Among the men in the cantonments, I found much of that demoralization

that heat everywhere produces among Englishmen. The newly-arrived

soldiers appear to pass their days in alternate trials of hard drinking

and of total abstinence, and are continually in a state of nervous

fright, which in time must wear them out and make them an easy prey to

fever. The officers who are fresh from England often behave in much the

same manner as the men, though with them “belatee pawnee” takes the

place of plain water with the brandy. “Belatee pawnee” means, being

translated, “English water,” but, when interpreted, it means

“soda-water”--the natives once believing that this was English

river-water, bottled and brought to India by us as they carry Ganges

water to the remotest parts. The superstition is now at an end, owing to

the fact that natives are themselves largely employed in the making of

soda-water, which is cheaper in India than it is at home; but the name

remains.

Our men kill themselves with beer, with brandy and soda-water, and with

careless inattention to night chills, and then blame the poor climate

for their fevers, or die cursing “India.” Of course, long residence in a

climate winterless and always hot at mid-day produces or intensifies

certain diseases; but brandy and soda-water produces more, and

intensifies all. They say it is “soda-and-brandy” the first month, and

then “brandy-and-soda,” but that men finally take to putting in the

soda-water first, and then somehow the brandy always kills them. If a

man wears a flannel belt and thick clothes when he travels by night, and

drinks hot tea, he need not fear India.

In all ways, Benares is the type of India; in the Secrole cantonments,

you have the English in India, intelligent enough, but careless, and

more English than they are at home, with garrison chaplains, picnics,

balls, and champagne suppers; hard by, in the native town, the fierce

side of Hindooism, and streets for an Englishman to show himself in

which ten years ago was almost certain death. Benares is the center of

all the political intrigues of India; but the great mutiny itself was

hatched there without being heard of at Secrole. Except that our

policemen now perambulate the town, change in Benares there has been

none. Were missionaries to appear openly in its streets, their fate

would still very possibly be the same as that which in this city befell

St. Thomas.

CHAPTER V.

CASTE.

One of the greatest difficulties with which the British have to contend

in Hindostan is how to discover the tendencies, how to follow the

changes, of native opinion. Your Hindoo is so complaisant a companion,

that, whether he is your servant at threepence a day, or the ruler of

the State in which you dwell, he is perpetually striving to make his

opinions the reflex of your own. You are engaged in a continual struggle

to prevent your views from being seen, in order that you may get at his:

in this you always fail; a slight hint is enough for a Hindoo, and, if

he cannot find even that much of suggestion in your words, he confines

himself to commonplace. We should see in this, not so much one of the

forms assumed by the cringing slavishness born of centuries of

subjection, not so much an example of Oriental cunning, as of the polish

of Eastern manners. Even in our rude country it is hardly courteous,

whatever your opinions, flatly to contradict the man with whom you

happen to be talking; with the Hindoo, it is the height of ill breeding

so much as to differ from him. The results of the practice are

deplorable; our utter ignorance of the secret history of the rebellion

of 1857 is an example of its working, for there must have been a time,

before discontent ripened into conspiracy, when we might have been

advised and warned. The native newspapers are worse than useless to us;

accepted as exponents of Hindoo views by those who know no better, and

founded mostly by British capital, they are at once incapable of

directing and of acting as indexes to native opinion, and express only

the sentiments of half a dozen small merchants at the presidency towns,

who give the tone to some two or three papers, which are copied and

followed by the remainder.

The result of this difficulty in discovering native opinion is that our

officers, however careful, however considerate in their bearing toward

the natives, daily wound the feelings of the people who are under their

care by acts which, though done in a praiseworthy spirit, appear to the

natives deeds of gross stupidity or of outrageous despotism. It is

hopeless to attempt to conciliate, it is impossible so much as to govern

unless by main force continually displayed, an Eastern people in whose

religious thought we are not deeply learned.

Not only are we unacquainted with the feelings of the people, but we

are lamentably ignorant of the simplest facts about their religions,

their wealth, and their occupations, for no census of all India has yet

been taken. A complete census had, indeed, been taken, not long before

my visit, in Central India, and another in the Northwest Provinces, but

none in Madras, Bombay, the Punjaub, or Bengal. The difficulties in the

way of the officials who carried through the arrangements for the two

that had been taken were singularly great. In the Central Provinces, the

census-papers had to be prepared in five languages; both here and in the

Northwest, the purely scientific nature of the inquiry had to be brought

home to the minds of the people. In Central India the hill-tribes

believed that our object in the census was to pave the way for the

collection of the unmarried girls as companions for our wifeless

soldiers, so all began marrying forthwith. In the Northwest, the natives

took it into their heads that our object was to see how many able-bodied

men would be available for a war against Russia, and to collect a

poll-tax to pay for the expedition. The numerous tribes that are

habitually guilty of infanticide threw every difficulty in the way;

Europeans disliked the whole affair, on account of the insult offered to

their dignity in ranking them along with natives. It must be admitted,

indeed, that the provisions for recording caste distinctions gave an odd

shape to the census-papers left at the houses at Secrole, in which

European officers were asked to state their “caste or tribe.” The census

of the Central Provinces was imperfect enough, but that of the Northwest

was the second that had been taken there, and showed signs of scientific

arrangement and great care.

The Northwest Provinces include the great towns of Benares, Agra, and

Allahabad, and the census fell into my hands at Benares itself, at the

Sanscrit College. It was a strange production, and seemed to have

brought together a mass of information respecting castes and creeds

which was new even to those who had lived long in the Northwest

Provinces. All callings in India being hereditary, there were entries

recording the presence in certain towns of “hereditary clerks who pray

to their inkhorns,” “hereditary beggars,” “hereditary planters of slips

or cuttings,” “hereditary grave-diggers,” “hereditary hermits,” and

“hereditary hangmen,” for in India a hangmanship descends with as much

regularity as a crown. In the single district of the Dehra Valley, there

are 1500 “hereditary tomtom men”--drummers at the festivals; 234

Brahmins of Bijnour returned themselves as having for profession “the

receipt of presents to avert the influence of evil stars.” In Bijnour,

there are also fifteen people of a caste which professes “the pleasing

of people by assuming disguises,” while at Benares there is a whole

caste--the Bhâts--whose hereditary occupation is to “satirize the

enemies of the rich, and to praise their friends.” In the Northwest

Provinces, there are 572 distinct castes in all.

The accounts which some castes gave of their origin read strangely in a

solemn governmental document: the members of one caste described

themselves as “descended from Maicasur, a demon;” but some of the

records are less legendary and more historic. One caste in the Dehra

Valley sent in a note that they came in 1000 A.D. from the Deccan;

another, that they emigrated from Arabia 500 years ago. The Gour

Brahmins claim to have been in the district of Moozuffernuggur for 5000

years.

Under the title of “occupations,” the heads of families alone were

given, and not the number of those dependent on them, whence it comes

that in the whole province only “11,000 tomtom players” were set down.

The habits and tastes of the people are easily seen in the entries:

“3600 firework manufacturers,” “45 makers of crowns for idols,” “4353

gold-bangle makers,” “29,136 glass-bangle makers,” “1123 astrologers.”

There are also 145 “ear-cleaners,” besides “kite-makers,”

“ear-piercers,” “pedigree-makers,” “makers of caste-marks,” “cow-dung

sellers,” and “hereditary painters of horses with spots.” There was no

backwardness in the followers of maligned pursuits: 974 people in

Allahabad described themselves as “low blackguards,” 35 as “men who beg

with threats of violence,” 25 as “hereditary robbers,” 479,015 as

“beggars,” 29 as “howlers at funerals,” 226 as “flatterers for gain;”

“vagabonds,” “charmers,” “informers” were all set down, and 1100

returned themselves as “hereditary buffoons,” while 2000 styled

themselves “conjurers,” 4000 “acrobats,” and 6372 “poets.” In one

district alone, there were 777 “soothsayers and astrologers” by

profession.

It is worthy of notice that, although there are in the Northwest

Provinces half a million of beggars in a population of thirty millions,

they seem never to beg of Europeans--at least, I was not once asked for

alms during my stay in India. If the smallest service be performed,

there comes a howl of “O Bauks-heece!” from all quarters, but at other

times natives seem afraid to beg of Englishmen.

The number of fakeers, soothsayers, charmers, and other “religious”

vagabonds is enormous, but the dense ignorance of the people renders

them a prey to witchcraft, evil-eye, devil-influence, and all such

folly. In Central India, there are whole districts which are looked upon

as witch-tracts or haunted places, and which are never approached by

man, but set aside as homes for devils. A gentleman who was lately

engaged there on the railroad survey found that night after night his

men were frightened out of their wits by “fire-fiends,” or blazing

demons. He insisted that they should take him to the spot where these

strange sights were seen, and to his amazement he, too, saw the

fire-devil; at least, he saw a blaze of light moving slowly through the

jungle. Gathering himself up for a chase, he rushed at the devil with a

club, when the light suddenly disappeared, and instantly shone out from

another spot, a hundred yards from the former place. Seeing that there

was some trickery at work, he hid himself, and after some hours caught

his devil, who, to escape from a sound drubbing, gave an explanation of

the whole affair. The man said that the natives of the surveyor‘s party

had stolen his mangoes for several nights, but that at last he had hit

on a plan for frightening them away. He and his sons went out at dark

with pots of blazing oil upon their heads, and, when approached by

thieves, the leading one put a cover on his pot, and became invisible,

while the second uncovered his. The surveying party got the drubbing,

and the devil escaped scot-free; but the surveyor, with short-sighted

wisdom, told his men, who had not seen him catch the fire-bearer, that

he had had the honor of an interview with the devil himself, who had

joyfully informed him of the thefts committed by the men. The surveyor

did not admit that he was from this time forward worshiped by his party,

but it is not unlikely that such was the case. One of the hill-tribes of

Madras worships Colonel Palmer, a British officer who died some seventy

years ago, just as Drake was worshiped in America, and Captain Cook in

Hawaii. It was one of these tribes that invented the well-known

worshiping machine, or “praying-wheel.”

The hill-tribes are less refined, but hardly more ignorant in their

fanaticism than are the Hindoos. At Bombay, upon the beach where the

dead are buried, or rather tossed to the wild beasts, I saw a filthy and

holy Hindoo saint, whose claim to veneration consists in his having

spent the whole of the days and portions of the nights for twenty years

in a stone box in which he can neither stand, nor lie, nor sit, nor

sleep. These saintly fakeers have still much influence with the Hindoo

mass, but in old times their power and their insolence were alike

unbounded. Agra itself was founded to please one of them. The great

Emperor Akbar, who, although a lax Mohammedan, was in no sense a Hindoo,

kept nevertheless a Hindoo saint for political purposes, and gave him

the foremost position in his train. When the emperor was beginning to

fortify Futtehpore Sikri, where he lived, the saint sent for him, and

said that the work must be stopped, as the noise disturbed him at his

prayers. The emperor offered him new rooms away from the site of the

proposed walls, but the saint replied that, whether Akbar went on with

his works or no, he should leave Futtehpore. To pacify him, Akbar

founded Agra, and dismantled Futtehpore Sikri.

