Greater Britain Part 38

No mere policy of disarmament or of oppression can be worth much as a system for securing lasting peace, for if our Irish constabulary cannot prevent the introduction of Fenian arms to Cork and Dublin, how doubly impossible must it be to guard a frontier of five or six thousand miles by means of a police force which itself cannot be trusted! That prolonged disarmament causes our subjects to forget the art of war is scarcely true, and if true would tell both ways. The question is not one of disarmament, and suppression of rebellion: it is that of whether we can raise up in India a people that will support our rule; and if this is to be done, there must be an end of cuffing.

Were the Hindoos as capable of appreciating the best points of our government as they are of pointing out the worst, we should have nothing to fear in comparison with Russia. Drunken, dirty, ignorant, and corrupt, the Russian people are no fit rulers for Hindostan. Were our rival that which she pretends to be,--a civilized European Power with "a mission" in the East; were she even, indeed, an enlightened commercial Power, with sufficiently benevolent instincts but with no policy outside her pocket, such as England was till lately in the East, and is still in the Pacific,--we might find ourselves able to meet her with open arms, and to bring ourselves to believe that her advance into Southern Asia was a gain to mankind. As it is, the Russians form a barbarous horde, ruled by a German emperor and a German ministry, who, however, are as little able to suppress degrading drunkenness and shameless venality as they are themselves desirous of promoting true enlightenment and education. "Talk of Russian civilization of the East!" an Egyptian once said to me; "why, Russia is an organized barbarism; why--the Russians are--why they are--why--nearly as bad as _we_ are!" It should be remembered, too, that Russia, being herself an Asiatic power, can never introduce European civilization into Asia. All the cry of "Russia!

Russia!" all this magnifying of the Russian power, only means that, the English being the strong men most hated by the weak men of Southern Asia, the name of the next strongest is used to terrify them. The offensive strength of Russia has been grossly exaggerated by alarmists, who forget that, if Russia is to be strong in Bokhara and Khiva, it will be Bokharan and Khivan strength. In all our arguments we a.s.sume that with three-fourths of her power in Asia, and with her armies composed of Asians, Russia will remain a European Power. Whatever the composition of her forces, it may be doubted whether India is not a stronger empire than her new neighbor. The military expenditure of India is equal to that of Russia; the h.o.m.ogeneousness of the Northern Power is at the best inferior to that of India; India has twice the population of Russia, five times her trade, and as large a revenue. To the miserable military administration of Russia, Afghanistan would prove a second Caucasus, and by their conduct we see that the Afghans themselves are not terrified by her advance. The people with whom an Asiatic prince seeks alliances are not those whom he most fears. That the Afghans are continually intriguing with Russia against us, merely means that they fear us more than they fear Russia.

Russia will one day find herself encountering the English or Americans in China, perhaps, but not upon the plains of Hindostan. Wherever and whenever the contest comes, it can have but one result. Whether upon India or on England falls the duty of defense, Russia must be beaten. A country that was fifty years conquering the Caucasus, and that could never place a disposable force of 60,000 men in the Crimea, need give no fear to India, while her grandest offensive efforts would be ridiculed by America, or by the England of to-day. To meet Russia in the way that we are asked to meet her means to meet her by corruption, and a system of meddling Eastern diplomacy is proposed to us which is revolting to our English nature. Let us by all means go our own way, and let Russia go hers. If we try to meet the Russian Orientals with craft, we shall be defeated; let us meet them, therefore, with straightforwardness and friends.h.i.+p, but, if necessary, in arms.

It is not Russia that we need dread, but, by the destruction of the various nationalities in Hindostan by means of centralization and of railroads, we have created an India which we cannot fight. India herself, not Russia, is our danger, and our task is rather to conciliate than to conquer.

CHAPTER XIV.

NATIVE STATES.

