Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin Part 34

Starting from Chipana early on the following morning, they continued their rapid descent by Buitenzorg to Batavia; and on the 16th embarked again on board the 'Ferooz,' for Ceylon, where he expected to find an acc.u.mulation of four mails. 'Two months of news!' (he wrote). 'I always feel nervous as to what so long an interval may bring forth.'

[Sidenote: Strait of Sunda.]

'_Ferooz,' at Sea.--February 16th.--One P.M._--We are entering the Strait of Sunda, which separates Java and Sumatra. When through it we have a clear sea-way to Galle. _Two_ P.M.--We have just pa.s.sed the high land which forms the north-western point of Java, and is called Cape St. Nicholas. It is beautifully rich-looking; the bright green of its gra.s.s and crops embroidered over by the darker green of the clumps of trees which are scattered upon it. Farther down to the south, on the same side, is the flat promontory known as Angen Point. On the other side we have the coast of Sumatra, wooded and broken, with mountains in the background, and green islets tossed out from it upon the ocean, in the foreground; and a sailing ship moving along it in the same direction with ourselves, her sails flapping idly in the calm.

_Sunday, February 24th_.--We have just had service on deck, under a double awning. A little fanning breeze from the north-east seemed to say that we are at last getting back into the region of that monsoon which we left when we went to the south of the Line. I have been some days without writing, for there has been nothing to tell, and we have had a good deal of bad weather, rain, and rolling and pitching; but we must not complain, as it was more convenient to have it here in the open sea, than if we had encountered it in a narrow pa.s.sage, such as we have pa.s.sed through. We expect to reach Galle in three days, and I cannot but feel a little nervous as to the news I may find there. We are in G.o.d's hands, and this sort of doubt makes us feel the more that we are so.

[Sidenote: Retrospect of Java.]

Altogether, I was much interested by Java. As I have said, it is ruled entirely for the interest of the governing race. No attempt is made to raise the natives. I _believe_ that the missionaries are not allowed to visit the interior. I asked about schools, and ascertained that in the province of which the regency of Bantong forms a part, and which contains some 600,000 inhabitants, there were five; not, I suspect, much attended. It was clear from the tone of the officials that there was no wish to educate the natives. There is a kind of forced labour.

They pay a t.i.the of the produce of their rice-fields; are obliged (in certain districts) to plant coffee, and to sell the produce at a rate fixed by the Government; in others, to work on sugar estates, and, in all, to make roads. Nevertheless, I am not satisfied that they are unhappy, or that the system can be called a failure. In those districts which I visited there was no appearance of their being overworked; and I was a.s.sured that, on the sugar estates, the proprietors have no power of punishing those who do not work; that it rests with the officials exclusively to do so. The tone of the officials on the subject is, that no punishment is necessary, because, although they are so lazy that if they had the choice they would never do anything, they do not make any difficulty about working when they are told to do so. Economically it is a success. The fertility of the island is very great, so that the labour of the natives leaves a large surplus after their own subsistence is provided for. There are twenty provinces, in each of which the chief officer is the president--a Dutchman; but the native chief (Regent) has the more direct relations with the people, arranges about their labour, &c. The Dutch officials look after him, and see that he does not abuse his power.

[Sidenote: Ceylon.]

Pressing eagerly forward, he reached Ceylon, the scene of so many anxieties and disasters, on the last day of February.

_Ceylon, March 2nd._--I found here your letters to January 10th, and am relieved... Where is our meeting to be?... If I can, I shall take the route through Trieste and Paris.

On the 20th he writes from the neighbourhood of Mount Sinai:--

[Sidenote: Sinai.]

_March 20th.--Noon._--We are now in the Gulf of Suez. On the right side a row of arid mountains with serrated crests, and a margin of flat dry sand at the base, and behind them what is reputed to be Mount Sinai. Only a glimpse of the latter can, however, be caught at one point, where there is a depression in the nearer range. On the left there are mountains of a similar character, overtopped by one 10,000 feet high. The sea is deeply blue and the sun scorching, but the air cool--almost cold. We have had a good deal of wind and sea against us for the last three days; but we pa.s.sed the Straits of Jubal early this morning, and hope to be at Suez during the night.

On the 24th he was once more enjoying the fresh and invigorating breezes of Europe:--

[Sidenote: The Mediterranean.]

_Sunday, March 24th.--On board H.M.S. 'Terrible.'_--Here is a change of scene! The last words of this journal were written in the Gulf of Suez, on board the 'Ferooz.' I now write from the Mediterranean, off the island of Candia, whose snow-capped mountains are looking down upon us; very different from the parched ranges of hills wrapped in perpetual heat haze, which I described to you four days ago.

