CHAPTER VII.

THE REMINISCENCES WRITTEN FOR MR. HITCHMAN IN 1888--INDIA.

[Sidenote: _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 friend[16] 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.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _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.

RICHARD BURTON'S LITTLE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

"The only scrap of autobiography we have from Richard Burton's pen," said Alfred Richard Bates, "was written very early in life, whilst in India, and dates thirty years ago. It is so characteristic it deserves to be perpetuated:--

"I extract the following few lines from a well-known literary journal as a kind of excuse for venturing, unasked, upon a scrap of autobiography. As long as critics content themselves with bedevilling one's style, discovering that one's slang is 'vulgar,' and one's attempts at drollery 'failures,' one should, methinks, listen silently to their ideas of 'gentility,' and accept their definitions of wit, reserving one's own opinion upon such subjects. For the British author in this, our modern day, engages himself as clown in a great pantomime, to be knocked down, and pulled up, slashed, tickled, and buttered _à discrétion_ for the benefit of a manual-pleasantry-loving Public. So it would be weakness in him to complain of bruised back, scored elbows, and bumped head.

"Besides, the treatment you receive varies prodigiously according to the temper and the manifold influences from without that operate upon the gentleman that operates upon you. For instance--

"''Tis a _failure_ at being _funny_,' says surly Aristarchus, when, for some reason or other, he dislikes you or your publisher.

"'It is a _smart_ book,' opines another, who has no particular reason to be your friend.

"'Narrated with _freshness of thought_,' declares a third, who takes an honest pride in 'giving the devil his due.'

"'Very _clever_,' exclaims the amiable critic, who for some reason or another likes you or your publisher.

"'There is _wit_ and _humour_ in these pages,' says the gentleman who has some particular reason to be your friend.

"'Evinces considerable _talent_.'

"And--

"'There is _genius_ in this book,' declare the dear critics who in any way identify themselves or their interests with you.

"Now for the extract:--

"'Mr. Burton was, it appears, stationed for several years in Sind with his regiment, and it is due to him to say that he has set a good example to his fellow-subalterns by pursuing so diligently his inquiries into the language, literature, and customs of the native population by which he was surrounded. We are far from accepting all his doctrines on questions of Eastern policy, especially as regards the treatment of natives; but we are sensible of the value of the additional evidence which he has brought forward on many important questions. For a young man, he seems to have adopted some very extreme opinions; and it is perhaps not too much to say, that the fault from which he has most to fear, not only as an author, but as an Indian officer, is a disregard of those well-established rules of moderation which no one can transgress with impunity.'

"The greatest difficulty a raw writer on Indian subjects has to contend with, is a proper comprehension of the _ignorance crasse_ which besets the mind of the home-reader and his oracle the critic. What a knowledge these lines _do_ show of the opportunity for study presented to the Anglo-Indian subaltern serving with his corps! Part of the time when I did duty with mine we were quartered at Ghárrá, a heap of bungalows surrounded by a wall of milk-bush; on a sandy flat, near a dirty village whose timorous inhabitants shunned us as walking pestilences. No amount of domiciliary visiting would have found a single Sindian book in the place, except the accounts of the native shopkeepers; and, to the best of my remembrance, there was not a soul who could make himself intelligible in the common medium of Indian intercourse--Hindostani. An ensign stationed at Dover Castle might write 'Ellis's Antiquities;' a _sous-lieutenant_ with his corps at Boulogne might compose the 'Legendaire de la Morinie,' but Ghárrá was sufficient to paralyse the readiest pen that ever coursed over foolscap paper.

"Now, waiving, with all due modesty, the unmerited compliment of 'good boy,' so gracefully tendered to me, I proceed to the judgment which follows it, my imminent peril of 'extreme opinions.' If there be any value in the 'additional evidence' I have 'brought forward on important questions,' the reader may, perchance, be curious to know how that evidence was collected. So, without further apology, I plunge into the subject.