From the census it appears that there are, in the Northwest Provinces,

no less than twenty-two newspapers under government inspection, of which

five are published at Agra. The circulation of these papers is extremely

small, and as the government itself takes 3500 of the 12,000 copies

which they issue, its hold over them, without exertion of force, is

great. Of the other 8500, 8000 go to native and 500 to European

subscribers. All the native papers are skillful at catering for their

double public, but those which are printed half in a native tongue and

half in English stand in the first rank for unscrupulousness. One of

these papers gave, while I was in India, some French speech in abuse of

the English. This was headed on the English side, “_Interesting_ Account

of the English,” but on the native side, “_Excellent_ Account of the

English.” The “English correspondence” and English news of these native

papers are so absurdly concocted by the editors out of their own brains

that it is a question whether it would not be advisable to send them

weekly a column of European news, and even to withhold government

patronage from them unless they gave it room, leaving them to qualify

and explain the facts as best they could. Their favorite statements are

that Russia is going to invade India forthwith, that the Queen has

become a Catholic or a Mohammedan, and that the whole population of

India is to be converted to Christianity by force. The external

appearance of the native papers is sometimes as comical as their matter.

The _Umritsur Commercial Advertiser_, of which nothing is English but

the title, gives, for instance, the time-tables of the Punjaub Railway

on its back sheet. The page, which is a mere maze of dots and crooked

lines, has at the top a cut of a railway train, in which guards

apparently cocked-hatted, but probably meant to be wearing pith helmets,

are represented sitting on the top of each carriage, with their legs

dangling down in front of the windows.

Neither Christianity nor native reformed religions make much show in the

Northwestern census. The Christians are strongest in the South of India,

the Hindoo reformers in the Punjaub. The Sikhs themselves, and the

Kookhas, Nirunkarees, Goolab Dasseas, Naukeeka-punth, and many other

Punjaubee sects, all show more or less hostility to caste; but in the

Northwest Provinces caste distinctions flourish, although in reality

they have no doubt lost strength. The high-caste men are beginning to

find their caste a drawback to their success in life, and are given to

concealing it. Just as with ourselves kings go _incognito_ when they

travel for pleasure, so the Bengal sepoy hides his Brahminical string

under his cloth, in order that he may be sent on foreign service without

its being known that by crossing the seas he will lose caste.

Judging by the unanimous opinion of the native press on the doings of

the Maharajahs of Bombay, and on the licentiousness of the Koolin

Brahmins, many of our civilians have come to think that Hindooism in its

present shape has lost the support of a large number of the more

intelligent Hindoos; but there is little reason to believe that this is

the case. In Calcutta, the Church of Hindoo Deists is gaining ground,

and one of their leaders is said to have met with some successes during

a recent expedition to the Northwest, but of this there is no proof. The

little regard that many high-caste natives show for caste except as a

matter of talk merely means that caste is less an affair of religion

than of custom, but that it is a matter of custom does not show that its

force is slight: on the contrary, custom is the lord of India.

The success of Mohammedanism in India should show that caste has never

been strong except so far as caste is custom. It is true that the

peasants in Orissa starved by the side of the sacred cows, but this was

custom too: any one man killing the cow would have been at once killed

by his also starving neighbors for breaking custom; but once change the

custom by force, and there is no tendency to return to the former state

of things. The Portuguese and the Mohammedans alike made converts by

compulsion, yet when the pressure was removed there was no return to the

earlier faith. Of the nature of caste we had an excellent example in the

behavior of the troopers of a Bengal cavalry regiment three weeks before

the outbreak of the mutiny of 1857, when they said that for their part

they knew that their cartridges were not greased with the fat of cows,

but that, as they looked as though they were, it came to the same thing,

for they should lose caste if their friends saw them touch the

cartridges in question.

It was the cry of infringement of custom that was raised against us by

the mutineers: “They aim at subverting our institutions; they have put

down the suttee of the Brahmins, the infanticide of the Marattas, caste

and adoption are despised; they aim at destroying all our religious

customs,” was the most powerful cry that could be raised. It is one

against which we shall never be wholly safe; but it is the custom and

not the religion which is the people‘s especial care.

There is one point in which caste forms a singular difficulty in our

way, which has not yet been brought sufficiently home to us. The

comparatively fair treatment which is now extended to the low-caste and

no-caste men is itself an insult to the high-caste nobility; and while

the no-caste men care little how we treat them, provided we pay them

well, and the bunnya, or shop-keeping class, encouraged by the

improvement, cry out loudly that the government wrongs them in not

treating them as Europeans, the high-caste men are equally disgusted

with our good treatment both of middle-class and inferior Hindoos. These

things are stumbling-blocks in our way, chiefly because no amount of

acquaintance with the various phases of caste feeling is sufficient to

bring home its importance to Englishmen. The Indian is essentially the

caste man, the Saxon as characteristically the no-caste man, and it is

difficult to produce a mutual understanding. Just as in England the

people are too democratic for the government, in India the government is

too democratic for the people.

Although caste has hitherto been but little shaken, there are forces at

work which must in time produce the most grave results. The return to

their homes of natives who have emigrated and worked at sugar-planting

in Mauritius and coffee-growing in Ceylon, mixing with negroes and with

Europeans, will gradually aid in the subversion of caste distinctions,

and the Parsees will give their help toward the creation of a healthier

feeling. The young men of the merchant-class--who are all pure

deists--set an example of doing away with caste distinctions which will

gradually affect the whole population of the towns; railways will act

upon the laborers and agriculturists; a closer intercourse with Europe

will possibly go hand in hand with universal instruction in the English

tongue, and the indirect results of Christian teaching will continue to

be, as they have been, great.

The positive results of missionary work in India have hitherto been

small. Taking the census as a guide, in the district of Mooradabad we

find but 107 Christians in 1,100,000 people; in Budaon, 64 “Christians,

Europeans, and Eurasians” (half-castes) out of 900,000 people; in

Bareilly, 137 native Christians in a million and a half of people; in

Shajehanpoor, 98 in a million people; in Turrai, none in a million

people; in Etah, no native Christians, and only twenty Europeans to

614,000 people; in the Banda district, thirteen native Christians out of

three-quarters of a million of people; in Goruckpoor, 100 native

Christians out of three and a half millions of people. Not to multiply

instances, this proportion is preserved throughout the whole of the

districts, and the native Christians in the Northwest are proved to form

but an insignificant fraction of the population.

The number of native Christians in India is extremely small.

Twenty-three societies, having three hundred Protestant missionary

stations, more than three hundred native missionary churches, and five

hundred European preachers, costing with their assistants two hundred

thousand pounds a year, profess to show only a hundred and fifty

thousand converts, of whom one-seventh are communicants. The majority of

the converts who are not communicants are converts only upon paper, and

it may be said that of real native non-Catholic Christians there are not

in India more than 40,000, of whom half are to be found among the

devil-worshipers of Madras. The so-called “aboriginal” hill-tribes,

having no elaborate religious system of their own, are not tied down to

the creed of their birth in the same way as are Mohammedans and Hindoos,

among whom our missionaries make no way whatever. The native

Protestant‘s position is a fearful one, except in such a city as Madras,

for he wholly loses caste, and becomes an outlaw from his people. The

native Catholic continues to be a caste man, and sometimes an

idol-worshiper, and the priests have made a million converts in Southern

India.

Besides revealing the fewness of the native Christians, the Northwestern

census has shown us plainly the weakness of the Europeans. In the

district of Mooradabad, 1,100,000 people are ruled by thirty-eight

Europeans. In many places, two Europeans watch over 200,000 people. The

Eurasians are about as numerous as the Europeans, to which class they

may for some purposes be regarded as belonging, for the natives reject

their society, and refuse them a place in every caste. The Eurasians are

a much-despised race, the butt of every Indian story, but as a community

they are not to be ranked high. That they should be ill educated, vain,

and cringing, is perhaps only what we might expect of persons placed in

their difficult position; nevertheless, that they are so tends to

lessen, in spite of our better feelings, the pity that we should

otherwise extend toward them.

The census had not only its revelations, but its results. One effect of

the census-taking is to check the practice of infanticide, by pointing

out to the notice of our officers the castes and the districts in which

it exists. The deaths of three or four hundred children are credited to

the wolves in the Umritsur district of the Punjaub alone, but it is

remarked that the “wolves” pick out the female infants. The great

disproportion of the sexes is itself partly to be explained as the

result of infanticide.

One weighty drawback to our influence upon Hindoo morals, is that in the

case of many abuses we legislate without effect, our laws being evaded

where they are outwardly obeyed. The practice of infanticide exists in

all parts of India, but especially in Rajpootana, and the girls are

killed chiefly in order to save the cost of marrying them--or, rather,

of buying husbands for them. Now we have “suppressed” infanticide--which

means that children are smothered or starved, instead of being exposed.

It is no easy task to bring about reforms in the customs of the people

of India.

The many improvements in the moral condition of the people which the

census chronicles are steps in a great march. Those who have known India

long are aware that a remarkable change has come over the country in the

last few years. Small as have been the positive visible results of

Christian teaching, the indirect effects have been enormous. Among the

Sikhs and Marattas, a spirit of reflection, of earnest thought, unusual

in natives, has been aroused; in Bengal it has taken the form of pure

deism, but then Bengal is not India. The spirit rather than the

doctrinal teaching of Christianity has been imbibed: a love of truth

appeals more to the feelings of the upright natives than do the whole of

the nine-and-thirty Articles. Here, as elsewhere, the natives look to

deeds, not words; the example of a Frere is worth the teaching of a

hundred missionaries, painstaking and earnest though they be.

CHAPTER VI.

MOHAMMEDAN CITIES.

Through Mirzapore, Allahabad, and Futtehpore, I passed on to Cawnpore,

spending but little time at Allahabad; for though the city is

strategically important, there is in it but little to be seen. Like all

spots of the confluence of rivers, Allahabad is sacred with the Hindoos,

for it stands, they say, at the meeting-point of no less than three

great streams--the Ganges, the Jumna, and a river of the spirit-land. To

us poor pagans the third stream is invisible; not so to the faithful.

Catching a glimpse of Marochetti‘s statue at the Cawnpore well, as I

hurried through that city, I diverged from the East Indian Railway, and

took dawk-carriage to Lucknow.

As compared with other Indian cities, the capital of Oude is a town to

be seen in driving rather than in walking; the general effects are

superior in charm and beauty to the details, and the vast size of the

city makes mere sight-seeing a work of difficulty. More populous before

1857 than either Calcutta or Bombay, it is still twice as large as

Liverpool. Not only, however, is Lucknow the most perfect of the modern

or Italianized Oriental towns, but there are in it several buildings

that have each the charm of an architecture special to itself. Of these,

the Martinière is the most singular, and it looks like what it is--the

freak of a wealthy madman. Its builder was General Martine, a Frenchman

in the service of the Kings of Oude. Not far behind the Martinière is

the Dilkousha--a fantastic specimen of an Oriental hunting-lodge. The

ordinary show-building of the place, the Kaiser-Bagh, or Palace of the

Kings of Oude, is a paltry place enough, but there is a certain grandeur

in the view of the great Imaumbara and the Hooseinabád from a point

whence the two piles form to the eye but one. The great Imaumbara

suffered terribly in 1858 from the wanton destruction which our troops

committed everywhere during the war of the mutiny. Had they confined

themselves to outrages such as these, however, but little could have

been said against the conduct of the war. There is too much fear that

the English, unless held in check, exhibit a singularly strong

disposition toward cruelty, wherever they have a weak enemy to meet.

The stories of the Indian mutiny and of the Jamaica riot are but two out

of many--two that we happen to have heard; but the Persian war in 1857

and the last of the Chinese campaigns are not without their records of

deliberate barbarity and wrong. From the first officer of one of the

Peninsular and Oriental steamers, which was employed in carrying troops

up the Euphrates during the Persian war, I heard a story that is the

type of many such. A Persian drummer-boy of about ten years old was seen

bathing from the bank one morning by the officers on deck. Bets were

made as to the chance of hitting him with an Enfield rifle, and one of

the betters killed him at the first shot.

