MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER
 
 MEMOIES 
 
 OF 
 
 MY INDIAN CAEEEE 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL, 
 
 M.P., K.C.S.I., D.C.L. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 SIR CHARLES E. BERNARD 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NBW YORK 
 1893
 
 DS 
 1-76. SL 
 
 V.I 
 
 PEEFAOE 
 
 THESE memoirs were written by George Campbell during 
 the last two years of a busy life; and he was engaged on 
 them in Egypt up to three weeks before his death in 
 February 1892. They are published as he left them, the 
 old spelling of Indian names being retained. The memoirs 
 give some idea of Campbell's diligence, his thirst for 
 information, his grasp of great affairs, his many-sidedness, 
 his steadfast adherence to principle, his sympathy with the 
 oppressed and afflicted, his honesty of purpose, and his 
 untiring energy. His reforming zeal on occasions raised 
 opponents, who afterwards recognised that Campbell's 
 measures were generally sound and beneficial. He left a 
 permanent mark for good on the administration of Bengal, 
 the Central Provinces, Oude, and part of the Punjaub. 
 
 But the memoirs do not fully bring out the warmth of 
 heart, the unselfish kindness, and the thoughtfulness for 
 others which endeared George Campbell to those who knew 
 him best during his Indian career. 
 
 C. E. BERNARD. 
 
 February 1893.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SIKH COUNTRY ....... 38 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FURLOUGH 1851-54 ....... 130 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH . . . . . .145 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES . . . . . .177 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE SEPOY MUTINY . ... 210
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 EARLY DAYS AND EAELY SERVICE TO 1846 
 
 THE story of our family down to my own birth has been 
 told in the Life of Lord Campbell, so well edited by his 
 daughter, and which evoked much interest and sympathy. 
 Very pleasant is the account of his relations with his family 
 and of his close connection and correspondence with my 
 father, his only brother, a picture to which I can desire to 
 add very little. I can wish nothing better than that my 
 father should be known as he has come to be known in 
 those pages. Anything of our early history that I here add 
 is only by way of supplement. 
 
 In regard to Donald Campbell, Abbot of Coupar- Angus, 
 and son of the Argyll who fell at Flodden, from whom we 
 claim descent, Lord Campbell says that he had ascertained 
 that Donald was a soldier and a married man with a family 
 before he became a monk. This Donald was a considerable 
 man in his day, and voluminous papers regarding the abbacy 
 of Coupar- Angus have lately been published. I have seen it 
 suggested as an instance of the laxity of those days that Donald 
 the Abbot openly brought up a family without being the least 
 ashamed of it, and that they blazoned their relationship on 
 tombstones and all the rest of it. But our case is that there 
 was no concealment, because the Abbot had nothing to be 
 ashamed of. Nicholas, the son of Donald, and our ancestor, 
 was born in 1517, while Donald was not appointed to the 
 abbacy till 1526 ; and we may well suppose that Argyll's 
 son did not laboriously rise from a curacy, so the dates are 
 
 VOL. I B
 
 2 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 by no means inconsistent with the facts ascertained by Lord 
 Campbell. Donald managed to feather his nest, and gave 
 estates to each of his several sons. Nicholas had the estate 
 of Kethik, now called Keithock, on the borders of Perth- 
 shire and Forfarshire, and that was the estate held by 
 George Campbell two generations later, when he became 
 " caution " for the Marquis of Argyll, and was judicially 
 sold up in consequence in 1661. 
 