Quitting Lah.o.r.e at night, I traveled to Moultan by a railway which has names for its stations such as India cannot match. Chunga-Munga, Wanrasharam, Cheechawutnee, and Chunnoo, follow one another in that order. During the night, when I looked out into the still moonlight, I saw only desert, and trains of laden camels pacing noiselessly over the waste sands; but in the morning I found that the whole country within eye-shot was a howling wilderness. Moultan, renowned in warlike history from Alexander's time to ours, stands upon the edge of the great sandy tract once known as the "Desert of the Indies." In every village, bagpipes were playing through the livelong night. There are many resemblances to the Gaelic races to be found in India; the Hindoo girl's saree is the plaid of the Galway peasantess, or of the Trongate fishwife; many of the hill-tribes wear the kilt; but the Punjaubee pipes are like those of the Italian pfiferari rather than those of the Scotch Highlander.

The great sandy desert which lies between the Indus and Rajpootana has, perhaps, a future under British rule. Wherever snowy mountains are met with in warm countries, yearly floods, the product of the thaws, sweep down the rivers that take their rise in the glaciers of the chain, and the Indus is no exception to the rule. Were the fall less great, the stream less swift, Scinde would have been another Cambodia, another Egypt. As it is, the fertilizing floods pour through the deep river-bed instead of covering the land, and the silt is wasted on the Arabian Gulf. No native State with narrow boundaries can deal with the great works required for irrigation on the scale that can alone succeed; but, possessing as we do the country from the defiles whence the five rivers escape into the plains to the sandy bars at which they lose themselves in the Indian Seas, we might convert the Punjaub and Scinde into a garden which should support a happy population of a hundred millions, reared under our rule, and the best of bulwarks against invasion from the north and west.

At Umritsur I had seen those great ca.n.a.ls that are commencing to irrigate and fertilize the vast deserts that stretch to Scinde. At Jullundur I had already seen their handiwork in the fields of cotton, tobacco, and wheat that blossom in the middle of a wilderness; and if the whole Punjaub and Indus valley can be made what Jullundur is, no outlay can be too costly a means to such an end. There can be no reason why, with irrigation, the Indus valley should not become as fertile as the valley of the Nile.

After admiring in Moultan, on the one hand, the grandeur of the citadel which still shows signs of the terrible bombardment which it suffered at our hands after the murder by the Sikhs of Mr. Van Agnew in 1848, and, on the other hand, the modesty of the sensitive mimosa which grows plentifully about the city, I set off by railway for Sher Shah, the point at which the railway comes to its end upon the banks of the united Jhelum and Chenab, two of the rivers of the Punjaub. The railway company once built a station on the river-bank at Sher Shah, but the same summer, when the floods came down, station and railway alike disappeared into the Indus. Embanking the river is impossible, from the cost of the works which would be needed; and building wing-dams has been tried, with the remarkable effect of sending off the river at right angles to the dam to devastate the country opposite.

The railway has now no station at Sher Shah, but the Indus-steamer captains pick out a good place to lie alongside the bank, and the rails are so laid as to bring the trains alongside the s.h.i.+ps. After seeing nothing but flat plains from the time of leaving Umritsur, I caught sight from Sher Shah of the great Sooleiman chain of the Afghan Mountains, rising in black ma.s.ses through the fiery mist that fills the Indus valley.

I had so timed my arrival on board the river-boat that she sailed the next morning, and after a day's uneventful steaming, varied by much running aground, when we anch.o.r.ed in the evening we were in the native State of Bhawulpore.

While we were wandering about the river-sh.o.r.e in the evening, I and my two or three European fellow-travelers, we met a native, with whom one of our number got into conversation. The Englishman had heard that Bhawulpore was to be annexed, so he asked the native whether he was a British subject, to which the answer was to the effect that he did not know. "To whom do you pay your taxes?" "To the government." "Which government? the English government or the Bhawulpore government?" His answer was that he did not care so long as he had to pay them to somebody, and that he certainly did not know.

Little as our Bhawulpore friend knew or cared about the color of his rulers, he was nevertheless, according to our Indian government theories, one of the people who ought to be most anxious for the advent of English rule. Such has been the insecurity of life in Bhawulpore, that, of the six last viziers, five have been murdered by order of the Khan, the last of all having been strangled in 1862; and no native State has been more notorious than Bhawulpore for the extravagance and gross licentiousness of the reigning princes. The rulers of Bhawulpore, although nominally controlled by us, have hitherto been absolute despots, and have frequently put to death their subjects out of mere whimsy. For years the country has been torn by ceaseless revolutions, to the ruin of the traders and the demoralization of the people; the taxes have been excessive, peculation universal, and the army has lived at free quarters. The Khans were for many years in such dread of attempts upon their lives, that every dish for their table was tasted by the cooks; the army was mutinous, all appointments bought and sold, and the Khans being Mohammedans, no one need pay a debt to a Hindoo.

