Читать книгу The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2) - Lady Isabel Burton - Страница 22

A Later Chapter on same events differently told.

When I landed at Bombay (October 28th, 1842), "Momba Devi" town was a marvellous contrast with the "Queen of Western India," as she thrones it in 1887; no City in Europe, except perhaps Vienna, can show such a difference. The old Portuguese port-village temp. Caroli Secundi, with its silly fortifications and useless esplanade, its narrow alleys and squares like places d'armes, had not developed itself into "Sasson-Town," as we may call the olden, and "Frére-Town" the modern moiety.

Under the patriarchal rule of the Court of Directors to the Hon. East Indian Company, a form of torpidity much resembling the paternal government of good Emperor Franz, no arrangements were made for the reception of the queer animals called "cadets." They landed and fell into the knowing hands of some rascals; lodged at a Persian tavern, the British Hotel, all uncleanliness at the highest prices. I had a touch of "seasoning sickness," came under the charge of "Paddy Ryan," Fort Surgeon and general favourite, and was duly drafted into the Sanitary Bungalow—thatched hovels facing Back Bay, whence ever arose a pestilential whiff of roast Hindú, and opened the eyes of those who had read about the luxuries of the East. Life was confined to a solitary ride (at dawn and dusk), a dull monotonous day, and a night in some place of dissipation—to put it mildly—such as the Bhendi bazar, whose attractions consisted of dark young persons in gaudy dress, mock jewels, and hair japanned with cocoa-nut oil, and whose especial diversions were an occasional "row"—a barbarous manner of "town and gown." But a few days, of residence had taught me that India, at least Western India, offered only two specialities for the Britisher; first Shikar or sport, and secondly, opportunities of studying the people and their languages. These were practically unlimited; I found that it took me some years of hard study before I could walk into a bazar and distinguish the several castes, and know something of them, their manners and customs, religion and superstitions. I at once engaged a venerable Parsee, Dosabhai Sohrabji, also a mubid, or priest, as his white cap and coat showed, who had coached many generations of griffs, and under his guidance dived deep into the "Ethics of Hind" (Akhlak-i-Hindi) and other such text-books.

This was the year after the heir-apparent was born; when Nott, Pollock, and Sale revenged the destruction of some 13,000 men by the Afghans; when the Chinese War broke out; when Lord Ellenborough succeeded awkward Lord Auckland; and when Major-General Sir Charles J. Napier, commanding at Poonah, was appointed to Sind (August 25th, 1842), and when his subsequent unfriend, Brevet-Major James Outram, was on furlough to England; lastly, and curious to say, most important of all to me, was the fact that "Ensign Burton" was ranked and posted in the G. G. O. of October 15th, 1842, to the 18th Regiment, Bombay N.I.

Nor was I less surprised by the boasting of my brother officers (the Sepoys had thrashed the French in India and elsewhere, they were the flower of the British army, and so forth)—fine specimen of esprit de corps run mad, which was destined presently to change its tone, after 1857. Meanwhile this loud brag covered an ugly truth. We officers of the Indian army held her Majesty's commission, but the Company's officers were looked upon by the Queen's troops as mere auxiliaries, locals without general rank, as it were black policemen. Moreover the rules of the service did not allow us to rise above a certain rank. What a contrast to the French private, who carries a Marshal's baton in his knapsack!

Captain Cleland introduced me to his sister, the wife of a field-officer, and she to sundry of her friends, whose tone somewhat surprised me. Here and there a reference was made to my "immortal soul," and I was overwhelmed with oral treatises upon what was expected from a "Christian in a heathen land." And these ladies "talked shop," at least, so it appeared to me, like non-commissioned officers. After Shikar and the linguistics, the only popular pursuit in India is (I should think always was) "Society." But indigestible dinners are not pleasant in a Turkish bath; dancing is at a discount in a region of eternal dog-days; picnics are unpleasant on the "palm-tasselled strand of glowing Ind," where scorpions and cobras come uninvited; horse-racing, like Cicero's "Mercaturi," to be honoured, must be on a large scale; the Mess tiffin is an abomination ruinous to digestion and health; the billiard-table may pass an hour or so pleasantly enough, but it becomes a monotonous waste of time, and the evening bands, or meet at "Scandal Point," is open to the charge of a deadly dullness.

Visits become visitations, because that tyrant Madam Etiquette commanded them about noon, despite risk of sunstroke, and "the ladies" insisted upon them without remorse of conscience. Needless to say that in those days the Gym-hánah was unknown, and that the Indian world ignored lawn-tennis, even croquet.

Another point in Bombay Society at once struck me, and I afterwards found it in the Colonies and most highly developed in the United States. At home men and women live under an incubus, a perfect system of social despotism which is intended to make amends for an unnatural political equality, amongst classes born radically unequal. Abroad, the weight is taken off their shoulders, and they result of its removal is a peculiar rankness of growth. The pious become fanatically one-idea'd, pharisaical, unchristian, monomaniacal. The un-pious run to the other extreme, believe nothing, sneer at the holies, "and look upon the mere Agnostic as a 'slow coach.'" Eccentricity develops itself Bedlam-wards. One of my friends had a mania and swore "By my halidom." Another had an image of Gánpati over his door, which he never passed without the prayer, "Shri ganeshayá Hamahá" ("I bow to auspicious Janus"). A third, of whom I heard, had studied Aristotle in Arabic, and when shown the "Novum Organon," asked, indignantly, "who the fellow might be that talked such stuff." And in matters of honesty the social idea was somewhat lax; to sell a spavined horse to a friend was considered a good joke, and to pass off plated wares for real silver was looked upon as only a trifle too "smart." The Press faithfully reflected these nuances with a little extra violence and virulence of its own. By-the-by, I must not forget making the acquaintance of a typical Scot, Dr. Buist (afterwards Sir Charles Napier's "blatant beast of the Bombay Times"). He wrote much (so badly that only one clerk could read it) and washed little; and as age advanced he married a young wife.

