Chapter XXXV: Appendix: E (2)

"Again, there are thousands of our fellow-countrymen scattered over the surface of Turkey, and were England known to be incapacitated from using arms, yet having arms and money, it is to be feared that the first Russian gun fired from Constantinople would be the signal of a miserable butchery. But it will be said that the Sultan has begun the task of reform; his last rescript has been more favourable to the Rayyahs than anything ever issued by Turkey. I reply, it is easy to have dust thrown in our eyes provided we open them for the purpose. What have all the Hatts Shereef or Humayoun yet done for the Christian Turk? We must be made, after the image of David Urquhart, to believe in such pie-crust promises. Grant we that H.I.M. the Sultan is sincere, yet he cannot act himself, and there is no one to act for him. The Turkish official, and, for the matter of that, the unofficial, society is much like her army. The private is an excellent man, sober, honest, truthful, brave, and docile to a degree. Promote him, and he runs through the several grades of bad comparison, not _repenté_, but with an agility which surprises the slow northern mind. As a non-commissioned officer he is bad; higher he is worse; and command makes him worst. The same with the French peasant; give him a small _emploi_, a bit of gold lace, and he falls from an angel to a demon in a week, without stopping to look round.

"Now back to _notre premier amour_, Trieste. I associate with politicians and clever men all day, with open eyes and ears; and an occasional peep at a despatch makes one learn a great deal, and form strong opinions. I am neither philo-Turk nor Russ. I am John Bull to the backbone, with personal Austrian sympathies, and a strong leaning to all that is of Arab blood.

"This port was once a favourite with the British bird of passage, especially when embarking with the Austro-Hungarian Lloyd for Alexandria. But the Northerner did not approve of the line. He liked his beef and mutton in huge joints, not in slices and cutlets; he preferred his potatoes in their jackets to _pommes de terre à la maître d'hôtel_; in fact, he grumbled about everything, and at Suez he transferred himself on board the P. and O. like one that had found a home. The stranger has also been put to flight by the hotel-managers. This city is one of the dearest in Europe. The shilling, the lira, and the franc have become the florin; but these gentlemen gild refined gold, and charge highly for the operation. There are three establishments which call themselves first-rate, and which Englishmen would consider decently comfortable. Unhappily, they belong to companies, not individuals, and they are farmed out to managers, who squeeze you as the tax-gatherer does the Rayyah. There are no tables of charges hung up in the rooms, so you pay according to length of purse, real or supposed. Thus the late Lord Dalling had a bill of £45 for two days, during which he never dined in the house, and the present Prince Ypsilante was plundered at the same time of 950 florins. It is said that he sent for the manager, and, after settling his account, warmly complimented him upon being the greatest rascal he had ever had to do with. So the late Lord Hertford, when paying off his Parisian architect, politely regretted that he had never had _le déplaisir de sa connaissance_.

"All the world here is reading M. Charles Yriarte. That popular writer, the Ipsilon of the _Revue des deux Mondes_, who spent the winter of 1873-4 in Istria and Dalmatia, Montenegro and Herzegovina, published his trip in the illustrated journal, the _Tour du Monde_; and, the time being propitious, it was translated into Italian at Milan, with a variety of notes, taking the Italianissimo view of the matter, and converting a delightful tale of travel into a rabid wrangle of politics. The Austrian Government has shown a want of knowledge of human nature, put the book _à l'index_, confiscating every copy found in the libraries; consequently we are all devouring it _en cachette_."

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Red Sea_.]

[Here we change from Central Europe to the massacre at Jeddah in 1858 (the source of the official wigging), and the cause of cholera.]

"In 1858 there was a cruel, cowardly massacre of the few Europeans and Christians, including the English and French Consuls, which was revenged by the French with two bombardments and a fine of 2,241,016 francs. It arose from our suppression of the slave-trade, and jealousy at finding that the Europeans, whose exports and imports are worth about £3,000,000, were absorbing the commerce; moreover, these two feelings still exist. Our present Vice-Consul, Mr. Wylde, is a man well fitted to the post, which is anything but a pleasant one. His open-hearted, straightforward, and fearless ways of dealing with the natives succeed perfectly. He knows what the native disposition is, and how to treat it, whilst he is of a joyous temperament and quite insensible to any danger. Still (as he laughingly remarked to me one day) it would doubtless be much more comfortable if the morning and evening _shell_ (instead of gun) were fired into the town; and, joking apart, every passing Man-of-war ought to have orders to look in _en passant_, just to call on the authorities, and to see what the delightful natives have been up to since the last ship passed. Some day the Wali Pasha of the Hejaz may be a fanatical hater of Europeans, the Kaimmakám of Jeddah may be a weak-minded good-intentioned man who cannot keep things in order, or intestine troubles may draw away the troops; and these visits are more necessary in places where perpetual orders from home necessitate an interference with the slave-trade, which the Arabs are ever ready to resist. There ought to be cruisers perpetually visiting and reporting upon the condition of all the outlying little ports, where at present British subjects are unfairly left to take care of themselves.

"HOW CHOLERA SPREADS--THE JEDDAH MASSACRE OF 1858.

"One must read 'Une Mission au Hedjaz Arabie,' par Dr. Buez (Paris: Masson, 1873, Académie de Médecine), which treats of the epidemics which the Hajj engenders,--the focus of infection for Egypt, the Mediterranean, and consequently for Europe. At any rate, one may note the nine conclusions.

"1. Arabia, and especially El Hejaz, with its pure air, does not originated the morbid elements which express themselves in dysentery and typhus, cholera and plague. Small-pox, however, in certain places is always to be dreaded.

"2. Cholera is at present the special genesis of India.

"3. Steamers, though on the whole beneficial to the general health of the pilgrims, produce new sanitary conditions, and aid greatly in propagating the choleraic element, thus becoming a permanent and, at times, a real danger to Europe. The same is the case with railroads, but to a much less extent.

