Part 3

It may be useful if I say a word as to the cost of living in India; this has, doubtless, greatly increased within the last ten years, but of course admits of very varied estimate according to a man’s tastes and idiosyncrasies. I _have_ known a subaltern live on 150 rupees a month, which may be set down as the smallest possible sum for a single man, and if you double that sum a young man should live comfortably on it, without being able to indulge in any extravagancies. Many young married couples live on this, but they must exercise great self-denial to do so, and this of course is for current expenditure, and makes no allowance (in their case at least) for first cost of furniture, horses, travelling expenses, &c. The unit of coinage is the rupee, which, though nominally worth 2_s._, is practically given wherever you would in England give 1_s._, or even sometimes 6_d._ But, although this is the case, there is some compensating advantage in the fact, that there is not much temptation to extravagance in India, and that social life in the up-country stations is on an easy and natural footing that prevents any foolish ostentation on the one hand, or on the other, any inability to mix in society on the ground of not being able to afford it. This arises from two causes: First, that few men in India have private fortunes, and anyone may know the amount of his neighbour’s income by simple reference to the pay code. Secondly, that the society, except in a few large places, is so limited that everyone who can make himself or herself agreeable is welcome on that account, and can enjoy hospitality freely without an uneasy sense of obligation arising from inability to return it in kind. On the whole, I think Anglo-Indian society is pleasant and agreeable; few men suffer from _ennui_, or think everything a bore; most of the men are interested in their work and talk a certain amount of shop—not more so, I think, than other men; there are plenty of book clubs at all stations, and most people read a good deal; there are few stations at which sport of some kind is not procurable for those who have leisure for it; and those who can get two or three months’ leave to travel in Cashmere or the Himalayahs will certainly not sigh for Switzerland or the Alps.

While I am on the subject of society, let me disabuse you of the notion still prevailing in the minds of many respectable people, as well as second-rate novelists, that ladies in India are different from their English sisters, and that, when young, they are shipped over to the East like figs, to the market of Hymen. Such fables belong only to the time when every Indian was a nabob, with no liver to speak of, and the complexion of a China orange. Young ladies now go to India, I assure you, for the same reason that other young ladies stay in England,— because their fathers and mothers are there; and stray females, bent on an independent matrimonial cruise, are, alas! things of the past. On the other hand, while the one terrible drawback of Anglo-Indian life is the continual separation of husband and wife, parents and children, I am bold enough to say that those social relations—the former, at any rate—are stronger even than in England, if only on this account, that each is less independent of the other than at home. If Damon and Phyllis have had a quarrel, Damon can’t go to his club, nor Phyllis run to her mamma, to make matters worse; and when each has cooled or sulked a little, Damon remembers the terrible time when they said good-bye to their little ones at Southampton, and Phyllis recalls the intense pleasure of again meeting her husband, after that cruel illness which sent her home when he could not go with her; so they kiss and make friends, and resolve to keep their tempers in better check in future.

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I have often been asked how we travel in India? Well, where there are no railways, and you have a good metalled road, you travel by horse-dâk, as it is termed;—that is, you hire a carriage, which is a four-wheeled cab slightly altered, and engage relays of horses at every five or six miles; and by travelling all night to escape the heat, you manage to accomplish 60 or 70 miles between dinner and breakfast-time pretty comfortably, at a cost of about a shilling per mile.

The horses are an abominable set of brutes, and generally begin by obstinately refusing to stir a step, or, perhaps, lying down in the shafts. Then the native coachman, after patiently undoing the rotten harness and getting the animal once more on his legs, addresses him by all manner of endearing epithets. “Go on, my brother,” (horse doesn’t move); “go on, my son, my brave, my hero,” (no result); a cut with the whip, followed by a vicious kick from the horse. Coachee changes his language—“Go on, you scoundrel—you villain;” a shower of blows, a volley of abuse from the passenger inside, more kicks and plunges from the horse, and finally, by the aid of the whole stable establishment, who push behind, whack the horse, and simultaneously yell like fiends, off you go at the rate of ten miles an hour, the horse never stopping until he gets to the end of his stage.

If there is no road, as happens very often, you must be content with the old-fashioned palanquin or doolie, a species of coffin with doors at the sides, in which you are carried on men’s shoulders at an average rate of three miles per hour, the bearers being changed every ten miles. When I first landed in India, I travelled from Calcutta to Allahabad, a distance of 500 miles, in this way, taking twelve days on the road; the journey being now accomplished by rail in about twenty hours.