"After some years of careful training for the Church in the north and south of France, Florence, Naples, and the University of Pisa, I found myself one day walking the High Street, Oxford, with all the emotions which a Parisian exquisite of the first water would experience on awaking--at 3 p.m.--in 'Dandakaran's tangled wood.'

"To be brief, my 'college career' was highly unsatisfactory. I began a 'reading man,' worked regularly twelve hours a day, failed in everything--chiefly, I flattered myself, because Latin hexameters and Greek iambics had not entered into the list of my studies--threw up the classics, and returned to old habits of fencing, boxing, and single-stick, handling the 'ribbons,' and sketching facetiously, though not wisely, the reverend features and figures of certain half-reformed monks, calling themselves 'fellows.' My reading also ran into bad courses--Erpenius, Zadkiel, Falconry, Cornelius Agrippa, and the Art of Pluck.

"At last the Afghan War broke out. After begging the paternal authority in vain for the Austrian service, the Swiss Guards at Naples, and even the _Légion étrangère_, I determined to leave Oxford, _coûte qui coûte_. The testy old lady, Alma Mater, was easily persuaded to consign, for a time, to 'country nursing' the froward brat who showed not a whit of filial regard for her. So, after two years, I left Trinity, without a 'little go,' in a high dog-cart,--a companion in misfortune too-tooing lustily through a 'yard of tin,' as the dons started up from their game of bowls to witness the departure of the forbidden vehicle. Thus having thoroughly established the fact that I was fit for nothing but to be 'shot at for sixpence a day,' and as those Afghans (how I blessed their name!) had cut gaps in many a regiment, my father provided me with a commission in the Indian army, and started me as quickly as feasible for the 'Land of the Sun.'

"So, my friends and fellow-soldiers, I may address you in the words of the witty thief--slightly altered from Gil Blas--'Blessings on the dainty pow of the old dame who turned me out of her house; for had she shown clemency I should now doubtless be a dyspeptic Don, instead of which I have the honour to be a lieutenant, your comrade.'

"As the Bombay pilot sprang on board, twenty mouths agape over the gangway, all asked one and the same question. Alas! the answer was a sad one!--the Afghans had been defeated--the avenging army had retreated! The twenty mouths all ejaculated a something unfit for ears polite.

"To a mind thoroughly impressed with the sentiment that

'Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long,'

the position of an Ensign in the Hon. E. I. Company's Service is a very satisfactory one. He has a horse or two, part of a house, a pleasant Mess, plenty of pale ale, as much shooting as he can manage, and an occasional invitation to a dance, where there are thirty-two cavaliers to three dames, or to a dinner-party when a chair unexpectedly falls vacant. But some are vain enough to want more, and of these fools was I.

"In India two roads lead to preferment. The direct highway is 'service;'--getting a flesh wound, cutting down a few of the enemy, and doing something eccentric, so that your name may creep into a despatch. The other path, study of the languages, is a rugged and tortuous one, still you have only to plod steadily along its length, and, sooner or later, you must come to a 'staff appointment.' _Bien entendu_, I suppose you to be destitute of or deficient in Interest whose magic influence sets you down at once a heaven-born Staff Officer, at the goal which others must toil to reach.

"A dozen lessons from Professor Forbes and a native servant on board the _John Knox_ enabled me to land with _éclat_ as a griff, and to astonish the throng of palanquin bearers that jostled, pushed, and pulled me at the pier head, with the vivacity and nervousness of my phraseology. And I spent the first evening in company with one Dosabhai Sohrabji, a white-bearded Parsee, who, in his quality of language-master, had vernacularized the tongues of Hormuzd knows how many generations of Anglo-Indian subalterns.