It is not only in war-time that our cruelty comes out; it is often seen

in trifles during peace. Even a traveler, indeed, becomes so soon used

to see the natives wronged in every way by people of quiet manner and

apparent kindness of disposition, that he ceases to record the cases. In

Madras roads, for instance, I saw a fruit-seller hand up some limes to a

lower-deck port, just as we were weighing anchor. Three Anglo-Indians

(men who had been out before) asked in chorus, “How much?” “One quarter

rupee.” “Too much.” And, without more ado, paying nothing, they pelted

the man with his own limes, of which he lost more than half. In Ceylon,

near Bentotté rest-house, a native child offered a handsome cowrie (of a

kind worth in Australia about five shillings, and certainly worth

something in Ceylon) to the child of a Mauritius coffee-planter who was

traveling with us to Columbo, himself an old Indian officer. The white

child took it, and would not give it up. The native child cried for

money, or to have his shell back, but the mother of the white child

exclaimed, “You be hanged; it‘s worth nothing;” and off came the shell

with us in the dawk. Such are the small but galling wrongs inflicted

daily upon the Indian natives. It was a maxim of the Portuguese Jesuits

that men who live long among Asiatics seldom fail to learn their vices;

but our older civilians treat the natives with strict justice, and

Anglo-Indian ladies who have been reared in the country are generally

kind to their own servants, if somewhat harsh toward other natives. It

is those who have been in the country from five to ten years, and

especially soldiers, who treat the natives badly. Such men I have heard

exclaim that the new penal code has revolutionized the country.

“Formerly,” they say, “you used to send a man to a police-officer or a

magistrate with a note:--‘My dear ----. Please give the bearer twenty

lashes.’ But now the magistrates are afraid to act, and your servant can

have you fined for beating him.” In spite of the lamentations of

Anglo-Indians over the good old days, I noticed in all the hotels in

India the significant notice, “Gentlemen are earnestly requested not to

strike the servants.”

The jokes of a people against themselves are not worth much, but may be

taken in aid of other evidence. The two favorite Anglo-Indian stories

are that of the native who, being asked his religion, said, “Me

Christian--me get drunk like massa;” and that of the young officer who,

learning Hindostanee in 1858, had the difference between the negative

“né” and the particle “ne” explained to him by the moonshee, when he

exclaimed: “Dear me! I hanged lots of natives last year for admitting

that they had not been in their villages for months. I suppose they

meant to say that they had not left their villages for months.” It is

certain that in the suppression of the mutiny hundreds of natives were

hanged by Queen‘s officers who, unable to speak a word of any native

language, could neither understand evidence nor defense.

It is in India, when listening to a mess-table conversation on the

subject of looting, that we begin to remember our descent from

Scandinavian sea-king robbers. Centuries of education have not purified

the blood: our men in India can hardly set eyes upon a native prince or

a Hindoo palace before they cry, “What a place to break up!” “What a

fellow to _loot_!” When I said to an officer who had been stationed at

Secrole in the early days of the mutiny, “I suppose you were afraid that

the Benares people would have attacked you,” his answer was, “Well, for

my part, I rather hoped they would, because then we should have thrashed

them, and looted the city. It hadn‘t been looted for two hundred years.”

Those who doubt that Indian military service makes soldiers careless of

men‘s lives, reckless as to the rights of property, and disregardful of

human dignity, can hardly remember the letters which reached home in

1857, in which an officer in high command during the march upon Cawnpore

reported, “Good bag to-day; polished off ---- rebels,” it being borne in

mind that the “rebels” thus hanged or blown from guns were not taken in

arms, but villagers apprehended “on suspicion.” During this march,

atrocities were committed in the burning of villages, and massacre of

innocent inhabitants, at which Mohammed Togluk himself would have stood

ashamed, and it would be to contradict all history to assert that a

succession of such deeds would not prove fatal to our liberties at home.

The European officers of native regiments, and many officers formerly in

the Company‘s service, habitually show great kindness to the natives,

but it is the benevolent kindness of the master for a favorite slave, of

the superior for men immeasurably beneath him; there is little of the

feeling which a common citizenship should bestow, little of that

equality of man and man which Christianity would seem to teach, and

which our Indian government has for some years favored.

At Lucknow, I saw the Residency, and at Cawnpore, on my return to the

East Indian Railway, the intrenchments which were, each of them, the

scene in 1857 of those defenses against the mutineers generally styled

“glorious” or “heroic,” though made by men fighting with ropes about

their necks. The successful defenses of the fort at Arrah and of the

Lucknow Residency were rather testimonies to the wonderful fighting

powers of the English than to their courage,--for cowards would fight

when the alternative was, fight or die. As far as Oude was concerned,

the “rebellion” of 1857 seems to have been rather a war than a mutiny;

but the habits of the native princes would probably have led them to

have acted as treacherously at Lucknow in the case of a surrender as did

the Nana at Cawnpore, and our officers wisely determined that in no

event would they treat for terms. What is to be regretted is that we as

conquerors should have shown the Oude insurgents no more mercy than they

would have shown to us, and that we should have made use of the pretext

that the rising was a mere mutiny of our native troops, as an excuse for

hanging in cold blood the agriculturists of Oude. Whatever the duplicity

of their rulers, whatever the provocation to annexation may have been,

there can be no doubt that the revolution in the land-laws set on foot

by us resulted in the offer of a career as native policemen or railway

ticket-clerks to men whose ancestors were warriors and knights when ours

wore woad; and we are responsible before mankind for having treated as

flagrant treason and mutiny a legitimate war on the part of the nobility

of Oude. In the official papers of the government of the Northwest

Provinces, the so-called “mutiny” is styled more properly “a grievous

civil war.”

There is much reason to fear, not that the mutiny will be too long

remembered, but that it will be too soon forgotten. Ten years ago,

Monghyr was an ash-heap, Cawnpore a name of horror, Delhi a stronghold

of armed rebels, yet now we can travel without change of cars through

peaceful and prosperous Monghyr and Cawnpore--a thousand and twenty

miles--in forty hours, and find at the end of our journey that shaded

boulevards have already taken the place of the walls of Delhi.

Quitting the main line of the East Indian Railway at Toondla Junction, I

passed over a newly-made branch road to Agra. The line was but lately

opened, and birds without number sat upon the telegraph-posts, and were

seemingly too astonished to fly away from the train, while, on the open

barrens, herds of Indian antelopes grazed fearlessly, and took no notice

of us when we passed.

Long before we entered Akbarabad, as the city should be called, by the

great new bridge across the Jumna, I had sighted in the far distance the

majestic, shining dome of the famed Taj Mahal; but when arrived within

the city, I first visited the citadel and ramparts. The fort and palace

of Akbar are the Moslem creed in stone. Without--turned toward the

unbeliever and the foe--the far-famed triple walls, frowning one above

the other with the frown that a hill-fanatic wears before he strikes the

infidel; within is the secure paradise of the believing “Emperor of the

world”--delicious fountains pouring into basins of the whitest marble,

beds of rose and myrtle, balconies and pavilions; part of the zenana, or

women‘s wing, overhanging the river, and commanding the distant

snow-dome of the Taj. Within, too, the “Motee Musjid”--“Pearl of

Mosques” in fact as well as name--a marble-cloistered court, to which

an angel architect could not add a stone, nor snatch one from it,

without spoiling all. These for believers; for non-believers the grim

old Saracenic “Hall of the Seat of Judgment.” The palace, except the

mosque, which is purity itself, is overlaid with a crust of gems. There

is one famed chamber--a woman‘s bath-house--the roof and sides of which

are covered with tiny silver-mounted mirrors, placed at such angles as

to reflect to infinity the figures of those who stand within the bath;

and a court is near at hand, paved with marble squares in black and

white, over which Akbar and his vizier used to sit and gravely play at

draughts with dancing girls for “pieces.”

On the river bank, a mile from Akbar‘s palace, in the center of a vast

garden entered through the noblest gateways in the world, stands the Taj

Mahal, a terrace rising in dazzling whiteness from a black mass of

cypresses, and bearing four lofty, delicate minars, and the central pile

that gleams like an Alp against the deep-blue sky--minars, terrace,

tomb, all of spotless marble and faultless shape. Its Persian builders

named the Taj “the palace floating in the air.”

Out of the fierce heat and blazing sunlight you enter into chill and

darkness, but soon begin to see the hollow dome growing into form above

your head, and the tomb itself--that of Noor Mahal, the favorite queen

of Shah Jehan--before you, and beside it her husband‘s humbler grave.

Though within and without the Taj is white, still here you find the

walls profusely jeweled, and the purity retained. Flowers are pictured

on every block in mosaic of cinnamon-stone, carnelian, turquoise,

amethyst, and emerald; the corridors contain the whole Koran, inlaid in

jet-black stone, yet the interior as a whole exceeds in chastity the

spotlessness of the outer dome. Oriental, it is not barbaric, and a

sweet melancholy is the effect the Taj produces on the mind, when seen

by day; in the still moonlight, the form is too mysterious to be

touching.

In a Persian manuscript, there still remains a catalogue of the prices

of the gems made use of in the building of the Taj, and of the places

from which they came. Among those named are coral from Arabia, sapphires

from Moldavia, amethysts from Persia, crystal from China, turquoises

from Thibet, diamonds from Bundelcund, and lapis-lazuli from Ceylon. The

stones were presents or tribute to the emperor, and the master-masons

came mostly from Constantinople and Bagdad--a fact which should be

remembered when we are discussing the intellectual capacity of the

Bengal Hindoos. That a people who paint their cows pink with green

spots, and their horses orange or bright red, should be the authors of

the Pearl Mosque and the Taj, would be too wonderful for our belief; but

the Mohammedan conquerors brought with them the chosen artists of the

Moslem world. The contrast between the Taj and the Monkey Temple at

Benares reminds one of that between a Cashmere and a Norwich shawl.

It is not at Agra alone that we meet the works of Mogul emperors. Much

as we have ourselves done in building roads and bridges, there are many

parts of Upper India where the traces of the Moslem are still more

numerous than are at present those of the later conquerors of the

unfortunate Hindoos. Mosques, forts, conduits, bridges, gardens--all the

works of the Moguls are both solid and magnificent, and it was with

almost reverential feelings that I made my pilgrimage to the tomb at

Secundra of the great Emperor Akbar, grandfather of Shah Jehan, son of

Hoomayoon, and founder of Agra City.

It is to be remarked that the Mohammedans in India make a considerable

show for their small numbers. Of the great cities of India, the three

Presidency towns are English; and the three gigantic cities of Delhi,

Agra, and Lucknow, chiefly Mohammedan. Benares alone is a Hindoo city,

and even in Benares the Mohammedans have their temples. All the great

buildings of India are Mohammedan; so are all the great works that are

not English. Yet even in the Agra district the Mohammedans are only

one-twelfth of the population, but they live chiefly in the towns.

The history of the Mogul empire of India from the time of the conquest

of the older empire by Tamerlane in the fourteenth century, and the

forced conversion to Mohammedanism of a vast number of Hindoos, and that

of Akbar‘s splendor and enormous power, down to the transportation of

the last emperor in 1857 to Rangoon, and the shooting of his sons in a

dry ditch by Captain Hodson, is one for us to ponder carefully. Those

who know what we have done in India, say that even in our codes--and

they are allowed to be our best claim to the world‘s applause--we fall

short of Akbar‘s standard.

Delhi, the work of Shah Jehan, founder of the Taj and the Pearl Mosque,

was built by himself in a wilderness, as was Agra by the Emperor Akbar.