After a month or so at Bombay, chiefly spent in mugging "Hindostani," and in providing myself with the necessaries of life—servants, headed by Salvador Soares, a handsome Goanese; a horse, in the shape of a dun-coloured Kattywár nag; also a "horsekeeper," a dog, a tent, and so forth—I received my marching orders and set out to "join" my own corps. The simple way of travelling in those days before steam and rail was by palanquin or pattymar. I have described the latter article in "Goa," and I may add that it had its advantages. True it was a "slow coach," creeping on seventy or eighty miles a day, and some days almost stationary; it had few comforts and no luxuries. I began by actually missing "pudding," and have often smiled at the remembrance of my stomach's comical disappointment. En revanche, the study of the little world within was most valuable to the "young Anglo-Indian," and the slow devious course allowed landing at places rarely visited by Europeans. During my repeated trips I saw Diu, once so famous in Portuguese story, Holy Dwarká, guarded outside by sharks and filled with fierce and fanatic mercenaries, and a dozen less interesting spots.

The end of this trip was Tankária-Bunder, a small landing in the Bay of Cambay, a most primitive locale to be called a port, where a mud-bank, adapted for a mooring-stake, was about the only convenience. It showed me, however, a fine specimen of the Ghora, or bore, known to our Severn and other rivers—an exaggerated high tide, when the water comes rushing up the shallows like a charge of cavalry. Native carts were also to be procured at Tankária-Bunder for the three days' short march to Baroda, and a mattress spread below made the rude article comfortable enough for young limbs and strong nerves.

Gujarat, the classical Gujaráhtra, a land of the Gujar clan, which remained the Syrastrena Regio of Arrian, surprised me by its tranquil beauty and its vast natural wealth. Green as a card-table, flat as a prairie, it grew a marvellous growth of trees, which stunted our English oaks and elm trees—

"to ancient song unknown,

The noble sons of potent heat and flood"—

and a succession of fields breaking the glades, of townlets and villages walled by luxuriant barriers of caustic milk-bush (euphorbia), teemed with sights and sounds and smells peculiarly Indian. The sharp bark of Hanu the Monkey and the bray of the Shankh or conch near the bowery pagoda were surprises to the ear, and less to the nose was the blue vapour which settled over the hamlets morning and evening, a semi-transparent veil, the result of Gobar smoke from "cow-chips." A stale trick upon travellers approaching India by sea was to rub a little sandal oil upon the gunwale and invite them to "smell India," yet many a time for miles off shore I have noted that faint spicy odour, as if there were curry in the air, which about the abodes of man seems to be crossed with an aroma of drugs, as though proceeding from an apothecary's store. Wondrous peaceful and quiet lay those little Indian villages, outlaid by glorious banyan and pipal trees, topes or clumps of giant figs which rain a most grateful shade, and sometimes provided by the piety of some long-departed Chief with a tank of cut stone, a baurá or draw-well of fine masonry and large dimensions. But what "exercised" not a little my "Griffin" thoughts was to note the unpleasant difference between villages under English rule and those belonging to "His Highness the Gaikwar" or cowkeeper; the penury of the former and the prosperity of the latter. Mr. Boyd, the then Resident at the local court, soon enlightened me upon the evils of our unelastic rule of "smart Collectors," who cannot and dare not make any allowance for deficient rainfall or injured crops, and it is better to have something to lose, and to lose it even to the extent "of being ousted of possessions and disseized of freehold," with the likely hope of gaining it again, than to own nothing worth plundering.

The end of the march introduced me to my corps, the 18th Regiment, Bombay Native Infantry, whose head-quarters were in Gujarat, one wing being stationed at Mhow, on the Bengal frontier.

The officer commanding, Captain James (C.V.), called upon me at the Travellers' bungalow, the rudimentary Inn which must satisfy the stranger in India, suggesting the while such sad contrast, and bore me off to his bungalow, formally presented me at Mess—then reduced to eight members besides myself—and the Assistant-Surgeon Arnott put me in the way of lodging myself. The regimental Mess, with its large cool Hall and punkahs, its clean napery and bright silver, its servants each standing behind his master's chair, and the cheroots and hookahs which appeared with the disappearance of the "table"-cloth, was a pleasant surprise, the first sight of comfortable home-life I had seen since landing at Bombay. Not so the Subalterns' bungalow, which gave the idea of a dog-hole at which British Ponto would turn up his civilized nose. The business of the day was mainly goose-step and studying the drill book, and listening to such equivocal words of command as "Tandelees" (stand at ease) and "Fiz-bagnat" (fix bayonets). Long practice with the sword, which I had began seriously at the age of twelve, sometimes taking three lessons a day, soon eased my difficulties, and led to the study of native swordsmanship, whose grotesqueness and buffoonery can be rivalled only by its insufficiency.1

The wrestling, however, was another matter, and not a few natives in my Company had at first the advantage of me, and this induced a trial of Indian training, which consisted mainly of washing down balls of Gur (unrefined sugar) with bowls of hot milk hotly spiced. The result was that in a week I was blind with bile. Another set of lessons suggested by common sense, was instruction by a chábuhsawar, or native jockey. All nations seem to despise one another's riding, and none seem to know how much they have to learn. The Indian style was the merit of holding the horse well in hand, making him bound off at a touch of the heel, stopping him dead at a hand gallop, and wheeling him round as on a pivot. The Hindú will canter over a figure-of-eight, gradually diminishing the dimensions till the animal leans over at an angle of 45°, and throwing himself over the off side and hanging by the heel to the earth, will pick up sword or pistol from the ground. Our lumbering chargers brought us to notable grief more than once in the great Sikh War. And as I was somewhat nervous about snakes, I took lessons of a "Charmer," and could soon handle them with coolness.