"The corps to which I was appointed was then in country quarters at Baroda, in the land of Gujerat; the journey was a long one, the difficulty of finding good instructors there was great, so was the expense, moreover fevers abounded; and, lastly, it was not so easy to obtain leave of absence to visit the Presidency, where candidates for the honours of language are examined. These were serious obstacles to success; they were surmounted, however, in six months, at the end of which time I found myself in the novel position of 'passed interpreter in Hindostani.'

"My success--for I had distanced a field of eleven--encouraged me to a second attempt, and though I had to front all the difficulties over again, in four months my name appeared in orders as qualified to interpret in the Guzerattee tongue.

"Meanwhile the Ameers of Sind had exchanged their palaces at Haydarábád for other quarters not quite so comfortable at Hazareebagh, and we were ordered up to the Indus for the pleasant purpose of acting police there. Knowing the Conqueror's chief want, a man who could speak a word of his pet conquest's vernacular dialect, I had not been a week at Karáchee before I found a language-master and a book. But the study was undertaken _invitâ minervâ_. We were quartered in tents, dust-storms howled over us daily, drills and brigade parades were never ending, and, as I was acting interpreter to my regiment, courts-martial of dreary length occupied the best part of my time. Besides, it was impossible to work in such an atmosphere of discontent. The seniors abhorred the barren desolate spot, with all its inglorious perils of fever, spleen, dysentery, and congestion of the brain, the juniors grumbled in sympathy, and the Staff officers, ordered up to rejoin the corps--it was on field service--complained bitterly of having to quit their comfortable appointments in more favoured lands without even a campaign in prospect. So when, a month or two after landing in the country, we were transferred from Karáchee to Ghárrá--purgatory to the other locale--I threw aside Sindí for Maharattee, hoping, by dint of reiterated examinations, to escape the place of torment as soon as possible. It was very like studying Russian in an English country-town; however, with the assistance of Molesworth's excellent dictionary, and the regimental _pundit_, or schoolmaster, I gained some knowledge of the dialect, and proved myself duly qualified in it at Bombay. At the same time a brother subaltern and I had jointly leased a Persian _moonshee_, one Mirza Mohammed Hosayn, of Shiraz. Poor fellow, after passing through the fires of Sind unscathed, he returned to his delightful land for a few weeks, to die there!--and we laid the foundation of a lengthened course of reading in that most elegant of Oriental languages.

"Now it is a known fact that a good Staff appointment has the general effect of doing away with one's bad opinion of any place whatever. So when, by the kindness of a friend whose name _his_ modesty prevents my mentioning, the Governor of Sind was persuaded to give me the temporary appointment of Assistant in the Survey, I began to look with interest upon the desolation around me. The country was a new one, so was its population, so was their language. After reading all the works published upon the subject, I felt convinced that none but Mr. Crow and Captain J. MacMurdo had dipped beneath the superficies of things. My new duties compelled me to spend the cold season in wandering over the districts, levelling the beds of canals, and making preparatory sketches for a grand survey. I was thrown so entirely amongst the people as to depend upon them for society, and the 'dignity,' not to mention the increased allowances of a Staff officer, enabled me to collect a fair stock of books, and to gather around me those who could make them of any use. So, after the first year, when I had Persian at my fingers'-ends, sufficient Arabic to read, write, and converse fluently, and a superficial knowledge of that dialect of Punjaubee which is spoken in the wilder parts of the province, I began the systematic study of the Sindian people, their mariners and their tongue.