We who have seen the time that has passed since its foundation by

Washington before the capital of the United States has grown out of the

village shape, cannot deny that the Mogul emperors, if they were

despots, were at least tyrants possessed of imperial energy. Akbar built

Agra twenty or thirty miles from Futtehpore Sikri, his former capital,

but Jehan had the harder task of forcing his people to quit an earlier

site not five miles from modern Delhi, while Akbar merely moved his

palace and let the people follow.

Delhi suffered so much at our hands during the storm in 1857, and has

suffered so much since in the way of Napoleonic boulevards intended to

prevent the necessity of storming it again, that it must be much changed

from what it was before the war. The walls which surround the whole city

are nearly as grand as those of the fort at Agra, and the gate towers

are very Gibraltars of brick and stone, as we found to our cost when we

battered the Cashmere Gate in 1857. The palace and the Motee Musjid are

extremely fine, but inferior to their namesakes at Agra; and the Jumna

Musjid--reputed the most beautiful as it is the largest mosque in the

world--impressed me only by its size. The view, however, from its minars

is one of the whole Northwest. The vast city becomes an ant-heap, and

you instinctively peer out into space, and try to discern the sea toward

Calcutta or Bombay.

The historical memories that attach to Delhi differ from those that we

associate with the name of Agra. There is little pleasure in the

contemplation of the zenana, where the miserable old man, the last of

the Moguls, dawdled away his years.

CHAPTER VII.

SIMLA.

After visiting Nicholson‘s tomb at the Cashmere Gate, I entered my

one-horse dawk--the regulation carriage of India--and set off for

Kurnaul and Simla, passing between the sand-hills, gravel-pits, and

ruined mosques through which the rebel cavalry made their famous sortie

upon our camp. It was evening when we started, and as the dawk-gharrees

are so arranged that you can lie with comfort at full-length, but cannot

sit without misery, I brought my canvas bag into service as a pillow,

and was soon asleep.

When I woke, we had stopped; and when I drew the sliding shutter that

does duty for door and window, and peered out into the darkness, I

discovered that there was no horse in the shafts, and that my driver and

his horse syce--or groom--were smoking their hubble-bubbles at a well in

the company of a passing friend. By making free use of the strongest

language that my dictionary contained, I prevailed upon the men to put

in a fresh horse; but starting was a different matter. The horse refused

to budge an inch, except, indeed, backwards, or sideways toward the

ditch. Six grooms came running from the stable, and placed themselves

one at each wheel, and one on each side of the horse, while many boys

pushed behind. At a signal from the driver, the four wheelmen threw

their whole weight on the spokes, and one of the men at the horse‘s

head held up the obstinate brute‘s off fore-leg, so that he was fairly

run off the ground, and forced to make a start, which he did with a

violent plunge, for which all the grooms were, however, well prepared.

As they yelled with triumph, we dashed along for some twenty yards, then

swerved sideways, and came to a dead stop. Again and again the starting

process was repeated, till at last the horse went off at a gallop, which

carried us to the end of the stage. This is the only form of starting

known to up-country horses, as I soon found; but sometimes even this

ceremony fails to start the horse, and twice in the Delhi-to-Kalka

journey we lost a quarter of an hour over horses, and had finally to get

others from the stable.

About midnight, we reached a government bungalow, or roadside inn, where

I was to sup, and five minutes produced a chicken curry which, in spite

of its hardness, was disposed of in as many more. Meanwhile a storm had

come rumbling and roaring across the skies, and when I went to the door

to start, the bungalow butler and cook pointed to the gharree, and told

me that driver and horse were gone. Not wishing the bungalow men to

discover how small was my stock of Hindostanee, I paid careful attention

to their conversation, and looked up each time that I heard “sahib,” as

I knew that then they must be talking about me. Seeing this, they seemed

to agree that I was a thorough Hindostanee scholar, but too proud to

answer when they spoke. While they were humbly requesting that I would

bow to the storm and sleep in the bungalow, which was filled with

twittering sparrows, waked by the thunder or the lights, I was reading

my dictionary by the faint glimmer of the cocoanut oil-lamp, and trying

to find out how I was to declare that I insisted on going on at once.

When at last I hit upon my phrase, the storm was over, and the butler

soon found both horse and driver. After this adventure, my Hindostanee

improved fast.

A remarkable misapprehension prevails in England concerning the

languages of India. The natives of India, we are inclined to believe,

speak Hindostanee, which is the language of India as English is that of

Britain. The truth is that there are in India a multitude of languages,

of which Hindostanee is not even one. Besides the great tongues, Urdu,

Maratti, and Tamil, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of local

languages, and innumerable dialects of each. Hindostanee is a camp

language, which contains many native words, but which also is largely

composed of imported Arabic and Persian words, and which is not without

specimens of English and Portuguese. “Saboon,” for soap, is the latter;

“glassie,” for a tumbler, and “istubul,” for a stable, the former: but

almost every common English phrase and English word of command forms in

a certain measure part of the Hindostanee tongue. Some terms have been

ingeniously perverted; for instance, “Who comes there?” has become

“Hookum dar?” “Stand at ease!” is changed to “Tundel tis,” and “Present

arms!” to “Furyunt arm!” The Hindostanee name for a European lady is

“mem sahib,” a feminine formed from “sahib”--lord, or European--by

prefixing to it the English servants’ “mum,” or corruption of “madam.”

Some pure Hindostanee words have a comical sound enough to English ears,

as “hookm,” an order, pronounced “hook‘em;” “misri,” sugar, which sounds

like “misery;” “top,” fever; “molly,” a gardener; and “dolly,” a bundle

of vegetables.

Dawk traveling in the Punjaub is by no means unpleasant; by night you

sleep soundly, and by day there is no lack of life in the mere traffic

on the road, while the general scene is full of charm. Here and there

are _serais_, or corrals, built by the Mogul emperors or by the British

government for the use of native travelers. Our word “caravansery” is

properly “caravan-serai,” an inclosure for the use of those traveling in

caravans. The keeper of the serai supplies water, provender, and food,

and at night the serais along the road glow with the cooking-fires and

resound with the voices of thousands of natives, who when on journeys

never seem to sleep. Throughout the plains of India, the high-roads pass

villages, serais, police-stations, and groups of trees at almost equal

intervals. The space between clump and clump is generally about three

miles, and in this distance you never see a house, so compact are the

Indian villages. The Northwest Provinces are the most densely-peopled

countries of the world, yet between village and village you often see no

trace of man, while jackals and wild blue-cows roam about as freely as

though the country were an untrodden wilderness.

Each time you reach a clump of banyans, tamarind and tulip trees, you

find the same tenants of its shades: village police-station, government

posting-stable, and serai are always inclosed within its limits. All the

villages are fortified with lofty walls of mud or brick, as are the

numerous police-stations along the road, where the military

constabulary, in their dark-blue tunics, yellow trowsers, and huge

puggrees of bright red, rise up from sleep or hookah as you pass, and,

turning out with tulwárs and rifles, perform the military salute--due in

India to the white face from all native troops. Your skin here is your

patent of aristocracy and your passport, all in one.

It is not only by the police and troops that you are saluted: the

natives all salaam to you--except mere coolies, who do not think

themselves worthy even to offer a salute--and many Anglo-Indians refuse

to return their bow. Every Englishman in India ought to act as though he

were an ambassador of the Queen and people, and regulate accordingly his

conduct in the most trifling things; but too often the low bow and

humble “Salaam sahib” is not acknowledged even by a curt “Salaam.”

In the drier portions of the country, women were busy with knives

digging up little roots of grass for horse-food; and four or five times

a day a great bugling would be heard and answered by my driver, while

the mail-cart shot by us at full speed. The astonishment with which I

looked upon the Indian plains grew even stronger as I advanced up

country. Not only is bush scarce, and forest never seen, but where there

is jungle it is of the thinnest and least tropical kind. It would be

harder to traverse, on horse or foot, the thinnest coppice in the south

of England than the densest jungle in the plain country of all India.

Both in the villages and in the desert portions of the road, the

ground-squirrels galloped in troops before the dawk, and birds without

number hopped fearlessly beside us as we passed; hoopoes, blue-jays, and

minas were the commonest, but there were many paddy-birds and graceful

golden egrets in the lower grounds.

Between Delhi and Kurnaul were many ruins, now green with the

pomegranate leaf, now scarlet with the bloom of the peacock-tree, and,

about the ancient villages, acre after acre of plantain-garden,

irrigated by the conduits of the Mohammedan conquerors; at last, Kurnaul

itself--a fortified town--seen through a forest of date, wild mango, and

banyan, with patches of wheat about it, and strings of laden camels

winding along the dusty road. After a bheestie had poured a skinful of

water over me, I set off again for Kalka, halting in the territory of

the Puttiala Rajah to see his gardens at Pinjore, and then passed on

toward the base of the Himalayan foot-hills. The wheat-harvest was in

progress in the Kalka country, and the girls, reaping with the sickle,

and carrying away the sheaves upon their heads, bore themselves

gracefully, as Hindoo women ever do, and formed a contrast to the coarse

old land-owners as these rode past, each followed by his pipe-bearer and

his retinue.

A Goorkha battalion and a Thibetan goat-train had just entered Kalka

when I reached it, and the confusion was such that I started at once in

a jampan up the sides of the brown and desolate hills. A jampan, called,

tonjon in Madras, is an arm-chair in shafts, and built more lightly than

a sedan; it is carried at a short trot by four men, while another four,

and a mate or chief, make their way up the hills before you, and meet

you here and there to relieve guard. The hire of the jampan and nine men

is less than that of a pony and groom--a curious illustration of the

cheapness of labor in the East. When you first reach India, this

cheapness is a standing wonder. At your hotel at Calcutta you are asked,

“You wish boy pull punkah all night? Boy pull punkah all day and all

night for two annas” (3_d._). On some parts of the railway lines, where

there is also a good road, the natives find it cheaper to travel by

palankeen than to ride in a third-class railway carriage. It is cheaper

in Calcutta to be carried by four men in a palki than to ride in a

“second-class gharry,” or very bad cab; and the streets of the city are

invariably watered by hand by bheesties with skins. The key to Indian

politics lies in these facts.

At Wilson‘s at Calcutta, the rule of the hotel obliges one to hire a

kitmutghar, who waits at table. This I did for the magnificent wage of

11_d_. a day, out of which Cherry--the nearest phonetic spelling of my

man‘s name--of course fed and kept himself. I will do him the justice to

add that he managed to make about another shilling a day out of me, and

that he always brought me small change in copper, on the chance that I

should give it him. Small as seemed these wages, I could have hired him

for one-fifth the rate that I have named had I been ready to retain him

in my service for a month or two. Wages in India are somewhat raised by

the practice of dustooree--a custom by which every native, high or low,

takes toll of all money that passes through his hands. My first

introduction to this institution struck me forcibly, though afterward I

came to look upon it as tranquilly as old Indians do. It was in the

gardens of the Taj, where, to relieve myself from importunity, I had

bought a photograph of the dome: a native servant of the hotel, who

accompanied me much against my will, and who, being far more ignorant of

English than I was of Hindostanee, was of absolutely no use, I had at

last succeeded in warning off from my side, but directly I bought the

photograph for half a rupee, he rushed upon the seller, and claimed

one-fourth of the price, or two annas, as his share, I having

transgressed his privilege in buying directly instead of through him as

intermediary. I remonstrated, but to my amazement the seller paid the

money quietly, and evidently looked on me as a meddling sort of fellow

enough for interfering with the institution of dustooree. Customs, after

all, are much the same throughout the world. Our sportsmen follow the

habit of Confucius, whose disciples two or three thousand years ago

proclaimed that “he angled, but did not use a net; he shot, but not at

birds perching;” our servants, perhaps, are not altogether innocent of

dustooree. However much wages may be supplemented by dustooree, they are

low enough to allow of the keeping of a tribe of servants by persons of

moderate incomes. A small family at Simla “require” three body servants,

two cooks, one butler, two grooms, two gardeners, two messengers, two

nurses, two washermen, two water-carriers, thirteen jampan-men, one

sweeper, one lamp-cleaner, and one boy, besides the European lady‘s

maid, or thirty-five in all; but if wages were doubled, perhaps fewer

men would be “absolutely needed.” At the house where I stayed at Simla,

ten jampan-men and two gardeners were supposed to be continuously

employed in a tiny flower-garden round the house. To a European fresh

from the temperate climates there is something irksome in the restraint

produced by the constant presence of servants in every corner of an

Indian house. To pull off one‘s own socks or pour out the water into the

basin for one‘s self becomes a much-longed-for luxury. It is far from

pleasant to have three or four natives squatting in front of your door,

with nothing to do unless you find such odd jobs for them as holding the

heel of your boot while you pull it on, or brushing your clothes for the

fourteenth time.