Bhawulpore is no exceptional case; everywhere we hear of similar deeds being common in native States. One of the native rulers lately shot a man for killing a tiger that the rajah had wounded; another flogged a subject for defending his wife; abduction, adultery, and sale of wives are common among them. Land is seized from its holders without compensation being so much as offered to them; extortion, torture, and denial of justice are common, open venality prevails in all ranks, and no native will take the pledged word of his king, while the revenues, largely made up of forced loans, are wasted on all that is most vile.

In a vast number of cases, the reigning families have degenerated to such an extent, that the scepter has come into the hands of some mere driveler, whom, for the senselessness of his rule, it has at last been necessary to depose. Those who have made idiocy their study, know that in the majority of cases the infirmity is the last stage of the declension of a race worn out by hereditary perpetuation of luxury, vice, or disease the effect of vice. Every ruling family in the East, save such as slave marriages have reinvigorated, is one of these run-down and exhausted breeds. Not only unbounded tyranny and extortion, but incredible venality and corruption, prevail in the greater number of native States. The Rajah of Travancore, as it is said, lately requiring some small bungalow to be added to a palace, a builder contracted to build it for 10,000rs. After a time, he came to apply to be let off, and on the Rajah asking him the reason, he said: "Your highness, of the 10,000rs., your prime minister will get 5000rs., his secretary 1000rs., the baboos in his office another 2000rs., the ladies of the zenana 1000rs., and the commander of your forces 500rs.; now, the bungalow itself will cost 500rs., so where am I to make my profit?" Corruption, however, pervades in India all native inst.i.tutions; it is not enough to show that native States are subject to it, unless we can prove that it is worse there than in our own dominions.

The question whether British or native rule be the least distasteful to the people of India is one upon which it is not easy to decide. It is not to be expected that our government should be popular with the Rajpoot chiefs, or with the great n.o.bles of Oude, but it may fairly be contended that the ma.s.s of the people live in more comfort, and, in spite of the Orissa case, are less likely to starve, in English than in native territory. No nation has at any time ever governed an alien empire more wisely or justly than we the Punjaub. The men who cry out against our rule are the n.o.bles and the schemers, who, under it, are left without a hope. Our leveling rule does not even, like other democracies, raise up a military chieftains.h.i.+p. Our native officers of the highest rank are paid and treated much as are European sergeants, though in native States they would of course be generals and princes.

Want of promotion for sepoys and educated native civilians, and the degrading treatment of the high-caste people by the English, were causes, among others, of the mutiny. The treatment of the natives cannot easily be reformed; if we punish or discourage such behavior in our officers, we cannot easily reach the European planters and the railway officials, while punishment itself would only make men treat the natives with violence instead of mere disdain, when out of sight of their superiors. There is, however, reason to believe that in many districts the people are not only well off under our government, but that they know it. During the native rule in Oude, the population was diminished by a continual outpour of fugitives. The British district of Mirzapore Chowhare, on the Oude frontiers, had a rural population of over 1000 to each square mile--a density entirely owing to the emigration of the natives from their villages in Oude. Again, British Burmah is draining of her people Upper Burmah, which remains under the old rulers; and throughout India the eye can distinguish British territories from the native States by the look of prosperity which is borne by all our villages.

The native merchants and townsfolk generally are our friends. It is unfortunately the fact, however, that the cultivators of the soil, who form three-fourths of the population of India, believe themselves worse off under us than in the native States. They say that they care not who rules so long as their holdings are secured to them at a fixed rent, whereas under our system the zemindars pay us a fixed rent, but in many districts exact what they please from the competing peasants--a practice which, under the native system, was prevented by custom. In all our future land-settlements, it is to be hoped that the agreement will be made, not with middlemen, but directly with the people.