[Sidenote: Greece.]

_March 26th.--Seven A.M._--I have been about two hours on deck. A beautiful morning, and smooth sea. On our right the coast of Albania, hilly and wooded. On our left the land is low, and covered apparently with olive trees. Before us the southern end of Corfu, which we are approaching. Farther on, the channel along which we are gliding seems to be closed in as a lake, the Corfu mountains and those of Greece overlapping each other. The snow-covered crests of some of the latter gleam in the sunshine. It is a lovely scene. Yesterday we pa.s.sed Cape Matapan, Zante, &c., all on our right; but there was a good deal of wind and sea, and an unusual amount of motion for the 'Terrible.'

Navarino, too, we pa.s.sed; but I did not know it at the time. We propose to call in at Corfu, take in coal, and see what can be seen during the day. But I hope to be off for Trieste to-morrow morning.

[Sidenote: Corfu.]

_March 27th._--We found at Corfu three line-of-battle ships and Admiral Dacres, who came on board to see me. I landed at 11 A.M., and went to the Government House, where I found Sir H. Storks. He took me a drive of about thirteen miles, to the top of a pa.s.s in the mountains called Pantaleone, from which there is a very extensive view. It is a beautiful island. The day bright and sunny. Nothing can be more picturesque than the town. The people, too, seem to me very handsome.

I saw this morning the captain of a sloop-of-war who has been visiting various ports in the Adriatic. He was received at Ancona with a _furore_ of enthusiasm, and exceedingly well treated at Venice, Trieste, &c., by the Austrians, who are burning to revenge themselves on the French, and anxious to ally themselves with us for that purpose.... We have been steaming through a narrow channel, with the snow-covered mountains of Albania on our right; but we are now emerging into the open Adriatic.

[Sidenote: England.]

By Trieste and Vienna he travelled rapidly to Paris, where he was met by Lady Elgin; and on the 11th of April 1861, within a few days of the anniversary of his departure, he found himself once more on British soil.

[Sidenote: Warm reception.]

[Sidenote: Dunfermline.]

The reception which awaited him at home was even warmer than that which he had met with two years before. What gratified him, perhaps, more than any of the many similar expressions of good-will was the cordial welcome with which he was greeted by his old friends and neighbours at Dunfermline: friends from whom he had been, as he told them, so long an unwilling absentee. His answer to their address was the simple and natural expression of this feeling.

It is pleasant (he said)--perhaps it is one of the sweetest flowers we cull on the path of this rugged life--to find ourselves among old friends after a long absence, and to find their hearts beat as true and warm as ever. I am deeply gratified by the flattering terms in which my public services have been referred to in this address, but I am still more gratified by the welcome which you have tendered to me to-day.... Gentlemen, I have been for many years very much, perhaps too much of a wanderer, and it has been my fortune to receive from our countrymen established in different parts of the world tokens of their regard and consideration. The very last address of felicitation I received before I landed at Dover the other day was from a body of my countrymen established in the Philippines--a group of Spanish islands in the far East, near the equator. But allow me to say that among all these tokens, those most grateful and agreeable to me are those which I receive from friends and neighbours at home. And, perhaps, I appreciate these tokens the more highly, because I am conscious that the very fact of my having been so much of a wanderer, has prevented me from acquiring some of those t.i.tles to their personal regard which I might have hoped to establish if I had been constantly resident among them.

[Sidenote: Royal Academy dinner.]

About the same time he was received with marked distinction at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy in London; and the words which he spoke on that occasion have more than a mere pa.s.sing interest, as ill.u.s.trating the speaker's frank and straightforward manner of dealing with a question of great delicacy, and also as containing some striking and suggestive remarks on certain mental and moral peculiarities of the Chinese people.