 Lord Campbell tells the story of the subsequent settle- 
 ment of the family in Fife, and residence there till a hundred 
 years later they came to their lowest point after the death 
 of my great-grandfather. The history of his sons is an 
 instance that Scotch families do not give in. While my 
 grandfather made the best of it in this country, two of his 
 brothers went to America in 1770, and one went to Con- 
 stantinople, where he turned Turk, and is said to have risen 
 to considerable office. We have lately found a series of 
 letters from one of the brothers who went to America, Andrew 
 Campbell, curiously well written and interesting. One 
 could hardly have expected a young emigrant to have 
 written such letters ; but from his brother's notices it 
 appears that he had been a distinguished student at St. 
 Andrews. From the time we came to Fife, all the family 
 down to myself have been educated at the University of St. 
 Andrews, which in former days seems, relatively at any rate, 
 to have been a much more considerable place of education 
 than in my day. Andrew went to Maryland, and seems to 
 have found a relation, a Tom Campbell, who had consider- 
 able property, both in Virginia and the West Indies. 
 Andrew himself acted as H.M. Collector of Customs for the 
 Potomac. The younger brother Jock was much less com- 
 pletely educated, of a very roving disposition, and, his 
 brother says, a shocking bad letter-writer. We only know 
 of him through Andrew, but Andrew tells us that he found 
 his way to a place called Pittsburg, " which I only know to 
 be a place in the back settlements in the Indian territory." 
 Andrew complains of the difficulty of getting information, 
 partly on account of the sparseness of Jock's letter-writing,
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 3 
 
 and partly on account of the difficulty of communication 
 with Pittsburg, which was only had by occasional waggons 
 in the summer-time. The last that was heard of Jock was 
 that he had joined and gone into partnership with an 
 American, Colonel George Croghan, who was " possessed of 
 an immense tract of land " in those parts. Andrew died, 
 leaving only an infant son, another George, and then the 
 war came on ; nothing more was heard of Jock. The family 
 long remained in hopes of his turning up a millionaire, but 
 he has not come yet. 
 
 As I have said, Lord Campbell's account of my grand- 
 father and his family is enough. I was born in 1824, and 
 brought up at Edenwood, my father's home in Fife. I may 
 say this much, that my father was eminently loved and 
 respected by all his children. My mother, too, was a very 
 clever woman, and we owe much to our parents. My father 
 kept a note of my early life, on which I need not dwell. 
 It is very curious in reading these things to see how early 
 in life the peculiarities and special tastes come out which 
 have followed me in maturer years. In one thing only 
 there is a material difference. The main fault my father 
 found with me was being slow and listless. In after life 
 people have been apt to accuse me of being a little too 
 restless. 
 
 At the age of eight I was sent to the Edinburgh New 
 Academy, then in its first prime, and which had had Arch- 
 bishop Tait and Lord Moncreiff for its first duxes. I was 
 there two years, and then three years at the newly-started 
 Madras College, St. Andrews, where the education was 
 similar. At both places the teaching was good of its kind ; 
 but after all our Scotch education was little better than the 
 English in regard to the choice of subjects. It was still 
 almost entirely classical, with a little mathematics thrown in. 
 It has always been a regret to me, that, having been 
 so much over the world, as so many of us have, I never 
 got a little smattering of useful science in my youth 
 geology and botany and natural history, and such things. 
 My Latin education w r as very thorough, better than the
 
 4 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 English style ; great attention was paid to roots and deriva- 
 tives, and that is what makes Latin useful for our own and 
 other languages. I confess, however, that I never came to 
 enjoy Latin literature beyond a few stock passages of Tacitus, 
 which I retained. Just when I should have commenced 
 Greek, I had an attack of bad eyes, got thrown behind the 
 course, and never properly overtook it ; consequently I never 
 had more than a very superficial smattering of Greek, 
 and have not had much desire for more. I can follow the 
 Greek words now introduced into our language, which is 
 about all that any one who is not a profound scholar wants. 
 The truth is that I never had a good memory, nor any 
 talent for intricate languages ; though I was very much 
 whipped up with every advantage, nobody could ever make 
 a classical scholar of me. I became very diffident of my 
 own powers, and that was perhaps why my father called me 
 slow and listless. There was a gleam of another state of 
 things when I came to mathematics proper, to Euclid, at the 
 age of twelve. Then I suddenly found that without any 
 effort I was easily head of a class of some fifty boys. The 
 fact is, that any powers that I have are of a ratiocinative 
 character. At the end of a year I had triumphantly 
 mastered the six books of Euclid, though I don't think my 
 mathematical education ever went very much further. How- 
 ever the ratiocinative character of my mind has always stood 
 rne in good stead or in bad as the case may be. I think I have 
 always been prone to fixed and logical principles of action. 
 But, on the other hand, I have perhaps been too much given 
 to independent views ; too little apt to follow the current 
 tide of opinion. That has not always been to my advantage, 
 even if I may sometimes think that my opinions were only a 
 little in advance of most of the world, and were right, though 
 premature. In the secondary schools of Scotland, at any rate, 
 religion was very little taught to the best of my recollec- 
 tion it was not taught at the Edinburgh Academy at all. 
 At St. Andrews we had a weekly dose of the Shorter Cate- 
 chism, just enough to make me hate it a hatred which I 
 have maintained through life. I am pained to think that
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 5 
 