It is not difficult to lay down certain rules for our future behavior toward the native States. We already exercise over the whole of them a control sufficient to secure ourselves against attack in time of peace, but not sufficient to relieve us from all fear of hostile action in time of internal revolt or external war. It might be well that we should issue a proclamation declaring that, for the future, we should invariably recognize the practice of adoption of children by the native rulers, as we have done in the case of the Mysore succession; but that, on the other hand, we should require the gradual disbandment of all troops not needed for the preservation of internal peace. We might well commence our action in this matter by calling upon the native rulers to bind themselves by treaty no longer to keep on foot artillery. In the event of an invasion of Hindostan, a large portion of our European force would be needed to overawe the native princes and prevent their marching upon our rear. It is impossible to believe that the native States would ever be of a.s.sistance to us except in cases where we could do without their help. During the mutiny, the Nepaulese delayed their promised march to join us until they were certain that we should beat the mutineers, and this although the Nepaulese are among our surest friends.

After the mutiny, it came to light that Lucknow and Delhi--then native capitals--had been centers of intrigue, although we had "Residents" at each, and it is probable that Hyderabad and Cashmere City are little less dangerous to us now than was Delhi in 1857.

There is one native State, that of Cashmere and Jummoo, which stands upon a very different footing from the rest. Created by us as late as 1846,--when we sold this best of all the provinces conquered by us from the Maharajahs of Lah.o.r.e to a Sikh traitor, Gholab Singh, an ex-farmer of taxes, for three-quarters of a million sterling, which he embezzled from the treasury of Lah.o.r.e,--the State of Cashmere has been steadily misgoverned for twenty years. Although our tributary, the Maharajah of Cashmere forbids English travelers to enter his dominions without leave (which is granted only to a fixed number of persons every year), to employ more than a stated number of servants, to travel except by certain pa.s.ses for fear of their meeting his wives, to buy provisions except of certain persons, or to remain in the country after the 1st November under any circ.u.mstances whatever. He imprisons all native Christians, prohibits the exportation of grain whenever there is a scarcity in our territory, and takes every opportunity that falls in his way of insulting our government and its officials. Our Central Asian trade has been all-but entirely destroyed by the duties levied by his officers, and Russia is the Maharajah's chosen friend. The unhappy people of the Cashmere valley, sold by us, without their consent or knowledge, to a family which has never ceased to oppress them, pet.i.tion us continually for relief, and, by flocking into our Punjaub territory, give practical testimony to the wrongs they suffer.

In this case of Cashmere, there is ample ground for immediate repurchase or annexation, if annexation it can be called to remove or buy out a feudatory family which was unjustly raised to power by us twenty-two years ago, and which has broken every article of the agreement under which it was placed upon the tributary throne. The only reason which has ever been shown against the resumption by us of the government of the Cashmere valley is the strange argument that, by placing it in the hands of a feudatory, we save the expense of defending the frontier against the dangerous hill-tribes; although the revenues of the province, even were taxation much reduced, would amply suffice to meet the cost of continual war, and although our experience in Central India has shown that many hill-tribes which will not submit to Hindoo rajahs become peaceable at once upon our annexation of their country. Were Cashmere independent and in the hands of its old rulers, there would be ample ground for its annexation in the prohibition of trade, the hinderance to the civilization of Central Asia, the gross oppression of the people, the existence of slavery, and the imprisonment of Christians; as it is, the non-annexation of the country almost amounts to a crime against mankind.

Although the necessity of consolidation of our empire and the progressive character of our rule are reasons for annexing the whole of the native States, there are other and stronger arguments in favor of leaving them as they are; our policy toward the Nizam must be regulated by the consideration that he is now the head of the Moslem power in India, and that his influence over the Indian Mohammedans may be made useful to us in our dealings with that dangerous portion of our people.

Our military arrangements with the Nizam are, moreover, on the best of footings. Scindia is our friend, and no bad ruler, but some interference may be needed with the Guicodar of Baroda and with Holkar. Our policy toward Mysore is now declared, and consists in respecting the native rule if the young prince proves himself capable of good government; and we might impose similar conditions upon the remaining princes, and also suppress forced labor in their States as we have all-but suppressed suttee.

In dealing with the native princes, it is advisable that we should remember that we are no interlopers of to-day coming in to disturb families that have been for ages the rulers of the land. Many of the greatest of the native families were set up by ourselves; and of the remainder, few, if any, have been in possession of their countries so long as have the English of Madras or Bombay.