After your night’s journey, in which you have probably accomplished some 35 miles, you are glad to espy a solitary house—a dâk-bungalow, as it is termed—in which you can get temporary rest and refreshment; so the doolie is deposited in the verandah; the hot and dusty traveller, who has hardly had a wink of sleep all night, emerges from the inside of the coffin, and summons the native servant, who in white robes and with a venerable grey beard, might sit for a portrait of any of the Old Testament patriarchs. Then ensues something like the following dialogue, which I must translate from the Hindustani, in which it is spoken:—“What can I have for breakfast?” say you.—“Your lordship can have everything.”—“Very well, then, bring me a beef-steak.”—“Beefy-e-steak! nourisher of the poor! how can your slave get any?”—“Well, then, a mutton chop.”—“Mutton-e-chāp! cherisher of the humble! there are none left.”—“Well, what is there?”—“Perhaps, O great king, there may be a fowl.”—“Then get it ready.” Exit the servant, and in another minute you hear a violent _clucking_ in the back-yard, and see the man in hot chase of a venerable cock, who evinces the strongest disinclination to have his few remaining days curtailed to satisfy your unholy hunger. But it is all of no use—he is captured; his head is turned towards Mecca, and the Mahomedan cook, muttering “Bismillah,” “in the name of God the compassionate and merciful,” cuts the fowl’s throat, and in twenty minutes more it is smoking on your table.

And now my watch warns me that I have tried your patience long enough. I have endeavoured to give you some idea of the nature of Anglo-Indian life, and of that country which has so often been described as the brightest jewel in the British Crown. But, after all, the only way to know much of a country is to see it; and I often wonder that more Englishmen do not pay a flying visit to India now that it is so accessible. Many certainly do go there now-a-days for a short time, and are, I am sure, well rewarded for their pains; but they are very, very few in proportion to those who might go, if they only knew how to set about it, and perhaps I cannot conclude my lecture better than by taking you all a journey there on paper, just as if I were Mr. Cook, and you were a party of tourists.

We start from the Waterloo Station and run down to Southampton, going on board one of the fine steamers of the P. & O., as it is always called, which I need not say is short for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. The mails are on board, the last good-byes have been said, and we are steaming down Channel and across the Bay of Biscay, until, on the fifth day, we cast anchor off the Rock of Gibraltar. A few hours’ delay for coaling, and we run on to Malta, and find ourselves in Valetta Harbour, wandering about the quaint old town, eating oranges, buying lace, or examining the old church of St. John, with its relics and monuments that carry us back to the middle ages. Another three days’ run and we are landed at Alexandria, and getting our first peep at the East from the top of a donkey. But the train is ready, and we speed through the flat, fertile country watered by the Nile, cross that muddy and venerable stream which has puzzled all the geographers from Herodotus to Livingstone, get a glimpse of the Pyramids in the distance, and cross that terrible desert which is still what it was when Moses led the Israelites through it more than 3000 years ago; and in twelve hours from the time of leaving the Mediterranean, are on board the other mail steamer in the Red Sea. Six days’ run takes us to its mouth, and we are anchored off Aden, a strong military post built on a barren rock, where we stay a few hours for coaling, and then enter on the last stage of our voyage. Five days’ run across the Indian Ocean and we sight the magnificent harbour of Bombay; and then a little steamer carries us all off to the shore, and we are driving to Pallonjee’s Hotel under a fierce sun, tempered only by the sea-breeze, and through streets thronged by motley crowds of natives, in which the few white men are altogether lost.

From Bombay, the Great Indian Peninsular Railway will take you 600 miles in about twenty-five hours to Jubbulpore, up the steep inclines of the Western Ghat mountains, and through the dense jungles and undulating hills of Central India.

Another run of 220 miles takes you to Allahabad, the modern capital of the North-west Provinces, situated at the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna, a great military and civil station, but dusty and disagreeable. Here resides the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-west Provinces, a territory larger than France, with 30,000,000 inhabitants. From Allahabad we may travel south-east to Calcutta, 600 miles distant, passing Benares, the holy city; Patna, famous for opium; and many others; or north-west to Agra, Delhi, and Lahore; the last, 700 miles distant, the capital of the Punjab, where resides another of our great pro-consuls, as Macaulay calls them, _viz._ the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab.

All these great cities are well worth a visit, containing, as they do, many interesting ruins and architectural remains of the old Hindoo and Mahomedan rulers of the country. Beyond Lahore, where the railway at present terminates, a fine road 260 miles long, will take the traveller across the classic streams of the Punjab, famous for Alexander the Great’s campaigns, up to Peshawur, on the extreme north-west boundary of the empire, where a force of 8000 men keeps watch over the fierce and turbulent races of the neighbouring mountains.

From Umballa, on the Punjab Railway, if the traveller strikes to the east, a good road of 40 miles will take him to the foot of the Himalayahs, whence he can ascend to Simla, situated amongst its groves of pines and rhododendrons, 8000 feet above the sea; and thence through some of the finest mountain scenery in the world, to Cashmere or Thibet, or the frontier of China.