"The first difficulty was to pass for an Oriental, and this was as necessary as it was difficult. The European official in India seldom, if ever, sees anything in its real light, so dense is the veil which the fearfulness, the duplicity, the prejudice, and the superstitions of the natives hang before his eyes. And the white man lives a life so distinct from the black, that hundreds of the former serve through what they call their 'term of exile' without once being present at a circumcision feast, a wedding, or a funeral. More especially the present generation, whom the habit and the means of taking furloughs, the increased facility for enjoying ladies' society, and, if truth be spoken, a greater regard for appearances, if not a stricter code of morality, estrange from their dusky fellow-subjects every day more and more. After trying several characters, the easiest to be assumed was, I found, that of a half-Arab, half-Iranian, such as may be met with in thousands along the northern shore of the Persian Gulf. The Sindians would have detected in a moment the difference between my articulation and their own, had I attempted to speak their vernacular dialect, but they attributed the accent to my strange country, as naturally as a home-bred Englishman would account for the bad pronunciation of a foreigner calling himself partly Spanish, partly Portuguese. Besides, I knew the countries along the Gulf by heart from books, I had a fair knowledge of the Shiah form of worship prevalent in Persia, and my poor _moonshee_ was generally at hand to support me in times of difficulty, so that the danger of being detected--even by a 'real Simon Pure'--was a very inconsiderable one.

"With hair falling upon his shoulders, a long beard, face and hands, arms and feet, stained with a thin coat of henna, Mirza Abdullah of Bushire--your humble servant--set out upon many and many a trip. He was a _bazzaz_, a vendor of fine linen, calicoes, and muslins--such chapmen are sometimes admitted to display their wares, even in the sacred harem, by 'fast' and fashionable dames--and he had a little pack of _bijouterie_ and _virtù_ reserved for emergencies. It was only, however, when absolutely necessary that he displayed his stock-in-trade; generally, he contented himself with alluding to it on all possible occasions, boasting largely of his traffic, and asking a thousand questions concerning the state of the market. Thus he could walk into most men's houses, quite without ceremony; even if the master dreamed of kicking him out, the mistress was sure to oppose such measure with might and main. He secured numberless invitations, was proposed to by several papas, and won, or had to think he won, a few hearts; for he came as a rich man and he stayed with dignity, and he departed exacting all the honours. When wending his ways he usually urged a return of visit in the morning, but he was seldom to be found at the caravanserai he specified--was Mirza Abdullah the Bushiri.

"The timid villagers collected in crowds to see the rich merchant in Oriental dress, riding spear in hand, and pistols in holsters, towards the little encampment pitched near their settlements. But regularly every evening on the line of march the Mirza issued from his tent and wandered amongst them, collecting much information and dealing out more concerning an ideal master--the Feringhee supposed to be sitting in State amongst the _moonshees_, the Scribes, the servants, the wheels, the chains, the telescopes, and the other magical implements in which the camp abounded. When travelling, the Mirza became this mysterious person's factotum, and often had he to answer the question how much his perquisites and illicit gains amounted to in the course of the year.

"When the Mirza arrived at a strange town, his first step was to secure a house in or near the bazar, for the purpose of evening _conversazioni_. Now and then he rented a shop, and furnished it with clammy dates, viscid molasses, tobacco, ginger, rancid oil, and strong-smelling sweetmeats; and wonderful tales Fame told about these establishments. Yet somehow or other, though they were more crowded than a first-rate milliner's rooms in town, they throve not in a pecuniary point of view; the cause of which was, I believe, that the polite Mirza was in the habit of giving the heaviest possible weight for their money to all the ladies, particularly the pretty ones, that honoured him by patronizing his concern.

"Sometimes the Mirza passed the evening in a mosque listening to the ragged students who, stretched at full length with their stomachs on the dusty floor, and their arms supporting their heads, mumbled out Arabic from the thumbed, soiled, and tattered pages of theology upon which a dim oil light shed its scanty ray, or he sat debating the niceties of faith with the long-bearded, shaven-pated, blear-eyed, and stolid-faced _genus loci_, the _Mullah_. At other times, when in merrier mood, he entered uninvited the first door whence issued the sounds of music and the dance;--a clean turban and a polite bow are the best 'tickets for soup' the East knows. Or he played chess with some native friend, or he consorted with the hemp-drinkers and opium-eaters in the _estaminets_, or he visited the Mrs. Gadabouts and Go-betweens who make matches amongst the Faithful, and gathered from them a precious budget of private history and domestic scandal.