"4. All the great outbreaks in the Hejaz, notably that of 1865, when five hundred _per diem_ died at Mecca during the Hajj, were imported, indirectly or directly, from India, and then spread over the civilized world.

"5. The problem of preserving Egypt, Syria, the Levant, and Europe from cholera is to be resolved only through the strictest surveillance, by competent men, over pilgrims bound from India to the Hejaz, and to Egypt from the Red Sea ports--Jeddah, Rais, Rabegh, Yambu, Líth, Gonfodah, Jisán, Hodaydah, Lohayah, Mocha, etc.

"6. The question is complicated by the existence of choleraic foci, which may be termed secondary and local, as opposed to primitive or original, where the epidemic has lingered, and possibly has incubated till again exasperated by occult conditions--telluric, atmospheric, or hygienic. This fact demands increased measures of surveillance. They may not be thoroughly satisfactory, but because we cannot close all the doors we need not leave all the largest open.

"7. At the period of embarking from the Red Sea ports, where _bakshish_ is the key to most consciences, the local Health Office and the member of the Sanitary Council annually sent from Stamboul after the International Conference of 1866 should be assisted by a special commission of European physicians, who could, moreover, modify and improve the different 'Passenger Acts.'

"8. 'Long Desert,' a march of twenty-one days, is the best of _cordon sanitaires_, alone able to 'purge' infected caravans.

"9. _Ergo_, when the Hejaz is attacked by cholera the sea-road should be peremptorily closed to all pilgrims, an operation whose difficulties have been greatly and needlessly exaggerated; nor should it be reopened till after at least one pilgrimage season has passed away without accident.

"To these wise conclusions I would add a truth. All quarantinary measures are unpopular with Moslems, who regard them as inventions of the evil one, or, as the vulgar say, 'flying in the face of Providence.' Moreover, at Mecca it is every man's interest to conceal the outbreak; and there is always a danger of the earliest cases finding their way to Jeddah before the existence of cholera is suspected at the port. Indeed, clean bills have been given under such circumstances. Evidently, the only remedy for this evil is to make the special sanitary commission of European physicians meet annually at Mecca.

"Now, if such great meteoric changes can be effected by a mere riband of water let into the sand, what will happen when we submerge a great part of the African Sáhara (whose eastern limits are unknown), and thereby create a sea, perhaps, bigger than the Mediterranean? We cannot calculate the possible amount of climatic modification which such a new offset of the Atlantic might induce; and some clever men think that the Sáhara Sea is likely to affect many parts of the Mediterranean basin, and even the whole southern seaboard of Europe, with changes which may be deleterious in the extreme. The scirocco from Africa is the summer wind _par excellence_ of the 'White Sea,' as the Arabs call it, blowing through half the year, and that half the most dangerous--if we submerge the desert, say with a foot or two of water upon rotting vegetation, what will its effect be upon the world's health?

* * * * *

"A new Passenger Act is, I believe, about to appear; let us hope that it will abate one part of the nuisance. At present we can never feel safe on board these crowded cattle-pens. An epidemic might break out any moment; in case of shipwreck all would be lost; and even if the screw were injured, or the main shaft were to break, hundreds on board would die of starvation.

"Each ship should be compelled to carry a condensing apparatus and cooking-ranges, calculated to accommodate the pilgrims; while one passenger per two tons (registered) should be the maximum of freightage. Before departure, the devotees ought to be severally and carefully inspected by the Port Surgeons; at Aden the health officer should take them in charge; and in case of infectious disease having appeared on the voyage, they should be quarantined at Perim or at the Kumarán Islands, off Lohayya. No one after a certain age should be allowed to embark--the Korán allows him to send a substitute; and the same is the case with the infirm and with invalids. Each person should prove that he carries at least four hundred rupees in ready money, and that he has left with his family sufficient to support it according to its station: such is the absolute order of the Hanafi school, to which all these Bengalis belong. On arriving at Jeddah, all should take out passports from her Majesty's Consulate, paying a fee of one rupee per head, and the same for _visas_ after return: the French and the Dutch charge a dollar. Proclamations in Hindostani and Persian should be issued at the several Presidencies, and be published in the local papers every year before the annual preparations for the pilgrimage begin. I am certain that all sensible Hindí Moslems would be grateful for a measure relieving them from exorbitant charities, and from the reproach that Hindustan is the 'basest of kingdoms;' whilst we should only be doing our duty,--a little late, it is true, but better now than neglecting till the evil shall have become inveterate. That everlasting incuriousness and _laissez-aller_ of the Anglo-Indian are the only reasons why precautions were not taken twenty-five years ago.

_The Massacre._

"I took some trouble to investigate the causes which led to the horrible massacre of June 15, 1858. This is far from being an old tale of times which will not return; it is an example of what may occur any day in the present excited state of the Moslem world. Moreover, the conditions under which it occurred are precisely those of the present moment, and an ugly symptom has just appeared.[7] The village _moplah_ (Malabar Moslem), who murdered Mr. Conolly, has been allowed to escape from surveillance at Jeddah, to embark at Líth, and probably to return to India _viâ_ Makalla in Hadramant. But as popular memory in England is short upon such subjects, it is necessary to give a _résumé_ of the facts.