You may vary the homeward route by visiting Calcutta, Madras, and Ceylon, or by going down the Indus to Kurrachee, and thence back to Bombay.

And over all these distances, and through this vast country, the traveller may journey as safely as in any part of Europe, in a healthy, enjoyable climate, if he chooses the proper time, and with his mind expanded by the contemplation of scenery differing widely from anything in the West, and of a state of social and national life which the most superficial glance will assure him is utterly foreign to all his previous experiences.

That, I think, is the chief good of all travel. The experience it brings lifts us out of our old grooves of thought, widens our narrow ideas, teaches us that as God has not made us all with the same coloured skins, so he has given us varieties of national character, which are admirable from their very diversity, and do not make us the less members of one common family, in which He is the great Father of us all.

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For purposes of administration and government India is divided as follows:—The Viceroy and Governor-General of course rules over all, making his head-quarters at Calcutta in the cold weather, and at Simla in the summer. Under him are the Governors of Madras and Bombay, the Lieutenant-Governors of Bengal, the North-west Provinces and the Punjab, with their seats of government at Calcutta, Allahabad, and Lahore respectively; the Chief Commissioners of Oudh, the Central Provinces, Central India, and British Burmah, residing at Lucknow, Nagpore, Indore, and Rangoon; and the Commissioners of Mysore, Hyderabad, and Scinde. Some idea of the extent and importance of these provincial commands may be formed if we consider that Bengal proper, for example, is as large as Germany, and numbers 60 millions of inhabitants.

With regard to the Public Works of the country, their control and direction are confided to a separate department of the State, known as the Public Works Department, at the head of which is a Secretary, styled the Secretary to the Government of India in the P. W. D., and who is, in effect, the consulting engineer and professional adviser to the Viceroy and his council. He is assisted by Deputy-Secretaries for the separate branches of Irrigation, Railways, and Military Buildings.

To the head-quarters of each local government is similarly attached a Secretary, who is at once the mouthpiece and professional adviser of the Lieutenant-Governor or Chief Commissioner, and who, as Chief Engineer, is also head of the whole public works establishment of his province.

Subordinate to him are the Superintending Engineers, who may either have general charge of all the public works of a large district, or, as is more generally the case, are in special charge of some large work, such as a Canal or a Railway. Under the superintending engineers are the Executive Engineers, who are, in effect, the working units of the system. An executive engineer may have a range of new Barracks to build, a line of Road 80 to 100 miles long to keep in repair, or 30 or 40 miles of Canal or Railway to lay out and construct, and for the actual execution of this work he is primarily the responsible man. If the work is a new one, he has to prepare the detailed designs and working drawings under the advice and guidance of his superintendent, to frame the estimates, and to write the reports. When sanctioned, he has to lay out the work, and to find the workmen or contractors to execute it, to control the expenditure, to submit monthly accounts and progress reports, and to conduct a tolerably large correspondence. He will probably have two or three Assistant-engineers, five or six European Overseers, and eight or ten native Sub-Overseers, besides an Office establishment of clerks and accountants.

All the above officials, from the grade of Chief Engineer down to that of Assistant-Engineer, inclusive, are indifferently drawn from officers of the Royal Engineers; Artillery or Line Officers trained at Roorkee; Civil Engineers sent out from England; civilians (European and Native) trained at Roorkee. The promotion from one grade to another is partly by merit and partly by seniority, and has nothing whatever to do with military rank; but care has generally been taken not to have a Royal Engineer officer serving departmentally under his junior.

It may interest some of you if I trace the probable career of a young Royal Engineer, sent to India, say, to what is still called (though improperly) the Bengal Presidency. On landing at Bombay, and reporting himself to the military authorities, he will be directed to proceed to Roorkee, where he will have to do duty with the Bengal Sappers and Miners for a year. This is the order at present, the idea being that in the interval he will acquire some knowledge of the language and of the customs of the country, and, if he is wise, he will make good use of his time; for until he can speak Hindustani pretty fluently, he will find himself very helpless, and all but useless. Roorkee is the head-quarters of the Bengal Sappers, and virtually the head-quarters of the Royal Engineers in the Bengal Presidency. The college over which I have, for some years, had the honour of presiding is at the same station, but is in no way connected with the Sappers, being a public works institution under the civil government, while the Sappers are of course under the Commander-in-Chief.