 even at this day children are subjected to that antique 
 theological code of another age. 
 
 Those five years at Edinburgh and St. Andrews almost 
 completed the only regular education I ever had. After 
 that I was two sessions at the University of St. Andrews, 
 commencing at the age of thirteen ; but I must confess that 
 I got little good there. The system was not well fitted for 
 a boy. In former days St. Andrews was much more like 
 an English University. There were several colleges, and 
 those colleges were residential, with rooms for the students, 
 and common-hall, and so on. They used to speak Latin, 
 and acquire a great deal of knowledge of a kind. Down to 
 the time of my father and uncle, there were rooms and hall 
 in the United College, and I believe in St. Mary's too. 
 Indeed it was only in my time that the disused and 
 dilapidated buildings were pulled down. The United 
 College had then become a mere day school. That system 
 may suit very well in Edinburgh and Glasgow, where a 
 large proportion of the students live at home, but at such a 
 place as St. Andrews, I think the change is very much to 
 be regretted. The Duke of Argyll and others have tried to 
 revive the college halls but without success. Now-a-days 
 people who can afford it send their sons to England for 
 general education. The Scotch Universities are mostly 
 professional schools with a little general education thrown 
 in for local purposes, or as a passport to the professional 
 schools. I don't think I knew more Latin and Mathematics 
 when I left the University at fifteen than when I went 
 there. I may have picked up a smattering of logic, and like 
 my father before me, I was a member of a debating society, 
 and was probably a little ripened, but that was all. 
 
 At this time my father obtained for me the promise of 
 a nomination to India, and thenceforward my course was 
 all in an Indian channel. 
 
 One great advantage of the day-school system of 
 Edinburgh and St. Andrews was, that I was a great deal 
 at home. Two or three winters my father had houses in 
 Edinburgh and St. Andrews for the education of his children,
 
 6 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 and at St. Andrews I was always within easy reach of our 
 home at Edenwood. My father was a man of much higher 
 classical education than I ever attained, and of strong 
 literary tastes. I am afraid, however, that his sons 
 irreverently thought some of those tastes a little out of 
 date. He was always trying to make us appreciate the 
 English classics of the last century : Addison and Pope and 
 the others, but somehow or other we never could see it. 
 I used to fear that I was wanting in filial piety, but I 
 gather that a great many peeple are similarly situated as 
 regards those eighteenth century classics. Partly with my 
 sisters at home, and partly at St. Andrews, I learnt enough 
 French to read that language with sufficient facility. 
 
 There was another kind of education of which I got a 
 good deal at home at a very early age, a political education. 
 I have a very vivid recollection of the excitement of the 
 Pieform Bill agitation of 1832. My father was a great 
 reformer, and very actively engaged in the Eeform move- 
 ment at a time when his neighbours looked upon such a 
 man as a kind of mad dog. As a child, I came to sympathise 
 in an active agitation of a more thorough character I think 
 than anything we have seen in these days, and as it were 
 drank in Radical ideas with my mother's milk. I well 
 remember going with my father to meetings and processions, 
 and fraternising with the handloom-weavers, then very 
 numerous, and especially good reformers. That, however, 
 lasted but a short time in my very early youth. Quieter days 
 succeeded ; the Whigs were established in power and my 
 uncle in office. For many years after that the Radical seed 
 lay dormant, and my views in politics were principally 
 derived from the correspondence between my uncle the 
 Whig in office, and my father. People thought that under 
 the Whig regime my father should have got something 
 substantial out of the spoils, but he was put off with a 
 handle to his name, and though he did think of parliament 
 and might have got in, he decided to husband his resources 
 for the education of his children, devoted himself to that 
 and local politics, was on excellent terms with the country
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 7 
 
 gentlemen around him, and lived to see many of them 
 become Whigs. My youth was without the Radical excite- 
 ment of my childhood. I don't know whether I was born 
 a Eadical, or was made one in 1832. I rather think my 
 nature inclines that way. 
 