"The innovation of appointing European Consuls to Jeddah, the 'Gate of the Holy City,' was resented by the Moslems, both on the grounds of religion and of private interests, especially when protected foreign subjects began to absorb the greater parts of the commerce. Several _ballons d'essai_ were launched. In 1848 an attempt was made to assassinate, near the Medinah Gate, M. Fulgence Fresnel, the famous Arabist, who was often consulted upon questions of casuistry by the D.D.'s of Mecca. The criminal was saved by a certain Abdullah Muhtásib, a Fellah of Lower Egypt, who began life as a baker, and who rose to be farmer of the _octroi_ and Chief of the Police; thus being able to bribe and bully _à discretion_. In 1849, Mr. Consul Ogilvie was openly insulted in the bazar, and obtained no redress. During my first visit to Jeddah, Mr. Consul Cole had avoided all troubles by his firmness and conciliatory manners; but, after his departure, the so-called 'War of the Sherífs' (1854) suggested a grand opportunity for despoiling the Christians. Abdullah Muhtásib again appeared as the villain of the play. He was, however, arrested, and exiled to Masáwwah by the _Wali_ of the Hejaz, Namik Pasha.

"In 1856 Abdullah Muhtásib returned triumphant from his exile, and the Sepoy war of 1857 once more offered him a tempting opportunity. Actively assisted by his son, he brought into the plot the Kadi (Abd el Kadir Effendi), the Sayyid el Amúli, the Shaykh Bagafur, Abdullah Bakarum, and the wealthy merchant Yusuf Banaji. Presently, in June, 1858, during the height of the pilgrimage, it became known that Captain Pullen, H.M.S. _Cyclops_, intended to carry off the _Irania_, an English ship upon which Turkish colours had been hoisted. Abdullah Muhtásib and his friends met at the Custom-house _café_, and sat, _en permanence_, to direct the issue of their conspiracy. At two p.m. on June 15, the ship was worked out, the boats of the _Cyclops_ left, and the coast was clear.

"Violent harangues in the bazar roused the cry of 'Death to the Infidel!' The plot burst like a barrel of gunpowder, and at six p.m. the massacre began. The Sayyid el Amúli took charge of Mr. Page, whom he beheaded with his own hand; the body was thrown into the streets to be hacked to pieces by the mob; the house was plundered, and the flagstaff was torn up. M. Sabatier, however, is in error when he reports that the English dragoman and _kawwás_ were murdered: one died lately, and the other, a very old man, is still living.

"Meanwhile, two bands of ruffians attacked the other objects of their hate. One rushed to the French Consulate, and broke in the doors when they were closed by the _kawwás_. Madame Eveillard was first stabbed, and then her husband was cut down, despite the heroic defence of the daughter, Mdlle. Elsie, who, after seizing one of the chief murderers by the beard, and severely biting his arm, was wounded by a yataghan in the face. She and the lady's-maid, saved by the tardy arrival of the _kaimmakám_ (commandant) and two Government _kawwáses_, were taken from the blood-bespattered home to a Turkish house. Monsieur Emérat,[8] the Chancellor, after bravely fighting for fifteen minutes, was preserved in the same way, and, sabred in three places, was led by his faithful Algerian, Haji Mahommed, to the quarters of Hasan Bey, commanding the artillery. M. de Lesseps was, therefore, misinformed about Mdlle. Eveillard saving herself by drawing the cushions of the divan over her body, and by simulating death whilst the murderers slashed at her legs. He says nothing of the _kaimmakám_, and he attributes the honour of saving the two lives to a negro boy and the old Algerine soldier.[9] The flagstaff was torn down, the tricolour trampled upon, and the Consulate given over to plunder.

"The other band rushed to the house of Sabá Mascondi, the richest of the Greek merchants, and therefore the most obnoxious of all the Christians. My husband well remembers this amiable and inoffensive man. He had been repeatedly warned, but he refused to believe a massacre possible till he and his party, some twenty men, mostly from Lemnos, met one evening. At length, when it was reported that the Consulates were being pillaged, three of them went out to inquire. Meanwhile the armed mob rushed in, and instantly cut down eight; the rest jumping out of the windows, and flying over the terraces and down the street, to reach the sea. Poor Sabá veiled his head, and also tried to escape. M. Sabatier heard two accounts of his death: one was that he was killed in the house of the English dragoman (an error); the other, that he was recognized in his rude disguise by the son of Abdullah Muhtásib, who blew out his brains with a pistol. This is a fact.

"The French Consul-General also relates that the _Cyclops_, anchored only three miles off, perceiving a tumult in the town, armed her boats and sent them to find out the cause; that the crews were fired upon, and that they returned, without further action, to their ship. It is hard to believe this. A few shells thrown into Jeddah would have cleared every street in half an hour. No justification was wanted for resenting so gross an insult, and instant measures might have saved some unhappy lives. But in those days we were still under the glamour of that most unfortunate Crimean War, and modern England does not, as a rule, encourage her officers to incur any manner of responsibility.

"The first act of retribution was on the early morning of July 25, when the _Cyclops_, at the distance of twenty-five hundred yards, bombarded Jeddah for two hours. This was repeated till noon on the 26th, when the new Governor-General, Namik Pasha, arrived. The people, of course, evacuated the town; a few houses were injured, a minaret was knocked crooked, and some fifteen boats were destroyed.

"Presently France, who, whatever may have been her sins of omission and commission, has ever shown a noble jealousy of her national honour, determined not to be played with after this fashion; and she sent, not a 'person of rank,' but M. Sabatier, the fittest head and hand for the work. The inapt and treacherous politic of the Porte on this occasion bears a fraternal resemblance to her manœuvres adopted after the massacre of Damascus (1860), with this difference: at Beyrout there was no Sabatier, but there was a certain trickster of the first order, Fuad Pasha, whose reckless ambition had caused the catastrophe. The Sultan appointed, as his Commissioner, one Ismail Pasha, who hastened off to the Hejaz, and, in concert with the feeble and negligent Namik Pasha, put to death half a dozen poor devils, complied a voluminous _Mazbatah_ (_procès verbale_), and hurried back to Constantinople with thirty-nine 'compromised' individuals. Heavy bribes had induced him to estimate the damage done to Christian property at twenty thousand francs. '_Il était difficile de faire associer les consuls de France et d'Angleterre à meilleur marché_,' is M. Sabatier's only comment upon this part of the proceeding.