The Bibi (white woman) was at that time rare in India; the result was the triumph of the Búbú (coloured sister). I found every officer in the corps more or less provided with one of these helpmates.

We boys naturally followed suit; but I had to suffer the protestations of the Portuguese padre, who had taken upon himself the cure and charge of my soul, and was like a hen who had hatched a duckling. I had a fine opportunity of studying the pros and cons of the Búbú system.

Pros: The "walking dictionary" is all but indispensable to the Student, and she teaches him not only Hindostani grammar, but the syntaxes of native Life. She keeps house for him, never allowing him to save money, or, if possible, to waste it. She keeps the servants in order. She has an infallible recipe to prevent maternity, especially if her tenure of office depends on such compact. She looks after him in sickness, and is one of the best of nurses, and, as it is not good for man to live alone, she makes him a manner of home.

The disadvantages are as manifest as the advantages. Presently, as overland passages became cheaper and commoner, the Bibi won and the Búbú lost ground. Even during my day, married men began, doubtless at the instance of their wives, to look coldly upon the half-married, thereby showing mighty little common sense. For India was the classic land of Cicisbeism, where husbands are occupied between ten a.m. and five p.m. at their offices and counting-houses, leaving a fair field and much favour to the sub unattached, and whose duty often keeps the man sweltering upon the plains, when the wife is enjoying the somer-frisch upon "the Hills." Moreover, the confirmed hypocrite and the respectable-ist, when in power, established a kind of inquisitorial inquiry into the officer's house, and affixed a black mark to the name of the half-married. At last the Búbú made her exit and left a void. The greatest danger in British India is the ever-growing gulf that yawns between the governors and the governed; they lose touch of one another, and such racial estrangement leads directly to racial hostility.

The day in Cantonment-way is lively. It began before sunrise on the parade-ground, an open space, which any other people but English would have converted into a stronghold. Followed, the baths and the choti-hazri, or little breakfast, the munshi (language-master), and literary matters till nine o'clock meal. The hours were detestable, compared with the French system—the déjeuner à la fourchette, which abolished the necessity of lunch; but throughout the Anglo-American world, even in the places worst adapted, "business" lays out the day. After breakfast, most men went to the billiard-room; some, but very few, preferred "peacocking," which meant robing in white-grass clothes and riding under a roasting sun, as near the meridian as possible, to call upon "regimental ladies," who were gruff as corporals when the function was neglected too long. The dull and tedious afternoon again belonged to munshi, and ended with a constitutional ride, or a rare glance at the band; Mess about seven p.m., possibly a game of whist, and a stroll home under the marvellous Gujarat skies, through a scene of perfect loveliness, a paradise bounded by the whity-black line.

There was little variety in such days. At times we rode to Baroda City, which seemed like a Mansion, to which the Cantonment acted as porter's Lodge. "Good Water" (as the Sanskritists translate it) was a walled City, lying on the north bank of the Vishwamitra river, and containing some 150,000 souls, mostly hostile, who eyed us with hateful eyes, and who seemed to have taught even their animals to abhor us. The City is a mélange of low huts and tall houses, grotesquely painted, with a shabby palace, and a Chauk, or Bazar, where four streets meet. At times H.M. the Gaikwar would show us what was called sport—a fight between two elephants with cut tusks, or a caged tiger and a buffalo—the last being generally the winner—or a wrangle between two fierce stallions, which bit like camels. The cock-fighting was, however, of a superior kind, the birds being of first-class blood, and so well trained, that they never hesitated to attack a stranger. An occasional picnic, for hunting, not society, was a most pleasant treat. The native Prince would always lend us his cheetahs or hunting leopards, or his elephants; the jungles inland of the city swarmed with game, from a snipe to a tiger, and the broad plains to the north were packs of nilghai and the glorious black buck. About twenty-eight miles due east, rises high above the sea of verdure the picturesque hill known as Pávangarh, the Fort of Eolus, and the centre of an old Civilization. Tanks and Jain temples were scattered around it, and the ruins of Champenír City cumbered the base. In a more progressive society, this place, 2500 feet high, and cooler by 18° to 20° F., would have become a kind of sanitarium. But men, apparently, could not agree. When the Baroda races came round, Major C. Crawley, commanding the 4th Bombay Rifles, used, in consequence of some fancied slight, to openly ride out of cantonment; and Brigadier Gibbons, the commander, did nothing for society. But the crowning excitement of the season was the report of Sir Charles Napier's battle of Miani (February 21st), followed by the affair of Dubba (March 25th), the "tail of the Afghan War." The account seemed to act as an electric shock upon the English frame, followed by a deep depression and a sense of mortal injury at the hands of Fate in keeping us out of the fray.

At length, in April, 1843, I obtained two months' leave of absence to the Presidency, for the purpose of passing an examination in Hindostani. The function was held at the Town Hall. Major-General Vans-Kennedy presided, a queer old man as queerly dressed, who had given his life to Orientalism, and who had printed some very respectable studies of Hinduism. The examining munshi, Mohammed "Mucklá," was no friend to me, because I was coached by a rival, old Dosabhai, yet he could not prevent my distancing a field of eleven. This happened on May 5th, and on May 12th I had laid in a full supply of Gujarati books, and set out by the old road to rejoin.

If Baroda was dull and dreary during the dries, it was mortal during the rains. I had been compelled to change my quarters for a bigger bungalow, close to the bank of the nullah which bounded the camp to the east and fed the Vishwamitra. It was an ill-omened place; an English officer had been wounded in it, and the lintel still bore the mark of a sabre which some native ruffian had left, intending to split a Serjeant's head. Other quarters in the cantonment were obliged to keep one ramosi, alias Paggi, a tracker, a temporarily reformed thief who keeps off other thieves; my bungalow required two. An ignoble position for a dominant race, this openly paying blackmail and compounding felony. The rule of the good Company was, however, not a rule of honour, but of expediency, and the safety of its officers was little regarded; they were stabbed in their tents, or cut down by dacoits, even when travelling on the highways of Gujarat. Long and loudly the survivors hoped that some fine day a bishop or a Director's son would come to grief, and when this happened at last the process was summarily stopped. Indeed, nothing was easier to find than a remedy. A heavy fine was imposed upon the district in which the outrage was committed. By such means, Mohammed Ali of Egypt made the Suez Desert safer than a London street, and Sir Charles Napier pacified Sind, and made deeds of violence unknown—by means not such as Earl Russell virtually encouraged the robber-shepherds of Greece to plunder and murder English travellers.