 When my appointment to India was secured, I was 
 sent for a year to a school in the North of England, then 
 of great repute, where many distinguished contemporaries 
 have been, the Grange, kept by Dr. Cowan. But both 
 Cowan and the majority of the pupils were Scotch. I was 
 in the school, but not of it, for I was to be specially pre- 
 pared for Haileybury, and my work was almost entirely 
 with a man to whom I owe very much, the late Dr. Dawson 
 Turner. He was then a young Oxford man, and very full of 
 Oxford, but by no means of Oxford routine. I learnt from 
 him especially a great deal of what is the rarest thing in 
 the world, rational history not kings and queens and 
 battles, but the history of nations and peoples. I had also 
 particularly to get up Paley, then imposed on candidates for 
 Haileybury, rather, I suppose, in imitation of the universities 
 than because the East India Company particularly wanted 
 to make their servants orthodox. I had none of the 
 dislike to Paley that I had for the Shorter Catechism ; on 
 the contrary, I have an affection for Paley to this day, and 
 though he has now gone out of fashion, I have not heard 
 that anything better has been found to put in his place. I 
 need hardly say that my preference for Paley to the Shorter 
 Catechism does not involve any liking for Anglican forms ; 
 on the contrary, I have always infinitely preferred the 
 Presbyterian system of my fathers to the episcopal sacer- 
 dotalism of the Anglicans. The examination for Haileybury 
 was then not competitive but qualifying, and qualifying exam- 
 inations seldom keep many out ; yet I went up with some 
 trembling, and was very agreeably surprised to find that I 
 had greatly distinguished myself, and was much complimented 
 by the examiners. 
 
 I may say a few words here about the then mode of 
 making appointments to the Indian Civil Service. Except
 
 8 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 in rare cases, there was of course no pretence that the 
 directors went about looking for the best young men. 
 They nominated their sons and nephews and friends. 
 Though I was not related to any director, I was not selected 
 for any merit whatever ; my director had never seen or 
 heard of me till, as a matter of mutual friendship and 
 favour, he gave me a nomination. Still, the qualifying 
 examination not only threw out a few of the worst, but 
 frightened away a good many more. Directors did not 
 like to send up a boy likely to fail. Then a considerable 
 number were sifted out at Haileybury. It would have been 
 difficult to turn him adrift, but there was the alternative of 
 the Company's Cavalry, a coveted service. The fashion 
 was to send into the Cavalry a young man too idle or too 
 stupid to go through Haileybury, and the director put another 
 in his place in the Civil Service. Altogether, a good many 
 were weeded out from the bottom; and the rest being 
 caught young, and kept apart, the best did not go off from 
 the top, as they might under other circumstances. The 
 young men, caught young and taught to believe themselves 
 especially fortunate, took a pride in the service ; they had a 
 wonderfully effective training in India, and almost all 
 became zealous. I think they took more to the natives 
 than more mature men, and they more readily accepted the 
 view that they were given body and soul to the Government 
 must look to no other emoluments whatever, and scrupulously 
 abstain from all other enterprises. I say all this, not denying 
 that the present mode of selection is better, but as showing 
 that there was something to be said on the other side too, and 
 to explain why, in my opinion, the difference in efficiency 
 between the old and the new service is not so very wide as 
 might be supposed, considering the difference in the manner 
 of selection. 
 