The Thomason College has been founded about twenty-five years, and now contains about 250 students. There is an engineer class, consisting of a few Artillery and Line officers, and some thirty civilians, who undergo a two years’ training to fit them for the posts of Assistant-Engineers in the P. W. Dept.; another class of officers, who stay only seven months, and are trained for the Quartermaster-General’s Department; a class of soldiers who are trained as Overseers; and a large native class, who are educated as Sub-Overseers, Sub-Surveyors, Estimators, and Draftsmen. Besides the Principal, there are two Royal Engineer Assistants on the staff, two civil Professors of Mathematics and Experimental Science, and two sets of subordinate Masters for the lower classes. There are also a library, model room, and museums in the college, and an excellent press, whence a good many useful works have issued, chiefly relating to Indian engineering.

The Bengal Sappers and Miners are a fine body of men, consisting of twelve companies of native soldiers, recruited from the best and most warlike tribes in Upper India, who have done excellent service wherever they have been employed. Besides their own native officers, English non-commissioned officers are attached to the companies. There is a Commandant, Adjutant, Superintendent of Instruction, and Superintendent of the Park and Field Train, and four doing-duty officers, who are all Royal Engineers, besides the new arrivals attached temporarily to the corps. About half the men are at head-quarters, the remainder in detached companies at Peshawur and elsewhere on the frontier. There is a very fair park and pontoon train attached; also workshops and schools. The men are skilful and intelligent, excellent workmen and good soldiers.

Roorkee also possesses a Foundry and Workshops belonging to Government, which are interesting as having been the first of the kind erected in India, twenty-four years ago, before the introduction of railways. The workmen are all natives, and some of them are remarkably clever and intelligent. They will make anything for anybody, from an iron bridge or a steam engine, down to a railway key; and they turn out excellent spirit levels, prismatic compasses, and so forth. Near Roorkee are also all the greatest works of the Ganges Canal.

Roorkee is a pleasant and healthy station, and many of the young officers stay voluntarily with the Sappers for more than the regular year, as their departmental promotion counts all the same. But generally speaking, before the year is out, the young officer will read in the Gazette of India one fine morning that his services have been placed at the disposal of the P.W. Dept.; and in the next Gazette that he is posted to such or such a province; then a week later, in the local Gazette of that province, he will be posted to a particular circle, and the superintending engineer of that circle will desire him to report himself to some particular executive engineer. The day after his arrival he will find himself employed according to the nature of the work, either surveying and levelling, or drawing plans and making calculations, or in a tent in the middle of the jungles superintending the building of a bridge, with not a soul that can speak a word of English within 30 miles of him. For the next four or five years he will probably be changed about a good deal from one work to another; and if he has proved himself efficient, will then find himself an executive engineer of the fourth grade, and in charge of a division; while, after running through the four executive grades, another ten years or so may carry him on to the higher grade of a superintending engineer.

Generally speaking, a new arrival can select his own line of departmental service, which will depend on his tastes and circumstances. If he has been weak enough to get married before going out, or if he is fond of society, he will select the Military Buildings’ branch, so that he may live in a station; and if he has a speciality for architecture, I should strongly recommend him to do this, for there is a great want of men in that line in India. If, however, he is fond of hard work and knocking about in the jungles, and doesn’t mind a solitary life, he will prefer the Irrigation or Railway branch, and I do not think he will regret his choice, for no man fond of his profession could desire more interesting work, and in the construction of a new line of Canal or Railroad he will every day find scope for his talent or ingenuity or readiness of resource.

Not a few men enter the Survey, which is, however, quite a separate department, divided into three branches,—the Trigonometrical, Topographical, and Revenue,—and the promotion in it proceeds _pari passu_ with that of the Public Works Department.

It may be asked, what are the relations of a Royal Engineer officer, in a department so miscellaneously constituted, to the Civil Engineers and Line officers, with whom he has to work? I think they are generally very friendly and agreeable, and though, of course, it is pleasanter to serve under one’s own brother officers, yet the various members of the department work harmoniously together, and the promotions are generally very fairly made, energetic and clever men being pushed on well.

You will observe that I have said nothing about military engineering works except barracks; in fact, there is very little work of that kind in India. Like the Romans of old, we encamp our troops in open cantonments instead of shutting them up in forts, and what forts there are in the country, for the magazines and arsenals, are almost all old native forts. Of harbour defence works we have scarcely any, for the simple reason that there are scarcely any harbours, except at Bombay, where the subject has recently had much attention directed to it. Whatever military engineering work is required is therefore done as a civil work by the Public Works Department, and all Royal Engineer officers virtually work as civilians, except in the event of war, when those required are at once ordered off to join the army; and though doubtless an officer’s knowledge of military details may be considerably weakened by his long absence from military duty in civil employment, yet the very nature of that employment engenders a quickness and fertility of resource and a sense of responsibility which go far to compensate for that deficiency, and the men who blew in the Cashmere Gate at Delhi, and laid out the defences of the Lucknow Residency, at any rate found their knowledge of military engineering sufficient for the purpose.