The monsoon,2 as it is most incorrectly termed, completely changes the tenor of Anglo-Indian life. It is ushered in by a display of "insect youth" which would have astonished Egypt in the age of the plagues, "flying bugs," and so forth. At Mess every tumbler was protected by a silver lid. And when the downfall begins it suggests that the "fountains of the great deep" have been opened up. I have seen tropical rains in many a region near the Line, but never anything that rivals Gujarati. Without exaggeration, the steady discharge of water buckets lasted literally, on one occasion, through seven days and nights without intermission, and to reach Mess we had to send our clothes on, and to wear a single waterproof, and to gallop through water above, around, and below at full speed. This third of the year was a terribly dull suicidal time, worse even than the gloomy month of November. It amply accounted for the card-table surface and the glorious tree-clump of the Gujarat—

"The mighty growth of sun and torrent-rains."

Working some twelve hours a day, and doing nothing but work, I found myself ready in later August for a second trip to the Presidency, and obtained leave from September 10th to October 30th (afterwards made to include November 10th) for proceeding to Bombay, and being examined in the Guzerattee language.3

This time I resolved to try another route, and, despite the warning of abominable roads, to ride down coast viâ Baroch and Surat. I had not been deceived; the deep and rich black soil, which is so good for the growth of cotton, makes a mud truly terrible to travellers. Baroch, the Hindú Brighu-Khatia, or Field of Brighú, son of Brahma, is generally made the modern successor of Ptolemy and Arrian's "Barygaza," but there are no classic remains to support the identification of the spot, nor indeed did any one in the place seem to care a fig about the matter. A truly Hindú town of some twelve thousand souls on the banks of the Nerbudda, it boasted of only one sight, the Kabir-bar, which the English translated "Big Banyan," and which meant, "Banyan-tree of (the famous ascetic and poet) Das Kabir." I remember only two of his lines—

"Máyá mare na man mare, mar mar gaya sarir"

("Illusion dies; dies not the mind, though body die and die")—

Máyá (illusion) being sensuous matter, and old Fakirs express the idea of the modern Hylozoist,4 "All things are thinks." The old tree is hardly worth a visit, although it may have sheltered five thousand horsemen and inspired Milton, for which see the guide-books.

Surat (Surashtra = good region), long time the "Gate of Meccah," where pilgrims embarked instead of at Bombay, shows nothing of its olden splendour.

This was the nucleus of British power on the western coast of India in the seventeenth century, and as early as May, 1609, Captain Hawkins, of the Hector, obtained permission at Agra here to found a factory for his half-piratical countrymen, who are briefly described as "Molossis suis ferociores." They soon managed to turn out the Portuguese, and they left a Graveyard which is not devoid of some barbaric interest—Tom Croyate of the Crudities, however, is absent from it. At Surat I met Lieutenant Manson, R.A. He was going down to "go up" in Maharátta, and we agreed to take a pattymar together. We cruised down the foul Tapti river—all Indian, like West African, streams seem to be made of dirty water—and were shown the abandoned sites of the Dutch garden and French factory, Vaux's Tomb, and Dormus Island. We escaped an Elephanta storm, one of those pleasant September visitations which denote the break up of the "monsoon," and which not unfrequently bestrews the whole coast of Western India with wreckage. This time I found lodging in the Town Barracks, Bombay, and passed an examination in the Town Hall before General Vans-Kennedy, with the normal success, being placed first. The process consisted of reading from print (two books), and handwriting, generally some "native letter," and of conversing and of writing an "address" or some paper of the kind.

Returning Baroda-wards, whence my regiment was transferred to our immense satisfaction to Sind, I assisted in the farewell revelries, dinners and Naches, or native dances—the most melancholy form in which Terpsichore ever manifested herself.

By far the most agreeable and wholesome part of regimental life in India is the march; the hours are reasonable, the work not too severe, and the results, in appetite and sleep, admirable. At Bombay we encamped on the Esplanade, and on January 1st, 1844, we embarked for Karáchi on board the H.E.I.C.'s steamer Semiramis, whose uneventful cruise is told in "Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," chap. I, "The Shippe of Helle." Yet not wholly uneventual to me.

On board of the Semiramis was Captain Walter Scott, Bombay Engineers, who had lately been transferred from commanding in Candeish to the superintendence of the Sind Canals, a department newly organized by the old Conqueror of "Young Egypt," and our chance meeting influenced my life for the next six years. I have before described him. With short intervals I was one of his assistants till 1849. We never had a diverging thought, much less an unpleasant word; and when he died, at Berlin, in 1875, I felt his loss as that of a near relation.

Karáchi, which I have twice described, was in 1844 a mere stretch of a Cantonment, and nothing if not military; the garrison consisting of some five thousand men of all arms, European and native. The discomfort of camp life in this Sahara,5 which represented the Libyan Desert, after Gujarat, the Nile Valley, was excessive, the dust-storms were atrocious,6 and the brackish water produced the most unpleasant symptoms. Parades of all kinds, regimental and brigade, were the rule, and Sir Charles Napier was rarely absent from anything on a large scale.

