Greater Britain Part 35

Some pure Hindostanee words have a comical sound enough to English ears, as "hookm," an order, p.r.o.nounced "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 pa.s.s villages, serais, police-stations, and groups of trees at almost equal intervals. The s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.s, and, turning out with tulwars 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 pa.s.sport, 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 amba.s.sador 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed; 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 peac.o.c.k-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 pa.s.sed 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 coa.r.s.e 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 ill.u.s.tration 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-cla.s.s railway carriage. It is cheaper in Calcutta to be carried by four men in a palki than to ride in a "second-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.ses through his hands. My first introduction to this inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution 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-sh.e.l.ls which do duty as money, for an anna, or 1_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 pa.s.s 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-sh.e.l.ls, however, pa.s.s 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.ses 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.s 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 cas.e.m.e.nt; 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 lat.i.tude 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 pa.s.s 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 Na.s.suck, 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 mult.i.tude 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 a.s.sam. 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 quant.i.ties 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 mult.i.tudes 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 a.s.sam. 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 a.s.sam. 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sam, 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 cla.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sed 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 fetes, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, and they say that there is a professional buffoon attached to every Goorkha regiment. Their full-dress is like that of the French _cha.s.seurs a 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 pa.s.sion.

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."