever shown a noble jealousy of her national honour,

determined not to be played with after this fashion; and she sent, not

a 'person of rank,' but M. Sabatier, the fittest head and hand for the

work. The inapt and treacherous politic of the Porte on this occasion

bears a fraternal resemblance to her manœuvres adopted after the

massacre of Damascus (1860), with this difference: at Beyrout there was

no Sabatier, but there was a certain trickster of the first order, Fuad

Pasha, whose reckless ambition had caused the catastrophe. The Sultan

appointed, as his Commissioner, one Ismail Pasha, who hastened off to

the Hejaz, and, in concert with the feeble and negligent Namik Pasha,

put to death half a dozen poor devils, complied a voluminous _Mazbatah_

(_procès verbale_), and hurried back to Constantinople with thirty-nine

'compromised' individuals. Heavy bribes had induced him to estimate the

damage done to Christian property at twenty thousand francs. '_Il était

difficile de faire associer les consuls de France et d'Angleterre à

meilleur marché_,' is M. Sabatier's only comment upon this part of the

proceeding.

"As Ismail Pasha persisted in conversation with his two

fellow-Commissioners, that his part of the work had been thoroughly

done, and that he was expected at Stamboul, M. Sabatier and Captain

Pullen, R.N., set out in the _Cyclops_, with the English and

French flags flying together on the mainmast, and reached Jeddah

on October 12th, 1859. Here they found Commodore Seymour with the

_Pelorus_ (twenty-one guns); the corvette _Assaye_ (ten guns); and

the _Chesapeake_ (fifty-one guns) expected. Five days afterwards,

Namik Pasha arrived from Mecca; and, as the Turkish Commissioner

had admitted that all the local authorities were accessories to the

murder, M. Sabatier proceeded to examine all witnesses, Moslems as

well as Christians. Even he, accustomed for long years to the abstruse

chicanery of the East, must have been surprised to hear the Turkish

authorities laying the blame upon Captain Pullen; as if a mere question

of maritime and international law could have borne such fruits. Even

he, so well inured to the contempt of European intelligence--which is

an article of faith with all Orientals--must have been startled, as

well as shocked, to see the abominable Abdullah Muhtásib sitting side

by side with Hasan Bey, the wretched commandant of artillery, when

the Consulate of France was still a mere shell, and the walls were

bespattered with the blood of his fellow-countrymen.

"It would be tedious to relate how bravely and how well M. Sabatier did

his duty. Briefly, in January, 1859, Tricoult, _capitaine de frégate_,

appeared upon the stage, and a few hours brought the authorities to

their senses. The miserable Ismail Pasha lost his head on 'Raven's

Isle,' within sight of Jeddah; Abdullah Muhtásib and the Sayyid el

Amúli on the Custom-house square (January 21st, 1859). The fine for the

losses of the Christians amounted to 2,241,016 francs, of which 500,000

were paid to the Eveillard family, 100,000 to M. Emérat, and 100,000 to

Sabá Mascondi's relatives.

"The Jeddah massacre was made the stalking-horse to bring down

slave-trading in the Red Sea, which had already been abolished

theoretically (1885) under the effects of the Crimean War. In June,

1869, vizierial letters were addressed especially to the Hejaz, without

any effect beyond causing a disturbance; they were essentially dead

letters, worth only their weight of spoiled paper. This is not the

place for so extensive a subject. I will only state that the traffic

still flourishes at Jeddah; that the market, till lately, was under the

eyes of the British Consulate; that on representation it was removed a

few yards off; that the Turkish authorities, even if they wished, are

unable to stop or even to hinder it; and that the only remedy is armed

intervention, serious and continued,--in fact, a 'Coffin Squadron,'

like that of the Persian Gulf, stationed in the Red Sea, with 'slave

approvers' all around the coast of Arabia. I need hardly say that

we should demand the right of search, and that a Consul-General or

Slave Commissioner, with a sufficient staff and salary, the use of

a gunboat, and a roving commission, should be appointed to the Red

Sea, independently of the Consul-General of Egypt, and in lieu of the

trading Consul of Jeddah.

"M. Sabatier on the occasion omitted only one step, probably because he

judged that the hour to take it had not struck. He should have insisted

upon Mecca being opened to the world, and upon all travellers being

protected there, as they are at Jerusalem and other 'Holy Cities.'

It is high time that these obsolete obstructions to the march of

civilization should everywhere be swept away; the world will endure

them no longer. Mecca is not only a great centre of religion and

commerce; it is also the prime source of political intrigues, the very

nest where plans of conquest and schemes of revenge upon the Infidel

are hatched; and, as I have before said, the focus whence cholera is

dispersed over the West. Shall a misplaced sentiment of tolerating

intolerance allow her to work in the dark against humanity? Allah

forbid it!

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _India_.]

[We now change to India.]

"I suppose no one has any idea (and certainly no foreigner has) of the

amount of diplomacy or the responsibility incurred by the Viceroy of

India. The India House may well be quoted as 'the focus of politics for

nearly all Asia, and the storehouse of romance of all the East.' It

has to regulate our relations with all the neighbouring foreign Powers

_beyond_ the limits of Hindustan, and with the four hundred and sixty

dependent Princes and Chiefs within our own Indian Empire.

* * * * *

"I inspected the cotton-mills. It is evident that India must become a

manufacturing country, or it can no longer defend its teeming millions

from famine. When this great work shall have been done, Great Britain,

with one foot on Hindustan and the other in China, will command

the cotton and wool manufactures of the world, and be the greatest

producing power ever known.

* * * * *

"We now know, even at home, that India is not a country, but a

continent. It contains as many races as the whole of Europe: here

we have the Jangali, or wild men; the Dravidians, or old Turanian

immigration; the pure Aryans from Persia, as the Nágar Brahman; the

vast variety of mixed breeds between Dravidian and Aryan, such as the

Telinga Brahman; and, besides these four great families, a number of

intrusive peoples--Christians from Chaldea and Portugal; Jews, white

and black; Rohillas ('hill-people') from the Afghan mountains; Sidis

(Wásáwáhili) from Zanzibar; and Arabs, pure or mixed, the latter

showing its type in the Mapillahs (Moplahs) of Malabar. After all, in

Europe there are only three: the great Slav race, occupying the eastern

half of the continent; the Scandinavo-Teuton; and the Græco-Latin

races. Europe also speaks three great forms of language; here we

have the three, Semitic, Hamitic, and Japhetic, or Turanian, with

some thirty modifications of the Prakrit, which, in the hands of the

literati, became, like the modern Greek spoken at Athens, the Sanskrit,

or finished speech. It was the same with the _Latina Rustica_, not the

language of Virgil and Cicero, but the quaint country tongues which

branched off into the neo-Latin family.

"Again, the climate of India has a far wider range than that of Europe,

even if we throw into the latter Iceland and Spitzbergen. The west

regions of the mighty Himalayas, the 'Homes of Snow,' represent the

Polar regions; and we run through the temperates into the tropical, or

rather the equinoctial, about Ceylon. And what a richness and diversity

of productions in the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral worlds,

compared with the poor produce of the temperate regions! What untold

wealth still hidden in the soil, and awaiting the skill and energy

of the nineteenth century! What a grand field for exploration and

discovery! Dr. de Marchesetti, a young Italian botanist from Trieste,

assures us that the fungi, one of the most interesting families of

plants, have hardly been studied at all. And how much remains for us to

learn! For instance, no sword-cutter in Europe can tell you anything

about the steel which makes the far-famed Khorásáni blades, miscalled

'Damascus;' and the dismantiferous regions between the valleys of the

Ganges and the Krishna are in great part unexplored ground.

* * * * *

"On the other hand, the Kharekwasla Tank and the noble dam, built by

Mr. Joyner, C.E., are well worth visiting, both on account of the

intrinsic excellence of the work, and the great consequences to which

such works must lead. It not only supplies the 'Monsoon Capital' of the

Bombay Presidency, but it will diffuse life and plenty over some ninety

linear miles of now waste ground. Travelling from Poonah to Hyderabad,

you remark that the land at this season is mostly fit only for the

traditional dragon and wild ass; it is, like Sind, a cross between an

oven and a dust-bin. Yet where the smallest rill flows, all is life

and verdure; the emerald-green topes, and the leek-green paddy fields,

are a repose to the sight, a 'coolness to the eye,' as the Arabs say;

and you hasten to plunge that hot and weary organ into the damp lush

vegetation of orchard and field and kitchen-garden. The first step will

be to supply water, as Mr. Joyner is doing; the second, to regulate its

use. Here the golden fluid is wasted in a way which would scandalize

the Arab, the Egyptian, the Sindi, and the 'Heathen Chinee.'

"And this leads us to notice another popular error which has gained

possession of the British brain. Certain statistics, which may be

correct, have taught it that India is an overcrowded land, and that

its population per square mile, exceeding that of England, approaches

that of Belgium. This, as with all statistics, is both true and untrue.

Parts of Bengal, for instance, teem with human life; and as native wars

are no more, and famines are to be turned, regardless of expense, into

plenty, or rather profusion, the peasantry will end, in Kafir phrase,

with 'eating one another up.' For note that the true cause of Indian

famines is concealed from England. There is plenty of provision. There

is an abundance of transport. But the people are so penniless that when

grain rises one penny a pound, they must live on wild roots or starve.

"The statement that India is overcrowded is utterly misleading as

regards the whole of India. Throughout the peninsula the lands are of

three kinds, not including the jungles and forests, which cannot be

touched without danger of diminishing the rain-supply. There are the

fertile, as Gujerat; the wholly desert, mostly sandy and stony tracks;

and the half-desert, which grows luxuriant crops only during the rains.

And the latter are so extensive that with irrigation they would support

at least treble the actual number of inhabitants.

"India, then, has more than one string to her bow: she will dispose

of her increasing millions in three ways. Firstly, she will keep them

at home and feed them by irrigation, which costs much, gives slow

profits, but ends by being the best of investments. Secondly, she will

export them to our other colonies, where labour is so much wanted, and

where, as free hands, they will take the place of our old friend, the

'a'mighty nigger.' Sind, I need hardly tell you, calls aloud for them,

and can offer the richest of soils. Thirdly, she will retrench her

useless expenditure; abolish a host of local Governors who should be

Secretaries; of Commanders-in-Chief who should be Major-Generals; and

of Members of Council whose chief work is to spoil foolscap. Lastly,

she will become a manufacturing country. She has coal and iron; she

breeds millions of human beings, hireable at sixpence a day; her men

can mine, and her women and children can work at _la petite industrie_.

Despite the 'mildew' with which mildewed Manchester, _pace_ Mr. E.

Ashworth, is attempting to inoculate India; despite the timidity of

statesmen, and despite the jealousy of the manufacturing mob, which

wishes to buy dirt-cheap from India, and to make her pay 100 per cent.

for working her own produce, we have a conviction, as we have before

said, that Indian manufactures will succeed; and that Great Britain,

with one foot on Hindustan and another in China, whose three hundred

millions work at threepence a day, will command the wool and cotton

markets of the world, and will become the greatest producing power that

the globe ever bore.

* * * * *

"Lanauli is a place of some importance, being the locomotive station

at the head of the Bhore Ghát, whilst the site upon the edge of

the Sahyadri Range renders it tolerably healthy for the Europeans.

Consequently, where a few huts formerly rose, the place now contains

some two hundred pale faces. I saw with immense satisfaction

fifty-three men of the New Railway Volunteer Corps, which numbers

a total of one hundred and fourteen, being drilled by a red-coated

sergeant, under the eye of Captain Buckley. This is truly a patriotic

movement, and one which may prove far more important than we expect

in these days, when the native powers have armies far exceeding our

own in numbers. There is hardly an 'Indian officer' who does not

expect another 'Sepoy Mutiny' within ten years, and yet we do little

to prepare for it. Were I Viceroy, every station should have its

cannon-armed and casemated place of refuge.