The Conqueror of Scinde was a noted and remarkable figure at that time, and there is still a semi-heroic ring about the name. In appearance he was ultra-Jewish, a wondrous contrast to his grand brother, Sir William; his countrymen called him Fagan, after Dickens, and his subjects, Shaytan-á-Bhái, Satan's brother, from his masterful spirit and reckless energy. There is an idealized portrait of him in Mr. W. H. Bruce's "Life" (London, Murray, 1885), but I much prefer the caricature by Lieutenant Beresford, printed in my wife's volume, "A.E.I." Yet there was nothing mean in the Conqueror's diminutive form; the hawk's eye, and eagle's beak, and powerful chin would redeem any face from vulgarity.

Sir Charles, during his long years of Peninsular and European service, cultivated the habit of jotting down all events in his diary, with a naïveté, a vivacity, and a fulness which echoed his spirit, and which, with advancing years, degenerated into intemperance of language and extravagance of statement. He was hard, as were most men in those days, upon the great Company he termed the "Twenty-four Kings of Leadenhall Street"—"ephemeral sovereigns;" he quoted Lord Wellesley about the "ignominious tyrants of the East."

In his sixtieth year he was appointed to the command of Poonah (December 28th, 1841), and he was so lacking in the goods of this world that a Bombay house refused to advance him £500. He began at once to study Hindostani, but it was too late; the lesson induced irresistible drowsiness, and the munshi was too polite to awaken the aged scholar, who always said he would give Rs. 10,000 to be able to address the Sepoys. On September 3rd, 1842, he set off to assume his new command in Upper and Lower Sind, and he at once saw his opportunity. Major Outram had blackened the faces of the Amirs, but he wanted to keep the work of conquest for himself, and he did not relish its being done by another. He, however, assisted Sir Charles Napier, and it was not till his return to England in 1843 that he ranged himself on the side of the Directors, whose hatred of the Conqueror grew with his success, and two factions, Outramists and Napierists, divided the little world of Western India.

The battles of Miani and Dubba were much criticized by military experts, who found that the "butcher's bill" did not justify the magnificent periods of Sir William Napier. This noble old soldier's "Conquest of Scinde" was a work of fantaisie; the story was admirably told, the picture was perfect, but the details were so incorrect, that it became the subject of endless "chaff" even in Government House, Karáchi. The corrective was an official report by Major (afterwards General) Waddington, B.O. Eng., which gave the shady, rather than the sunlit side of the picture. And there is still a third to be written. Neither of our authorities tell us, nor can we expect a public document to do so, how the mulatto who had charge of the Amir's guns had been persuaded to fire high, and how the Talpur traitor who commanded the cavalry, openly drew off his men and showed the shameless example of flight. When the day shall come to publish details concerning disbursement of "Secret service money in India," the public will learn strange things. Meanwhile those of us who have lived long enough to see how history is written, can regard it as but little better than a poor romance.

However exaggerated, little Miani taught the world one lesson which should not be forgotten—the sole plan to win a fight from barbarians, be they Belochis, Kafirs, or Burmese. It is simplicity itself; a sharp cannonade to shake the enemy, an advance in line or échelon as the ground demands, and a dash of cavalry to expedite the runaways. And presently the victory led to organizing the "Land Transport Corps" and the "Baggage Corps," two prime wants of the Indian army. Here Sir Charles Napier's skill as an inventor evolved order out of disorder, and efficiency from the most cumbrous of abuses. The pacification of the new Province was marvellously brought about by the enlightened despotism of the Conqueror. Outram had predicted ten years of guerilla warfare before peace could be restored; Sir Charles made it safer than any part of India within a year, and in 1844, when levelling down the canals, I was loudly blessed by the peasants, who cried out, "These men are indeed worthy to govern us, as they work for our good."

But Sir Charles Napier began India somewhat too late in life, and had to pay the penalty. His mistakes were manifold, and some of them miserable. When preparing for the "Truhkee campaign," he proposed to content himself with a "Numero-cent" tent for a Commander-in-Chief! When marching upon Multan, his idea was to quarter the Sepoys in the villages, which would have been destroyed at once; and it was some time before his Staff dared put it in this light.

From over-deference to English opinion, he liberated all the African slaves in Sind and turned them out to starve; it would have been wiser to "free the womb," and forbid importation. He never could understand the "Badli system," where a rich native buys a poor man to be hanged for him who committed the crime, and terribly scandalized Captain Young, the civilian Judge Advocate-General, by hanging the wrong man. Finding that the offended husband in Sind was justified by public opinion for cutting down his wife, he sent the unfortunate to the gallows, and the result was a peculiar condition of society. On one occasion, the anonymas of Hyderabad sent him a deputation to complain "that the married women were taking the bread out of their mouths."

Sir Charles was a favourite among the juniors, in fact, amongst all who did not thwart or oppose him. He delighted in Rabelaisian bon-mots, and the Conte grivois, as was the wont of field-officers in his day; his comment upon a newspaper's "peace and plenty at Karáchi" was long quoted.

After a month of discomfort at Karáchi, rendered more uncomfortable by the compulsory joining of six unfortunate Staff-officers who lost their snug appointments in India,7 we were moved to Gharra—"out of the frying-pan into the fire"—a melancholy hole some forty miles by road north of Head-quarters, and within hearing of the evening gun. I have already described its horror.8 Our predecessors had not built the barracks or bungalows, and we found only a parallelogram of rock and sand, girt by a tall dense hedge of bright green milk-bush, and surrounded by a flat of stone and gravel, near a filthy village whose timorous inhabitants shunned us as walking pestilences.

This, with an occasional temperature of 125° F., was to be our "house" for some years. As I had no money wherewith to build, I was compelled to endure a hot season in a single-poled tent, pitched outside the milk-bush hedge; and after, to escape suffocation, I was obliged to cover my table with a wet cloth and pass the hot hours under it. However, energy was not wanting, and the regimental pandit proving a good school-master, I threw away Sindi for Maráthá; and in October, 1844, I was able to pass my examination in Maráthá at the Presidency, I coming first of half a dozen. About this time Southern Bombay was agitated by a small mutiny in Sáwantwádi, and the papers contained a long service-correspondence about Colonels Outram and Wallace, the capture of Amanghar, and Lieutenant Brassy's descent on Shiva Drug. I at once laid in a store of Persian books, and began seriously to work at that richest and most charming of Eastern languages.