I am especially gratified (he said) by the great and very unexpected honour which you have done to me in drinking my health, because I trust that I may infer from it that in your judgment, Sir, and in that of this company, I am not so incorrigibly barbarous as to be incapable of feeling the humanising influences which fall upon us from the n.o.ble works of art by which we are surrounded. And, as I have ventured to approach so nearly to the margin of a burning question, I hope that I may be allowed to take one step more in the same direction, and to a.s.sure you that no one regretted more sincerely than I did the destruction of that collection of summer-houses and kiosks, already, and previously to any act of mine, rifled of their contents, which was dignified by the t.i.tle of Summer Palace of the Chinese Emperor. But when I had satisfied myself that in no other way, except, indeed, by inflicting on this country and on China the calamity of another year of war, could I mark the sense which I entertained, which the British army entertained--and on this point I may appeal to my gallant friend who is present here this evening, and who conducted that army triumphantly to Pekin with so much honour to himself and to those under his command--and which, moreover, I make bold in the presence of this company to say, the people of this country entertained--of an atrocious crime, which, if it had pa.s.sed unpunished, would have placed in jeopardy the life of every European in China, I felt that the time had come when I must choose between the indulgence of a not unnatural sensibility and the performance of a painful duty. The alternative is not a pleasant one; but I trust that there is no man serving the Crown in a responsible position who would hesitate when it is presented to him as to the decision at which he should arrive.[2] And now, Sir, to pa.s.s to another topic, I have been repeatedly asked whether, in my opinion, the interests of art in this country are likely to be in any degree promoted by the opening up of China. I must say, in reply, that I do not think that in matters of art we have much to learn from that country, but I am not quite prepared to admit that even in this department we can gain nothing from them. The distinguishing characteristic of the Chinese mind is this--that at all points of the circle described by man's intelligence, it seems occasionally to have caught glimpses of a heaven far beyond the range of its ordinary ken and vision. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to military supremacy when it invented gunpowder, some centuries before the discovery was made by any other nation. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to maritime supremacy when it made, at a period equally remote, the discovery of the mariner's compa.s.s. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to literary supremacy when, in the tenth century, it invented the printing press; and, as my ill.u.s.trious friend on my right (Sir E. Landseer) has reminded me, it has caught from time to time glimpses of the beautiful in colour and design. But in the hands of the Chinese themselves the invention of gunpowder has exploded in crackers and harmless fireworks. The mariner's compa.s.s has produced nothing better than the coasting junk. The art of printing has stagnated in stereotyped editions of _Confucius_, and the most cynical representations of the grotesque have been the princ.i.p.al products of Chinese conceptions of the sublime and beautiful.

Nevertheless, I am disposed to believe that under this ma.s.s of abortions and rubbish there lie hidden some sparks of a diviner fire, which the genius of my countrymen may gather and nurse into a flame.

[Sidenote: Dinner at the Mansion House.]

A few days afterwards, at a dinner given at the Mansion House in his honour, he was again greeted with more than common enthusiasm. In responding, after giving an account of the objects that had been sought and the results that had been achieved in the East, he concluded his speech by impressing on the merchants of England, in words which may be regarded as his final and farewell utterance on the subject, that with them must now chiefly lie the responsibility of aiding or r.e.t.a.r.ding the development of China, and thus of determining the place she shall hold in the commonwealth of nations.

My Lord Mayor (be said), I should be very much to blame if, having an opportunity of addressing an a.s.sembly in this place, I omitted to call attention to the fact that the occasional misconduct of our own countrymen and other foreigners in China is one of the greatest, perhaps the very greatest, difficulties with which the Queen's representatives there have to deal. We send out to that country honourable merchants and devout missionaries, who scatter benefits in every part of the land they visit, elevating and raising the standard of civilisation wherever they go. But sometimes, unfortunately, there slip out from among us dishonest traders and ruffians who disgrace our name and set the feelings of the people against us. The public opinion of England can do much to encourage the one cla.s.s of persons and discourage the other. I trust that the moral influence of this great city will always be exerted in that direction. In addressing the merchants of Shanghai some three years ago, at the time when I announced to them that it was my intention to seek a treaty in Pekin itself if I could not get it before I arrived there, I made this observation--that when force and diplomacy should have effected in China all that they could legitimately accomplish, the work which we had to do in that empire would still be only in its commencement. I repeat that statement now. My gallant friend who spoke just now has returned his sword to the scabbard. The diplomatist, as far as treaty- making is concerned, has placed his pen on the shelf. But the great task of construction--the task of bringing China, with its extensive territory, its fertile soil, and its industrious population, as an active and useful member, into the community of nations, and making it a fellow-labourer with ourselves in diffusing over the world happiness and well-being--is one that yet remains to be accomplished. No persons are more ent.i.tled or more fitted to take a part in that work than the merchants of this great city. I implore them, then, to devote themselves earnestly to its fulfilment, and from the bottom of my heart I pray that their endeavours towards that end may be crowned with success.

[1] Vide supra, p. 310.

[2] It may not be out of place here to quote the words used later in the evening by Sir Hope Grant, in returning thanks for his own health: 'With regard (he said) to what Lord Elgin has said about the destruction of the Summer Palace of the Emperor of China, I must say that I do candidly think it was a necessary act of retribution for an abominable murder which had been committed, and the army, as Well as myself, entirely concurred with him in what he did.'

CHAPTER XV.

INDIA.