"What scenes he saw! what adventures he went through! But who would believe, even if he ventured to detail them?[21]

"The Mirza's favourite school for study was the house of an elderly matron on the banks of the Fulailee River, about a mile from the Fort of Haydarábád. Khanum Jan had been a beauty in her youth, and the tender passion had been hard upon her--at least judging from the fact that she had fled her home, her husband, and her native town, Candahar, in company with Mohammed Bakhsh, a purblind old tailor, the object of her warmest affections.

"'Ah, he is a regular old hyæna now,' would the Joan exclaim in her outlandish Persian, pointing to the venerable Darby as he sat in the cool shade, nodding his head and winking his eyes over a pair of pantaloons which took him a month to sew, 'but you should have seen him fifteen years ago, what a wonderful youth he was!'

"The knowledge of one mind is that of a million--after a fashion. I addressed myself particularly to that of 'Darby;' and many an hour of tough thought it took me before I had mastered its truly Oriental peculiarities, its regular irregularities of deduction, and its strange monotonous one-idea'dness.

"Khanum Jan's house was a mud edifice, occupying one side of a square formed by tall, thin, crumbling mud walls. The respectable matron's peculiar vanity was to lend a helping hand in all manner of _affaires du cœur_. So it often happened that Mirza Abdullah was turned out of the house to pass a few hours in the garden. There he sat upon his felt rug spread beneath a shadowy tamarind, with beds of sweet-smelling basil around him, his eyes roving over the broad river that coursed rapidly between its wooded banks and the groups gathered at the frequent ferries, whilst the soft strains of mysterious, philosophical, transcendental Hafiz were sounded in his ears by the other Mirza, his companion; Mohammed Hosayn--peace be upon him!

"Of all economical studies this course was the cheapest. For tobacco daily, for frequent draughts of milk, for hemp occasionally, for four months' lectures from Mohammed Bakhsh, and for sundry other little indulgences, the Mirza paid, it is calculated, the sum of six shillings. When he left Haydarábád, he gave a silver talisman to the dame, and a cloth coat to her protector: long may they live to wear them!"

* * * * *

"Thus it was I formed my estimate of the native character. I am as ready to reform it when a man of more extensive experience and greater knowledge of the subject will kindly show me how far it transgresses the well-established limits of moderation. As yet I hold, by way of general rule, that the Eastern mind--I talk of the nations known to me by personal experience--is always in extremes; that it ignores what is meant by 'golden mean,' and that it delights to range in flights limited only by the _ne plus ultra_ of Nature herself. Under which conviction I am open to correction.

"RICHARD F. BURTON."

[Sidenote: _His Books on India._]

Richard's works on India are--A grammar of the Játakí, or Belochi dialect. Here I would remark he mixed with the Játs of Sind, a race extending from the mouth of the Indus to the plains of Tartary, and who _he_ believed to be the origin and head of the numerous tribes of Oriental gypsies, and he worked with the Camel men to assimilate himself with them. The next work was a grammar of the Mooltanee language, "Notes on the Pushtû, or Afghan Dialect," Reports to Bombay, (1) "General Notes on Sind," (2) "Notes on the Population of Sind."

These were all _preparatory_ to becoming an author, and were brought out in 1849 by the Royal Asiatic Society, Bombay branch, and the Government Records. I have a single copy of each, but they must be out of print; meantime he prepared "Goa and the Blue Mountains," 1 vol.; "Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," 2 vols.; and "Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus," 1 vol.; but these did not appear until 1851.

"Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," is, I think, the freshest, most witty and spirited thing I ever read. He had not been to war with the critics and Mrs. Grundy then, and there is all the boy's fun and fire in it. "Falconry in the Valley of the Indus" was produced in 1852, and is worthy of any sportsman's attention. That is Van Voorst's, now Gurney and Jackson, whom Richard used to say was the only honest publisher he ever met. It is _not_ out of print. In 1870 appeared "Vikram and the Vampire," 1 vol. These tales are thoroughly witty, and make those laugh heartily who have lived in the East, but it was a great amusement to Richard and me, when the publisher, having accepted "Vikram," which is full of "chaff," said to me with a long face, "My eldest boy and I read over some of the tales last night, and we were so disappointed we could not laugh." I could not help saying drily, "No, I dare say you couldn't."

The last book on India was "Sind Revisited," 2 vols., 1877. It was written in maturer years and after hard experience of the world. It may be more valuable, but to my mind has not the sparkle of twenty-six years earlier. All these eight or ten books, including my own "A.E.I."--"Arabia, Egypt, and India"--brought out in 1879, I boiled down into Christmas books for boys. I took my manuscript (enough for three Christmas books) to David Bogue, King William Street, Strand, and went abroad, and the next thing I heard was, that David Bogue was bankrupt, and my manuscript had disappeared.

I give a few pages in the appendixes out of his first book on Scinde as a sample. One describes his visit to the village of a Scindian chief, a perfect picture of an Oriental visit; the other is a description of a cock-fight. After his transfer to the Goanese Church, his bungalow was nicknamed the "Inquisition," and there he buried Bhujang, when his favourite game-cock departed this life, and people declared it was a baby's grave. For all that my husband _said_ of India, he talked exactly as Mr. Rudyard Kipling writes, and when I read him, I can hear Richard talking; hence I knew how true and to the point are his writings. Also I think Mr. Kipling must have taken his character of "Strickland" from my husband, who mixed with, and knew all about, the natives and their customs, as Strickland did.

During those first seven years in India, Richard passed in Hindostani, Guzaratee, Persian, Maharattee, Sindhee, Punjaubee, Arabic, Telugu, Pushtû (Afghan tongue), with Turkish and Armenian. In 1844 he went to Scinde with the 18th Native Infantry, and Colonel Walter Scott put him on Sir Charles Napier's staff, who soon found out what he was worth, and turned his merits to account, but he accompanied his regiment to Mooltan to attack the Sikhs. He became much attached to his Chief; they quite understood each other, and remained together for five years. Richard's training was of the uncommon sort, and glorious as it was, dangerous as it was, and romantic as it will ever be to posterity, he did not get from dense and narrow-minded Governments those rewards which men who risk their lives deserve, and which would have been given to the man who took care of "number one," and who, with average stupidity, worked on red-tape lines. He was sent out amongst the wild tribes of the hills and plains to collect information for Sir Charles. He did not go as a British officer or Commissioner, because he knew he would see nothing but what the natives chose him to see; he let down a curtain between himself and Civilization, and a tattered, dirty-looking dervish would wander on foot, lodge in mosques, where he was venerated as a saintly man, mix with the strangest company, join the Beloch and the Brahui tribes (Indo-Scythians), about whom there was nothing then known. Sometimes he appeared in the towns; as a merchant he opened a shop, sold stuffs or sweetmeats in the bazar. Sometimes he worked with the men in native dress, "Játs" and Camel men, at levelling canals.

When Richard was in India he at one time got rather tired of the daily Mess, and living with men, and he thought he should like to learn the manners, customs, and habits of monkeys, so he collected forty monkeys of all kinds of ages, races, species, and he lived with them, and he used to call them by different offices. He had his doctor, his chaplain, his secretary, his aide-de-camp, his agent, and one tiny one, a very pretty, small, silky-looking monkey, he used to call his wife, and put pearls in her ears. His great amusement was to keep a kind of refectory for them, where they all sat down on chairs at meals, and the servants waited on them, and each had its bowl and plate, with the food and drinks proper for them. He sat at the head of the table, and the pretty little monkey sat by him in a high baby's chair, with a little bar before it. He had a little whip on the table, with which he used to keep them in order when they had bad manners, which did sometimes occur, as they frequently used to get jealous of the little monkey, and try to claw her. He did this for the sake of doing what Mr. Garner is now doing, that of ascertaining and studying the language of monkeys, so that he used regularly to talk to them, and pronounce their sounds afterwards, till he and the monkeys at last got quite to understand each other. He obtained as many as sixty words, I think twenty more than Mr. Garner--that is, leading words--and he wrote them down and formed a vocabulary, meaning to pursue his studies at some future time. Mr. Garner has now the advantage of phonographs, and all sorts of appliances. Had Richard been alive, he could have helped him greatly. Unfortunately his monkey vocabulary was burnt in Grindlay's fire. He also writes--but this was with his regiment--