The Guicodars of Baroda and the family of Holkar are descended from cowherds, and that of Scindia from a peasant, and none of them date back much more than a hundred years. The family of the Nabobs of Arcot, founded by an adventurer, is not more ancient, neither is that of Nizam: the great Hyder Ali was the son of a police-constable, and was unable to read or write. While we should religiously adhere to the treaties that we have made, we are bound, in the interests of humanity, to intervene in all cases where it is certain that the ma.s.s of the people would prefer our rule, and where they are suffering under slavery or gross oppression.

Holkar has permitted us to make a railway across his territory, but he levies such enormous duties upon goods in transit as to cramp the development of trade in a considerable portion of our dominions. Now, the fact that a happy combination of circ.u.mstances enabled the cowherd, his ancestor, to seize upon a certain piece of territory a hundred years ago can have given his descendants no prescriptive right to impede the civilization of India; all that we must aim at is to so improve our governmental system as to make the natives themselves see that our rule means the moral advancement of their country.

The best argument that can be made use of against our rule is that its strength and minuteness enfeeble the native character. When we annex a State, we put an end to promotion alike in war and learning; and under our rule, unless it change its character, enlightenment must decline in India, however much material prosperity may increase.

Under our present system of exclusion of natives from the Indian Civil Service, the more boys we educate, the more vicious and discontented men we have beneath our rule. Were we to throw it open to them, under a plan of compet.i.tion which would admit to the service even a small number of natives, we should at least obtain a valuable body of friends in those admitted, and should make the excluded feel that their exclusion was in some measure their own fault. As it is, we not only exclude natives from our own service, but even to some extent from that of the native States, whose levies are often drilled by English officers. The Guicodar of Baroda's service is popular with Englishmen, as it has become a custom that when he has a review he presents each of his officers with a year's full pay.

Our plan of shutting out the natives from all share in the government not only makes our rule unpopular, but gives rise to the strongest of all the arguments in favor of the retention of the existing native States, which is, that they offer a career to shrewd and learned natives, who otherwise would spend their leisure in devising plots against us. One of the ablest men in India, Madhava Rao, now premier of Travancore, was born in our territory, and was senior scholar of his year in the Madras College. That such men as Madhava Rao and Salar Jung should be incapable of finding suitable employment in our service is one of the standing reproaches of our rule.

Could we but throw open our service to the natives, our government might, with advantage to civilization, be extended over the whole of the native States; for, whether we are ever to leave India or whether we are to remain there till the end of time, there can be no doubt but that the course best adapted to raise the moral condition of the natives is to mould Hindostan into a h.o.m.ogeneous empire sufficiently strong to stand by itself against all attacks from without, and internally governed by natives, under a gradually weakened control from at home. If, after careful trial, we find that we cannot educate the people to become active supporters of our power, then it will be time to make use of the native princes and grandees; but it is to be hoped that the people, as they become well taught, will also become the mainstay of our democratic rule.

The present att.i.tude of the ma.s.s of the people is one of indifference and neutrality, which in itself lends a kind of pa.s.sive strength to our rule. During the mutiny of 1857, the people neither aided nor opposed us; and even had the whole of the land-owners been against us, as were those of Oude, it is doubtful whether they could have raised their villagers and peasants. Were our policemen relatively equal to their officers and to the magistrates, we should never hear of native disaffection, but we cannot count upon the attachment of the people so long as it is possible for our constables to procure confessions by the bribery of villagers or the application of pots full of wasps to their stomachs.

In the matter of the annexation of those native States which still c.u.mber the earth, we are not altogether free agents. We swallow up States like Bhawulpore just as Russia consumes Bokhara. Everywhere indeed, in Asia, strong countries must inevitably swallow up their weaker neighbors. Failure of heirs, broken treaties, irregular frontiers--all these are reasons or a.s.sumed reasons for advance; but the end is certain, and is exemplified in the march of England from Calcutta to Peshawur and of Russia from the Aral to Turkestan. Our experience in the case of the Punjaub shows that even honest discouragement of farther advances on the part of the rulers of the stronger power will not always suffice to prevent annexation.

CHAPTER XV.

SCINDE.