 Picked up as I was, I went to Haileybury at the age of 
 sixteen, being one of the youngest of my term. It was a very 
 large, and, we thought, a distinguished term. I have a very 
 pleasurable recollection of the two years I spent at Hailey- 
 bury, always excepting the constant voyages between the
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 9 
 
 Tay and the Thames, in days before railways, on that rough 
 eastern coast ; but perhaps they inured me for longer 
 voyages afterwards. Haileybury was generally popular. It 
 was in a good situation ; the life was not unpleasant, the 
 East India Company provided the best of professors, the 
 education was on the whole much better than we should 
 have got elsewhere, and we made many friendships. Pos- 
 sibly it was too exclusive ; it may be that young men who 
 are now specially cared for at Balliol are better placed, 
 though I am not sure of it; and where young men are 
 scattered at various places of education I doubt it altogether. 
 Of this I feel sure, that an independent student life in 
 London is bad for Europeans and worse for natives of India. 
 At Haileybury it was rather absurdly attempted to carry 
 on the routine of classics and mathematics at the same time 
 as special subjects, but I can answer for it that I did not 
 give much time to the former. The small modicum of 
 mathematics that I had got at St. Andrews three years 
 before sufficed to carry me through at the head of that 
 department at Haileybury. Classics was more difficult. 
 We had in the term two men who had been head of Eton 
 and Rugby respectively R. N. Gust and W. S. Seton Karr, 
 rivalry with whom was no bar to a long-continuing friend- 
 ship, and who, I am happy to say, survive and live near me 
 now. I never attempted to compete with them in their 
 own department ; but knowing how excessively slender my 
 classical requirements were, I was surprised to find that. I 
 could hold my own against all the other public schoolmen. 
 The moral I drew was that if the average boy learnt little 
 else at an English public school, he learnt uncommonly little 
 classics. We were taught a little of the Oriental languages, 
 which really was useful as a beginning. We learnt the 
 characters, both Sanscrit and Persian, and read one or two 
 simple books in both languages ; but I confess I never was 
 very brilliant. My principal subjects were Political Economy 
 and Law, taught by two notable men, Jones and Empson. 
 Political Economy had not then been sent to Saturn, and 
 I really think Jones taught it in a very sensible way. I
 
 io MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 never was a rigid disciple, but I do trace in my letters for 
 the next two or three years little priggish economical state- 
 ments which I would not venture upon in these days. 
 Empsou's law was not the law of English lawyers, but 
 good first principles. He was a good deal of a Benthamite, 
 and I came away from Haileybury with a very sound belief 
 in the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 
 
 I confess I am very much inclined to regret the aboli- 
 tion of Haileybury. Some years later I had a plan for a 
 special Indian College at one of the universities, and had a 
 good deal of talk with Whewell about it. The main diffi- 
 culty seemed to be that no government would dare to plant 
 such an institution at one university to the exclusion of the 
 other. I suspect that at the present day that would be very 
 much the difficulty in finding any substitute for Haileybury. 
 
 At eighteen, then, I had finished my education and was 
 ready to go to India. By blood, bringing up, and feelings, 
 I was and am altogether Scotch. When I went to Hailey- 
 bury I spoke a good native vernacular, and I never, like 
 Lord Campbell, tried to get rid of it ; but gradually and 
 imperceptibly I lapsed into that neutral language which is 
 free from English provincialisms. I am always inclined to 
 say that to speak English correctly, a man, and still more a 
 woman, must be born in Scotland. No English person can 
 pronounce correctly such words as " whale " and " where," 
 for instance. Seriously I believe philologists are agreed that 
 Scotch is the purest and best form of English, and it is 
 shown as matter of history that in the north we got rid 
 of the Teutonic inflexions and approached the modern form 
 long before the southerners did. My life has been so much 
 divided between Scotland, India, and London, the common 
 capital, that England is still to me a sort of foreign country. 
 
 My upbringing was purely lowland, but I several times 
 visited the Highlands, first with my father, who knew that 
 country well in the end of the last century, when he served 
 as a young officer in the militia, and then on -several walking 
 tours. My father used to show me the remains of the old 
 " runrig " system and other customs, which I afterwards
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 11 
 
 recognised in far distant parts of the world we are nearly 
 akin after all. 
 