[Sidenote: _Burying a Sányasi._]

"Amongst other remarkable experiments made by me, a Sányasi, whom I knew, talked to me about their manner of burying themselves alive. I said I would not believe it unless I saw it. The native therefore told me that he would prove it, by letting me try it; but that he should require three days for preparation, and hoped for a reward. Accordingly for three days he made his preparations by swallowing immense draughts of milk. I refused to put him in a coffin, or to bury him in the earth, lest he should die; but he lay down in a hammock, rolled his tongue up in his throat, and appeared to be dead. My brother officers and I then slung him up to the ceiling by four large hooks and ropes, lying comfortably in the hammock, and, to avoid trickery, one of us was always on guard day and night, each taking two hours' watch at a time. After three weeks we began to get frightened, because if the man died there would be such a scandal. So we lowered him down, and tried to awake him. We opened his mouth and tried to unroll his tongue into its natural position. He then, after some time, woke perfectly well. We gave him food, paid him a handsome reward, and he went away quite delighted, offering to do it for _three months_, if it pleased us."

Richard would be in a dozen different capacities on his travels, but when he returned, he was rich with news and information for Sir Charles, for he arrived at secrets quite out of the reach of the British Army. He knew all that the natives knew, which was more than British officers and surveyors did. General MacMurdo consulted his journals and Survey books, which were highly praised by the Surveyor-General. He was frequently in the presence of and speaking before his own Colonel without his having the slightest idea that it was Richard.

Sir Charles Napier liked decision; he hated a man who had not an answer ready for him. For instance, a young man would go and ask him for an appointment. Sir Charles would say, "What do you want?" The youth of firm mind would answer, "An Adjutancy, Sir." "All right," said Sir Charles, and he probably got it. But "Anything you please, Sir Charles," would be sure to be contemptuously dismissed. On returning from his native researches, Sir Charles would ask Richard such questions as: "Is it true that native high-class landowners, who monopolize the fiefs about the heads of the canals, neglect to clear out the tails, and allow Government ground and the peasants' fields to lie barren for want of water?"

"Perfectly true, Sir."

"What would be my best course then?"

"Simply to confiscate the whole or part of those estates, Sir."

"H'm! You don't mince matters, Burton."

He once asked Richard how many bricks there were in a newly built bridge (an impossible question, such as are put to lads whom the examiner intends to pluck). Richard, knowing his foible, answered, "229,010, Sir Charles." He turned away and smiled. Another time he ordered a review on a grand scale to impress certain Chiefs--

"Lieutenant Burton, be pleased to inform these gentlemen that I propose to form these men in line, then to break into échelon by the right, and to form square on the centre battalion," and so on, for about five minutes in military technical terms, for which there were no equivalents in these men's dialects.

"Yes, Sir," said Richard, saluting.

Turning to the Chiefs, Richard said, "Oh, Chiefs! our Great Man is going to show you the way we fight, and you must be attentive to the rules." He then touched his cap to Sir Charles.

"Have you explained all?" he asked.

"Everything, Sir," answered Richard.

"A most concentrated language that must be," said Sir Charles, riding off with his nose in the air.