The greater or less value of the smallest coin in common use in a

country is a rough test of the wealth or poverty of its inhabitants, and

by the application of it to India we find that country poor indeed. At

Agra, I had gone to a money-changer in the bazaar, and asked him for

change, in the cowrie-shells which do duty as money, for an anna, or

1½_d_. piece. He gave me handful after handful, till I cried enough. Yet

when in the afternoon of the same day I had a performance on my

threshold of “Tasa-ba-tasa”--that singular tune which reigns from Java

to the Bosphorus, with Sanscrit words in Persia, and Malay words in the

Eastern islands--the three players seemed grateful for half a dozen of

the cowries, for they treated me to a native version of “Vee vont gah

ham tall mardid, vee vont gah ham tall mardid,” by way of thanks. Many

strange natural objects pass as uncoined money in the East: tusks in

Africa, women in Arabia, human skulls in Borneo; the Red Indians of

America sell their neighbors’ scalps for money, but have not yet reached

the height of civilization which would be denoted by their keeping them

to use as such; cowrie-shells, however, pass as money in almost every

ancient trading country of the world.

The historical cheapness of labor in India has led to such an obstinate

aversion to all labor-saving expedients that such great works as the

making of railway embankments and the boulevard construction at Delhi

are conducted by the scraping together of earth with the hands, and the

collected pile is slowly placed in tiny baskets, much like strawberry

pottles, and borne away on women‘s heads to its new destination.

Wheelbarrows, water-carts, picks, and shovels are in India all unknown.

If, on my road from Kalka to Simla, I had an example of the cheapness of

Indian labor, I also had one of its efficiency. The coolie who carried

my baggage on his head trotted up the hills for twenty-one hours,

without halting for more than an hour or two, and this for two days’

pay.

During the first half-hour after leaving Kalka, the heat was as great as

on the plains, but we had not gone many miles before we came out of the

heat and dust into a new world, and an atmosphere every breath of which

was life. I got out, and walked for miles; and when we halted at a

rest-house on the first plateau, I thoroughly enjoyed a cup of the

mountain tea, and was still more pleased at the sight of the first

red-coated English soldiers that I had seen since I left Niagara. The

men were even attempting bowls and cricket, so cool were the evenings at

this station. There is grim satire in the fact that the director-general

of military gymnastics has his establishment at Simla, in the cold of

the Snowy Range, and there invents running drills and such like summer

diversions, to be executed by the unfortunates in the plains below.

Bowls, which are an amusement at Kussoolie, would in the hot weather be

death at Kalka, only ten miles away; but so short is the memory of

climate that you are no more able to conceive the heat of the plains

when in the hills than the cold of the hills when at Calcutta.

There is no reason except a slight and temporary increase of cost to

prevent the whole of the European troops in India being concentrated in

a few cool and healthy stations. Provided that all the artillery be

retained in the hands of the Europeans, almost the whole of the English

forces might be kept in half a dozen hill-stations, of which Darjeeling

and Bangalore would be two, and some place near Bombay a third. It has

been said that the men would be incapable, through want of

acclimatization, of acting on the plains if retained in hill-stations

except when their services were needed; but it is notoriously the fact

that newcomers from England--that is, men with health--do not suffer

seriously from heat during the first six months which they pass upon the

plains.

Soon after dark, a terrific thunder-storm came on, the thunder rolling

round the valleys and along the ridges, while the rain fell in short,

sharp showers. My men put me down on the lee-side of a hut, and

squatted for a long smoke. The custom common to all the Eastern races of

sitting round a fire smoking all night long explains the number and the

excellence of their tales and legends. In Europe we see the Swedish

peasants sitting round their hearths chatting during the long winter

evenings: hence follow naturally the Thor legends; our sailors are with

us the only men given to sitting in groups to talk: they are noted

story-tellers. The word “yarn” exemplifies the whole philosophy of the

matter. We meet, however, here the eternal difficulty of which is cause

and which is effect. It is easy to say that the long nights of Norway,

the confined space of the ship, making the fo‘castle the sailor‘s only

lounge, each in their way necessitate the story-telling; not so in

India, not so in Egypt, in Arabia, in Persia: there can here be no

necessity for men sitting up all night to talk, short of pure love of

talk for talking‘s sake.

When the light came in the morning, we were ascending the same

strangely-ribbed hills that we had been crossing by torchlight during

the night, and were meeting Chinese-faced Thibetans, with hair done into

many pig-tails, who were laboriously bringing over the mountain passes

Chinese goods in tiny sheep-loads. For miles I journeyed on, up mountain

sides and down into ravines, but never for a single moment upon a level,

catching sight sometimes of portions of the Snowy Range itself, far

distant, and half mingled with the clouds, till at last a huge mountain

mass rising to the north and east blocked out all view save that behind

me over the sea of hills that I had crossed, and the scene became

monotonously hideous, with only that grandeur which hugeness carries

with it--a view, in short, that would be fine at sunset, and at no other

time. The weather, too, grew damp and cold--a cruel cold, with driving

rain--and the landscape was dreariness itself.

Suddenly we crossed the ridge, and began to descend, when the sky

cleared, and I found myself on the edge of the rhododendron forest--tall

trees with dark-green leaves and masses of crimson flowers; ferns of a

hundred different kinds marking the beds of the rivulets that coursed

down through the woods, which were filled with troops of chattering

monkeys.

Rising again slightly, I began to pass the European bungalows, each in

its thicket of deodar, and few with flat ground enough for more than

half a rose-bed or a quarter of a croquet-ground. On either side the

ridge was a deep valley, with terraced rice-fields five thousand feet

below, and, in the distance, on the one side the mist-covered plains lit

by the single silvery ribbon of the distant Sutlej, on the other side

the Snowy Range.

The first Europeans whom I met in Simla were the Viceroy‘s children and

their nurses, who formed with their escort a stately procession. First

came a tall native in scarlet, then a jampan with a child, then one with

a nurse and viceregal baby, and so on, the bearers wearing scarlet and

gray. All the residents at Simla have different uniforms for their

jampanees, some clothing their men in red and green, some in purple and

yellow, some in black and white. Before reaching the center of the town,

I had met several Europeans riding, although the sun was still high and

hot; but before evening a hailstorm came across the range and filled the

woods with a chilling mist, and night found me toasting my feet at a

blazing fire in an Alpine room of polished pine--a real room, with doors

and casement; not a section of a street with a bed in it, as are the

rooms in the Indian plains. Two blankets were a luxury in this

“tropical climate of Simla,” as one of our best-informed London

newspapers once called it. The fact is that Simla, which stands at from

seven to eight thousand feet above the sea, and in latitude 31°, or 7°

north of the boundary of the tropics, has a climate cold in everything

except its sun, which is sometimes strong. The snow lies on the ground

at intervals for five months of the year; and during what is by courtesy

styled “the hot weather,” cold rains are of frequent occurrence.

The climate of Simla is no mere matter of curiosity; it is a question of

serious interest in connection with the retention of our Indian empire.

When the government seeks refuge here from the Calcutta heat, the

various departments are located in tiny cottages and bungalows up on the

mountain and down in the valley, practically as far from each other as

London from Brighton; and, moreover, Simla itself is forty miles from

Kalka by the shortest path, and sixty by the better bridle-path. There

is clearly much loss of time in sending dispatches for half the year to

and from a place like this, and there is no chance of the railway ever

coming nearer to it than Kalka, even if it reaches that. On the other

hand, the telegraph is replacing the railway day by day, and mountain

heights are no bar to wires. This poor, little, uneven hill-village has

been styled the “Indian Capua” and nicknamed the “Hill Versailles;” but

so far from enervating the ministers or enfeebling the administration,

Simla gives vigor to the government, and a hearty English tone to the

State papers issued in the hot months. English ministers are not in

London all the year long, and no men, ministers or not, could stand four

years’ continual brain-work in Calcutta. In 1866, the first year of the

removal of the government as a whole and publication of the _Gazette_

at Simla during the summer, all the arrears of work in all the offices

were cleared off for the first time since the occupation by us of any

part of India.

Bengal, the Northwest Provinces, and the Punjaub must soon be made into

“governorships,” instead of “lieutenant-governorships,” so that the

Viceroy may be relieved from tedious work, and time saved by the

Northern Governors reporting straight home, as do the Governors of

Madras and Bombay, unless a system be adopted under which all shall

report to the Viceroy. At all events, the five divisions must be put

upon the same footing one with another. This being granted, there is no

conceivable reason for keeping the Viceroy at Calcutta--a city

singularly hot, unhealthy, and out of the way. On our Council of India,

sitting at the capital, we ought to have natives picked from all India

for their honesty, ability, and discretion; but so bad is the water at

Calcutta, that the city is deadly to water-drinkers; and although they

value the distinction of a seat at the Council more than any other honor

within their reach, many of the most distinguished natives in India have

chosen to resign their places rather than pass a second season at

Calcutta.

It is not necessary that we should argue about Calcutta‘s disadvantages.

It is enough to say that, of all Indian cities, we have selected for our

capital the most distant and the most unhealthy. The great question is,

Shall we have one capital, or two? Shall we keep the Viceroy all the

year round in a central but hot position, such as Delhi, Agra,

Allahabad, or Jubbelpore, or else at a less central but cooler station,

such as Nassuck, Poonah, Bangalore, or Mussoorie? Or shall we keep him

at a central place during the cool, and a hill place during the hot

weather? There can be but little doubt that Simla is a necessity at

present, but with a fairly healthy city, such as Agra, for the

headquarters of the government, and the railway open to within a few

miles of Mussoorie, so that men could run to the hills in six or seven

hours, and even spend a few days there in each summer month, an

efficient government could be maintained in the plains. We must remember

that Agra is now within twenty-three days of London; and that, with the

Persian Gulf route open, and a railway from Kurrachee (the natural port

of England in India), leave for home would be a matter still more simple

than it has become already. With some such central town as Poonah for

the capital, the Bombay and Madras commander-in-chiefships could be

abolished, with the result of saving a considerable expense, and greatly

increasing the efficiency of the Indian army. It is probable that Simla

will not continue to be the chosen station of the government in the

hills. The town is subject to the ravages of dysentery; the cost of

draining it would be immense, and the water supply is very limited; the

bheesties have often to wait whole hours for their turn.