 In spite of rural birth and breeding I have always been 
 thin and rather pale, but I think wiry. I learnt to ride 
 at the age of two, and at six my father notes that I rode 
 some twenty-five miles without feeling it. Later he had 
 some young horses which gave me a practice that afterwards 
 came useful in India. But I was always a loose rider, and 
 have rather prided myself on the agility by which I avoided 
 any serious harm from the many accidents I have had, than 
 on too severely sticking to my saddle. Like all Britishers, 
 too, I was infected with that survival of the hunting age of 
 mankind the feeling that it is necessary to a man and a 
 gentleman to take every opportunity of killing something, 
 and it has taken me some fifty years completely to emanci- 
 pate myself from that superstition. I began to shoot very 
 early, and continued it throughout my service in India, if 
 not with excessive devotion, at any rate enough to give me 
 change, air, and exercise, and a pleasant variety of food when 
 I was in camp. I always felt more zealous when shooting for 
 the pot, stalking ducks, and the like; and after a long 
 career of not very successful shooting at flying creatures, it 
 gradually dawned upon me that nature had made me for a 
 poacher rather than a sportsman. Perhaps that is why in 
 game questions I rather sympathise with the poacher. 
 
 Land-tenure questions were not prominent in my youth, 
 and Fife is a country of largish farms and pure contract 
 tenancies. Brought up among moderate landholders, I have 
 never been able to take such a severe view of that class as 
 Mr. Bright and some of the mercantile school. Even the 
 average Irish landlord I can't be too hard upon ; I am rather 
 inclined to pity him for his misfortune in having owned Irish 
 land than too bitterly to condemn him. 
 
 After leaving Haileybury I spent a short time with my 
 family at Edenwood, and then, parting from them, started 
 for India in September 1842. We had been a very united 
 family, but we were never all together again. Both my
 
 12 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 brothers followed me to India. My sisters were married, 
 and when I returned in 1857 my father and mother were 
 alone at the old home. I went round the Cape, but in a 
 steamer, the Hindoostan, the first of the P. and O. vessels 
 to take up the line from Calcutta to England by way of 
 Egypt, which, in the absence of means of communication 
 across India to Bombay, was for many years the main route 
 for nine-tenths of the Indian world. I have a very pleasant 
 recollection of that voyage out. We had a large and agree- 
 able party, and saw half the world on the way. I shared a 
 cabin with a friend, E. L. Brandreth, the best Oriental of 
 my day. He too now lives as fresh as ever very near me. 
 And there was my most intimate friend, John Dalrymple, 
 who passed away about a year ago. Late in life he came 
 into the family estates and honours at North Berwick, and 
 was then keen to exercise the kindness and generosity which 
 always distinguished him. But these are very bad days for 
 East Lothian landlords ; his health had failed, and he went 
 from us before long. 
 
 Besides other young men there were several elder civil 
 servants on board the Hindoostan, in whose society we picked 
 up much, and some ladies, of whom I have very kindly 
 memories. 
 
 Our first halt was at Gibraltar, where we stopped two or 
 three days, and made excursions into Spain. Then we 
 touched at the Cape de Verde Islands, and at Ascension. 
 When we were nearing the Cape it was suddenly discovered 
 that we had no more coal, and we drifted into a place on 
 the coast, an outlying part of Cape Colony. There a party 
 of us penetrated into the interior till we found a Dutch 
 farmer, with whom we made an arrangement to send us 
 overland to Cape Town, when we despatched coals to fetch 
 up the steamer and the rest of the passengers. I was 
 tipwards of a fortnight in South Africa, and greatly enjoyed 
 it. We had left a fine autumn in Europe, and we came 
 upon -a fine spring in the Southern Hemisphere in the 
 beginning of November. We were astonished by the skill 
 with which our Hottentot coachman drove a waggon and ten
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 13 
 
 horses over the most impossible no -roads. The Dutch 
 farmers on the route were exceedingly kind and hospitable, 
 and we quite liked them. The environs of Cape Town 
 seemed to us delightful, and the Cape riding-horses charm- 
 ing. That was then a great resort for Anglo-Indians on 
 account of the peculiar leave rules and the good climate. 
 We had a large addition to our party there, including some 
 who proved even more agreeable than those whom we had 
 brought with us. From the Cape we went to the Mauritius, 
 from the Mauritius to Ceylon, from Ceylon to Madras, from 
 Madras to Calcutta, arriving there on Christmas day 1842, 
 after a three months' voyage ; but then we had spent nearly 
 half the time on shore. 
 