Near Mithun Kote, we steamed suddenly into the main stream of the Indus, the bed of which is here a mile and a quarter wide. Although the river at the time of my visit was rising fast, it was far from being at its greatest height. In January, it brings down but forty thousand cubic feet of water every second, but in August it pours down four hundred and fifty thousand. The river-bed is rarely covered with running water, but the stream cuts a channel for itself upon one sh.o.r.e, and flows in a current of eight or nine miles an hour, while the remainder of the bed is filled with half-liquid sand.

The navigation of the Indus is monotonous enough. Were it not for the climate, the view would resemble that on the Maas, near Rotterdam, though with alligators lining the banks instead of logs from the Upper Meuse; but climate affects color, and every country has tints of its own. California is golden, New Zealand a black-green, Australia yellow, the Indus valley is of a blazing red. Although every evening the Beloochee Mountains came in sight as the sun sank down behind them, and revealed their shapes in shadow, all through the day the landscape was one of endless flats. The river is a dirty flood, now swift, now sluggish, running through a country in which sand deserts alternate only with fields of stone. Villages upon the banks there are none, and from town to town is a day's journey at the least. The only life in the view is given by an occasional sail of gigantic size and curious shape, belonging to some native craft or other on her voyage from the Punjaub to Kurrachee. On our journey down the Indus, we pa.s.sed hundreds of s.h.i.+ps, but met not one. They are built of timber, which is plentiful in the Himalayas, upon the head-waters of the river, and carry down to the sea the produce of the Punjaub. The stream is so strong, that the s.h.i.+ps are broken up in Scinde, and the crews walk back 1000 miles along the bank. In building his s.h.i.+ps upon the Hydaspes, and sailing them down the Indus to its mouth, Alexander did but follow the custom of the country.

The natives, however, break up their s.h.i.+ps at Kotree, whereas the Macedonian intrusted his to Nearchus for the voyage to the Gulf of Persia and a survey of the coast.

Geographically, the Indus valley is but a portion of the Great Sahara.

Those who know the desert well, say that from Cape Blanco to Khartoom, from Khartoom to Muscat, from Muscat to Moultan, the desert is but one; the same in the absence of life, the same in such life as it does possess. The Valley of the Nile is but an oasis, the Gulfs of Persia and of Aden are but trifling breaks in its vast width. Rainless, swept by dry hot winds laden with p.r.i.c.kly sand, traversed everywhere by low ranges of red and sunburnt rocks, strewn with jagged stones, and dotted here and there with a patch of dates gathered about some ancient well, such is the Sahara for a length of near six thousand miles. On the Indus banks, the sand is as salt as it is at Suez, and there are as many petrified trees between Sukkur and Kurrachee as there are in the neighborhood of Cairo.

Our days on board were all pa.s.sed upon one plan. Each morning we rose at dawn, which came about half-past four, and, watching the starting of the s.h.i.+p from the bank where she had been moored all night, we got a cool walk in our sleeping-clothes before we bathed and dressed. The heat then suffocated us quietly till four, when we would rea.s.sert the majesty of man by bathing, and attempting to walk or talk till dinner, which was at five. At dark we anch.o.r.ed, and after watching the water-turtles at their play, or hunting for the monstrous water-lizards known as "gos,"--apparently the ichneumons called in Egypt "gots,"--or sometimes fis.h.i.+ng for great mud-fish with wide mouths and powerful teeth, we would resume our sleeping-clothes (in which, but for the dignity of the Briton in the eyes of the native crew, we should have dined and spent the day).

At half-past seven or eight, we lay down on deck, and forgot our sorrows in sleep, or engaged in a frantic struggle with the c.o.c.kroaches. In the latter conflict we--in our dreams at least--were not victorious, and once in an awful trance I believed myself carried off by one leg in the jaws of a gigantic c.o.c.kroach, and pushed with his feelers down into his horrid hole.