On return to Karáchi, I found myself, by the favour of my friend Scott, gazetted as one of his four assistants in the Sind "Survey," with especial reference to the Canal Department; my being able to read and translate the valuable Italian works on hydro-dynamics being a point in my favour. A few days taught me the use of compass, theodolite, and spirit-level, and on December 10th, 1844, I was sent with a surveying party and six camels to work at Fulayli (Phuleli) and its continuation, the Guni river. The labour was not small; after a frosty night using instruments in the sole of a canal where the sun's rays seemed to pour as through a funnel, was decidedly trying to the constitution. However, I managed to pull through, and my surveying books were honoured with official approbation. During this winter I enjoyed some sport, especially hawking, and collected material for "Falconry in the Valley of the Indus."9 I had begun the noble art as a boy at Blois, but the poor kestrel upon which I tried my "'prentice hand" had died soon, worn out like an Eastern ascetic by the severities of training, especially in the fasting line. Returning northwards, I found my Corps at Hyderabad, and passing through the deserted Gharra, joined the Head-quarters of the Survey at Karáchi in April.

Here I made acquaintance with Mirza Ali Akhbar, who owed his rank (Khan Bahádur) to his gallant conduct as Sir Charles Napier's munshi at Miani and Dubba, where he did his best to save as many unfortunate Beloch braves as possible. He lived outside the camp in a bungalow which he built for himself, and lodged a friend, Mirza Dáud, a first-rate Persian scholar. My life became much mixed up with these gentlemen, and my brother officers fell to calling me the "White Nigger." I had also invested in a Persian munshi, Mirza Mohammad Musayn, of Shiraz; poor fellow, after passing through the fires of Scinde unscathed, he returned to die of cholera in his native land. With his assistance I opened on the sly three shops at Karáchi,10 where cloth, tobacco, and other small matters were sold exceedingly cheap to those who deserved them, and where I laid in a stock of native experience, especially regarding such matters as I have treated upon in my "Terminal Essay" to the "Thousand Nights and a Night,"11 but I soon lost my munshi friends. Mirza Dáud died of indigestion and patent pills at Karáchi; I last saw Mirza Ali Akhbar at Bombay, in 1876, and he deceased shortly afterwards. He had been unjustly and cruelly treated. Despite the high praises of Outram and Napier for the honesty and efficiency of Ali Akhbar,12 the new commission had brought against the doomed man a number of trumped-up charges, proving bribery and corruption, and managed to effect his dismissal from the service. The unfortunate Mirza, in the course of time, disproved them all, but the only answer to his application for being reinstated was that what had been done could not now be undone. I greatly regretted his loss. He had promised me to write out from his Persian notes a diary of his proceedings during the conquest of Scinde; he was more "behind the curtain" than any man I knew, and the truths he might have told would have been exceedingly valuable.

Karáchi was, for India, not a dull place in those days. Besides our daily work of planning and mapping the surveys of the cold season, and practising latitudes and longitudes till my right eye became comparatively short-sighted, we organized a "Survey Mess" in a bungalow belonging to the office "Compound." There were six of us—Blagrave, Maclagan, Vanrenin, and afterwards Price and Lambert—and local society pronounced us all mad, although I cannot see that we were more whimsical than our neighbours. I also built a bungalow, which got the title of the "Inquisition," and there I buried my favourite game-cock Bhujang (the dragon), who had won me many a victory—people declared that it was the grave of a small human. I saw much of Mirza Husayn, a brother of Agha Khan Mahallati, a scion of the Isma'iliyah, or "Old Man of the Mountain," who, having fled his country, Persia, after a rebellion, ridiculous even in that land of eternal ridiculous rebellions, turned condottière, and with his troop of one hundred and thirty ruffians took service with us and was placed to garrison Jarak (Jerruch). Here the Belochis came down upon him, and killed or wounded about a hundred of his troop, after which he passed on to Bombay and enlightened the Presidency about his having conquered Scinde. His brother, my acquaintance, also determined to attack Persia viâ Makran, and managed so well that he found himself travelling to Teheran, lashed to a gun carriage. The Lodge "Hope" kindly made me an "entered apprentice," but I had read Carlisle, "The Atheistical Publisher," and the whole affair appeared to me a gigantic humbug, dating from the days of the Crusades, and as Cardinal Newman expressed it, "meaning a goose club." But I think better of it now, as it still serves political purposes in the East, and gives us a point against our French rivals and enemies. As the "Scinde Association" was formed, I was made honorary secretary, and had no little correspondence with Mr. E. Blyth, the curator of the Zoological Department, Calcutta. Sir Charles Napier's friends also determined to start a newspaper, in order to answer the Enemy in the Gate, and reply to the "base and sordid Bombay faction," headed by the "Rampant Buist," with a strong backing of anonymous officials.

The Karrachee Advertiser presently appeared in the modest shape of a lithographed sheet on Government foolscap, and, through Sir William Napier, its most spicy articles had the honour of a reprint in London. Of these, the best were "the letters of Omega," by my late friend Rathborne, then Collector at Hyderabad, and they described the vices of the Sind Amirs in language the reverse of ambiguous. I did not keep copies, nor, unfortunately, did the clever and genial author.