Mussoorie has all the advantages and none of the drawbacks of Simla, and

lies compactly in ground on which a small city could be built, whereas

Simla straggles along a narrow mountain ridge, and up and down the steep

sides of an Alpine peak. It is questionable, however, whether, if India

is to be governed from at home, the seat of government should not be at

Poonah, within reach of London. The telegraph has already made viceroys

of the ancient kind impossible.

The sunrise view of the Snowy Range from my bungalow was one rather

strange, from the multitude of peaks in sight at once, than either

beautiful or grand. The desolate ranges of foot-hills destroy the

beauty that the contrast of the deodars, the crimson rhododendrons, and

the snow would otherwise produce, and the height at which you stand

seems to dwarf the distant ranges; but from one of the spots which I

reached in a mountain march, the prospect was widely different. Here we

saw at once the sources of the Jumna, the Sutlej, and the Ganges, the

dazzling peaks of Gungootrie, of Jumnotrie, and of Kamet; while behind

us in the distant plains we could trace the Sutlej itself, silvered by

the hazy rays of the half-risen sun. We had in sight not only the 26,000

feet of Kamet, but no less than twenty other peaks of over 20,000 feet,

snow-clad to their very bases, while between us and the nearest outlying

range were valleys from which the ear caught the humble murmur of

fresh-risen streams.

CHAPTER VIII.

COLONIZATION.

Connected with the question of the site of the future capital is that of

the possibility of the colonization by Englishmen of portions of the

peninsula of India.

Hitherto the attempts at settlement which have been made have been

mainly confined to six districts--Mysore, where there are only some

dozen planters; the Neilgherries proper, where coffee-planting is

largely carried on; Oude, where many Europeans have taken land as

zemindars, and cultivate a portion of it, while they let out the

remainder to natives on the Metayer plan; Bengal, where indigo-planting

is gaining ground; the Himalayan valleys, and Assam. Settlement in the

hot plains is limited by the fact that English children cannot there be

reared, so to the hill districts the discussion must be confined.

One of the commonest of mistakes respecting India consists in the

supposition that there is available land in large quantities on the

slopes of the Himalayas. There are no Himalayan slopes; the country is

all straight up and down, and for English colonists there is no room--no

ground that will grow anything but deodars, and those only moderately

well. The hot sun dries the ground, and the violent rains follow, and

cut it through and through with deep channels, in this way gradually

making all the hills both steep and ribbed. Mysore is still a native

State, but, in spite of this, European settlement is increasing year by

year, and there, as in the Neilgherries proper, there is room for many

coffee-planters, though fever is not unknown; but when India is

carefully surveyed, the only district that appears to be thoroughly

suited to English settlement, as contrasted with mere planting or

land-holding, is the valley of Cashmere, where the race would probably

not suffer deterioration. With the exception of Cashmere, none of the

deep mountain valleys are cool enough for permanent European settlement.

Family life is impossible where there is no home; you can have no

English comfort, no English virtues, in a climate which forces your

people to live out of doors, or else in rocking-chairs or hammocks.

Night-work and reading are all-but impossible in a climate where

multitudes of insects haunt the air. In the Himalayan valleys, the hot

weather is terribly scorching, and it lasts for half the year, and on

the hill-sides there is but little fertile soil.

The civilians and rulers of India in general are extremely jealous of

the “interlopers,” as European settlers are termed; and, although

tea-cultivation was at first encouraged by the Bengal government, recent

legislation, fair or unfair, has almost ruined the tea-planters of

Assam. The native population of that district is averse to labor, and

coolies from a distance have to be brought in; but the government of

India, as the planters say, interferes with harsh and narrow

regulations, and so enormously increases the cost of imported labor as

to ruin the planters, who, even when they have got their laborers on the

ground, cannot make them work, as there exists no means of compelling

specific performance of a contract to work. The remedy known to the

English law is an action for damages brought by the employer against the

laborer, so with English obstinacy we declare that an action for damages

shall be the remedy in Burmah or Assam. A provision for attachment of

goods and imprisonment of person of laborers refusing to perform their

portion of a contract to work was inscribed in the draft of the proposed

Indian “Code of Civil Procedure,” but vetoed by the authorities at home.

The Spanish Jesuits themselves were not more afraid of free white

settlers than is our Bengal government. An enterprising merchant of

Calcutta lately obtained a grant of vast tracts of country in the

Sunderbunds--the fever-haunted jungle near Calcutta--and had already

completed his arrangements for importing Chinese laborers to cultivate

his acquisitions, when the jealous civilians got wind of the affair, and

forced government into a most undignified retreat from their agreement.

The secret of this opposition to settlement by Europeans lies partly in

a horror of “low-caste Englishmen,” and a fear that they will somewhat

debase Europeans in native eyes, but far more in the wish of the old

civilians to keep India to themselves as a sort of “happy

hunting-ground”--a wish which has prompted them to start the cry of

“India for the Indians”--which of course means India for the

Anglo-Indians.

Somewhat apart from the question of European colonization, but closely

related to it, is that of the holding by Europeans of landed estates in

India. It will perhaps be conceded that the European should, on the one

hand, be allowed to come into the market and purchase land, or rent it

from the government or from individuals, on the same conditions as those

which would apply to natives, and, on the other hand, that special

grants should not be made to Europeans as they were by us in Java in old

times. In Eastern countries, however, government can hardly be wholly

neutral, and, whatever the law, if European landholders be encouraged,

they will come; if discouraged, they will stop away. From India they

stop away, while such as do reach Hindostan are known in official

circles by the significant name of “interlopers.”

Under a healthy social system, which the presence of English planters

throughout India, and the support which would thus be given to the

unofficial press, would of itself do much to create, the owning of land

by Europeans could produce nothing but good. The danger of the use of

compulsion toward the natives would not exist, because in India--unlike

what is the case in Dutch Java--the interest of the ruling classes would

be the other way. If it be answered that, once in possession of the

land, the Europeans would get the government into their own hands, we

must reply that they could never be sufficiently numerous to have the

slightest chance of doing anything of the kind. As we have seen in

Ceylon, the attempt on the part of the planters to usurp the government

is sternly repressed by the English people, the moment that its true

bearing is understood, and yet in Ceylon the planters are far more

numerous in proportion to the population than they can ever be in India,

where the climate of the plains is fatal to European children, and where

there is comparatively little land upon the hills; while in Ceylon the

coffee-tracts, which are mountainous and healthy, form a sensible

proportion of the whole lands of the island. It is true that the press,

when once completely in the planters’ hands, may advocate their

interests at the expense of those of the natives, but in the case of

Queensland we have seen that this is no protection to the planters

against the inquisitive home eye, which would be drawn to India as it

has been to Queensland by the reports of independent travelers and of

interested but honest missionaries.

The infamies of the foundation of the indigo-plantations in Bengal, and

of many of the tea-plantations in Assam, in which violence was freely

used to make the natives grow the selected crop, and in some cases the

land actually stolen from its owners, have gone far to make European

settlement in India a by-word among the friends of the Hindoo; but it is

clear that an efficient police would suffice to restrain these

illegalities and hideous wrongs. It might become advisable in the

interest of the natives to provide that not only the officers, but also

the sub-officers and some constables of the police, should be Europeans

in districts where the plantations lay, great care being taken to select

honest and fearless men, and to keep a strict watch on their conduct.

The two great securities against that further degradation of the natives

which has been foretold as a result of the expected influx of Europeans

are the general teaching of the English language, and the grant of

perfect freedom of action (the government standing aloof) to

missionaries of every creed under heaven. The bestowal of the English

tongue upon the natives will give the local newspapers a larger

circulation among them than among the planter classes, and so, by the

powerful motive of self-interest, force them to the side of liberty;

while the honesty of some of the missionaries and the interest of others

will certainly place the majority of the religious bodies on the side of

freedom. It is needless to say that the success of a policy which would

be opposed by the local press and at the same time by the chief English

Churches is not an eventuality about which we need give ourselves

concern, and it is therefore probable that on the whole the

encouragement of European settlement upon the plains would be conducive

to the welfare of the native race.

That settlement or colonization would make our tenure of India more

secure is very doubtful, and, if certain, would be a point of little

moment. If, when India has passed through the present transition stage

from a country of many peoples to a country of only one, we cannot

continue to rule her by the consent of the majority of her inhabitants,

our occupation of the country must come to an end, whether we will or

no. At the same time, the union of interests and community of ideas

which would rise out of well-ordered settlement would do much to endear

our government to the great body of the natives. As a warning against

European settlement as it is, every Englishman should read the drama

“Nil Darpan.”

During my stay at Simla, I visited a pretty fair in one of the

neighboring valleys. There was much buffoonery and dancing--among other

things, a sort of jig by a fakeer, who danced himself into a fit, real

or pretended; but the charm of this, as of all Hindoo gatherings, lay

in the color. The women of the Punjaub dress very gayly for their fêtes,

wearing tight-fitting trowsers of crimson, blue, or yellow, and a long

thin robe of white, or crimson-grounded Cashmere shawl; bracelets and

anklets of silver, and a nose-ring, either huge and thin, or small and

nearly solid, complete the dress.

At the fair were many of the Goorkhas (of whom there is a regiment at

Simla), who danced, and seemingly enjoyed themselves immensely; indeed,

the natives of all parts of India, from Nepaul to the Deccan, possess a

most enviable faculty of amusement, and they say that there is a

professional buffoon attached to every Goorkha regiment. Their

full-dress is like that of the French _chasseurs à pied_, but in their

undress uniform of white, the trowsers worn so tight as to wrinkle from

stretching--these dashing little fellows, with their thin legs, broad

shoulders, bullet heads, and flat faces, look extremely like a corps of

jockeys. A general inspecting one of these regiments once said to the

colonel: “Your men are small, sir.” “Their pay is small, sir!” growled

the colonel, in a towering passion.

There were unmistakable traces of Buddhist architecture in the little

valley Hindoo shrine. Of the Chinese pilgrimages to India in the

Buddhist period there are many records yet extant, and one of these, we

are told, relates how, as late as the fourteenth century, the Emperor of

China asked leave of the Delhi ruler to rebuild a temple at the southern

base of the Himalayas, inasmuch as it was visited by his Tartar people.

CHAPTER IX.

THE “GAZETTE.”

Of all printed information upon India, there is none which, either for

value or interest, can be ranked with that contained in the Government

_Gazette_, which during my stay at Simla was published at that town, the

Viceroy‘s Council having moved there for the hot weather. Not only are

the records of the mere routine business interesting from their variety,

but almost every week there is printed along with the _Gazette_ a

supplement, which contains memoranda from leading natives or from the

representatives of the local governments upon the operations of certain

customs, or on the probable effects of a proposed law, or similar

communications. Sometimes the circulars issued by the government are

alone reprinted, “with a view to elicit opinions,” but more generally

the whole of the replies are given.

It is difficult for English readers to conceive the number and variety

of subjects upon which a single number of the _Gazette_ will give

information of some kind. The paragraphs are strung together in the

order in which they are received, without arrangement or connection. “A

copy of a treaty with his Highness the Maharajah of Cashmere” stands

side by side with a grant of three months’ leave to a lieutenant of

Bombay Native Foot; while above is an account of the suppression of the

late murderous outrages in the Punjaub, and below a narrative of the

upsetting of the Calcutta mails into a river near Jubbelpore. “A

khureta from the Viceroy to his Highness the Rao Oomaid Singh Bahadoor”

orders him to put down crime in his dominions, and the humble answer of

the Rao is printed, in which he promises to do his best. Paragraphs are

given to “the floating dock at Rangoon;” “the disease among mail

horses;” “the Suez Canal;” “the forests of Oude;” and “polygamy among

the Hindoos.” The Viceroy contributes a “note on the administration of

the Khetree chieftainship;” the Bengal government sends a memorandum on

“bribery of telegraph clerks;” and the Resident of Kotah an official

report of the ceremonies attending the reception of a viceregal khureta

restoring the honors of a salute to the Maha Rao of Kotah. The khureta

was received in state, the letter being mounted alone upon an elephant

magnificently caparisoned, and saluted from the palace with 101 guns.