* * * * *

"Shere Ali Khan is an ill-conditioned Prince--proud, coarse, and

violent. Yet there is something to be noted on the side of this little

Highland chief. His hostility dates from those early days when,

perhaps, we deserved scant friendship. During the Sepoy Mutiny he urged

the invasion of the Punjaub upon his wise old father, Dost Mohammed

Khan, whom a Russian paper reports on the throne, although he has been

dead for years. The masterly inactivity which Lord Lawrence still dares

to recommend, did not prevent that Viceroy acknowledging the claims of

Afzal Khan, the brother who had deprecated the Punjaub invasion. Shere

Ali had a pet grievance against Lord Mayo, and he was especially hurt

by Lord Northcote refusing to pay his subsidy--'tribute,' the wise

would call it--with the desired regularity. His relations with the

present Viceroy need hardly be noticed. The truth is that a policy of

alternate do-nothing, bullying, and cajoling have persuaded him firmly

that he holds the road to India; that the keys of the treasure-house

are in his hands. Hence he persistently refused to receive the Káshgar

mission; 'their blood be upon their own heads if they come to Cabul!'

Hence he admitted no English representatives, and he hardly permitted

the _Wakeel_, or resident Agent of her Majesty's Government, to address

him in Durbar. That he despises us, we cannot fail to see; nor less can

we fail to feel that we have not forced him to respect us. We might

have withdrawn that phantom of a _Wakeel_; we might also have withdrawn

his subsidy or tribute, a lakh of rupees _per mensem_, till his

manners improved; or, better still, we might have reserved it for his

successor. But a high-principled Viceroy objected that such proceedings

would be a 'premium upon rebellion.'

"That unhappy mission has placed us between the horns of an ugly

dilemma. If we do not fight, we offend public opinion at home and

abroad, in England and in India. If we do fight, we play Russia's

own game. Although never committed to paper, there was an implied

agreement between the two great Europe-Asiatic Powers that our Asiatic

army should not be employed in European wars. The policy of the

moment thought fit to throw a new weight into the scale; and Russia's

comment must have been something of this nature: 'Oh! you will employ

your Sepoys in Europe, will you? All right; meanwhile you shall have

enough to do with them in India!' Whatever alarmists told the world,

Russia has hitherto meddled mighty little with our Eastern Empire.

Now, however, times have changed, and we may look out for squalls. Our

Imperial 'Bakht,' our conquering star, our unbroken good luck, may yet

be our shield and our defender. Not the less this Afghan war threatens

to be the beginning of serious, nay, of fatal troubles, which may shake

our Indian Empire to its very foundation. Behind it stand General

Scindia and the Nawab of Hyderabad,--now the great Moslem power, the

Delhi of the Peninsula. Behind all, terrible and menacing as the Spirit

of the Storm which appeared to Da Gama, rises that frightful phantom,

a starving population reduced to the lowest expression of life by the

exorbitant expenditure of our rule.

"I would willingly point a moral with the state of the Sepoy army, now

reduced to a host of Irregulars; with the cost of a march _à Cabul_

against an enemy whose improved weapons have been supplied by ourselves

as well as by Russia; with the Russian claim to wage aggressive and

non-official war, even as we did in Turkey; with the effect which our

intense sensitiveness to every step taken by Russia must exercise upon

the Sultan and his Ministers; and lastly, with the possible results

to England, which under the workings of a Free Trade, the reverse of

free, threatens to become a Macclesfield on a very large scale. Is the

prophecy of the Koh-i-noor to be fulfilled after all, and a ridiculed

superstition to become a reality?

"THE NIZAM DIAMOND--THE DIAMOND IN INDIA.

[Sidenote: _Diamonds_.]

"It would be unpardonable to quit Golconda without a word concerning

the precious stone which, in the seventeenth century, made its name a

household word throughout Europe; and also without noticing the great

diamond whose unauspicious name, Bala (little) Koh-i-noor, I would

alter to 'The Nizam.' Not a little peculiar it is that professional

books like Mr. Lewis Lieulafait's 'Diamonds and Precious Stones'

(London: Blackie, 1874), which record the life, the titles, the weight,

the scale, the size, and the shape of all the historic stones, have

utterly ignored one of the most remarkable. Mr. Harry Emanuel does not

neglect even the Násik diamond, which fetched only £30,000: we must,

by-the-by, convert for intelligibility his 'Mahratta of Peshawur' into

the 'Peshwa of the Maharattas.'

"The history of the Nizam diamond is simple enough; like the Abaïté,

and unlike the Koh-i-noor, its discovery cost at most a heartache, and

did not lose a drop of man's blood. About half a century ago it was

accidentally found by a Hindú _sonár_ (goldsmith) at Narkola, a village

about twenty miles cast of Shamsábád, the latter lying some fourteen

miles south-west of the Lion City, on the road to Maktal. It had been

buried in an earthen pipkin (_Koti_ or _Abkhorah_), which suggests,

possibly, that it had been stolen, and was being carried for sale to

Mysore or Coorg. The wretched finder placed it upon a stone, and struck

it with another upon the apex of the pyramid. This violence broke it

into three pieces, of which the largest represents about half. With the

glass model in hand it is easy to restore the original octohedron. The

discovery came to the ears of the celebrated Diwan (Minister) Rajah

Chandú Lál, a friend of General Fraser, who governed the country as

Premier for the term of forty-two years. He took it very properly from

the _sonár_, before it underwent further ill-treatment, and deposited

it amongst his master's crown jewels. Lately Messrs. Aratoon, of

Madras, offered to cut it for three lakhs of rupees, a modest sum,

considering the responsibility and the labour such operations involve;

but the figure was considered exorbitant. A M. Jansen of Amsterdam,

who died about a twelvemonth ago, volunteered to place it in the hands

of Messrs. Costa, who certainly did not improve its big brother. This

offer was also naturally enough declined. Let me hope, however, that it

will not be cloven into a plate or flat slab _more Indico_.

"The stone is said to be of the finest water. An outline of the model

gives a maximum length of 1 inch 10.25 lines, and 1 inch 2 lines for

the greatest breadth, with comfortable thickness throughout. The face

is slightly convex, and the cleavage plane, produced by the fracture,

is nearly flat, with a curious slope or groove beginning at the apex.

The general appearance is an imperfect oval, with only one projection

which will require the saw. It is not unlike a Chinese woman's foot

without the toes, and it will easily cut into a splendid brilliant,

larger and more valuable than the present Koh-i-noor.

"I can hardly wonder at this stone being ignored in England and in

India, when little is known about it at Hyderabad. No one could tell

me its weight in grains or carats. The highest authority in the land

vaguely said 'about two ounces or three hundred carats.'[10] The

blacksmith who made the mould was brought to us, and the rascal showed

a bit of wood shaped much like a clove of orange. Finally, I was driven

to accept the statement of Mr. Briggs (i. 117): 'Almost all the finest

jewels in India have been gradually collected at Hyderabad, and have

fallen into the Nizam's possession, and are considered State property.

_One uncut diamond alone of three hundred and seventy-five carats is

valued at thirty lakhs of rupees_, and has been mortgaged for half that

money.'

"Let us now estimate the value of the Nizam diamond. For uncut stones

we square the weight (375 x 375 = 140,625) and multiply the product by

£2, which gives a sum of £281,250. For cut stones the process is the

same, only the multiplier is raised from £2 to £8. Thus, supposing a

loss of 75 carats, which would reduce 375 to 300 (300 x 300 = 90,000 x

£8), we obtain a total value of £720,003.

"Allow me briefly to compare the Nizam diamond (uncut 375 carats, cut

370) with the historic stones of the world. The list usually begins

with the Pitt or Regent, the first cut in Europe. When the extraneous

matter was removed in unusual quantities, it was reduced to 136¾

carats, valued from £141,058 to £160,000. The famous or infamous

Koh-i-noor originally gauged 900 carats; it was successively reduced

to 279 or 280 (Tavernier) and to 186¼ (= £276,768) when exhibited in

Hyde Park; its last treatment has left it at 162½ carats. Then we have

the Grand Duke's or Austrian, of 139½ carats (= £153,682); the Orloff

or Russian (rose cut) of 195 (193?) carats; and the Abaïté, poetically

called the 'Estrella do Sul' (Star of the South), weighing 120 carats.

The 'Stone of the Great Mogul,' mentioned by Tavernier, is probably

that now called the Daryá-i-noor: it weighs 279 9/16 carats, and

graces the treasury of the Shah. The nearest approach to 'The Nizam' is

the Mattan or Laudah diamond of 376 carats. Experts agree to ignore the

Braganza, whose 1680 carats are calculated to be worth £5,644,800: the

stone is kept with a silly mystery which makes men suspect that it is a

white topaz.

"And now to notice the diamond diggings of India, and especially of

Golconda, their ancient history and their modern state. I will begin

by stating my conclusions. Diamonds have been found in the Ganges

Valley: they are still washed as far north as Sambalpúr, and in the

Majnodi, an influent of the Mahanadi, on the Upper Narbada (Nerbudda),

on the line of the Godaveri and on the whole course of the Krishna. The

extreme points would range between Masulipatam and the Ganges Valley;

the more limited area gives a depth from north to south of some 5º (=

three hundred direct geographical miles), beginning north from the

Central Provinces and south from the Western Gháts, a breadth averaging

about the same extent, and a superficies of ninety thousand miles. A

considerable part of this vast space is, I need hardly say, almost

unexplored, and the sooner we prospect it the better. The curious

reader will find the limits laid down in the 'General Sketch,' etc., of

British India, by G. B. Greenough, F.R.S.

"The history of the diamond in India begins with the Maharabháta (B.C.

2100). The Koh-i-noor is supposed to have belonged to King Vikramaditya

(B.C. 56), and to a succession of Moslem princes (A.D. 1306), till it

fell into the hands of the Christians. Henry Lord's 'Discovery of the

Banian Religion' quaintly relates how 'Shuddery' (Sudra), the third

son of Pourvus (Purusha), 'findeth a mine of diamonds,' and engenders

a race of miners--this is going back with a witness, _teste_ Menu. At

what period India invented the cutting of the stone we are yet unable

to find out; the more civilized Greeks and Romans ignored, it is

suspected, the steel wheel. The Indian diamond was first made famous in

Europe by the French jeweller, Jean Baptiste Tavernier (born 1605, died

1689), who made six journeys to the Peninsula as a purchaser of what he

calls the Iri (_hira_).

"Tavernier's travels are especially interesting to diamond-diggers,

because he visited the two extreme points, north and south. He began

with 'Raulconda,' in the Carnatic, some five days south of Golconda

(Hyderabad), and eight or nine marches from Vizapore (_hodie_ Bijapur).

In 1665 the diggings were some two hundred years old, and they still

employed sixty thousand hands. The traveller's description of the sandy

earth, full of rocks, and 'covered with coppice-wood, nearly similar

to the environs of Fontainebleau,' is perfectly applicable to the

Nizam's country about Hyderabad. The diamond veins ranged from half

an inch to an inch in thickness, and the precious gangue was hooked

out with iron rods. Some of the stones were valued at two thousand,

and even at sixteen thousand crowns, and the steel wheel was used for

cutting. He then passed on to the Ganee diggings, which the Persians

call Coulour (_hod._ Burkalún), also belonging to the King of Golconda.

They lay upon the river separating the capital from Bijapur. This must

be the Bhima influent of the Krishna, and the old jeweller notices the

'corracles' which are still in use. The discovery began about A.D.

1565 with a peasant finding a stone gauging twenty-five carats. Here,

we are told, appeared the Koh-i-noor (nine hundred carats), which

'Mirzimolas,' or 'Mirgimola,' the 'Captain of the Mogols,' presented

to the Emperor Aurungzeb. The sixty thousand hands used to dig to the

depth of ten, twelve, or fourteen feet, _but as soon as they meet with

water there is no hope of success_. Tavernier then records the fact

that the king closed perforce half a dozen diggings between 'Coulour

and Raulconda, because for thirty or forty years the yield of black

and yellow had given rise to frauds.' The Frenchman's last visit

was to 'Soumelpore' (Sambalpur), 'a town of Bengala, on the river

Gowel,' a northern affluent of the Mahanadi. The season for washing

the diamantiferous land began in early February, when the waters ran

clear; other authors make it extend from November to the rainy season;

and the eight thousand hands extended their operations to fifty _kos_

up-stream. Gold and the finest diamonds in India--locally called

'Brahmans'--were found in the river-bed and at the mouth of the various

feeders.