This pleasant, careless life broke up in November, 1845, when I started with my friend Scott for a long tour to the north of Sind. We rode by the high-road through Gharra and Jarak to Kotri, the station of the Sind flotilla, and then crossed to Hyderabad, where I found my Corps flourishing. After a very jolly week, we resumed our way up the right bank of the Indus and on the extreme western frontier, where we found the Beloch herdsmen in their wildest state. About that time began to prevail the wildest reports about the lost tribes of Israel (who were never lost), and with the aid of Gesenius and Lynch I dressed up a very pretty grammar and vocabulary, which proved to sundry scientists that the lost was found at last. But my mentor would not allow the joke to appear in print. On Christmas Day we entered "Sehwán," absurdly styled "Alexander's Camp." Here again the spirit of mischief was too strong for me. I buried a broken and hocussed jar of "Athenæum sauce," red pottery with black Etruscan figures, right in the way of an ardent amateur antiquary; and the results were comical. At Larkháná we made acquaintance with "fighting FitzGerald," who commanded there, a magnificent figure, who could cut a donkey in two; and who, although a man of property, preferred the hardships of India to the pleasures of home. He had, however, a mania of blowing himself up in a little steamer mainly of his own construction, and after his last accident he was invalided home to England, and died within sight of her shores. At Larkháná the following letter was received:—

"Karáchi, January 3, 1846.

"My dear Scott,

"The General says you may allow as many of your assistants as you can spare to join their regiments, if going on service, with the understanding that they must resign their appointments and will not be reappointed, etc.

"(Signed) John Napier."

This, beyond bazar reports, was our first notice of the great Sikh War, which added the Punjab to Anglo-India. This news made me wild to go. A carpet-soldier was a horror to me, and I was miserable that anything should take place in India without my being in the thick of the fight. So, after a visit to Sahkar Shikarpúr and the neighbourhood, I applied myself with all my might to prepare for the Campaign. After sundry small surveyings and levellings about Sahkar (Sukhur), I persuaded Scott, greatly against the grain, to send in my resignation, and called upon General James Simpson, who was supposed to be in his dotage, and was qualifying for the Chief Command in the Crimea.

My application was refused. Happily for me, however, suddenly appeared an order from Bengal to the purport that all we assistant-surveyors must give sureties. This was enough for me. I wrote officially, saying that no man would be bail for me, and was told to be off to my corps; and on February 23rd, I marched with the 18th from Rohri.

Needless to repeat the sad story of our disappointment.13 It was a model army of thirteen thousand men, Europeans and natives, and under "Old Charley" it would have walked into Multan as into a mutton-pie. We had also heard that Náo Mall was wasting his two millions of gold, and we were willing to save him the trouble. Merrily we trudged through Sabzalcote and Khanpur, and we entered Baháwalpur, where we found the heart-chilling order to retire and to march home, and consequently we marched and returned to Rohri on April 2nd; and after a few days' halt there, tired and miserable, we marched south, viâ Khayrpur, and, after seventeen marches, reached the old regimental quarters in Mohammad Khan Ká Tándá, on the Fulayli river.14

But our physical trials and mental disappointments had soured our tempers, and domestic disturbances began. Our colonel was one Henry Corsellis, the son of a Bencoolen civilian, and neither his colour nor his temper were in his favour. The wars began in a small matter.

I had been making doggrel rhymes on men's names at Mess, and knowing something of the commanding officer's touchiness, passed him over. Hereupon he took offence, and seeing well that I was "in for a row," I said, "Very well, Colonel, I will write your Epitaph," which was as follows—

"Here lieth the body of Colonel Corsellis;

The rest of the fellow, I fancy, in hell is."

After which we went at it "hammer and tongs."

I shall say no more upon the subject; it is, perhaps, the part of my life upon which my mind dwells with least satisfaction. In addition to regimental troubles, there were not a few domestic disagreeables, especially complications, with a young person named Núr Jan. To make matters worse, after a dreadful wet night my mud bungalow came down upon me, wounding my foot.15 The only pleasant reminiscences of the time are the days spent in the quarters of an old native friend16 on the banks of the beautiful Phuleli, seated upon a felt rug, spread beneath a shadowy tamarind tree, with beds of sweet-smelling rayhan (basil) around, and eyes looking over the broad smooth stream and the gaily dressed groups gathered at the frequent ferries. I need hardly say that these visits were paid in native costume, and so correct was it, that I, on camel's back, frequently passed my Commanding Officer in the Gateway of Fort Hyderabad, without his recognizing me. I had also a host of good friends, especially Dr. J. J. Steinhaüser, who, in after years, was to have accompanied me, but for an accident, to Lake Tanganyika, and who afterwards became my collaborateur in the "Thousand Nights and a Night."

The hot season of 1846 was unusually sickly, and the white regiments at Karáchi, notably the 78th Highlanders, suffered terribly. Hyderabad was also threatened, but escaped better than she deserved. In early July I went into "sick quarters," and left my regiment in early September, with a strong case. At Bombay my friend Henry J. Carter assisted me, and enabled me to obtain two years' leave of absence to the Neilgherries.

My munshi, Mohammed Husayn, had sailed for Persia, and I at once engaged an Arab "coach." This was one Haji Jauhur, a young Abyssinian, who, with his wife, of the same breed, spoke a curious Semitic dialect, and was useful in conversational matters. Accompanied by my servants and horse, I engaged the usual pattymar, the Daryá Prashád ("Joy of the Ocean"), and set sail for Goa on February 20th, 1847. In three days' trip we landed in the once splendid capital, whose ruins I have described in "Goa and the Blue Mountains" (1851). Dom Pestanha was the Governor-General, Senhor Gomez Secretary to Government, and Major St. Maurice chief aide-de-camp, and all treated me with uncommon kindness. On my third visit to the place in 1876, all my old friends and acquaintances had disappeared, whilst the other surroundings had not changed in the least degree.

From Goa to Punány was a trip of five days, and from the little Malabar Port, a terrible dull ride of ten days, halts and excursions included, with the only excitement of being nearly drowned in a torrent, placed me at Conoor, on the western edge of the "Blue Mountains." At Ootacamund, the capital of the sanitarium, I found a friend, Lieutenant Dyett, who offered to share with me his quarters. Poor fellow! he suffered sadly in the Multan campaign, where most of the wounded came to grief, some said owing to the salt in the silt, which made so many operations fatal; after three amputations his arm was taken out of the socket. I have noted the humours of "Ooty" in the book before mentioned, and I made myself independent of society by beginning the study of Telugu, in addition to Arabic.