"As Ismail Pasha persisted in conversation with his two fellow-Commissioners, that his part of the work had been thoroughly done, and that he was expected at Stamboul, M. Sabatier and Captain Pullen, R.N., set out in the _Cyclops_, with the English and French flags flying together on the mainmast, and reached Jeddah on October 12th, 1859. Here they found Commodore Seymour with the _Pelorus_ (twenty-one guns); the corvette _Assaye_ (ten guns); and the _Chesapeake_ (fifty-one guns) expected. Five days afterwards, Namik Pasha arrived from Mecca; and, as the Turkish Commissioner had admitted that all the local authorities were accessories to the murder, M. Sabatier proceeded to examine all witnesses, Moslems as well as Christians. Even he, accustomed for long years to the abstruse chicanery of the East, must have been surprised to hear the Turkish authorities laying the blame upon Captain Pullen; as if a mere question of maritime and international law could have borne such fruits. Even he, so well inured to the contempt of European intelligence--which is an article of faith with all Orientals--must have been startled, as well as shocked, to see the abominable Abdullah Muhtásib sitting side by side with Hasan Bey, the wretched commandant of artillery, when the Consulate of France was still a mere shell, and the walls were bespattered with the blood of his fellow-countrymen.

"It would be tedious to relate how bravely and how well M. Sabatier did his duty. Briefly, in January, 1859, Tricoult, _capitaine de frégate_, appeared upon the stage, and a few hours brought the authorities to their senses. The miserable Ismail Pasha lost his head on 'Raven's Isle,' within sight of Jeddah; Abdullah Muhtásib and the Sayyid el Amúli on the Custom-house square (January 21st, 1859). The fine for the losses of the Christians amounted to 2,241,016 francs, of which 500,000 were paid to the Eveillard family, 100,000 to M. Emérat, and 100,000 to Sabá Mascondi's relatives.

"The Jeddah massacre was made the stalking-horse to bring down slave-trading in the Red Sea, which had already been abolished theoretically (1885) under the effects of the Crimean War. In June, 1869, vizierial letters were addressed especially to the Hejaz, without any effect beyond causing a disturbance; they were essentially dead letters, worth only their weight of spoiled paper. This is not the place for so extensive a subject. I will only state that the traffic still flourishes at Jeddah; that the market, till lately, was under the eyes of the British Consulate; that on representation it was removed a few yards off; that the Turkish authorities, even if they wished, are unable to stop or even to hinder it; and that the only remedy is armed intervention, serious and continued,--in fact, a 'Coffin Squadron,' like that of the Persian Gulf, stationed in the Red Sea, with 'slave approvers' all around the coast of Arabia. I need hardly say that we should demand the right of search, and that a Consul-General or Slave Commissioner, with a sufficient staff and salary, the use of a gunboat, and a roving commission, should be appointed to the Red Sea, independently of the Consul-General of Egypt, and in lieu of the trading Consul of Jeddah.

"M. Sabatier on the occasion omitted only one step, probably because he judged that the hour to take it had not struck. He should have insisted upon Mecca being opened to the world, and upon all travellers being protected there, as they are at Jerusalem and other 'Holy Cities.' It is high time that these obsolete obstructions to the march of civilization should everywhere be swept away; the world will endure them no longer. Mecca is not only a great centre of religion and commerce; it is also the prime source of political intrigues, the very nest where plans of conquest and schemes of revenge upon the Infidel are hatched; and, as I have before said, the focus whence cholera is dispersed over the West. Shall a misplaced sentiment of tolerating intolerance allow her to work in the dark against humanity? Allah forbid it!

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _India_.]

[We now change to India.]

"I suppose no one has any idea (and certainly no foreigner has) of the amount of diplomacy or the responsibility incurred by the Viceroy of India. The India House may well be quoted as 'the focus of politics for nearly all Asia, and the storehouse of romance of all the East.' It has to regulate our relations with all the neighbouring foreign Powers _beyond_ the limits of Hindustan, and with the four hundred and sixty dependent Princes and Chiefs within our own Indian Empire.

* * * * *

"I inspected the cotton-mills. It is evident that India must become a manufacturing country, or it can no longer defend its teeming millions from famine. When this great work shall have been done, Great Britain, with one foot on Hindustan and the other in China, will command the cotton and wool manufactures of the world, and be the greatest producing power ever known.

* * * * *

"We now know, even at home, that India is not a country, but a continent. It contains as many races as the whole of Europe: here we have the Jangali, or wild men; the Dravidians, or old Turanian immigration; the pure Aryans from Persia, as the Nágar Brahman; the vast variety of mixed breeds between Dravidian and Aryan, such as the Telinga Brahman; and, besides these four great families, a number of intrusive peoples--Christians from Chaldea and Portugal; Jews, white and black; Rohillas ('hill-people') from the Afghan mountains; Sidis (Wásáwáhili) from Zanzibar; and Arabs, pure or mixed, the latter showing its type in the Mapillahs (Moplahs) of Malabar. After all, in Europe there are only three: the great Slav race, occupying the eastern half of the continent; the Scandinavo-Teuton; and the Græco-Latin races. Europe also speaks three great forms of language; here we have the three, Semitic, Hamitic, and Japhetic, or Turanian, with some thirty modifications of the Prakrit, which, in the hands of the literati, became, like the modern Greek spoken at Athens, the Sanskrit, or finished speech. It was the same with the _Latina Rustica_, not the language of Virgil and Cicero, but the quaint country tongues which branched off into the neo-Latin family.