 At Calcutta I was strange at first, but soon found 
 myself more at home in a congenial society. We were 
 kept there to learn the languages, at what was by a fiction 
 called the college of Fort William, but there really was no 
 college ; we hired native instructors and went up for 
 examinations. A party of young civilians of whom I was 
 one set up house together. We saw a great deal of the 
 heads of our profession, learned Indian manners, were duly 
 cheated about horses, and did learn a little language. For 
 these who did not linger too long it was not a bad experi- 
 ence. Five months saw me thorough, and soon after that 
 I started for the North- Western Provinces, to which I 
 had been posted. 
 
 It is not very far from half a century since I knew 
 Calcutta in those days, but I really do not think that the 
 kind of life there or the chances of living have very greatly 
 changed since then, except only in the modern facility for 
 getting away. In those days the only resource was to go 
 to sea. When people did not feel well they used to go to 
 the pilot brigs cruising at the head of the Bay of Bengal, 
 which was a kind of choice between the devil and the deep 
 sea. Pessimists have said that Calcutta is bad for new 
 arrivals in the hot weather, in the rains for old Indians, 
 and in the cold weather for everybody ; but the cold weather 
 is really very pleasant, and in the hot weather the southerly
 
 14 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 breeze makes the climate much more bearable than in 
 stations in the interior. In those days there were some 
 very old European residents, and many who had been 
 there a long while without being the worse. People did 
 not seem to expect to die much more then than they do 
 now. I remember some statistics compiled regarding the 
 European Orphan Asylums near Calcutta from the beginning 
 of the century, which showed an extraordinary absence of 
 mortality. The residents seem very early to have hit off 
 a style of roomy-house with open verandahs facing the 
 south, very much suited to the climate, and which has never 
 been bettered. There was no scientific sanitation in those 
 days, and one is almost inclined to say, So much the worse 
 for sanitation : people lived when they ought by rights to 
 have died. There certainly was a good deal of cholera the 
 season I was there, but I think it was an occasional outbreak. 
 There always is cholera more or less in Calcutta, and people 
 don't think very much of it. It only takes people occasion- 
 ally, and I doubt if it is worse than the typhoid which we 
 have recently imported into India. The only very marked 
 change I have noticed is in the fort, the European garrison. 
 There used to be very low barracks surrounded by very 
 high ramparts, and the place was very unhealthy. Since 
 the present four-storied barracks were built they are among 
 the healthiest in India. They are just as suitable for the 
 climate of Calcutta as buildings of that class were found to 
 be unsuitable for the dry upper provinces when they were 
 imposed upon us there. 
 
 In 1843 the Governor-General was absent from Calcutta 
 on the frontier, but the Members of Council and other great 
 people were there. For the amenities of life I was 
 principally indebted to a well-known family who had been 
 my fellow-travellers on the Hindoostan, the Patties. Old 
 Pattle was very much of the old school of civilians an 
 ancient member of the Board of Eevenue. His wife, the 
 daughter of an emigrant Frenchman, we were all very fond 
 of. Several of his beautiful daughters had married Mem- 
 bers of Council and distinguished people, and everybody else
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 15 
 
 wanted to marry the remainder. The youngest did later 
 marry my friend Dalrymple, and has survived him. 
 
 In June 1843 I started up country in a Ganges 
 steamer, which took me as far as Allahabad. Thence I 
 travelled by palanquin up to Bareilly in Rohilcund, 
 enduring on the latter part of the journey a good many 
 adventures by flood, for the rains had set in heavily. I 
 was astonished, and I still am, at the endurance of the 
 Indian bearers, who carry heavy palanquins and heavy 
 travellers for long stages, in a way which I believe is really 
 a marvel of athletic power. That travelling, with halts in 
 the heat of the day, though slow, was not altogether very 
 uncomfortable. It was one of the advantages of the 
 homogeneity of the Indian services that one was received 
 with exceeding kindness wherever one halted. I had my 
 first Indian illness on board the steamer, and that was the 
 occasion of my staying a short time at Allahabad, where 
 most of the principal officials of the North-West Provinces 
 then were, and where I made their acquaintance. I stayed 
 with G. Edmonstone, then a rising man, who afterwards 
 rose much higher. 
 