"So far Tavernier. In 1688 and 1728 the well-known Captain Hamilton

('New Account,' etc.), in his twenty-ninth chapter, treating of

'Maderass, or China-Patam,' describes the diamond mines, evidently

those of Partiál in the Northern Circars, as being distant a week's

journey from Fort St. George; and he records the fact that the Pitt

diamond was there brought to light.

"The precious stone was practically limited to Hindustan and Borneo

before A.D. 1728, when diggings were opened in Brazil. At first the new

produce was rejected by the public, till it found out that many Indian

stones from the New World were sent to Goa, and thence were exported

to Europe. Still the general view was not wholly wrong. The specific

gravity of the diamond averages 3.6, and the difference of oxide in

the crystallized or allotropic carbon does not exceed a third place

of decimals. This, however, makes all the difference in lustre; and,

even in England, we have lately found out that a small brilliant of

perfect water, hung to the ear, for instance, is far more effective

than a stone much superior in size but inferior in quality. The public,

perhaps, do not remember that as far back as 1868 my study of the

formations which bear the Brazilian diamonds enabled me to forecast

that the gem would be found in a variety of places where its existence

had never been suspected. Thus, to mention no others, they were washed

in the Cudgegong river, near Rylston, New South Wales; the Australian

Diamond Company failed, however, probably by bad management, to pay its

expenses. It has been otherwise with the South African diggings, which

began with the Vaal river; the stones are inferior even to those of the

Brazil, yet they have reduced the value of the latter by one-third.

When another great revolution or other political trouble shall occur,

the diamond will recover its old market price.

"'The diamond mines of Golconda,' says Mr. Briggs (ch. vi.), 'derive

their name from being in the kingdom of Golconda, and not from being

near the Fort. They are at the village of Purteeali (Partiál), near

Condapilly, about one hundred and fifty miles from Hyderabad, on the

road to Masulipatam.[11] The property of them was reserved by the late

Nizam when he ceded the Northern Circars to the English Government.

They are superficial excavations not extending ten or twelve feet

deep in any part. For some years past the working of them has been

discontinued, and there is no tradition of their having ever produced

very valuable stones.'

"This _résumé_ is so full of errors that we cannot but suspect that

they conceal some design. The historian must have known that the Pitt

diamond, one of the finest and most perfect of its kind, was produced

at Gáni Partiál, and that the Koh-i-noor came from the so-called

'Golconda mines.' Again, Partiál, on the north bank of the Krishna,

some fifty miles from the Bay of Bengal, is only one of many diggings

in the vast area which I have before laid down, some being still

worked, and the others prematurely, we must believe, abandoned.

"The student will do well to consult that valuable volume, the

'Geological Papers on Western India' (Bombay, 1857), edited by my old

friend, Dr. Henry J. Carter. Here he will find detailed modern notices

of a multitude of mines. John Malcolmson, F.R.S. (p. 6), treats of the

diggings at 'Chinon on the Pennar,' and the Cuddapah mines (p. 6).

Of the latter Captain Newbold says ('Geological Notes' p. 375), 'The

diamond is found in the gravel beds of the Cuddapah district below

the _Regur_,' the black, tenacious, and fertile soils of Central and

Southern India. The same scientific officer, who died too early for

his fame, describes (p. 67) the yield of Mullavelly (or Malavilly),

north-west of Ellore, as 'occurring in a bed of gravel, composed

chiefly of rolled pebbles of quartz, sandstone, chert, ferruginous

jasper, conglomerate, sandstone, and Kankar, lying in a stratum of

dark mould about a foot thick.' Both these geologists inferred the

identity of the sandstone of Central with that of Southern India from

the existence of the diamond at Weiragad, a town about eighty miles

south-east of the capital. Malcolmson declared that the 'celebrated

diamond mines of Partel (Partiál), Bangnapilly, and Panna, occurring

in the great sandstone formations of Northern India, as well as the

limestones and schists associated with them, exhibit from the latitude

of Madras to the banks of the Ganges the same characters, and are

broken up or elevated by granite on trap rocks, in no respect differing

in mineralogical characters or in geological relations.'

"The Rev. Messrs. S. Hislop and R. Hunter, who visited and described

the Nagpur mines, object to this assertion, and endeavour to prove

that the 'diamond sandstone of the Southern Maharatta country is a

conglomerate, reposing upon the arenaceous beds, which have _never_

yielded the precious stone, nor are there any data to prove that the

conglomerate derived most of its materials from that source.' Dr.

Heyne contributed an excellent description of the mines of Southern

India, especially those of Bangnapilly (p. 689); of Ovalumpilly, six

miles from Cuddapah (p. 691); and of others in the Ellore district.

This experienced geologist concludes, 'All the diamond mines which I

have seen can be considered as nothing else than alluvial soil.' Major

Franklin ('Geological Translation,' second series, vol. iii. part

i.), who visited the mines of Pannah in Bandelkhand, before Victor

Jacquemont's day, makes the diamond sandstone, between the Narbada

(Nerbudda) and the Ganges, belong to the 'New Red'--apparently an

error. Others have described the diggings east of Nagpur (Central

Provinces) as having been opened in a matrix of lateritic grit. Dr.

Carter ('Summary of the Geology of India,' pp. 686-691) connects the

'diamond conglomerate' with the Oolitic series and its _débris_, and

he offers (p. 688) a useful tabular view of the strata in the mines

of Bangnapilly, described by Voysey, and Pannah or Punna, by Franklin

and Jacquemont. The most important conclusion is their invariable

connection with sandstone.

"Dr. Carter's volume quotes largely from the writings of Mr. Voysey

(_Journal As. Soc._, Bengal, second Report on the Government of

Hyderabad), a geologist who maintained the growth of the diamond as

others do of gold: he declared that he could prove in alluvial soil

the recrystallization of amethysts, zeolites, and felspar. During his

last journey from Nagpur to Calcutta he visited the diamond washings

of 'Sumbhulpore,' in the Mahanadi valley, and he describes the gems

as being 'sought for in the sand and gravel of the river,' the latter

consisting of pebbles of clay slate, flinty slate, jasper and jaspery

ironstone of all sizes, from an inch to a foot in diameter.

"We possess fortunately a modern description of the diggings, which, I

have said, were visited successively by Major Franklin and by Victor

Jacquemont. M. Louis Rousselet ('L'Inde des Rajahs,' Paris, Hachette,

1857), in his splendid volume (pp. 440, 443), gives an illustration

and an account of the world-famous mines of Pannah, the Pannasca of

Ptolemy (?), a little kingdom of eastern Bandelkhand erected in 1809.

The Rajah sent a _Jemadar_ (officer) to show him the diggings, which

are about twenty minutes' walk from the town. The site is a small

plateau covered with pebble-heaps; and, at the foot of a rise somewhat

higher than usual, yawns the pit, about twelve or fifteen or twenty

feet in diameter (about one hundred and eighty feet deep). It is

pierced in alluvial grounds, divided into horizontal strata, _débris_

of gneiss and carbonates, averaging thirteen metres. At the bottom is

the diamond-rock, a mixture of silex and quartz, in a gangue of red

earth (clay?). The naked miners descend by an inclined plane, and work

knee-deep in water, which the _noria_, or Persian wheel, turned by four

bullocks, is insufficient to drain; they heap the muddy mixture into

small baskets, which are drawn up by ropes, whilst a few are carried by

coolies. The dirt is placed upon stone slabs, sheltered by a shed; the

produce is carefully washed, and the silicious residuum is transferred

to a marble table for examination. The workmen, each with his

overseer, examine the stones one by one, throwing back the refuse into

a basket; it is a work of skill on the part of both men, as it must

be done with a certain rapidity, and the rough diamond is not easily

distinguished from the silex, quartz, jasper, hornstone (corundum), etc.

"Tradition reports that the first diamonds of fabulous size were thus

found, and the system of pits was perpetuated. When one is exhausted it

is filled up and another is opened hard by--a deplorable system, as one

hundred cubic metres must be displaced to examine one, and around each

well a surface of twenty times the area is rendered useless. Moreover,

much time is lost by the imperfect way of sinking the shaft, which

sometimes does not strike the stone.

"This diamond stratum extends more than twenty kilometres to the

north-east of Pannah. The most important diggings are those of the

capital, of Myra, Etawa, Kamariya, Brijpur, and Baraghari. The mean

annual produce ranges between £40,000 and £60,000--a trifling sum, as

the stones are the most prized in the world, and sell for a high price

in the country. They are pure and full of fire; the colour varies from

the purest white to black, with the intermediate shades--milky, rose,

yellow, green, and brown. Some have been found reaching twenty carats,

and the Myra mine yielded one of eighty-three, which belongs to the

crown jewels of the Mogul. Of course, the real produce must be taken

at double the official estimate, despite all precautions; such is the

case everywhere. The Rajah has established an approximate average

amount, and when this descends too low, he seizes one of the supposed

defaulters and beheads him or confiscates his goods. He sells his

diamonds directly to Allahabad and Benares, and of late years he has

established ateliers for cutting. These are the usual kind, horizontal

wheels of steel worked by the foot.

"Evidently here we have a primitive style, which has not varied since

diamond-working began. Good pumps are required to drain the wet pits.

Instead of sinking a succession of shafts, tunnels should be run along

the veins of diamond-bearing rocks. Magnifying-glasses and European

superintendence would improve the washing. I need hardly say that the

yield would double in the hands of Brazilians or South Africans.

"The precious stone is still brought for sale from the nearer valley

of the Krishna to Hyderabad. It occurs, I was assured, in a white

conglomerate of lime locally called _gar-ká-pathar_, which must be

broken up and washed. As it is found in a region of crystalline rocks,

common sense would suggest tracing up the material to the places

where it may have been formed; but this is never done. During our

week's visit I was consulted by two Parsee merchants concerning the

rudimentary tests of scratching and specific gravity. In fact, at

Golconda, where the finest gems used to be worked, no one, strange to

say, can now recognize a rough diamond.

"The 'Highlands of the Brazil' (ii. 113) has given a detailed list

of the various stones associated with the gem; and specimens of the

_cascalho_, or diamond gravel, the _tauá_, the _canga_, etc., have been

sent to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by Mr. Swinton. It is advisable

to remark that this association has everywhere been recognized. In

Borneo we are told that 'the diamond is known by the presence of

sundry small flints.' The gem-yielding pebble-conglomerate of India,

not usually a breccia, as was proved by Franklin, Newbold, and

Aytoun (_loc. cit._, p. 386), contains quartz and various quartzose

formations; garnet, corundum, epidote, and Lydian stone; chalcedony and

carnelian; jasper of red, brown, bluish, and black hues; and hornstone,

a kind of felspar, whilst 'green quartz indicates the presence of the

best stones.' Fossil chert is yielded by the limestone, and the highly

ferruginous and crystalline sandstone produces micaceous iron ores,

small globular stones (pisoliths?), and almost invariably fragments of

iron oxide. Finally, there are generally traces of gold, and sometimes

of platinum. At Hyderabad I was assured that such was the case on the

Krishna river; but none of my informants had any personal knowledge

of washing. Finally, Dr. Carter's 'Geological Papers' convinced me

that the sandstones of the diamond area will be found to resemble the

_itacolumite_--quartzose mica slate or laminated granular quartz, of

Brazilian 'Minas Geraes.'

"These considerations convince me that diamond-digging in India

generally, and especially in Golconda (the territory of Hyderabad),

has been prematurely abandoned. In the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries the machinery for draining wet mines was not what it is now;

and the imperfect appliances led to the general belief that all the

deposits were purely superficial. Doubtless some were in the alluvial

soil of the most recent rocks; but M. Rosselet's account shows that

deep digging may still be practised to advantage. Voysey also saw

the 'sandstone breccia' (diamond conglomerate?) of Southern India

'under fifty feet of sandstone, clay, slate, and slaty limestone.' The

Brazilian miners ('Highlands,' ii. 121) have only lately learned to

descend one hundred and eighty feet; and they find some of their best

stones at the lowest horizon. The Vaal River and other South-African

washings, opened in 1868, soon reached sixty feet.