Each hour pa.s.sed on the Indus differs from the others only in the greater or less portion of it which is devoted to getting off the sand-banks. After steaming gallantly down a narrow but deep and swift piece of the river, we would come to a spot at which the flood would lose itself in crossing its bed from one bank to the other. Backing the engines, but being whirled along close to the steep bank by the remaining portion of the current, we soon felt a shock, the recoil from which upset us, chairs and all, it being noticeable that we always fell up stream, and not with our heads in the direction in which the s.h.i.+p was going. As soon as we were fairly stuck, the captain flew at the pilot, and kicked him round the deck--a process always borne with fort.i.tude, although the pilot was changed every day. The only pilot never kicked was one who came on board near Bhawulpore, and who carried a jeweled tulwar, or Afghan scimetar, but even he was threatened. The kicking over, an entry of the time of grounding was made by the captain in the pilot's book, and the mate was ordered out in a boat to sound, while the native soldiers on board the flats we were towing began quietly to cook their dinner. The mate having found a sort of channel, though sometimes it had a ridge across it over which the steamer could not pa.s.s without touching, he returned for a kedge, which he fixed in the sand, and we were soon warped up to it by the use of the capstan, the native crew singing merrily the while. Every now and then, however, we would take the ground in the center of the s.h.i.+p, and with deep water all round, and then, instead of getting off, we for hours together only pivoted round and round. One of the Indus boats, with a line regiment on board, was once aground for a month near Mithun Kote, to the entire destruction of all the wild boars in the neighborhood.

The kicking of the unfortunate pilots was not a pleasant sight, but there were sometimes comic incidents attached to our periodic groundings. Once I noticed that the five men who were constantly sounding with colored poles in different parts of the s.h.i.+p and flats, had got into a monotonous chorus of "panche----e pot" ("five feet")--we drawing only three, so that we went ahead confidently at full speed, when suddenly we ran aground with a violent shock. On the re-sounding of our course by the boat's crew, we found that our pole-men must, for some time past, have been guessing the soundings to save the trouble of looking. These fellows richly deserved a kicking, but the pilots are innocent of any fault but inability to keep pace with the rapid changes of the river-course.

Another curious scene took place one day when we were steaming down a reach in which the river made many sudden twists and turns. We had on board a merchant from the Persian Gulf, a devout Mohammedan. In the afternoon, he carried his praying-carpet on to the bridge between the paddle-boxes, and there, turning to the west, commenced to pray. The sun was on his left, but almost facing him; in an instant, round whirled the s.h.i.+p, making her course between two sand-bars, and Mecca and the sun into the bargain were right behind our wors.h.i.+per. This was too much even for his devotion, so, glancing at the new course, he turned his carpet, and, looking in the fresh direction, recommenced his prayers. After a minute or two, back went the s.h.i.+p, and we began again to steer a southerly course. All this time the Persian kept his look of complete abstraction, and remained unshaken through all his difficulties. This seriousness in face of events which would force into shouts of laughter any European congregation is a characteristic of a native. It is strange that Englishmen are nowhere so easily provoked to loud laughter as in a church or college chapel, natives at no time so insusceptible of ridicule as when engaged upon the services of their religions.

The shallowness of the Indus, its impracticability for steams.h.i.+ps during some months of the year, and the many windings of the stream--all these things make it improbable that the river will ever be largely available for purposes of trade; at the same time, the Indus valley must necessarily be the line taken by the commerce of the Punjaub, and eventually by that of some portions of Central Asia, and even of Southern China. Whether Kurrachee becomes our great Indian port, or whether our railway be made through Beloochistan, a safe and speedy road up the Indus valley for troops and trade is needed.

If we take into consideration the size of India, the amount of its revenues, and the length of time during which we have occupied that portion of its extent which we at present hold, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that not even in Australia have railways been more completely neglected than they have been in India. We have opened but 4000 miles, or one mile for every 45,000 people. Nothing has been touched as yet but the Grand Trunk and great military and postal routes, and even these are little more than half completed. Even the Bombay and Calcutta mail line and the Calcutta and Lah.o.r.e lines are hardly finished; the Peshawur line and the Indus road not yet begun. While at home people believe that the Euphrates Valley Railway is under consideration, they will find, if they come out to India, that to reach Peshawur in 34 N. lat.i.tude they must go to Bombay in 18, if not to Galle in 6. Even if they reach Kurrachee, they will find it a month's journey to Peshawur. While we are trying to tempt the wool and shawls of Central Asia down to Umritsur and Lah.o.r.e, the goods with which we would buy these things are sent round by the Cape of Good Hope and Calcutta.