[Sidenote: _His Indian Career practically ends._]

After seven years of this kind of life, overwork, overstudy, combined with the hot season, and the march up the Indus Valley, told on Richard's health, and at the end of the campaign he was attacked by severe ophthalmia, the result of mental and physical fatigue, and he was ordered to take a short rest. He utilized that leave in going to Goa, and especially to Old Goa, where, as he said himself, he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Francis Xavier, and explored the scenes of the Inquisition. At last news reached him that another campaign was imminent in Mooltan, that Sir Charles Napier would take command; Colonel Scott and a host of friends were ordered up. He writes as follows:--

"I applied in almost suppliant terms to accompany the force as interpreter. I had passed examinations in six native languages, besides studying others, Multani included, and yet General Auchmuty's secretary wrote to me that this could not be, as he had chosen for the post Lieutenant X. Y. Z., who had passed in Hindustani.

"This last misfortune broke my heart. I had been seven years in India, working like a horse, volunteering for every bit of service, and qualifying myself for all contingencies. Rheumatic ophthalmia, which had almost left me when in hopes of marching northward, came on with redoubled force, and no longer had I any hope of curing it except by a change to Europe. Sick, sorry, and almost in tears of rage, I bade adieu to my friends and comrades in Sind. At Bombay there was no difficulty in passing the Medical Board, and I embarked at Bombay for a passage round the Cape, as the Austral winter was approaching, in a sixty-year-old teak-built craft, the brig _Eliza_, Captain Cory.

"My career in India had been in my eyes a failure, and by no fault of my own; the dwarfish demon called 'Interest' had fought against me, and as usual had won the fight."

[1] Those curious upon the subject will consult my "Book of the Sword," vol. i. p. 163. Remember, young swordsman, these people never give point and never parry it.

[2] The word is a Portuguese "corruption" of _mausim_, in Arabia a season, and _per excellentiam_ the sailing season. Thence it was transferred to the dry season, when the north-eastern trade-winds blow upon the Indian Ocean. But popular use transferred the name to the south-western rainy winds, which last from June to September.

[3] On June 26th, 1843, "Ensign Burton" appeared in orders as "Regimental Interpreter."

[4] See "Humanism _versus_ Theism, or Solipsism (Egoism)--Atheism," letters by Robert Lewin, M.D. London: Freethought Publishing Company, 1887.

[5] "Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," 2 vols.; and "Sind Revisited," 1877.

[6] "Scinde," chapter iv.

[7] "Scinde," vol. i. p. 252.

[8] Ibid., p. 89.

[9] It was brought out in 1852, by my friend John Van Voorst, of Paternoster Row, who, after a long and honourable career, retired at the ripe age of eighty-four to take well-merited rest. He has proved himself to me a phœnix amongst publishers. "Half profits are no profits to the author," is the common saying, and yet for the last thirty years I have continually received from him small sums which represented my gains. Oh that all were so scrupulous!

[10] "Falconry in the Valley of the Indus," pp. 100, 101.

[11] Vol. x. p. 205, _et seqq._

[12] See, in vol. i. p. 53 of "Sind Revisited," Sir Charles's outspoken opinion.

[13] "Scinde," vol. ii. p. 258, etc.

[14] "Sind Revisited," vol. i. p. 256, shows how I found my old home in 1876.

[15] "Scinde," vol. i. p. 151.

[16] "Falconry," pp. 103-105.

[17] "Goa," etc., p. 355.

[18] See Ibid., p. 339.

[19] This stuck to him off and on all his life.--I. B.

[20] Written with the assistance of a fine old Afghan _mullah_, Akhund Burhan al-Din.

[21] This was the manner in which he excelled in Eastern life and knowledge, and knew more than all your learned Orientalists and men high in office. I wish he would have written a personal novel about these scenes, but I never could induce him to do so. First he thought that they would never suit Mrs. Grundy, and though he could retain a crowd of friends around him till the small hours of the morning to listen to his delightful experiences, in print he never could be got to talk about himself.--I. B.