"Immediately about the Golconda Fort the rocks, almost wholly syenitic

and granitic, supply only quartz, chalcedony, carnelian, and amethyst;

but we had heard of chance diamonds being picked up by the accolents

of the Krishna river, and Sir Salar Jung, with his usual liberality,

proposed laying a _dák_ for us to Raichor. He was ready, in fact,

to meet a wanderer's wishes in every possible way. I presently,

however, learned from good authority that only crystalline rocks, like

those which we had seen in the Golconda tombs, are produced by this

central section of the Krishna, and that _itacolumite_ must be sought

elsewhere. Evidently the precious stones have been rolled down from

some unknown distance; and to follow the 'spoor' demanded more time

than I could command.

"It would be wasting paper to insist upon the benefits of reviving

the ancient industry. But India is slow, deadly slow. In her present

impoverished state she wants an energetic cultivation of every branch

of industry. She does nothing; worse still, she rages against those

who advise her to be up and doing. There is a fatal lethargy in her

air. England administered like Anglo-India would be bankrupt in a week.

And, locally speaking, diamond-working is a necessity. Hyderabad is

not a rich country, and her trade is well-nigh _nil_. But she has coal

that wants only a market; and if to the 'black diamond' she can add

the white diamond, her future prospects are not to be despised. The

first step is, of course, that of 'prospecting,' of systematically

reconnoitring the ground, with the aid of a few experienced hands

imported from the Brazil and South Africa. If the search be successful,

a company or companies would soon be found to do the rest. For me it

will be glory enough to have restored the time-honoured 'mines of

Golconda.'

"We left at the week's end the country of 'our Faithful Ally,' greatly

pleased with the courtesy and hospitality which seem to be its natural

growth. And I have a conviction that, despite the inevitable retrograde

party of all native states, the _codini_ of the East, the warlike

Zemindars, the 'dissolute vagabonds,' the 'Pathan bravos,'and the

'cut-throats and assassins' of the Press, this realm has become, since

1859, the 'greatest Mohammedan power in India.'

"The return journey to Bombay gave time for other reflections. At

present our 'enormous dependency, India, the most populous and

important that ever belonged to a nation, and conferring a higher

prestige on the ruling race than has ever been conferred by any other

subject people'--as the judicial Trollope has it--is, has been, and,

under present circumstances, ever will be, somewhat neglected by the

general public of England. No home Britisher can interest himself even

moderately in such a colony; it is too distant, and it can hardly be

brought nearer by local parliaments and similar institutions. Although

'taxation without representation is tyranny,' we are not yet prepared

to grant, what eventually must be granted, Representative Government.

We are therefore driven to seek some other course.

"Again, at Hyderabad, as in India generally, we are living upon a

volcano which may or may not slumber for years. See how of late all

soldiers have come round to the same opinion concerning the 'scientific

frontier.' All, in fact, are tacitly agreed to treat our Empire in

India like an army; with supports, reserves, with outposts, vedettes,

and similar martial appliances. The remedies hitherto proposed for the

natural disaffection of the great native powers, kept as they are in

a state of _quasi_-tutelage, appear to be mere quackeries, likely to

do harm rather than good. For instance, to make the energetic Indian

prince more powerful within his own jurisdiction would be simply to arm

him against ourselves.

"But why not at once admit a certain number of seats in the House

of Lords? Of those who claim salutes of twenty-one guns, there are,

besides four foreigners, three Indian princes, the Nizam, the Gaikwár,

and the rulers of Mysore, who all happen at present to be minors.

Amongst those honoured by nineteen guns we find Scindhia, Holkar, and

Udepúr; whilst Jaipúr, with twelve others, has seventeen guns. Of

course, it would be necessary to limit the number to six or seven, but

the hope of eventually rising to the dignity should not be withheld

from Chiefs of lower grade.

"Nothing would tend more directly to conciliate the princes of India,

and to make them our firm friends, than to admit them to the highest

dignity of the Empire--to a House where they would doubtless hasten to

sit; where they would learn their true interests, and where they would

find themselves raised to a real, instead of a false equality with the

ruling-race.

"Mr. Sowerby addressed a letter (April 25th, Broach) to the _Times of

India_, entering into a discussion with me on the Diamonds of Golconda,

to which I replied as follows:--

"'THE UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES OF INDIA.

"'To the Editor of the _Times of India_.

"'Sir,--Amidst the hurry and worry of departure, I failed to find a

spare moment for noticing the valuable communication dated Broach,

April 25th, and bearing the name of your distinguished correspondent

Mr. Sowerby. The calm and quiet of my present home, the "Minerva,"

allow me leisure _à discretion_, and perhaps some of your readers may

not be unwilling to see how much may be said on the other side.

"'The Madras Government would have done better to send a few

experienced diamond-diggers to the Cuddapah country, instead of

"driving the unfortunate diamond-seekers away from the fields;" but

we have already heard something concerning the modicum of wisdom with

which the world, even in Madras, is governed. Of course, untrained

prospecting and ignorant working end, as a rule, in "the most

abject poverty, wretchedness, and starvation." Thus we explain the

Spanish proverb, "A silver-mine means misery, a gold-mine ruin." The

"Garimpeiro," or pick-and-pan adventurer in the Brazil, could hardly

keep himself alive on manioc and tobacco, where the wealthy English

companies, which took his place, filled their coffers. With the

diamond the same is the case, and hence I have been able to draw up

a "rose-tinted" account of the diggings in Minas Geraes. Capital and

skilled labour succeed where the desultory attempts of untaught men

breed nothing but failure. My "projects" are simply to place the true

state of the case before the English capitalist, and to enlist the

sympathies of individuals and of the public; it would be a profligate

waste of labour to attack the _vis inertiæ_ of the Indian Government,

and bepreach the caste whose _dharma_ it is to work the machine.

It is hardly possible to believe that, whilst the diamond has been

found in spots scattered over the enormous area, say, of five hundred

direct geographical miles in depth, bounded north by the Mahanadi

and south by the Krishna, the mineral resources of vast and almost

unexplored tracts, like the highlands of Orissa, should continue to

be neglected. And, although an attempt to revive the diamond-mines

of Sambalpore resulted, I am told, in failure, my advice would be

to begin with the oldest diggings, which, as Tavernier shows, were

systematically abandoned after reaching the depth of a few feet,

because the owners ignored the art of pumping. Even if the deserted

spots be so worked out as not to yield a single gem, they will make

an excellent practical study of the formations in which the stone

may be expected to occur elsewhere. My principal difficulty will be

the utter unfamiliarity with the subject which belongs to the class

whose interests are most concerned. The first attempt brings me the

following answer: "I will give my opinion of the undertaking when I

have studied the details; but Golconda is an ungodly place to invite

the British capitalist to." As regards preliminaries, a friend, whose

touching modesty induces me to withhold his name, writes to me:

"The success in finding minerals and gems to the east of the Gháts

is simply a question of prospecting; and the more prospectors the

merrier. Why, there must be now ferreting in Australia, Tasmania,

and New Zealand, little short of half a million of skilled hands.

Geologists are valuable only so far as they indicate formations likely

to prove fertile; the real work must be done by prospectors."

"'I am far from thinking, with Mr. Sowerby, that, in a hopeful matter

like this, of development of wealth, "native rulers will always take

their cue from the paramount power," however rigidly our official seal

is affixed to the mineral treasures lying dormant in the land. One of

the commonplaces of the theoretical English writer is the exceeding

Conservatism of the East: practically I have found the reverse.

True, the Bombay "Kumbi" rejected the ridiculous windmills by which

the late Dr. Buist proposed to abolish the cheap and all-sufficient

water-wheel; and thus he incurred the vehement displeasure of that

_perfervidum ingenium_, who had, they said, a monetary interest in the

matter. But show the Hindú and Hindí (Moslem) that the novelty will

pay or will save money, and they will adopt it as readily as almost

any nationality known to me. What nonsense has been written and read

about the failure of Indian railways, because nothing could persuade

the Brahmin to ride side by side with the pariah! The truth is, caste

remains powerful as long as it pays; in the inverse condition it is a

name, and nothing more.

"'But practically it is very little matter whether the Government

of H.H. the Nizam take or take not the cue from the groovy and

torpid rule which distinguishes British India in this section of the

nineteenth century. That it will grant free and liberal concessions I

am persuaded. Still, after all, the diamond-diggings in the Krishna

Valley, though far-famed for their produce in days gone by, are a mere

line of trenches compared with the depths of field which lies behind

them.

"'Upon the subject of iron-making in India, Mr. Sowerby and I must

agree to differ. Of course, stone may be too rich for smelting

purposes; my travels have shown me mountains of iron, in the United

States and in South America, which are, perforce, neglected for

poorer ores. But the common charcoal-smelted metal of the Brazil is

preferred by the English mining companies--for instance, at São João

d'El Rei--to stampers of the best English steel; and I fail to see

why the same should not be the case in India, when replanting of

trees shall become the rule, and when the woods and forests shall be

properly managed. In my former letter, however, I alluded especially

to sword-blades and other costly articles, in which the least thing

thought of is the value of the raw material. Mr. Sowerby asserts,

"Not a single attempt has been made to manufacture arms in India

on a European scale and on European principles, but it has ended

in financial failure." Yet, further on, we are told that a "native

smith of Salem makes the best of hog-spears and hunting-knives."

European principles, I presume, mean the use of coal, whilst the

native preferred charcoal. And why should the Brazil succeed so

admirably with its thousands of little Catalan furnaces, and India

fail? Evidently the quality of the fuel is, in both cases, the vital

condition of success.

"'The specimens of Hyderabad coal shown to me at the Nizam's capital

were of thicker formation and of superior quality to the "brown coal

of Southern Austria," which is more lignite. And yet the latter pays,

even for steamers, when mixed with a certain proportion of Cardiff.

There _is_ a demand for coal almost throughout the ancient kingdom

of Golconda, where the land has been ruthlessly disforested; and

there should, methinks, be little difficulty in inducing the people

to abolish in its favour the use of "gober" and other fuels to which

their poverty drives them. Here the only want is evidently cheap and

easy transport; and with this object I proposed Mr. Worsley's "wooden

idea."

"'Your distinguished correspondent throws undue stress, it appears

to me, upon the fact that these cheapest of tramways have been known

in England for centuries, and have been supplanted by light iron

rails. Because the latter are found cheapest in England, _argal_,

as the grave-digger said, they should be adopted in India. But the

mine-owners in the Brazil, where wood is hard and abundant as in

India, still work with wooden rails; and in both countries the state

of the thoroughfares, especially beyond the main lines of traffic, is

like that of England two hundred years ago.

"'Upon this subject the modest friend before quoted writes to me

as follows:--"I shall be much obliged if you will give me all the

information you can about Worsley's wooden railways. I have five

hundred acres of excellent timber at a point of the Tasmanian

north-west coast, three hundred and fifty miles from Melbourne. I

am within two miles of a shipping-place, and I shall have to make

five miles of tramway with wooden rails, _as is always done in this

neighbourhood_" (italics mine); "but the ordinary flanged wheels are

used, and they drub the rails horribly. I understand your description

of the rails, but I cannot gather from your letter to the _Times of

India_ what sort of wheels Mr. Cayley Worsley proposes to use. Could

you send me a plan, or tell me where to get one?"

"'Mr. Worsley supplied me with a sketch-design of his invention or

modification, but as it contains novelties perhaps unknown to Mr.

Sowerby, whilst allowing me to put the public in possession of the

outline of his scheme, he naturally enough insisted upon the details

and the plan being kept secret. I have therefore referred my valued

correspondent to the inventor himself, whose private residence is No.

62, Belgrave Road, London.

"'Finally, when Mr. Sowerby roundly asserts "it is rather too late in

the day to teach us anything new in making cheap tramways," I presume

that he has seen or has read about the "Pioneer," lately invented by

my friend Mr. John Hadden, C.E., and exhibited during last December

at Mr. Lee Smith's office, No. 6, Westminster Chambers, and the

"Economical," belonging to Mr. Russell Shaw. If not, he would do well

to master the subject, and then he will probably conclude with me that

what has been done in tramways (as in other matters) is a very small

part of what remains to be done.

"'Yours, etc.,

"'R. F. BURTON.

"'Aden, at Sea, May 18th, 1876.'

"A PEEP INTO THE FUTURE OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA.

[Sidenote: _India_.]