There is no honor that we can pay to a native prince so great as that of

increasing his salute, and, on the other hand, when the Guicodar of

Baroda allows a suttee, or when Jung Bahadoor of Nepaul expresses his

intention of visiting Paris, we punish them by docking them of two guns,

or abolishing their salute, according to the magnitude of the offense.

An Order in Council confers upon the High Priest of the Parsees in the

Deccan, “in consideration of his services during the mutiny of 1857,”

the honorary title of “Khan Bahadoor.” A paragraph announces that an

official investigation has been made into the supposed desecration by

Scindia and the Viceroy of a mosque at Agra, and that it has been found

that the place in question was not a mosque at all. Scindia had given an

entertainment to the Viceroy at the Taj Mahal, and supper had been laid

out at a building in the grounds. The native papers said the building

was a mosque, but the Agra officials triumphantly demonstrated that it

had been used for a supper to Lord Ellenborough after the capture of

Cabool, and that its name meant “Feast-place.” “Report on the

light-houses of the Abyssinian coast;” “Agreement with the Governor of

Leh,” Thibet, in reference to the trans-Himalayan caravans; the

promotion of one gentleman to be “Commissioner of Coorg,” and of another

to be “Superintendent of the teak forests of Lower Burmah;” “Evidence on

the proposed measures to suppress the abuses of polyandry in Travancore

and Cochin (by arrangement with the Rajah of Travancore);” “Dismissal of

Policeman Juggernauth Ramkam--Oude division, No. 11 company--for gross

misconduct;” “Report on the Orissa famine;” “Plague in Turkey;” “Borer

insects in coffee-plantations;” “Presents to gentlemen at Fontainebleau

for teaching forestry to Indian officers;” “Report on the Cotton States

of America,” for the information of native planters; “Division of

Calcutta into postal districts” (in Bengalee as well as English); “Late

engagement between the Punjaub cavalry and the Afghan tribes;” “Pension

of 3rs. per mensem to the widow (aged 12) of Jamram Chesà, Sepoy, 27th

Bengal N. I.,” are other headings. The relative space given to matters

of importance and to those of little moment is altogether in favor of

the latter. The government of two millions of people is transferred in

three lines, but a page is taken up with a list of the caste-marks and

nose-borings of native women applying for pensions as soldiers’ widows,

and two pages are full of advertisements of lost currency notes.

The columns of the _Gazette_, or at all events its supplements, offer to

government officials whose opinion has been asked upon questions on

which they possess valuable knowledge, or in which the people of their

district are concerned, an opportunity of attacking the acts or laws of

the government itself--a chance of which they are not slow to take

advantage. One covertly attacks the license-tax; a second, under

pretense of giving his opinion on some proposed change in the contract

law, backs the demands of the indigo-planters for a law that shall

compel specific performance of labor-contracts on the part of the

workman, and under penalty of imprisonment; another lays all the ills

under which India can be shown to suffer at the door of the home

government, and points out the ruinous effects of continual changes of

Indian Secretaries in London.

It would be impossible to overrate the importance of the supplements to

the _Gazette_, viewed either as a substitute for a system of

communicated articles to the native papers, or as material for English

statesmen, whether in India or at home, or as a great experiment in the

direction of letting the people of India legislate for themselves. The

results of no less than three government inquiries were printed in the

supplement during my stay in India, the first being in the shape of a

circular to the various local governments requesting their opinion on

the proposed extension to natives of the testamentary succession laws

contained in the Indian Civil Code; while the second related to the

“ghaut murders,” and the third to the abuses of polygamy among the

Hindoos. The second and third inquiries were conducted by means of

circulars addressed by government to those most interested, whether

native or European.

The evidence in reply to the “ghaut murder” circular was commenced by a

letter from the Secretary to the government of Bengal to the Secretary

to the government of India, calling the attention of the Viceroy in

Council to an article written in Bengalee by a Hindoo in the _Dacca

Prokash_ on the practice of taking sick Hindoos to the river-side to

die. It appears from this letter that the local governments pay careful

attention to the opinions of the native papers--unless, indeed, we are

to accept the view that “the Hindoo” was a government clerk, and the

article written to order--a supposition favored by its radical and

destructive tone. The Viceroy answered that the local officers and

native gentlemen of all shades of religious opinion were to be privately

consulted. A confidential communication was then addressed to eleven

English and four Hindoo gentlemen, and the opinions of the English and

native newspapers were unofficially invited. The Europeans were chiefly

for the suppression of the practice; the natives--with the exception of

one, who made a guarded reply--stated that the abuses of the custom had

been exaggerated, and that they could not recommend its suppression. The

government agreed with the natives, and decided that nothing should be

done--an opinion in which the Secretary of State concurred.

In his reply to the “ghaut murder” circular, the representative of the

orthodox Hindoos, after pointing out that the _Dacca Prokash_ is the

Dacca organ of the Brahmos, or Bengal Deists, and not of the true

Hindoos, went on to quote at length from the Hindoo scriptures passages

which show that to die in the Ganges water is the most blessed of all

deaths. The quotations were printed in native character as well as in

English in the _Gazette_. One of the officials in his reply pointed out

that the discouragement of a custom was often as effective as its

prohibition, and instanced the cessation of the practice of

“hook-swinging” and “self-mutilation.”

Valuable as is the correspondence as a sample of the method pursued in

such inquiries, the question under discussion has not the importance

that attaches to the examination into the abuses of the practice of

polygamy.

To prevent an outcry that the customs of the Hindoo people were being

attacked, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal stated in his letters to the

government of India that it was his wish that the inquiry should be

strictly confined to the abuses of Koolin polygamy, and that there

should be no general examination into ordinary polygamy, which was not

opposed even by enlightened Hindoos. The polygamy of the Koolin Brahmins

is a system of taking a plurality of wives as a means of subsistence:

the Koolins were originally Brahmins of peculiar merit, and such was

their sanctity that there grew up a custom of payments being made to

them by the fathers of the forty or fifty women whom they honored by

marriage. So greatly has the custom grown that Koolins have sometimes as

many as eighty wives, and the husband‘s sole means of subsistence

consists in payments from the fathers of his wives, each of whom he

visits, however, only once in three or four years. The Koolin Brahmins

live in luxury and indolence, their wives exist in misery, and the whole

custom is plainly repugnant to the teachings of the Hindoo scriptures,

and is productive of vice and crime. The committee appointed for the

consideration of the subject by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal--which

consisted of two English civilians and five natives--reported that the

suggested systems of registration of marriages, or of fines increasing

in amount for every marriage after the first, would limit the general

liberty of the Hindoos to take many wives, which they were forbidden to

touch. On the other hand, to recommend a declaratory law on plural

marriages would be to break their instructions, which ordered them to

refrain from giving the sanction of English law to Hindoo polygamy. One

native dissented from the report, and favored a declaratory law.

The English idea of “not recognizing” customs or religions which exist

among a large number of the inhabitants of English countries is a

strange one, and productive of much harm. It is not necessary, indeed,

that we should countenance the worship of Juggernauth by ordering our

officials to present offerings at his shrine, but it is at least

necessary that we should recognize native customs by legislating to

restrain them within due limits. To refuse to “recognize” polygamy,

which is the social state of the vast majority of the citizens of the

British Empire, is not less ridiculous than to refuse to recognize that

Hindoos are black.

Recognition is one thing, interference another. How far we should

interfere with native customs is a question upon which no general rule

can be given, unless it be that we should in all cases of proposed

interference with social usages or religious ceremonies consult

intelligent but orthodox natives, and act up to their advice. In Ceylon,

we have prohibited polygamy and polyandry, although the law is not

enforced; in India, we “unofficially recognize” the custom; in

Singapore, we have distinctly recognized it by an amendment to the

Indian Succession Law, which there applies to natives as well as

Europeans. In India, we put down suttee; while, in Australia, we

tolerate customs at least as barbarous.

One of the social systems which we recognize in India is far more

revolting to our English feelings than is that of polygamy--namely, the

custom of polyandry, under which each woman has many husbands at a time.

This custom we unofficially recognize as completely as we do polygyny,

although it prevails only on the Malabar coast, and among the

hill-tribes of the Himalaya, and not among the strict Hindoos. The

Thibetan frontier tribes have a singular form of the institution, for

with them the woman is the wife of all the brothers of a family, the

eldest brother choosing her, and the eldest son succeeding to the

property of his mother and all her husbands. In Southern India, the

polyandry of the present day differs little from that which in the

middle of the fifteenth century Niccolo de Conti found flourishing in

Calicut. Each woman has several husbands, some as many as ten, who all

contribute to her maintenance, she living apart from all of them; and

the children are allotted to the husbands at the will of the wife.

The toleration of polygyny, or common polygamy, is a vexed question

everywhere. In India, all authorities are in favor of respecting it; in

Natal, opinion is the other way. While we suppress it in Ceylon, even

among black races conquered by us with little pretext only fifty years

ago, we are doubtful as to the propriety of its suppression by the

United States among white people, who, whatever was the case with the

original leaders, have for the most part settled down in Utah since it

has been the territory of a nation whose imperial laws prohibit polygamy

in plain terms.

The inquiries into the abuses of polygamy which have lately been

conducted in Bengal and in Natal have revealed singular differences

between the polygamy of the Hindoos and of the hill-tribes, between

Indian and Mormon polygamy, and between both and the Mohammedan law.

The Hindoo laws, while they limit the number of legal wives, allow of

concubines, and, in the Maharajah case, Sir Joseph Arnould went so far

as to say that polygamy and courtesanship are always found to flourish

side by side, although the reverse is notoriously the case at Salt Lake

City, where concubinage is punishable, in name at least, by death.

Again, polygamy is somewhat discouraged by Mohammedan and Hindoo laws,

and the latter even lay down the sum which in many cases is to be paid

to the first wife as compensation for the wrong done her by the taking

of other wives. Among the Mormons, on the other hand, polygamy is

enjoined upon the faithful, and, so far from feeling herself aggrieved,

the first wife herself selects the others, or is at the least consulted.

Among some of the hill-tribes of India, such as the Paharis of

Bhaugulpoor, polygamy is encouraged, but with a limitation to four

wives.

Among the Mohammedans, the number of marriages is restricted, and

divorce is common; among the Mormons, there is no limit--indeed, the

more wives the greater a man‘s glory--and divorce is all-but unknown.

The greatest, however, of all the many differences between Eastern and

Mormon polygamy lies in the fact that, of the Eastern wives, one is the

chief, while Mormon wives are absolutely equal in legitimacy and rank.

Not only is equality the law, but the first wife has recognized

superiority of position over the others in the Mormon family. By custom

she is always consulted by her husband in reference to the choice of a

new wife, while the other wives are not always asked for their opinion;

but this is a matter of habit, and the husband is in no way bound by her

decision. Again, the first wife--if she is a consenting party--often

gives away the fresh wives at the altar; but this, too, is a mere

custom. The fact that in India one of the wives generally occupies a

position of far higher dignity than that held by the others will make

Indian polygamy easy to destroy by the lapse of time and operation of

social and moral causes. As the city-dwelling natives come to mix more

with the Europeans, they will find that only one of their wives will be

generally recognized. This will tend of itself to repress polygamy among

the wealthy native merchants and among the rajahs who are members of our

various councils, and their example will gradually react upon the body

of the natives. Already a majority of the married people of India are

monogamists by practice, although polygamists in theory; their marriages

being limited by poverty, although not by law. The classes which have to

be reached are the noble families, the merchants, and the priests; and

over the two former European influence is considerable, while the

inquiry into Koolinism has proved that the leading natives will aid us

in repressing the abuses of polygamy among the priests.