"Again, the climate of India has a far wider range than that of Europe, even if we throw into the latter Iceland and Spitzbergen. The west regions of the mighty Himalayas, the 'Homes of Snow,' represent the Polar regions; and we run through the temperates into the tropical, or rather the equinoctial, about Ceylon. And what a richness and diversity of productions in the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral worlds, compared with the poor produce of the temperate regions! What untold wealth still hidden in the soil, and awaiting the skill and energy of the nineteenth century! What a grand field for exploration and discovery! Dr. de Marchesetti, a young Italian botanist from Trieste, assures us that the fungi, one of the most interesting families of plants, have hardly been studied at all. And how much remains for us to learn! For instance, no sword-cutter in Europe can tell you anything about the steel which makes the far-famed Khorásáni blades, miscalled 'Damascus;' and the dismantiferous regions between the valleys of the Ganges and the Krishna are in great part unexplored ground.

* * * * *

"On the other hand, the Kharekwasla Tank and the noble dam, built by Mr. Joyner, C.E., are well worth visiting, both on account of the intrinsic excellence of the work, and the great consequences to which such works must lead. It not only supplies the 'Monsoon Capital' of the Bombay Presidency, but it will diffuse life and plenty over some ninety linear miles of now waste ground. Travelling from Poonah to Hyderabad, you remark that the land at this season is mostly fit only for the traditional dragon and wild ass; it is, like Sind, a cross between an oven and a dust-bin. Yet where the smallest rill flows, all is life and verdure; the emerald-green topes, and the leek-green paddy fields, are a repose to the sight, a 'coolness to the eye,' as the Arabs say; and you hasten to plunge that hot and weary organ into the damp lush vegetation of orchard and field and kitchen-garden. The first step will be to supply water, as Mr. Joyner is doing; the second, to regulate its use. Here the golden fluid is wasted in a way which would scandalize the Arab, the Egyptian, the Sindi, and the 'Heathen Chinee.'

"And this leads us to notice another popular error which has gained possession of the British brain. Certain statistics, which may be correct, have taught it that India is an overcrowded land, and that its population per square mile, exceeding that of England, approaches that of Belgium. This, as with all statistics, is both true and untrue. Parts of Bengal, for instance, teem with human life; and as native wars are no more, and famines are to be turned, regardless of expense, into plenty, or rather profusion, the peasantry will end, in Kafir phrase, with 'eating one another up.' For note that the true cause of Indian famines is concealed from England. There is plenty of provision. There is an abundance of transport. But the people are so penniless that when grain rises one penny a pound, they must live on wild roots or starve.

"The statement that India is overcrowded is utterly misleading as regards the whole of India. Throughout the peninsula the lands are of three kinds, not including the jungles and forests, which cannot be touched without danger of diminishing the rain-supply. There are the fertile, as Gujerat; the wholly desert, mostly sandy and stony tracks; and the half-desert, which grows luxuriant crops only during the rains. And the latter are so extensive that with irrigation they would support at least treble the actual number of inhabitants.

"India, then, has more than one string to her bow: she will dispose of her increasing millions in three ways. Firstly, she will keep them at home and feed them by irrigation, which costs much, gives slow profits, but ends by being the best of investments. Secondly, she will export them to our other colonies, where labour is so much wanted, and where, as free hands, they will take the place of our old friend, the 'a'mighty nigger.' Sind, I need hardly tell you, calls aloud for them, and can offer the richest of soils. Thirdly, she will retrench her useless expenditure; abolish a host of local Governors who should be Secretaries; of Commanders-in-Chief who should be Major-Generals; and of Members of Council whose chief work is to spoil foolscap. Lastly, she will become a manufacturing country. She has coal and iron; she breeds millions of human beings, hireable at sixpence a day; her men can mine, and her women and children can work at _la petite industrie_. Despite the 'mildew' with which mildewed Manchester, _pace_ Mr. E. Ashworth, is attempting to inoculate India; despite the timidity of statesmen, and despite the jealousy of the manufacturing mob, which wishes to buy dirt-cheap from India, and to make her pay 100 per cent. for working her own produce, we have a conviction, as we have before said, that Indian manufactures will succeed; and that Great Britain, with one foot on Hindustan and another in China, whose three hundred millions work at threepence a day, will command the wool and cotton markets of the world, and will become the greatest producing power that the globe ever bore.

* * * * *

"Lanauli is a place of some importance, being the locomotive station at the head of the Bhore Ghát, whilst the site upon the edge of the Sahyadri Range renders it tolerably healthy for the Europeans. Consequently, where a few huts formerly rose, the place now contains some two hundred pale faces. I saw with immense satisfaction fifty-three men of the New Railway Volunteer Corps, which numbers a total of one hundred and fourteen, being drilled by a red-coated sergeant, under the eye of Captain Buckley. This is truly a patriotic movement, and one which may prove far more important than we expect in these days, when the native powers have armies far exceeding our own in numbers. There is hardly an 'Indian officer' who does not expect another 'Sepoy Mutiny' within ten years, and yet we do little to prepare for it. Were I Viceroy, every station should have its cannon-armed and casemated place of refuge.

* * * * *

"Shere Ali Khan is an ill-conditioned Prince--proud, coarse, and violent. Yet there is something to be noted on the side of this little Highland chief. His hostility dates from those early days when, perhaps, we deserved scant friendship. During the Sepoy Mutiny he urged the invasion of the Punjaub upon his wise old father, Dost Mohammed Khan, whom a Russian paper reports on the throne, although he has been dead for years. The masterly inactivity which Lord Lawrence still dares to recommend, did not prevent that Viceroy acknowledging the claims of Afzal Khan, the brother who had deprecated the Punjaub invasion. Shere Ali had a pet grievance against Lord Mayo, and he was especially hurt by Lord Northcote refusing to pay his subsidy--'tribute,' the wise would call it--with the desired regularity. His relations with the present Viceroy need hardly be noticed. The truth is that a policy of alternate do-nothing, bullying, and cajoling have persuaded him firmly that he holds the road to India; that the keys of the treasure-house are in his hands. Hence he persistently refused to receive the Káshgar mission; 'their blood be upon their own heads if they come to Cabul!' Hence he admitted no English representatives, and he hardly permitted the _Wakeel_, or resident Agent of her Majesty's Government, to address him in Durbar. That he despises us, we cannot fail to see; nor less can we fail to feel that we have not forced him to respect us. We might have withdrawn that phantom of a _Wakeel_; we might also have withdrawn his subsidy or tribute, a lakh of rupees _per mensem_, till his manners improved; or, better still, we might have reserved it for his successor. But a high-principled Viceroy objected that such proceedings would be a 'premium upon rebellion.'