"I would fain enter a vehement protest against the spirit and the

manner in which the relative positions of Great Britain and Russia are

treated by Englishmen, and I hope to show the immense detriment to

which this treatment has subjected, and still subjects, our prestige

and our good name.

"We were lately asked by an educated native of Bombay if the Russians

are not ready to throw fifty lakhs of men--five hundred thousand

bayonets!--upon British India; and not a few of the lower classes,

Mussulmans all, had told me that the 'Moskoff' is about to attack the

Punjáb.

"Men now just middle age, whose youth saw the virulent attack of

Russophobia which in 1838-39 led to the Afghan War, the severest

shake, next to the Sepoy Mutiny, which our Indian Empire has ever

endured, find it difficult, with the proverbial difficulty of mastering

new ideas after the tenth lustre, to appreciate the complete change

in the positions of the two great rival Powers. As early as 1791,

Russia prepared to invade India from Orenburg, _viâ_ Ashur, Ata, and

Asterabad, 'the line of least resistance,' Meshhed, Herat, and Kandahar.

"Let us suppose that in 1835 she had taken heart of grace and

resolved to follow in the footsteps of Nadir Shah. The road to Delhi

lay completely open to her. She had only to point to India, the

'traditional plunder-ground of Central Asia,' and all the rugged

robber-hordes, from the Sutlej to the mouths of the Euphrates, would

have rushed to the 'loot' like wolves and vultures to the quarry, and

Persia was only waiting to see the offensive action taken. Afghanistan

was ever ready to renew the pleasant scenes of Paniput. The whole line

of the Indus, Mooltan, Bahawulpore, and Sind, under the Talpúr Amirs,

would have hurried to the flank attack. The direct line lay through

the dominions of our good friend and bitterest enemy, Runjeet Singh,

whose gallant heart was broken by the easy successes of the British in

Afghanistan, where he flattered himself they had fallen into his trap.

With the Punjáb would have sided Cashmere, Nepaul, and even Bhootan;

in fact, the whole region south, and possibly north, of the Himalayan

range.

"But Russia did not take the opportunity, which means she had other

things to do; and that cautious, far-seeing Power saw no advantage

in a raid like the 'Chapáo' of Nadir Shah. Now the conditions of our

frontier are completely changed. From the modest line of the Sutlej and

the great North-western Desert, we have occupied a thousand miles of

the Indus frontier, extending from Peshawar to the sea; the Punjáb is

ours; Cashmere, Nepaul, and Bhootan exist on sufferance; they may be

ours at any moment we please.

"Persia might still join Russia, but we have operated more than once

with fatal effect upon her vulnerable heel, the Gulf. Her strength has

been wasted by famine; her exchequer is empty; and the chivalry of the

Desert, her Iliyát or Bedawi, have been crushed by the contact of a

so-called Regular Army. The Afghans would still flock to enrol under

the banners of the North, but they would be met by their hereditary

foe, the Sikh. How secure we are upon this point may be judged by

the way in which the military authorities have dismantled the whole

Indian fortress. Our native army has been converted into an irregular

machine, which could not meet even the Abyssinians without sending for

reinforcements of officers to Madras and Calcutta.

"The hare-hearted Sepoy--undoubtedly the worst soldier in Asia--has

been reduced to eight European officers per regiment, with all the

combatants mounted, so as to secure their being swept away by the first

fire.

"We have no army in England beyond what is required for police

purposes; nor shall we have one until the Britons, still happily

separated from the total world, determine, by a general conscription,

to march with the rest of Europe, and to exchange a small standing army

for a national force. And whilst we literally hold India with eighty

thousand white faces, we freely allow the Native Powers to levy and to

drill troops in numbers exceeding our own. Evidently our authorities

are very sure of their affair. Possibly they rely upon the fact that

the game is no longer worth the candle; that India, that golden land,

has been squeezed till no more is to be got out of her. 'Poor India,

every hair of her head is numbered!' said a mercantile traveller, when

I explained to him the figures on the date trees; and, certainly,

between the Abkari (excise) and the salt-tax, we have thoroughly

emptied the pockets of the breechless population.

"But, happily, things are gradually getting to the worst, and we may

fairly hope that they will surely mend. Presently we shall take a

lesson from Russia, who manages her trans-Caucasian provinces by a

mixture of foreign and native _employés_. Nothing more offends the

patriotic Russian than to doubt that he is wholly European; and yet

to the dash of Asiatic blood he owes many of his highest national

gifts,--his facility in acquiring languages; his devotion to his

Emperors, the 'Shadows of Bog upon Earth;' his subtle and persistent

policy; his love of conquest and military glory; and his fatalistic

calmness under fire.

"We shall remedy the chronic discontent of a pauper population by

opening up new sources of wealth in reproductive works, in manufactures

and mines. At present India is administered for the benefit of England,

or rather, of the English trading classes, who must supply the public

offices with paper and sealing-wax, and the soldiers and sepoys with

broadcloth and ducks. The National Religion of England will become the

State Church in India, and we shall cease to foster and encourage, by

a fatuous and absurd toleration, the fanaticism of Pagan idolatry. We

shall borrow from Russia another lesson of economy, by substituting

military law and rule for the pseudo-constitutionalism with which we,

like Portugal, have afflicted India; we shall relieve our great colony,

or rather conquest, of such an incubus as Presidency Governors and

Commanders-in-Chief, Members of Council and Chief Justices. We shall

reserve High Courts and similar preserves for lawyers' game; but we

shall confine them to the various capitals, where wealthy natives may

play at law, and ruin themselves _à discretion_.

"With this money, now profligately wasted upon civil establishments,

we shall maintain an efficient Native Army, which will deliver us

from the feeble politic of 'purpose and no power.' At home a general

conscription, or a revival of the Militia Act, will give us a force,

between actives and reserves, of two millions of men. The first

serious 'shake' in the East or the West will show us that our national

existence depends upon this measure, or rather that the alternative

will be subsiding into the position of Belgium and Holland. And

finally, when Russia begins her railway from Tabriz to Teheran and

Baghdad, we shall check her by the Euphrates Valley Line, at present

our principal Colonial want. And thus the 'Ikbal,' or good fortune,

which apparently departed with the defunct East India Company, will be

inherited by the Imperial Rule.

"The Government of the Company, it must be remembered, was

aristocratic,--an aristocracy of bales and barrels, if you please,

but still, to a certain extent, a rule of honour. Its successor acts

upon the latest and most modern rules of political economy; it buys

its labour in the cheapest market, and it demands only a fair day and

a half's work for a fair day's wage. It notably borrowed from China

its system of competitive examinations, which examine all least worth

examining,--that is, the memory and the receptivity, not the moral

and physical value of its Mandarins. Some day, perhaps, we shall see

a return of the well-abused system of patronage, whose evils can

so easily be checked by the administration of proper tests, and by

provisional appointments to be confirmed only after a sufficient period

of practical trial.

"To an Englishman who has at heart the honour and interests of his

native land, nothing is more offensive than the low standing taken

by our writers in treating of the Central Asian Question, and the

tone of despondency which contrasts so disparagingly with the high

grounds assumed by the Russians. England accepted as a kind of boon the

creation of a neutral zone,--a string of independent semi-barbarian

States, separating the frontiers of the two great Asiatic Powers.

Russia, with the moderation engendered by her intense vigour and

vitality, throws this sop to Cerberus, perfectly certain that the

measure is merely temporary, whilst the powerful war party which looks

upon the Cesarewitch as its head, openly expresses its scorn and

disgust. We are told by our Pundits that 'all we want is rest--rest

from foreign wars, rest from political disturbance.' We want nothing of

the kind: our only want is, _de l'audace, de l'audace, et toujours de

l'audace_.

"We are assured that we are conservative, not aggressive; whereas our

rivals are aggressive, not conservative; in other words, that they are

young and active and strong, while we are old and stiff and weak. We

are advised to push forward, because any check upon our frontier would

raise a host of enemies in our troubled rear,--which means that our

position in India is more or less precarious. We are informed in the

same breath that Russia has certainly not contemplated anything like an

invasion of India; and yet we are advised to take the strongest steps

in order to secure ourselves from invasion.

"A curious comment, by the way, upon the first dictum is the tone

of the young Grand Duke Nicholas' letters, published by Miss Fanny

Lear, in which he considers an appointment to the Caucasus as the

first step of a Russian march upon India. Again, we read the alarming

sentence, 'If there was danger to British India from the attitude and

possible designs of Russia twenty-eight years ago, that danger must

be increased a hundred-fold at the present day.' Furthermore, we are

threatened with the 'moral leverage' which Russia, by menacing India,

can bring to bear upon us in Europe; and with the chronic conflagration

which would result from the mere contiguity of a rival European Power;

in other words, we are told that Russia can make India too hot to hold

us,--as if we could not make, by means of China, Turkestan too hot to

hold Russia. Her troops are ever moving on resistless as fate, whilst

we are thoroughly alarmed by their advance: that is, Russia swoops like

the hawk, while we cower like the pigeon.

"Hence, the perpetual reports of new invasion-routes from the North

which fill our Press, the old Buroghil Pass being the latest 'fad.'

And hence the trembling anxiety with which the Anglo-Indian eye was

fixed upon the late Amir el-Muminin, Ya'akub Khan of Kashgar, as if a

struggling little Moslem Prince, who would assuredly be crushed between

the rival Colossi, Russia and China, held the destinies of British

India in his weakling hand. Hence the exaggerated importance attached

to what is called the 'Indian situation,' to the 'Russian glacis'

on the north-east of Persia, and to the strategic approach from the

south-eastern corner of Persia, 'which is so stealthily, but steadily

progressing.' And hence, finally, the forcible feeble stand which

we are making about the independence of villainous Bokhara, and the

inviolability of pauper Merv--a village which once numbered a million

of souls.

"This tone of excited despondency, this symptom of weakness and

violence, has travelled far, and has already done great damage to our

name. It has thoroughly complicated our relations with Afghanistan.

As may be proved by any old map, that turbulent land of robber-chiefs

has gained enormously, both in territory and in population, by our

intervention. Yet Shere Ali Khan sulks and pouts because Lord Lawrence

acknowledged his elder brother, the friendly Afzul Khan; because Lord

Mayo did not anticipate his every wish, and because Lord Northbrook

did not pay his subsidy--'tribute' I would rather call it--with all

the regularity he desired. Hence he refused the Kashgar Mission, under

pretext of being unable to protect the members,--'Their blood be

upon their own heads if they come to Cabul!' Hence he will admit no

English resident Agent; and the native _Aakil-i-Sarkar-i-Angriz_ is

hardly permitted to address him in Durbar. The fact is, this miserable

Highland Chief believes, and has been taught by us to believe, that he

holds 'the road to the English.' He is convinced that he has only to

offer aid to the Russians in order to drive us out of India. That he

hates us, we know: during the Sepoy Mutiny he urged in vain his wise

old father, Dost Mohammed, to invade the Punjáb--a measure deprecated

by Afzul Khan. That he despises us, we cannot fail to see; and not less

can we fail to feel that our policy has given him a right to despise

us.[12]

"What, then, should we do in this matter? The 'repose of strength' is

liable to be interpreted by the Oriental as supineness; moderation

means fear; and 'compromise,' the basis of public and private life in

England, has no synonym in the East. _De l'audace_, etc., is the only

rule of conduct in the Afghan hills. At the first opportunity--and any

day may bring one--we should break openly with Shere Ali; tread boldly

upon the coat-tail which he is trailing for a fight; withdraw that

phantom of a Native Agent, and offer the subsidy, a lakh _per mensem_,

to the successor who promises us his friendship and his confidence. The

latter measure has been characterized as a premium on rebellion. _Sit_,

so be it!

"We have nothing to fear from the Afghan chief, most of whose subjects

would right willingly exchange his barbarous sway for our civilized

rule. We have nothing to hope from him; he would take, Afghan-like,

our money with one hand, and stab us with the other. Here, if

anywhere, are the time and place to assume the tone and position of

a 'dominant race.' We have talked too long and too loudly about 'our

fellow-subjects in India' and our 'Afghan allies;' let us now change

the terms for 'conquered races' here, and for 'paid partisans' there.