APPOINTED VICEROY OP INDIA--FOREBODINGS--VOYAGE TO INDIA--INSTALLATION-- DEATHS OF MR. RITCHIE, LORD CANNING, GENERAL BRUCE--THE HOT SEASON-- BUSINESS RESUMED--STATE OF THE EMPIRE--LETTERS: THE ARMY; CULTIVATION OP COTTON; ORIENTALS NOT ALL CHILDREN; MISSIONARIES; RUMOURS OF DISAFFECTION; ALARMS; MURDER OF A NATIVE; AFGHANISTAN; POLICY OF LORD CANNING; CONSIDERATION FOR NATIVES.

From this time forward the story of Lord Elgin's life is no longer a record of stirring incidents, of difficulties triumphantly overcome, or novel and entangled situations successfully mastered. The career indeed is still arduous, and the toil unremitting, but the course is well-defined. Compared with the varied conflicts and anxieties of the preceding period, there is something of the repose of declining day, after the heat and dust of a brilliant noon; something even, young as he was in years, of the gloom of approaching night. It seems almost as if a shadow, cast by the coming end, rested upon his path.

[Sidenote: Vice-royalty of India.]

He had not been more than a month at home when the Vice-royalty of India, about to be vacated by Lord Canning, was offered to him, in the Queen's name, by Lord Palmerston. The splendid offer of the most magnificent Governorship in the world was accepted, but not without something of a vague presentiment that he should never return from it. This feeling was expressed with his usual frankness and simplicity, when in the course of an address delivered at Dunfermline, some months before his departure, after referring to former partings, uniformly followed by happy meetings, he said:--

[Sidenote: Forebodings.]

But, Gentlemen, I cannot conceal from myself, nor from you, the fact that the parting which is now about to take place is a far more serious matter than any of those which have preceded it; and that the vast amount of labour devolving upon the Governor-General of India, the insalubrity of the climate, and the advance of years, all tend to render the prospect of our again meeting more remote and uncertain.

Independently of any such forebodings, there were sorrows on which it is hardly necessary to dwell, but which were felt keenly by one so devoted to 'that peaceful home-life towards which he was always aspiring;'[1] the pain of tearing himself again from the children now growing up to need in an especial manner a father's presence, and of leaving the mother of these children, for a time at least, to contend alone with cares and anxieties from which it would have been his greatest happiness to shield and protect her. Something, too, there may have been of the depression which breathes in the poet's complaint, 'the roll of mighty poets is made up'--a feeling that the work of pacifying and settling India had been so thoroughly accomplished by Lord Dalhousie and Lord Canning, that the field no longer contained any laurels to be reaped by their successor. 'I succeed,' he used to say, 'to a great man and a great war, with a humble task to be humbly discharged.'

[Sidenote: Visit to Osborne.]

[Sidenote: Sails for India.]

But these thoughts and feelings, though they may have dimmed the brightness of his antic.i.p.ations, could not for long overcloud that 'unfailing cheerfulness' which contributed much to make him throughout life so successful himself, and so helpful to others: still less could they for a moment check the alacrity with which he set himself to prepare for his new duties. For some time he remained in London; after which he spent several pleasant months in Scotland, laying up a store of happy recollections to which his thoughts in after days often turned. Early in January 1862, accompanied by Lady Elgin, he went to Osborne on a visit to the Queen; who even in those early days of widowhood, roused herself to receive the first Viceroy of India ever appointed by the sole act of the Crown. On the 28th of the same month he quitted the sh.o.r.es of England; and, after a rapid and uneventful journey, reached Calcutta on March 12. As Lady Elgin was unable to accompany him, he resumed the habit of conversing with her, so to speak, through the medium of a journal; from which some brief extracts are here given, less for the sake of the few incidents which they record, than for the glimpses which they give into the mind and heart of the writer:-

[Sidenote: Man overboard!]

_H.M.S. 'Banshee.'--Ma.r.s.eilles.--January 31st._--Only think of my writing again from Ma.r.s.eilles! I was breakfasting yesterday, when there was a cry of 'A man overboard!' We went on deck. After a while, the man--who had enormous water-boots on, but who was fortunately a good swimmer--appeared on the surface, caught hold of a life-preserver which had been thrown out to him, was picked up by a boat, and hoisted on board. After a b.u.mper of brandy, he seemed none the worse. But in the meantime we had sprung our _rudder-head_ (the same sort of accident as befell the 'Great Eastern'). It must have been bad, or it could not have gone as it did. The captain said to me: 'We may go on for a few hours, and see what we can do, and then return if necessary.' I did not see the fun of this plan, and suggested that we had better at once find out what was the matter. We returned to port, and, after a long deliberation, a scheme of patching was resolved upon.... It is most vexatious to be doing nothing, when my moments have been of late so precious and so hurried.