"That unhappy mission has placed us between the horns of an ugly dilemma. If we do not fight, we offend public opinion at home and abroad, in England and in India. If we do fight, we play Russia's own game. Although never committed to paper, there was an implied agreement between the two great Europe-Asiatic Powers that our Asiatic army should not be employed in European wars. The policy of the moment thought fit to throw a new weight into the scale; and Russia's comment must have been something of this nature: 'Oh! you will employ your Sepoys in Europe, will you? All right; meanwhile you shall have enough to do with them in India!' Whatever alarmists told the world, Russia has hitherto meddled mighty little with our Eastern Empire. Now, however, times have changed, and we may look out for squalls. Our Imperial 'Bakht,' our conquering star, our unbroken good luck, may yet be our shield and our defender. Not the less this Afghan war threatens to be the beginning of serious, nay, of fatal troubles, which may shake our Indian Empire to its very foundation. Behind it stand General Scindia and the Nawab of Hyderabad,--now the great Moslem power, the Delhi of the Peninsula. Behind all, terrible and menacing as the Spirit of the Storm which appeared to Da Gama, rises that frightful phantom, a starving population reduced to the lowest expression of life by the exorbitant expenditure of our rule.

"I would willingly point a moral with the state of the Sepoy army, now reduced to a host of Irregulars; with the cost of a march _à Cabul_ against an enemy whose improved weapons have been supplied by ourselves as well as by Russia; with the Russian claim to wage aggressive and non-official war, even as we did in Turkey; with the effect which our intense sensitiveness to every step taken by Russia must exercise upon the Sultan and his Ministers; and lastly, with the possible results to England, which under the workings of a Free Trade, the reverse of free, threatens to become a Macclesfield on a very large scale. Is the prophecy of the Koh-i-noor to be fulfilled after all, and a ridiculed superstition to become a reality?

"THE NIZAM DIAMOND--THE DIAMOND IN INDIA.

[Sidenote: _Diamonds_.]

"It would be unpardonable to quit Golconda without a word concerning the precious stone which, in the seventeenth century, made its name a household word throughout Europe; and also without noticing the great diamond whose unauspicious name, Bala (little) Koh-i-noor, I would alter to 'The Nizam.' Not a little peculiar it is that professional books like Mr. Lewis Lieulafait's 'Diamonds and Precious Stones' (London: Blackie, 1874), which record the life, the titles, the weight, the scale, the size, and the shape of all the historic stones, have utterly ignored one of the most remarkable. Mr. Harry Emanuel does not neglect even the Násik diamond, which fetched only £30,000: we must, by-the-by, convert for intelligibility his 'Mahratta of Peshawur' into the 'Peshwa of the Maharattas.'

"The history of the Nizam diamond is simple enough; like the Abaïté, and unlike the Koh-i-noor, its discovery cost at most a heartache, and did not lose a drop of man's blood. About half a century ago it was accidentally found by a Hindú _sonár_ (goldsmith) at Narkola, a village about twenty miles cast of Shamsábád, the latter lying some fourteen miles south-west of the Lion City, on the road to Maktal. It had been buried in an earthen pipkin (_Koti_ or _Abkhorah_), which suggests, possibly, that it had been stolen, and was being carried for sale to Mysore or Coorg. The wretched finder placed it upon a stone, and struck it with another upon the apex of the pyramid. This violence broke it into three pieces, of which the largest represents about half. With the glass model in hand it is easy to restore the original octohedron. The discovery came to the ears of the celebrated Diwan (Minister) Rajah Chandú Lál, a friend of General Fraser, who governed the country as Premier for the term of forty-two years. He took it very properly from the _sonár_, before it underwent further ill-treatment, and deposited it amongst his master's crown jewels. Lately Messrs. Aratoon, of Madras, offered to cut it for three lakhs of rupees, a modest sum, considering the responsibility and the labour such operations involve; but the figure was considered exorbitant. A M. Jansen of Amsterdam, who died about a twelvemonth ago, volunteered to place it in the hands of Messrs. Costa, who certainly did not improve its big brother. This offer was also naturally enough declined. Let me hope, however, that it will not be cloven into a plate or flat slab _more Indico_.

"The stone is said to be of the finest water. An outline of the model gives a maximum length of 1 inch 10.25 lines, and 1 inch 2 lines for the greatest breadth, with comfortable thickness throughout. The face is slightly convex, and the cleavage plane, produced by the fracture, is nearly flat, with a curious slope or groove beginning at the apex. The general appearance is an imperfect oval, with only one projection which will require the saw. It is not unlike a Chinese woman's foot without the toes, and it will easily cut into a splendid brilliant, larger and more valuable than the present Koh-i-noor.

"I can hardly wonder at this stone being ignored in England and in India, when little is known about it at Hyderabad. No one could tell me its weight in grains or carats. The highest authority in the land vaguely said 'about two ounces or three hundred carats.'[10] The blacksmith who made the mould was brought to us, and the rascal showed a bit of wood shaped much like a clove of orange. Finally, I was driven to accept the statement of Mr. Briggs (i. 117): 'Almost all the finest jewels in India have been gradually collected at Hyderabad, and have fallen into the Nizam's possession, and are considered State property. _One uncut diamond alone of three hundred and seventy-five carats is valued at thirty lakhs of rupees_, and has been mortgaged for half that money.'