"Curious to say, the latest form of Russophobia was developed by our

grand national blunder, the great artillery duel in the corner of the

Black Sea, which history will call the 'Crimean War.' After nearly

incurring national bankruptcy by our rabid hostility to Napoleon I., we

were cozened by Napoleon III. into an alliance, whose sole object was

to give his house a status amongst the old and aristocratic dynasties

of Europe. But, to do the latter justice, he proposed to take upon

himself the chief onus of the campaign.

"It was Lord Palmerston--the statesman who saddled us with the Fenian

imbroglio; the man who, believing about as much as Epicurus, never

missed a Sunday morning service; the Irishman who knew the English

public better than it knew itself--that rejected the Frenchman's offer

to send the army, whilst England supplied the fleet. Thus, upon the

obsolete principle that one Englishman can beat three _Mossoos or

Johnny Crapauds_, we were allowed to contribute a mere contingent.

Thus we were condemned to play, as is commonly said, second fiddle,

without the least hope of rising in the world; whilst the want of

ability amongst our superior officers, the normal English deficiency of

organization, and a few miserable blunders, glorious like the Balaclava

Charge, and inglorious like the run from the Mamelon, duly printed

abroad throughout the civilized world, combined to form an ample

'vengeance for Waterloo.'

"The world has not yet learned that we entered half-hearted into

that war; that we were thoroughly ashamed of our Turkish allies and

of their cause; that many of our leading statesmen determined upon

not abasing Russia; that Cronstadt was allowed to exclude us from

St. Petersburg, when the late Captain Cole's turret-ship would have

set the fortress at defiance; that Kars was given over to starvation

because the Russians refused to make peace without a set-off for the

southern half of Sebastopol, evacuated after a resistance of eighteen

months; that Napoleon insisted on coming to terms with Russia, because

his Crimean army was mutinous, and he had won his point; and lastly,

that our allies' ignoble jealousy confined us to a game at long bowls

in the Crimea, when, with the assistance of the Turks, the Kurds, and

the Persians, we might easily have driven Russia once more behind and

beyond the Caucasus.

"All this, and more, we have been told by the late Lord Strangford, in

the two volumes of his pleasant works published some years ago by the

Viscountess, whose late gigantic charitable undertakings in Bulgaria

must be the envy and admiration of every woman. But, in determining

that Russia had gained by the war as much as Great Britain lost, my

clever friend was not so happy as in the rest of his judgments: in

fact, he neglected one great item in the account which determined the

balance in our favour. The Crimean War prevented the march of the

Russian empire southwards,--the general rule of northern conquest. It

compelled her to go and grow eastward.

"This necessity of growth in the Northern Giant is treated by our

writers with a luxury of explanation. It is attributed to a steadfast

political purpose; to the preponderating impulse of irresponsible

military ambition thirsting for distinction; to a traditional creed of

the Empire, which aims at augmented power in Europe through extension

in Asia; to obeying the natural law of increase; and to all these

causes combined.

"For the anthropologist, one amply suffices. The body politic, like the

individual, must grow to attain full development; and 'earth-hunger,'

as it is called, characterizes all young peoples in the lusty prime

of life. At present the only great conquering races are the Slav,

especially Russia, and the English, especially the Anglo-Americans. The

former conquer by invasion, the latter by occupation and colonization.

"Why Great Britain, at the present moment of her history, has turned

her sword into a ploughshare, is apparently little understood by the

mass of foreign writers. The truth is, we are still in a period of

reaction. During the first quarter of the present century we meddled

with--and often, it must be confessed, we muddled--European affairs

which least concerned an insular people.

"About 1850 the counter-action set in with peculiar violence. Lord

Palmerston was rebuked by the Crown for his officious interference in

continental matters. Mr. Cobden was at the summit of his fame. The

Great Exhibition of 1851 was to inaugurate the reign of peace and good

will amongst men, and international commerce was to cement the union

of the Pan-European family. The Frenchman would never invade us. If he

attempted so obsolete a step, our touching and charitable reception of

him would melt the heart of the bearded Zouave and the Sapeur, to whom

nothing is sacred. The army should be turned into a body of navvies;

the navy was to be converted into police-ships and emigrant-ships.

Posterity will marvel at this peace mania, and perhaps will sneer at

the part which the peacemakers took in precipitating the Russian War of

1853. It reads like a tale of Bedlam, but it is not the less true. The

secondary symptoms of the dread malady still ferment in the national

constitution, and possibly we may not escape without tertiaries. But

the perfect cure must come at last.

[Sidenote: _Eastern Politics_.]

"About 1863, when Russia had recovered from the fatigues of the

Crimean campaign, her 'manifest destiny' began to show itself in what

we vaguely term 'Central Asia.' It is not my purpose to trace her

steps. England, and especially India, looked on uneasily, although a

'large portion of the thinking public, including the optimist class of

Anglo-Indian politicians to a man, declared in favour of the Russian

advance.' And no wonder. The actual civilization of the Russian Empire

may not yet be of the highest order, yet it is long centuries in

advance of the reckless barbarism which characterizes the Great Horde

and the Usbeg Khanats. Whilst annexing the barren steppes, the eastern

shores of the Caspian, the lands about the Aral, and the noble valleys

of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, Russia's mission was _terram aperire

gentibus_. She opened military roads and proposed railways; she built

forts and meditated canals. She rendered the country passable to the

traveller and to the trader. The European had no longer to fear being

plundered or reduced to slavery, or being foully murdered. She enlisted

sundry marauding tribes; she had made them disciplined soldiers and

peaceful subjects, whilst many 'bad neighbours' were converted by

example into 'good neighbours.'

"Again, the dash of Eastern blood in the veins of Russia enabled

her to curb the fanatic spirit of her new lieges. Her enemies had

predicted that she had disturbed a hornet's nest; that her lines were

now cast in unpleasant places, amongst the most violent and bigoted of

Mohammedan races. Even our latest writers dwell upon the prospects of

an anti-Russian _Jehád_, or Holy War.

"But Russia is the only European Power which can successfully abate

the evil; and we must seek the reason of her success in her despotic

rule, the only regimen which the Oriental understands. She knows how

to handle her Sáyyids and her Súfis; she 'grasps her nettle,' and this

is the only treatment to which the ecclesiastical throat, priest or

parson, Mullah or Brahmin, unconditionally submits.

"We, on the contrary, with our excess of toleration and _penchant_

for liberty, too often degenerating into licence, make the natives

subjected to our rule far more bigoted than they were when we first

conquered them. Formerly, the Hindú would allow the 'Mlenchha' to drink

out of his metal pot, which only required scouring to become pure once

more; now he pours the water into a double leaf, or into the European's

hand. Twenty-five years ago, when entering the mosques or mausolea,

we removed our hats and wore our boots; now the Moslems insist upon

our conforming to a practice which, in our case, means degradation.

At Jeddah, the guardians of Eve's tomb only laugh when a terrier runs

in and out of the doors; after a few years of British rule they would

object to admitting not only the terrier, but the terrier's master. In

her early relations with Persia, the Russian was as fanatical as the

Persian, till the murder of an envoy taught him the more prudent way

of dealing with Moslems. We have notably failed in this matter, and I

should be sorry to see the experiment tried elsewhere.

"Some six years after Russia's first decided move eastwards (1869),

she abandoned the direct Persian line, and adopted the new plan of

turning her friend's flank by annexing the Balkan or Krasnovdsk

Bay, and exploring the northern valley of the Atrek river, the road

popularly known as the 'Atok,' or hill-skirt. Thereupon the alarmist

openly denounced the annexation of the eastern coast of the Caspian,

and the subjugation of the Turkomans, as a 'violation of treaty.'

The good sense of the public refused to be scared. What sympathy,

indeed, could England have with wretched Khiva, whose main industry was

kidnapping Russians and enslaving Persians? What with hateful Bokhara,

the very focus and head-quarters of Islamitic fanaticism; the city

of barbarians, whose murderous chief, Nasr Allah, had foully put to

death Stoddart and Conolly? Could we forget that, unable to reach this

double-dyed assassin, despite the proverbial length of her arm, England

was compelled to leave the slaughter of her envoys unavenged, to sit

down and cry like an impotent crone?

"Again, the public saw no objection to the two great Powers, Russia

and England, dividing between them the Empire of the East. Not a few

of us were put to shame by the importance attached to establishing

a craven 'neutral zone' of independent native states. The 'friendly

partition of Asia, leaving no intermediate zone,' was the favourite

idea of the Russian Press and of the public, especially the powerful

and influential war party, or party of progress. Here, again, we took

theoretically lower grounds than Russia. We were afraid to meet her;

she did not fear to meet us. After all, the prize, such as it is, will

fall to the better man: _detur digniori_ will be the verdict of the

world. If we can win the day, let us do so; if we cannot, let us cease

to accumulate futile obstacles in the path of those who deserve to win.

"And we shall gain little or nothing by the strong flanking position

secured by the reoccupation of the open country of Shaul, of Kandahar,

and even of Herat. Men are ever hankering after Herat and its

'stupendous earthworks.' A still better line of outlying frontier,

namely, Khelat, Quetta, and Jelalabad, would avail us as little.

Wanting an army, English or native, we shall be driven to moral

influence, to sympathy and moral support, to moral disapprobation--a

pretentiously feeble tactic without the _gros bataillons_ to give it

_vis_. So the late Macgregor Laird defined moral influence in West

Africa as a 68-pounder worked by British seamen.

"Our present policy must be a lively trust in the chapter of accidents,

and looking forward to the day when we can place two millions of

bayonets in the field. Russia has internal dangers of her own. She

works cheaply; her invasions of Khiva cost her, we are told, £70,000,

whilst we paid £15,000,000 for our occupation of Afghanistan. Still

capitalists are beginning to inquire curiously about her budget,

and she refuses to satisfy their curiosity. 'Russians' fell two per

cent. in one day during last autumn, and a chilling report pronounced

them to be 'shaky.' The fact is, a portion of the English Press has

so long been preaching the doctrine of repudiation, that the world

of debtors begins to lend its ear to the charmer: there are so many

nations which can afford to _payer les Anglais_. South America may

be pronounced to be 'going,' Turkey to be 'gone;' and the influence

of such failures on a gigantic scale, especially when they extend to

Europe and to England,--where at the present moment nothing is safe

beyond ground-rents, railways, and three per cents.,--must sooner or

later weigh upon Russia. Even she cannot go to war without the sinews

of war; even her ingenuity will be puzzled to make _la guerre nourrir

la guerre_ amongst the impecunious peoples of Central Asia.

[Sidenote: _China_.]

"But our highest prospect of happy deliverance from this terrible

northern rival is still to be noticed; and that so little attention

has been paid to it by our writers is not a little astonishing to

the student. In Russia it must have caused a vast amount of anxious

thought; and it readily explains the cautious system of her approaches,

parallels, and encroachments in the East: her provisional system of

indirect until ready for direct rule over her new conquests; her

strategic lines of observation and demonstration; and her carefully

disposed apparatus of supports, reserves, and bases of operations.

_Nolens volens_, will-we nill-we, Russia must eventually absorb

Kashgar; she must meet China face to face, and then her serious

troubles begin.

"The dash of Tartar blood in Russian veins establishes a remote

cousinhood with China. There is something of physical, and more of

moral, likeness between the two peoples. Both are equally sturdy,

hardy, frugal, energetic, persistent, aggressive, and brave in facing

death. Both have a national speech, a peculiar alphabet, and, to go

no further, a religion which distinguishes them from the rest of the

world. Both are animated by the sturdy vigour of a newly awakened

civilization. During the war of 1842 we facetiously said that it was

rank murder to attack the Chinese troops with any missiles but oranges.

Presently the Ever-Victorious Army, led by Gordon, one of England's

noblest and best neglected sons, showed the might that was slumbering

in a nation of three hundred millions.

"And now China is preparing herself, with that slow but terrible

stedfastness of purpose which distinguishes her, to exercise her

influence upon the civilized world,--upon the other three-fourths which

compose the sum of humanity. After a hundred checks and defeats she has

utterly annihilated the intrusive Mohammedan schism which attempted

to establish its independence in Yunnan. She will do the same in

Kashgar, although the dilatoriness of her proceedings, unintelligible

to the Western mind, tends to create a false feeling of security. She

is building a fleet and is rolling her own plates. Her army is being

drilled by Europeans; the men are armed with Remingtons, and she has

six manufactories for breech-loading rifles. Securely cautious of her

coming strength, she declines all little wars with England and France

till another dozen years or so shall enable her to meet her enemies on

terms which, forecasted in 1842, would have appeared the very madness

of prophecy.