CHAPTER X.

UMRITSUR.

At Umbala, I heard that the Sikh pilgrims returning from the sacred

fair, or great Hindoo camp-meeting, at Hurdwar, had been attacked by

cholera, and excluded from the town; and as I quitted Umbala in the

evening, I came upon the cholera-stricken train of pilgrims escaping by

forced marches toward their homes, in many cases a thousand miles away.

Tall, lithe, long-bearded men with large hooked noses, high foreheads,

and thin lips, stalked along, leading by one hand their veiled women,

who ran behind, their crimson and orange trowsers stained with the dust

of travel, while bullock-carts decked out with jingling bells bore the

tired and the sick. Many children of all ages were in the throng. For

mile after mile I drove through their ranks, as they marched with a

strange kind of weary haste, and marched, too, with few halts, with

little rest, if any. One great camp we left behind us, but only one; and

all night long we were still passing ranks of marching men and women.

The march was silent; there was none of the usual chatter of an Indian

crowd; gloom was in every face, and the people marched like a beaten

army flying from a destroying foe.

The disease, indeed, was pressing on their heels. Two hundred men and

women, as I was told at the Umbala lines, had died among them in the

single day. Many had dropped from fright alone, but the pestilence was

in the horde, and its seeds were carried into whatever villages the

pilgrims reached.

The gathering at Hurdwar had been attended by a million people drawn

from every part of the Punjaub and Northwest; not only Hindoos and

Sikhs, but Scindhees, Beloochees, Pathans, and Afghans had their

representatives in this great throng. As we neared the bridge of boats

across the Sutlej, I found that a hurried quarantine had been set up on

the spot. Only the sick or dying and bearers of corpses were detained,

however; a few questions were asked of the remainder, and ultimately

they were allowed to cross; but driving on at speed, I reached Jullundur

in the morning, only to find that the pilgrims had been denied

admittance to the town. A camp had been formed without the city, to

which the pilgrims had to go, unless they preferred to straggle on along

the roads, dropping and dying by the way; and the villagers throughout

the country had risen on the wretched people, to prevent them returning

to their homes.

It is not strange that the government of India should lately have turned

its attention to the regulation or suppression of these fairs, for the

city-dwelling people of North India will not continue long to tolerate

enormous gatherings at the commencement of the hot weather, by which the

lives of thousands must ultimately be lost. At Hurdwar, at Juggernauth,

and at many other holy spots, hundreds of thousands--millions, not

unfrequently--are collected yearly from all parts of India. Great

princes come down traveling slowly from their capitals with trains of

troops and followers so long that they often take a day or more to pass

a given spot. The Maharajah of Cashmere‘s camp between Kalka and Umbala

occupied when I saw it more space than that of Aldershot. Camels, women,

sutlers without count, follow in the train, so that a body of five

thousand men is multiplied until it occupies the space and requires the

equipments of a vast army. A huge multitude of cultivators, of princes,

of fakeers, and of roisterers met for the excitement and the pleasures

of the camp is gathered about the holy spot. There is religion, and

there is trade; indeed, the religious pilgrims are for the most part

shrewd traders, bent on making a good profit from their visit to the

fair.

The gathering at Hurdwar in 1867 had been more than usually well

attended and successful, when suddenly a rumor of cholera was heard; the

police procured the break-up of the camp, and government thought fit to

prohibit the visit to Simla of the Maharajah of Cashmere. The pilgrims

had hardly left the camp upon their journey home when cholera broke out,

and by the time I passed them hundreds were already dead, and a panic

had spread through India. The cholera soon followed the rumor, and

spread even to the healthiest hill-towns, and 6000 deaths occurred in

the city of Srinuggur, after the Maharajah‘s return with his infected

escort from Hurdwar. A government which has checked infanticide and

suppressed suttee could not fail to succeed, if it interfered, in

causing these fairs to be held in the cold weather.

At Jullundur I encountered a terrible dust-storm. It came from the south

and west, and, to judge from its fierceness, must have been driven

before the wind from the great sandy desert of Northern Scinde. The sun

was rising for a sultry day, when from the south there came a blast

which in a minute covered the sky with a leaden cloud, while from the

horizon there advanced, more slowly, a lurid mass of reddish-brown. It

soon reached the city, and then, from the wall where I sought shelter,

nothing could be seen but driving sand of ocher color, nothing heard but

the shrieking of the wind. The gale ceased as suddenly as it began, but

left a day which, delightful to travelers upon the Indian plains, would

elsewhere have been called by many a hard name--a day of lowering sky

and dropping rain, with chilling cold--in short, a day that felt and

looked like an English thaw, though the thermometer must have stood at

75°. Another legacy from the storm was a view of the Himalayas such as

is seldom given to the dwellers on the plains. Looking at the clouds

upon the northern horizon, I suddenly caught sight of the Snowy Range

hanging, as it seemed, above them, half-way up the skies. Seen with a

foreground of dawk jungle in bright bloom, the scene was beautiful; but

the view too distant to be grand, except through the ideas of immensity

called up by the loftiness of the peaks. While crossing the Beeas (the

ancient Hyphasis, and eastern boundary of the Persian empire in the days

of Darius), as I had crossed the Sutlej, by a bridge of boats, I noticed

that the railway viaduct, which was being built for the future Umritsur

and Delhi line, stood some way from the deep water of the river; indeed,

stood chiefly upon dry land. The rivers change their course so often

that the Beeas and Sutlej bridges will each have to be made a mile long.

There has lately been given us in the Punjaub a singular instance of the

blind confidence in which government orders are carried out by the

subordinates. The order was that the iron columns on which the Beeas

bridge was to rest should each be forty-five feet long. In placing them,

in some cases the bottom of the forty-five feet was in the shifting

sand--in others, it was thirty feet below the surface of the solid rock;

but a boring which was needless in the one case and worse than useless

in the other has been persevered in to the end, the story runs, because

it was the “hook‘m.” The Indian rivers are the great bars to road and

railway making; indeed, except on the Grand Trunk road, it may be said

that the rivers of India are still unbridged. On the chief mail-roads

stone causeways are built across the river-beds, but the streams are

all-but impassable during the rains. Even on the road from Kalka to

Umbala, however, there is one river-bed without a causeway, across which

the dawk-gharree is dragged by bullocks, who struggle slowly through the

sand; and, in crossing it, I saw a steam-engine lying half buried in the

drift.

In India, we have been sadly neglectful of the roads. The Grand Trunk

road and the few great railroads are the only means of communication in

the country. Even between the terminus of the Bengal lines at Jubbelpore

and of the Bombay railroad at Nagpore there was at the time of my visit

no metaled road, although the distance was but 200 miles, and the mails

already passed that way. Half a day at least was lost upon all the

Calcutta letters, and Calcutta passengers for Bombay or England were put

to an additional expense of some £30 and a loss of a week or ten days in

time from the absence of 200 miles of road. Until we have good

cross-roads in India, and metaled roads into the interior from every

railway station, we shall never succeed in increasing the trade of

India, nor in civilizing its inhabitants. The Grand Trunk road is,

however, the best in the world, and is formed of soft white nodules,

found in beds through North India, which when pounded and mixed with

water is known as “kunkur,” and makes a road hard, smooth, clean, and

lasting, not unlike to that which asphalt gives.

At Umritsur I first found myself in the true East--the East of myrtles,

roses, and veiled figures with flashing eyes--the East of the “Arabian

Nights” and “Lalla Rookh.” The city itself is Persian, rather than

Indian, in its character, and is overgrown with date-palms,

pomegranates, and the roses from which the precious attar is distilled.

Umritsur has the making of the attar for the world, and it is made from

a rose which blossoms only once a year. Ten tons of petals of the

ordinary country rose (_Rosa centifolia_) are used annually in

attar-making at Umritsur, and are worth from £20 to £30 a ton in the raw

state. The petals are placed in the retort with a small quantity of

water, and heat is applied until the water is distilled through a hollow

bamboo into a second vessel, which contains sandal-wood oil. A small

quantity of pure attar passes with the water into the receiver. The

contents of the receiver are then poured out, and allowed to stand till

the attar rises to the surface, in small globules, and is skimmed off.

The pure attar sells for its weight in silver.

Umritsur is famous for another kind of merchandise more precious even

than the attar. It is the seat of the Cashmere shawl trade, and three

great French firms have their houses in the town, where, through the

help of friends, shawls may be obtained at singularly low prices; but

travelers in far-off regions are often in the financial position of the

Texan hunter who was offered a million of acres for a pair of

boots--they “have not got the boots.”

It is only shawls of the second class that can be bought cheap at

Umritsur; those of the finest quality vary in price from £40 to £250,

£30 being the cost of the material. The shawl manufacture of the Punjaub

is not confined to Umritsur; there are 900 shawl-making shops in

Loodiana, I was told while there. There are more than sixty permanent

dyes in use at the Umritsur shawl-shops; cochineal, indigo, log-wood,

and saffron are the commonest and best. The shawls are made of the down

which underlies the hair of the “shawl-goat” of the higher levels. The

yak, the camel, and the dog of the Himalayas, all possess this down as

well as their hair or wool; it serves them as a protection against the

winter cold. _Chogas_--long cloaks used as dressing-gowns by

Europeans--are also made in Umritsur, from the soft wool of the Bokhara

camel, for Umritsur is now the headquarters of the Central Asian trade

with Hindostan.

The bazaar is the gayest and most bustling in India--the goods of all

India and Central Asia are there. Dacca muslin--known as “woven

air”--lies side by side with thick chogas of kinkob and embroidered

Cashmere, Indian towels of coarse huckaback half cover Chinese watered

silks, and the brilliant dyes of the brocades of Central India are

relieved by the modest grays of the soft _puttoo_ caps. The buyers are

as motley as the goods--Rajpoots in turbans of deep blue, ornamented

with gold thread, Cashmere valley herdsmen in strange caps, nautch girls

from the first three bridges of Srinuggur, some of the so-called

“hill-fanatics,” whose only religion is to levy contributions on the

people of the plains, and Sikh troopers, home on leave, stalking through

the streets with a haughty swagger. Some of the Sikhs wear the pointed

helmets of their ancestors, the ancient Sakæ; but, whether he be

helmeted or not, the enormous white beard of the Sikh, the fierce curl

of his mustache, the cock of the turban, and the amplitude of his sash,

all suggest the fighting-man. The strange closeness of the likeness of

the Hungarians to the Sikhs would lead one to think that the races are

identical. Not only are they alike in build, look, and warlike habits,

but they brush their beards in the same fashion, and these little

customs endure longer than manners--longer, often, than religion itself.

One of the crowd was a ruddy-faced, red-bearded, Judas-haired fellow,

that looked every inch a Fenian, and might have stepped here from the

Kilkenny wilds; but the majority of the Sikhs had aquiline noses and

fine features, so completely Jewish of the best and oldest type that I

was reminded of Sir William Jones‘s fanciful derivation of the Afghan

races from the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. It may be doubted whether the

Sikhs, Afghans, Persians, ancient Assyrians, Jews, ancient Scythians,

and Magyars were not all originally of one stock.