"Let us now estimate the value of the Nizam diamond. For uncut stones we square the weight (375 x 375 = 140,625) and multiply the product by £2, which gives a sum of £281,250. For cut stones the process is the same, only the multiplier is raised from £2 to £8. Thus, supposing a loss of 75 carats, which would reduce 375 to 300 (300 x 300 = 90,000 x £8), we obtain a total value of £720,003.

"Allow me briefly to compare the Nizam diamond (uncut 375 carats, cut 370) with the historic stones of the world. The list usually begins with the Pitt or Regent, the first cut in Europe. When the extraneous matter was removed in unusual quantities, it was reduced to 136¾ carats, valued from £141,058 to £160,000. The famous or infamous Koh-i-noor originally gauged 900 carats; it was successively reduced to 279 or 280 (Tavernier) and to 186¼ (= £276,768) when exhibited in Hyde Park; its last treatment has left it at 162½ carats. Then we have the Grand Duke's or Austrian, of 139½ carats (= £153,682); the Orloff or Russian (rose cut) of 195 (193?) carats; and the Abaïté, poetically called the 'Estrella do Sul' (Star of the South), weighing 120 carats. The 'Stone of the Great Mogul,' mentioned by Tavernier, is probably that now called the Daryá-i-noor: it weighs 279 9/16 carats, and graces the treasury of the Shah. The nearest approach to 'The Nizam' is the Mattan or Laudah diamond of 376 carats. Experts agree to ignore the Braganza, whose 1680 carats are calculated to be worth £5,644,800: the stone is kept with a silly mystery which makes men suspect that it is a white topaz.

"And now to notice the diamond diggings of India, and especially of Golconda, their ancient history and their modern state. I will begin by stating my conclusions. Diamonds have been found in the Ganges Valley: they are still washed as far north as Sambalpúr, and in the Majnodi, an influent of the Mahanadi, on the Upper Narbada (Nerbudda), on the line of the Godaveri and on the whole course of the Krishna. The extreme points would range between Masulipatam and the Ganges Valley; the more limited area gives a depth from north to south of some 5º (= three hundred direct geographical miles), beginning north from the Central Provinces and south from the Western Gháts, a breadth averaging about the same extent, and a superficies of ninety thousand miles. A considerable part of this vast space is, I need hardly say, almost unexplored, and the sooner we prospect it the better. The curious reader will find the limits laid down in the 'General Sketch,' etc., of British India, by G. B. Greenough, F.R.S.

"The history of the diamond in India begins with the Maharabháta (B.C. 2100). The Koh-i-noor is supposed to have belonged to King Vikramaditya (B.C. 56), and to a succession of Moslem princes (A.D. 1306), till it fell into the hands of the Christians. Henry Lord's 'Discovery of the Banian Religion' quaintly relates how 'Shuddery' (Sudra), the third son of Pourvus (Purusha), 'findeth a mine of diamonds,' and engenders a race of miners--this is going back with a witness, _teste_ Menu. At what period India invented the cutting of the stone we are yet unable to find out; the more civilized Greeks and Romans ignored, it is suspected, the steel wheel. The Indian diamond was first made famous in Europe by the French jeweller, Jean Baptiste Tavernier (born 1605, died 1689), who made six journeys to the Peninsula as a purchaser of what he calls the Iri (_hira_).

"Tavernier's travels are especially interesting to diamond-diggers, because he visited the two extreme points, north and south. He began with 'Raulconda,' in the Carnatic, some five days south of Golconda (Hyderabad), and eight or nine marches from Vizapore (_hodie_ Bijapur). In 1665 the diggings were some two hundred years old, and they still employed sixty thousand hands. The traveller's description of the sandy earth, full of rocks, and 'covered with coppice-wood, nearly similar to the environs of Fontainebleau,' is perfectly applicable to the Nizam's country about Hyderabad. The diamond veins ranged from half an inch to an inch in thickness, and the precious gangue was hooked out with iron rods. Some of the stones were valued at two thousand, and even at sixteen thousand crowns, and the steel wheel was used for cutting. He then passed on to the Ganee diggings, which the Persians call Coulour (_hod._ Burkalún), also belonging to the King of Golconda. They lay upon the river separating the capital from Bijapur. This must be the Bhima influent of the Krishna, and the old jeweller notices the 'corracles' which are still in use. The discovery began about A.D. 1565 with a peasant finding a stone gauging twenty-five carats. Here, we are told, appeared the Koh-i-noor (nine hundred carats), which 'Mirzimolas,' or 'Mirgimola,' the 'Captain of the Mogols,' presented to the Emperor Aurungzeb. The sixty thousand hands used to dig to the depth of ten, twelve, or fourteen feet, _but as soon as they meet with water there is no hope of success_. Tavernier then records the fact that the king closed perforce half a dozen diggings between 'Coulour and Raulconda, because for thirty or forty years the yield of black and yellow had given rise to frauds.' The Frenchman's last visit was to 'Soumelpore' (Sambalpur), 'a town of Bengala, on the river Gowel,' a northern affluent of the Mahanadi. The season for washing the diamantiferous land began in early February, when the waters ran clear; other authors make it extend from November to the rainy season; and the eight thousand hands extended their operations to fifty _kos_ up-stream. Gold and the finest diamonds in India--locally called 'Brahmans'--were found in the river-bed and at the mouth of the various feeders.