"Such is the nation which is fated to contend with Russia for the

glorious empire of Central Asia. This is the Power which our Press and

its teachers have agreed to ignore. In the coming struggle we shall see

the direct result of the Crimean War, and then, perhaps, we may reap

the reward of sacrifice and losses which hitherto have added little to

our honour or to our power.

'Now whether he kill Cassio,

Or Cassio him, or each do kill the other,

Every way makes my gain.'

[Sidenote: _Eastern Politics_.]

"When we were at Jeddah I addressed to the _Daily Telegraph_ a letter

upon the 'Partition of Turkey.' This paper had not pronounced itself in

January, 1876, as decidedly as in January, 1877, so the missive was

published on March 7th, with the heading only changed to 'The Future of

Turkey.' I did not then know that the Duke of Wellington had put forth

exactly the same views upon the critical point, the main question, What

is to become of Constantinople? nor could I forecast that Mr. Grant

Duff, who probably glances, like other men, at the _Daily Telegraph_,

would see in a dream what I saw when wide awake,--the Kingdom of

Byzantium revived.

"During the last two years and a half of war and massacre, which

must have cost the lives of a million human beings, the situation

has shifted, but the truth remains untouched. Still the Sick Man's

constitution is breaking up fast; and the political doctors and patent

drugs have done him no good. What peace he now enjoys is accompanied

neither by honour nor by honours. Instead of removing proud flesh and

amputating gangrened limbs, the rough surgeons have cut into the very

vitals of the patient. They should have pruned the tree; they preferred

to bark it. Under such circumstances vitality is impossible. With

acephalous governments and dynastic demoralization, diminished states

and autonomous provinces, to say nothing of utter impecuniosity and of

a paper money that threatens to be cheaper than assignats, ruin is a

mere matter of time.

"Resolved to maintain the 'integrity of Turkey,' the doctors have

disintegrated it. Turkey has become, not 'a scattered Empire like

England,' but a mere 'geographical expression,' as was the Italy of

the past. And now the Sick, or rather the Dying Man, has only to look

forward to financial ruin, to Russification, to the reign of dementia,

to spoliation, to partition--

'The dull grey close and apathetic end.'

"During the last quarter of a century the preservation of the putrid

Power has cost us forty thousand lives and four hundred millions

sterling. We are not likely to spend much more.

"The first letter was written, it will be remembered, under the reign

of Abd el Aziz, the suicided and 'forbicated' Vitellius, when the

troubles began at Podgorizza. In those days (1875-76) the general

reader knew nothing of Dalmatia, Servia, and the Herzegovina, beyond

what he had learnt from our late friends Gardner Wilkinson, Alexander

Paton, Miss Muir Mackenzie (the late Lady Sebright), and from the

present Viscountess Strangford. Mr. Arthur Evans had not published

either his brilliant book or his still more brilliant letters in the

_Manchester Examiner_. The older writers did indeed bring out the

fact, afterwards ignored by a host of 'Our Correspondents,' that the

Turk of the Slav Provinces has not one drop of Turkish blood in his

veins, that he cannot speak a word of Turkish, and that he detests the

Turk, especially the Effendi from Constantinople, with the bitterest

hate; witness the murdering of two Pashas, Mehemet Ali and Sa'ad ed

Din, by the Albanians in September, 1878. Even the dress of the Slav

'Turk,' his big turban, his tight jacket, and his bag breeches, are

those of old Slavonia, and contrast strongly with the flowing robes

of the Osmanli, whom you insult by calling a 'Toork,' _i.e._ a wild

wanderer, a nomad. He is by blood a cousin of the Russian Slavo-Finn,

an element which peoples nearly half of the great Empire, which forms

thirty-four out of seventy-one millions. In creed he is simply a

renegade Christian, an Islamized Paulicean or Bogomil, with all the

malignant animosity of a renegade, with a horror and an abomination

of the creed which he abandoned. Hence the tenacity and fury which he

displayed at Plevna and the Balkan Passes, where Russian met Russian,

where heretical Jugo-Slav struggled with orthodox Slavo-Finn. This

is the true history of the 'gentle and gallant Turk,' as far as the

Bosniac element is concerned. And that element supplied Turkey with one

hundred thousand of her best Regulars.

"Like most outsiders, I cannot see the difficulty of settling the

Eastern Question (_malè pereat!_), but I thoroughly see the danger of

leaving it, as at present, half settled. Of course, the distribution of

the spoil and the Turkish debt favour the conservation of Turkey. But

although the _haute politique_ makes all kinds of delays, ambiguities,

considerations, and mysteries, the eye of common sense can detect none.

As regards matters of finance, if the Powers that profit by annexation

will only guarantee, as in fairness they should, the liabilities of

Turkey, one prop of the rotten old pile is at once knocked away. And

even total loss is better than this chronic state of irritation now

afflicting the European system; this disturbance of trade and industry;

this fool's paradise of the gaming-table; this armed peace, which has

many of the evils and little of the good that war brings.

"Our great diplomatic triumph in the second half of the nineteenth

century has removed from us the fatal necessity of propping up

'Turkism' in Europe. The late occupation of Bosnia by the Austrians

shows what are the Bosniacs and their Beys. Savage and brutal

as Krevosjes or Cimariots, they have all the Moslem vices, none

of the simple and noble virtues which distinguish their peasant

co-religionists in Caramania, Anatolia, and other parts of Asia Minor,

where the Faithful number three to one. Their bullying tyranny was

exasperated for many a generation by the conviction that, despite

numerical inferiority of one to three (3,380,000 to 9,500,000), theirs

was the ruling class; and that the _Mudir_, the _Wali_, the Ministry,

and the Sultan himself would invariably support their iniquities,

unless compelled by the Great Powers of Europe to do simple justice

under threat of war. His temper was not improved by the aggravating

presence of the Kafir; and his habit of carrying weapons enabled him

to gratify every whim by a stab of the ready yataghan. He had never

heard of the classical policy embodied in Sultan Selim's will--_Farriku

baynhumá wa Sallitu alayhumá_ ('Breed dissensions between them both,

Moslems and Christians, and rule them both'). Selim El-Fátih (the

conqueror) left a will, you see, like Peter Velika, and their merits

were, being the expressions of hereditary racial thoughts, like Lord

Palmerston and M. Thiers. Yet he recognized the working of this

obsolete Machiavelism as it still prevails throughout the Turkish

Empire. Whenever a dispute arises between the rival religions about

a field, a woman, or a boy whose face has been slapped, the Nazarene

applies officially to the Pasha. The Pasha lends an attentive ear to

the complaint, quotes all the Hatts Sheríf, Humayoon, and so forth,

and exhorts the petitioner to remember that under a Constitutional

Government (Heaven save the mark!) men of all faiths are equal. When

the Mussulman proffers his counter-complaint, the same Pasha swears by

his beard that no earthly power can make the Infidel take rank with

True Believers. This was the tactic that caused the Syrian massacre of

1860. My theory stands proved by the fact that in the outlying villages

and hamlets, where no Turks were, the Mohammedan peasants fought

against the emissaries from Damascus, in defence of their Christian

neighbours.

"Austria has at length adopted the course prescribed to her many

years ago. Prince Eugène was the first name of note that advised

the Holy Roman Empire to abandon her worse than useless Italian

conquests, and to bring her weight to bear upon the Ottoman. Bosnia

and the Herzegovina are in these days political necessaries to her;

and the visit of the Emperor to Dalmatia was the beginning of the

present policy. It would have been carried out two years ago, only

circumstances then tied the hands of Count Andrassy, who throughout

the affair has shown himself a statesman. Without the inner regions

the stout Dalmatian kingdom cannot hold in the world the rank which it

deserves to hold. The country of Diocletian, the mother of Emperors,

was the narrowest realm of Europe, a mere masque, a face without a

head. She had the finest ports in the Mediterranean and the noblest

maritime population, while she had nothing to import, nothing to

export, nothing to transport. Meanwhile the barbarous and exclusive

policy of the Porte cut off the interior from the outer world. The

precious metals, the 'Dalmatic gold,' famed by the Romans, silver,

copper, iron, and coal remained undug, and the timber, the cattle,

and the wool never saw the sea. Building was confined to forts;

entrenchments took the place of roads, and whenever a traveller passed

through the country he carried his life in his hand.

"But things are now changed. After an occupation which has been a

campaign costing some four thousand lives, Austria, by the mandate

of Europe, has pacified Bosnia and the Herzegovina. She has taken

the first step towards becoming a great Slav power. These modern

Sarmatians and Scythians are divided by ethnologists into a multitude

of races, Slovaks, Slovenes, and so forth. I know only two halves.

The majority would be the Northern (Russo-Orthodox), the minority the

Southern (Jugo-Slavs) and Catholics. Here religion, not race, draws a

hard-and-fast line. Dual empire has now become virtually a _Triregno_,

as she would have been but for Count Beust, so much more distinguished

as an Ambassador than a Minister. The conquest of Bosnia, for such

it is, puts an end to Dualism; the Slav will now have his rights.

Austria may lose her 'better half,' Hungary, which threatens to renew

the scandals of 1849. The land of the Magyar, once the _Antemurale

Christianitatis_, the outlying bulwark of Christendom, has now become

a country of white Turks, of 'Ogres,' as Mr. Freeman calls them, of

Ugro-Altaics, more Turkish than the Turks. There is nothing to prevent

her becoming a great Jugo-Slav power, ever extending herself to the

south-eastward till she meets the Greek. Thus she will halve with

Russia the Slav world. By cultivating the Christian populations on the

Lower Danube, and by a league with Old Bulgaria (Servia, Roumania,

Roumelia, etc.), added to Bosnia, she would invest the Muscovite rival

to the south and the south-west, while Germany hems it in to the west

and north-west. Indeed, Russia declares that such a union, forming a

state of siege impossible to endure, would be a calamity second only to

the restoration of the Polish kingdom.

"Here, then, has begun the distribution of the Dying Man's estate.

The characteristic of the situation is its purely provisional

nature. No one is satisfied as matters now stand. All are, without

exception, claimants, and urgent claimants, for something more than

'administrative autonomy,' either municipal or provincial. The

'rebellious principalities,' Montenegro and Servia, have enlarged

their boundaries at the expense of Bulgaria; but both want more,

and will have more. The new 'tributary principality' of Bulgaria

Proper, as I suppose we must call her, will not be satisfied with

quasi-independence. As soon as she is strong enough she will fight

again, and, unless amalgamated with the 'Servian accession,' she will

insist upon becoming Russian. Meanwhile the Russians have not withdrawn

their armies, and they are justified in not doing so as long as

Austria holds Bosnia and England holds Cyprus. Eastern Roumelia, which

is Southern Bulgaria, will obtain her freedom only by uniting with

Bulgaria Proper and Russia.

"By the way, I must notice the notable injustice of the European Press,

that expects the wretched Bulgarians, who have been treated like wild

beasts for the last five hundred years, to show all the virtues of

freemen. There is an old prejudice against them since Pushkin sang--

'Be a Pole, or be a Russian,

Frenchman, Austrian, or Hungarian,

Englishman, or Dane, or Prussian,

Anything but base Bulgarian.'

Nothing can palliate their 'atrocities;' but what horrors have they

not to revenge? We all remember Lord Macaulay's answer when the Jews

were taunted with preferring low and immoral callings. But fair play

in English politics threatens to be a thing of the past. At least, the

Bulgarians have as yet enjoyed very little of our boasted national

quality. And Bulgaria literally has been what Turkey will be, broken

up, distributed into Roumania, Servia, and Roumelia. She is in the

world (without knowing it), a Southern Poland.