But the sudden change from dry Scinde to the damp cold mountains induced in me an attack of rheumatic ophthalmia, which began at the end of May, 1847, and lasted nearly two years, and would not be shaken off till I left India in March, 1849. In vain I tried diet and dark rooms, change of place, blisters of sorts, and the whole contents of the Pharmacopœia; it was a thorn in the flesh which determined to make itself felt. At intervals I was able to work hard and to visit the adjacent places, such as Kotagherry, the Orange Valley, and St. Catherine's Falls.17 Meanwhile I wrote letters to the Bombay Times, and studied Telugu and Toda as well as Persian and Arabic, and worked at the ethnology of Hylobius the Hillman, whose country showed mysterious remains of civilized life, gold mining included.

"Ooty" may be a pleasant place, like a water-cure establishment to an invalid in rude health; but to me nothing could be duller or more disagreeable, and my two years of sick leave was consequently reduced to four months. On September 1st, 1847, glad as a partridge-shooter, I rode down the Ghát, and a dozen days later made Calicut, the old capital of Camoens' "Jamorim," the Samriry Rajah. Here I was kindly received, and sent to visit old Calicut and other sights, by Mr. Collector Conolly, whom a Madras civilianship could not defend from Fate. A short time after my departure he was set upon and barbarously murdered in his own verandah, by a band of villain Moplahs,18 a bastard race got by Arab sires on Hindú dams. He was thus the third of the gallant brothers who came to violent end.

This visit gave me a good opportunity of studying on the spot the most remarkable scene of "The Lusiads," and it afterwards served me in good stead. The Seaforth, Captain Biggs, carried me to Bombay, after passing visits to Mangalore and Goa, in three days of ugly monsoon weather. On October 15th I passed in Persian at the Town Hall, coming out first of some thirty, with a compliment from the examiners; and this was succeeded by something more substantial, in the shape of an "honorarium" of Rs. 1000 from the Court of Directors.

This bright side of the medal had its reverse. A friend, an Irish medico, volunteered to prescribe for me, and strongly recommended frictions of citric ointment (calomel in disguise) round the orbit of the eye, and my perseverance in his prescription developed ugly symptoms of mercurialism, which eventually drove me from India.

My return to Scinde was in the s.s. Dwárká, the little vessel which, in 1853, carried me from Jeddah to Suez, and which, in 1862, foundered at the mouth of the Tapti or Surat river. She belonged to the Steam Navigation Company, Bombay, and she had been brought safely round the Cape by the skipper, a man named Tribe. That "climate" had demoralized him. He set out from Karáchi without even an able seaman who knew the Coast; the Captain and his Mate were drunk and incapable the whole way. As we were about to enter the dangerous port, my fellow-passengers insisted upon my taking Command as Senior Officer, and I ordered the Dwárká's head to be turned westward under the easiest steam, so that next morning we landed safely.

My return to head-quarters of the Survey was a misfortune to my comrades; my eyes forbade regular work, and my friends had to bear my share of the burden. However, there were painless intervals when I found myself able to work at Sindí under Munshi Nandú, and at Arabic under Shaykh Háshim, a small half-Bedawin, who had been imported by me from Bombay. Under him also I began the systematic study of practical Moslem divinity, learned about a quarter of the Korán by heart, and became a proficient at prayer. It was always my desire to visit Meccah during the pilgrimage season; written descriptions by hearsay of its rites and ceremonies were common enough in all languages, European as well as native, but none satisfied me, because none seemed practically to know anything about the matter. So to this preparation I devoted all my time and energy; not forgetting a sympathetic study of Sufi-ism, the Gnosticism of Al-Islam,19 which would raise me high above the rank of a mere Moslem. I conscientiously went through the chillá, or quarantine of fasting and other exercises, which, by-the-by, proved rather over-exciting to the brain. At times, when overstrung, I relieved my nerves with a course of Sikh religion and literature: the good old priest solemnly initiated me in presence of the swinging Granth, or Naná Shah's Scripture. As I had already been duly invested by a strict Hindú with the Janeo, or "Brahminical thread," my experience of Eastern faiths became phenomenal, and I became a Master-Sufi.

There was a scanty hope of surveying for weak eyes; so I attempted to do my duty by long reports concerning the country and the people, addressed to the Bombay Government, and these were duly printed in its "Selections," which MSS. I have by me. To the local branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, there were sent two papers, "Grammar of the Játakí or Mulltani Language," and "Remarks on Dr. Dorn's Chrestomathy of the Afghan Tongue."20 Without hearing of Professor Pott, the savant of Halle (and deceased lately), I convinced myself that the Játs of Scinde, a race which extends from the Indus's mouth to the plains of Tartary, give a clue to the origin of the Gypsies as well as to the Getæ and Massagetæ (Great Getæ).

And this induced me to work with the Camel men, who belong to that notorious race, and to bring out a grammar and vocabulary.

Indeed the more sluggish became my sight, the more active became my brain, which could be satisfied only with twelve to fourteen hours a day of alchemy, mnemonics, "Mantih," or Eastern logic, Arabic, Sindi, and Panjábi. In the latter, official examinations were passed before Captain Stack, the only Englishman in the country who had an inkling of the subject.

The spring of 1848, that most eventful year in Europe, brought us two most exciting items of intelligence. The proclamation of the French Republic reached us on April 8th, and on May 2nd came the news of the murder of Anderson and his companion by Náo Mall of Multan.

His Little Autobiography.

Richard wrote a little bit of autobiography about himself in 1852. In case all may not have seen it, and many may not remember it, I here insert it.