"So far Tavernier. In 1688 and 1728 the well-known Captain Hamilton ('New Account,' etc.), in his twenty-ninth chapter, treating of 'Maderass, or China-Patam,' describes the diamond mines, evidently those of Partiál in the Northern Circars, as being distant a week's journey from Fort St. George; and he records the fact that the Pitt diamond was there brought to light.

"The precious stone was practically limited to Hindustan and Borneo before A.D. 1728, when diggings were opened in Brazil. At first the new produce was rejected by the public, till it found out that many Indian stones from the New World were sent to Goa, and thence were exported to Europe. Still the general view was not wholly wrong. The specific gravity of the diamond averages 3.6, and the difference of oxide in the crystallized or allotropic carbon does not exceed a third place of decimals. This, however, makes all the difference in lustre; and, even in England, we have lately found out that a small brilliant of perfect water, hung to the ear, for instance, is far more effective than a stone much superior in size but inferior in quality. The public, perhaps, do not remember that as far back as 1868 my study of the formations which bear the Brazilian diamonds enabled me to forecast that the gem would be found in a variety of places where its existence had never been suspected. Thus, to mention no others, they were washed in the Cudgegong river, near Rylston, New South Wales; the Australian Diamond Company failed, however, probably by bad management, to pay its expenses. It has been otherwise with the South African diggings, which began with the Vaal river; the stones are inferior even to those of the Brazil, yet they have reduced the value of the latter by one-third. When another great revolution or other political trouble shall occur, the diamond will recover its old market price.

"'The diamond mines of Golconda,' says Mr. Briggs (ch. vi.), 'derive their name from being in the kingdom of Golconda, and not from being near the Fort. They are at the village of Purteeali (Partiál), near Condapilly, about one hundred and fifty miles from Hyderabad, on the road to Masulipatam.[11] The property of them was reserved by the late Nizam when he ceded the Northern Circars to the English Government. They are superficial excavations not extending ten or twelve feet deep in any part. For some years past the working of them has been discontinued, and there is no tradition of their having ever produced very valuable stones.'

"This _résumé_ is so full of errors that we cannot but suspect that they conceal some design. The historian must have known that the Pitt diamond, one of the finest and most perfect of its kind, was produced at Gáni Partiál, and that the Koh-i-noor came from the so-called 'Golconda mines.' Again, Partiál, on the north bank of the Krishna, some fifty miles from the Bay of Bengal, is only one of many diggings in the vast area which I have before laid down, some being still worked, and the others prematurely, we must believe, abandoned.

"The student will do well to consult that valuable volume, the 'Geological Papers on Western India' (Bombay, 1857), edited by my old friend, Dr. Henry J. Carter. Here he will find detailed modern notices of a multitude of mines. John Malcolmson, F.R.S. (p. 6), treats of the diggings at 'Chinon on the Pennar,' and the Cuddapah mines (p. 6). Of the latter Captain Newbold says ('Geological Notes' p. 375), 'The diamond is found in the gravel beds of the Cuddapah district below the _Regur_,' the black, tenacious, and fertile soils of Central and Southern India. The same scientific officer, who died too early for his fame, describes (p. 67) the yield of Mullavelly (or Malavilly), north-west of Ellore, as 'occurring in a bed of gravel, composed chiefly of rolled pebbles of quartz, sandstone, chert, ferruginous jasper, conglomerate, sandstone, and Kankar, lying in a stratum of dark mould about a foot thick.' Both these geologists inferred the identity of the sandstone of Central with that of Southern India from the existence of the diamond at Weiragad, a town about eighty miles south-east of the capital. Malcolmson declared that the 'celebrated diamond mines of Partel (Partiál), Bangnapilly, and Panna, occurring in the great sandstone formations of Northern India, as well as the limestones and schists associated with them, exhibit from the latitude of Madras to the banks of the Ganges the same characters, and are broken up or elevated by granite on trap rocks, in no respect differing in mineralogical characters or in geological relations.'

"The Rev. Messrs. S. Hislop and R. Hunter, who visited and described the Nagpur mines, object to this assertion, and endeavour to prove that the 'diamond sandstone of the Southern Maharatta country is a conglomerate, reposing upon the arenaceous beds, which have _never_ yielded the precious stone, nor are there any data to prove that the conglomerate derived most of its materials from that source.' Dr. Heyne contributed an excellent description of the mines of Southern India, especially those of Bangnapilly (p. 689); of Ovalumpilly, six miles from Cuddapah (p. 691); and of others in the Ellore district. This experienced geologist concludes, 'All the diamond mines which I have seen can be considered as nothing else than alluvial soil.' Major Franklin ('Geological Translation,' second series, vol. iii. part i.), who visited the mines of Pannah in Bandelkhand, before Victor Jacquemont's day, makes the diamond sandstone, between the Narbada (Nerbudda) and the Ganges, belong to the 'New Red'--apparently an error. Others have described the diggings east of Nagpur (Central Provinces) as having been opened in a matrix of lateritic grit. Dr. Carter ('Summary of the Geology of India,' pp. 686-691) connects the 'diamond conglomerate' with the Oolitic series and its _débris_, and he offers (p. 688) a useful tabular view of the strata in the mines of Bangnapilly, described by Voysey, and Pannah or Punna, by Franklin and Jacquemont. The most important conclusion is their invariable connection with sandstone.

"Dr. Carter's volume quotes largely from the writings of Mr. Voysey (_Journal As. Soc._, Bengal, second Report on the Government of Hyderabad), a geologist who maintained the growth of the diamond as others do of gold: he declared that he could prove in alluvial soil the recrystallization of amethysts, zeolites, and felspar. During his last journey from Nagpur to Calcutta he visited the diamond washings of 'Sumbhulpore,' in the Mahanadi valley, and he describes the gems as being 'sought for in the sand and gravel of the river,' the latter consisting of pebbles of clay slate, flinty slate, jasper and jaspery ironstone of all sizes, from an inch to a foot in diameter.