"Another sturdy claimant is Greece, not including her neighbour and

old congener Albania. The writings of Messrs. Gladstone and Freeman

have told the public of Turco-Græcia's wrongs. Since 1872, when her

independence was recognized, she has been shut up in the barren Morea

and the rocky deserts north of the financial world as a turf-defaulter;

and the massacre of Marathon is better known to our generation than

the battle of Marathon. But she now begins to see the error of her

ways. She makes roads, she proposes to pay her debt, and she puts

down brigandage. She behaved with exemplary patience during the

Russo-Turkish War; and we must excuse the irritability which presses

for the proposed concession--a miserable slice. But her turn will

come. Her manifest destiny is to divide with Austria the broad lands

between Albania and the Despoto Dagh, the Rhodope range. Meanwhile,

Albania--classic land of ruffians, hemmed in by Montenegro, Servia,

and Greece--clamours for self-rule. Let her take it and supply bath-men

to Byzantium.

"So much for Turkey in Europe. In Asia, Turkey has lost her most

valuable possessions: Kars, the great base of military operations; and

Batoum, the port which commands the Bosphorus. The Russians intend to

run their fine harbour against Trebizond, and to divert as much as

they can of the caravan-trade that enriches the latter. Hence their

obstinacy in the matter of that 'interesting tribe,' the Lazes. The

Muscovite wants nothing more at present in Western Asia, and it was a

second masterly stroke of policy, our pledging ourselves to defend that

which needs no defence. The Russian has nothing to do with the bleak

and barren mountains of Armenia, which must also count amongst the

rebellious provinces; and they are sturdy fellows, the men of Adana,

of Old Cilicia. Nor is she tempted by the rocky wastes of Kurdistan,

where every brigand 'subject' would want waiting upon by a soldier. She

may assist and laugh till she cries at the pleasant spectacle of Mrs.

Britannia performing the part of 'Reform by Moral Force,' and proposing

an honest gendarmerie, just tribunals, and tax-gathering publicans

turned to saints. If England were 'doctrinary' she would either let the

task severely alone or she would appoint to every _wilayat_ (province)

a 'Resident,' after the fashion of British India. But compromise is

her specific, her panacea for home use. She will do neither this nor

that; she will use _mezzi termini_ (half-measures), rely on the rule

of thumb, and in fact meddle and muddle her position between the two

stools. Liberal measures of reform have been freely promised, but

that stale trick now deceives nobody. It is very well to command, but

what is the use where none obey? Europe has had so much dust of this

kind thrown into her eyes, that she now endures the process without

writhing. And the Turk virtually says, 'Pay us, and we will give ear

to you; no loan, no reforms.' Which means, if you do not pay him he

won't reform; and if you do pay him, he will do ditto. The truth is,

he can't reform, and if he could he wouldn't. When Turkey assented to

the proceedings of the Berlin Congress, the credulous dreamed that she

intended to keep her treaty engagements. Not she! When Turkey promises,

suspect a lie; when she swears, be sure of a lie. What to her are

treaties, save things to be broken? Talk of a treaty between a dog and

its fleas!

"Our beloved Syria and Palestine must also be drawn from the vampire

claws of Turkey--this daughter of chaos. The Holy Land for many past

centuries has not enjoyed a gleam of prosperity, except when connected

with, or, rather, when placed under, Egypt. It was a miserable and

mistaken policy of Lord Palmerston in 1840, which, arresting the

progress of Mohammed Ali Pasha, made England the cat's-paw of Russia.

The old Bāsh-Buzzuk of Cavala, as Sultan of Turkey, would have given

fresh life to the obsolete and effete, the battered and broken empire

of the barbarian; and his ambition was, naturally enough, dreaded by

the northern pretenders to Constantinople. Let one sentence suffice to

show the difference of development between the two Pashaliks. Syria

has not one made port, Egypt has three; Egypt has a dozen railways,

Syria boasts of only one carriageable road--the Beyrout-Damascus--and

that one French. Of late years many efforts have been made to restore

the Israelites to their own; and there is, I believe, a project of

the kind--financial, not sentimental--actually in hand. The idea is

to obtain the consent and the subscriptions of the Jews in every part

of the world, and to purchase the tract between Dan and Beersheba by

means of a loan to the Porte. Jerusalem cannot, in the present state

of Europe, become the exclusive possession of any one European Power.

But already the land has been almost all bought up by the Jews, and the

City--like its holy sisters, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safet--now virtually

belongs to them.

"Moreover, Syria is fated to become in a few years most important to

England. The Euphrates Valley Line, under the surveillance of the Duke

of Sutherland, has at last fallen into shape. Instead of a Levantine

port, Alexandretta, Tripoli, or Tyre, and the great river for termini,

it will set out from Constantinople and pass, _viâ_ Baghdad, to Persia

and India. This great highway--the only means of consolidating Turkey

in Asia Minor--has hitherto been delayed only by the activity of

Muscovite agents, and by the systematic self-effacement of our own.

Before many years are past a branch of the main trunk-line will connect

it with the Syrian coast opposite Cyprus. Baalbak and Palmyra are not

yet 'played out.' These main stations, on the first and best of the

many 'overlands,' will presently hear the whistle of the railway,

and in the evening of their days they will again be made happy. The

Euphrates Valley system will be to the Suez Canal what the 'Egyptian

Bosphorus' has been to the Cape of Good Hope.

"And then we shall recognize the full value of Cyprus. After the

melancholy policy of the pedagogue-demagogue in 1862, that restored

the ruined Corfu, where some few years ago there was a popular tumult

in favour of bringing back the old masters, England must secure ports

and stations for her ironclads. The marvellous excitement caused by

our last scrap of annexation shows the way the popular wind blows.

Such a cackling over such a very small egg! We do not wish to make the

Mediterranean an English lake, but we object to its being a French lake

or a Russian lake, like the Black and Caspian Seas. Candia and Mitylene

would certainly not oppose the hoisting of the Union Jack. Of course,

those possessions will at first be unpopular--they will cost money,

soldiers will die of fever, and officers will grumble. The Turks,

after making the noble islands howling wildernesses, will propose to

raise loans upon their 'surplus revenues.' But British gold will drain

these homes of fever, ports will be laid out, and population will be

introduced. We are not justified in failing where the Crusaders and the

Knights succeeded so grandly.

"The destiny of Turkey in Africa is equally manifest. France, who

has by no means abandoned her claim to 'hegemony,' would add, if she

pleased, to her Algerine provinces the fair lands of Tunis as far east

as the plains of Jafara, where the southern bend of the coast ends in

the Gulf of Sidra. The limits are roughly east long. (G.) 8° to 12°,

a linear length of two hundred and forty direct geographical miles.

Already there is a report that the offer has been made to her, despite

the active opposition of Italy. This latter might be contented with

Tripoli, as far as the eastern shore of the Gulf of Sidra. But, since

her emancipation, she has shown a turbulent spirit, which threatens

the peace of Europe. I lately met a young Italian diplomatist, who

would hardly speak to an Englishman because we hold Malta as our

_haupt-piquet_. The occupation of Cyprus was a severe blow: the three

standards in St. Mark's Square, Venice, represent Cyprus, Candia,

and the Morea. 'Unredeemed Italy' means an Italy 'free from Etna to

Trieste.' It represents, I have shown, amongst the moderates, the

annexation of the Trentino, the duchy of Gorizia, and the peninsula of

Istria. The immoderates add the whole of Dalmatia and part of Albania;

in fact, wherever the Roman '_regiones_' reached.

"I say 'Tripoli as far as East Sidra,' the knob projecting into the

Mediterranean eastward of Sidra, and including Barca and the Cyrenaic,

should be added to Egypt, which would thus be prolonged from east long.

(G.) 24° to 20°, also about two hundred and forty direct geographical

miles. Grennah, of Old Cyrene, has a noble port, lying at a short

distance south-east of Malta, and this will be the terminus of a future

railway, connecting the glorious lands lying along the Mediterranean

with the Nile Valley. By this line passenger-traffic shall escape the

sea-voyage between Malta and Egypt, whilst the Cairo-Sioot, prolonged

to Cosseir, will save the mortification of the Suez Gulf.

"As regards Egypt, we were only beginning to take into consideration

the grand results brought about by the great Mohammed Ali Pasha and

his family. We want from her nothing but the free right of transit and

transport; we are resolved that the highway of the nations shall not

be barricaded. We may eventually be compelled to annex her, but that

measure is still distant, although lately advocated in England, and

feared in France. Meanwhile, we might be a little kinder to her. Whilst

the Turks are allowed freely to repudiate their debts, poor Egypt must

pay her usurious Christian creditors the uttermost farthing. The Powers

of Europe unwisely and wickedly compelled her to take part in the

last Russo-Turkish campaign. We have hitherto refused to set her free

from the immense 'benevolences' and other douceurs, heavier than any

tribute, which perpetually find their way into the Seraglio, and into

the ministerial pockets at Stamboul; and now that all the family income

is mortgaged, the head of the house will still be obliged to hold his

position by bribery. Surely the absolute independence or annexation of

Egypt has now become a necessity.

"Remains the real 'bone of contention'--Constantinople. Europe has

generally assumed that, with this queen of the Golden Horn added to

her dominions, the great Muscovite power would become irresistible;

men and statesmen have made it an article of faith. I am far from

believing in such results; at the same time, it would be unwise to

allow Russia the chance. The problem to be worked out is this: How,

when the Eastern half of Europe is almost wholly Slav, to exclude

the Slav from Stamboul--to create another island like Roumania,

breaking the Slavonic flood? Practically it was solved many years ago.

Volney narrowly escaped the Bastille for advocating a Franco-Russian

coalition against Turkey. When the Emperor Joseph I. of Austria had

shaken the equilibrium of Europe by his alliance with Catharine II.,

the great traveller saw the political necessity of his project,

namely, a Christian State having command of the Bosphorus. The Duke of

Wellington, as has been told, recommended it in the same words, and the

Russians have never refused to accept the measure. What says the Turk

himself? 'For Turkey, Roumelia is the Past, Anatolia is the Future.'

Pleasant prospect, by-the-by, for poor Anatolia! And what say his

serfs? 'Avoid the Turk if you can; for either he eats you out of very

love, or in his rage he tears you to pieces.'

"I would abolish the very name of Constantinople, whose hateful sound

reminds us of religious cruelty and hypocrisy. Let us substitute

a kingdom or principality of Byzantium,--a Hanse town mediatized

by Europe. Her territory would extend northwards, through Eastern

Roumelia, to the Balkans, and westwards to Rhodope, a fair and fertile

country, somewhat larger than increased Servia. Protected by the Great

Powers, she would be governed by a prince chosen from amongst the

ruling families of Europe. She would be neither Greek, nor Bulgarian,

nor Jewish, nor Armenian, nor Roumelian, nor Frank, but something of

all. The Hellene would make her illustrious by his political aptitude

and literary gifts; the Israelite and the Armenian would enrich her

by banking and commerce; the Bulgarian and the Roumelian would be her

hewers of wood and drawers of water; and, finally, the Frank would

connect her with the civilization of the West. I know nothing in Europe

which shows a finer combination of intellect and labour than this would

be. No stronger dyke could be opposed to the Muscovite flood.

"Turkey would thus be confined to Asia Minor proper, with Broussa or

Koniah, the old Iconium, for a capital. Her new frontier, bordering on

Russia and Persia, would remain untouched, and southwards she would

be barred by a line drawn from Alexandretta, _viâ_ Aleppo, to the

Euphrates. She would thus cease to be an incubus on Europe, especially

on South-Eastern Europe, whose 'neutral armaments' must last till

relieved of her hideous presence. Thus the evil effects of her extended

influence, which exists by acting upon the hates and fears of her

neighbours, would presently be abated, leaving behind them the battle

and the wrack. Thus her hopeless misgovernment and her inveterate

maladministration would at once be confined within comparatively narrow

limits. The old and venerable kingdoms, the Syria of the Seleucidæ,

for instance, which her iron heel has trodden and trampled into wastes

and deserts; where ruins are the sole remnants of a glorious and

memorious past; where even hope, man's last delusion, can hardly cheer

the prospect of the future, would soon recover a prosperity now all

but forgotten. Christendom would once more be free from the deadening

presence of that Mohammedan Mongol, whose hateful boast it ever was

that--

'Where once the Sultan's horse has trod,

Grass neither grows, nor shrub, nor tree.'

Ay, truly quoth Mazeppa--

'The year before

A Turkish army had marched o'er;

And where the Spahi's hoof hath trod,

The verdure flies the bloody sod.'