 The North-West Provinces were then considered the 
 model administration. The regular settlement of the Land 
 Revenue, the first of the kind, was just being completed. 
 It was called regular as distinguished from the " summary " 
 settlements which had preceded it, the regular settlement 
 involving a minute survey, classification and valuation of 
 the land, a full register of all rights, and a record of village 
 constitutions. In various ways too the administration had 
 been regularised, and I began in a good school. The civil 
 servants were, however, rather discontented at that time. 
 Owing to the conclusion of settlement operations, new rules, 
 and other causes, promotion was a good deal retarded 
 and pay reduced. It was just then that Lord Ellenborough 
 and his strong proclivities in favour of the military and 
 against civilians made things worse by his habit of replacing 
 civilians by military men in every case in which he legally 
 could do so. I had letters of introduction to Lord Ellen-
 
 16 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 borough, but I never saw him, and I had strong views about 
 his conduct. I did not like his rhodoinontade, and especially 
 disliked his extreme preference for military men, and his 
 contempt for civilians. We were especially offended by the 
 story of his calling civilians who wore moustaches " Cutcherry 
 Hussars," besides the real injuries we had sustained at his 
 hands. The only compensation we got for the transfer of 
 so many of the best appointments to military men, was that 
 two or three young civilians were sent down to Scinde to 
 be placed at the very bottom in that worst possible climate, 
 under Sir Charles Napier. If Lord Ellenborough was hard 
 upon civilians, Sir Charles was infinitely worse he treated 
 these young men abominably, and insisted on registering 
 them as camp-followers. They very soon came back. The 
 consequence of all this was that I never delivered my 
 letters to Lord Ellenborough up to the time when he was 
 recalled. That may have made a difference in my career. 
 Most men who are at all to the fore make a beginning in 
 the secretariat pretty early in their service, but I never 
 stumbled into that, and it so happens that in the whole 
 course of my career I never was a secretary. Just when 
 I had once accepted that office the mutiny intervened. 
 Perhaps there is hardly another instance of a man who has 
 come to the higher posts of the Civil Service exclusively in 
 the line, as it were, without ever being in the secretariat. 
 It so happened too that, sticking to the executive line, 
 almost the whole of my early service was in out-of-the-way 
 districts, where I had comparatively little intercourse with 
 Europeans, and was very much thrown among the natives. 
 
 I thought myself fortunate in being posted to the 
 province of Rohilcund, a favourite country. In the North- 
 West Provinces there were still left a few of the very old 
 civilians of the olden school who had joined the service in 
 the last century and never gone home, and I saw two or 
 three of them on my way up. They still nominally received 
 the magnificent salaries of a former day, but in their old 
 age the Government has insisted on providing them with 
 adjoints paid out of their salaries, which made a difference.
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 17 
 
 One fine specimen of the ancient time was old Wemyss at 
 Cawnpore, who had come in prehistoric times from my 
 county of Fife, the brother of an ancient Laird of Wemyss 
 Castle, and an early friend of my father's. The Government 
 soon after insisted on retiring him, but he lived on in India 
 in the hills, and was still a keen sportsman till he blew off 
 his arm, and then he got a light gun and shot with the 
 remaining arm. He died in honour, and left behind him a 
 large number of honoured descendants. After that old 
 school there came a very good and strong school of civilians, 
 beginning from the earlier part of the present century, to 
 whom our present form of administration is due such 
 men as Holt Mackenzie, who designed the North -West 
 revenue system ; Eobert Mertins Bird, who effected the 
 new settlement ; and Thomason who administered it. At 
 Allahabad there was Turner of the Sudder Board of Eevenue, 
 from whose family I received much kindness, and Powney- 
 Thompson of the Sudder Court, the progenitor of a numerous 
 race, and equally distinguished for judicial acumen, know- 
 ledge of horse-flesh, and piety. 
 
 At Bareilly I was kindly received by the Commissioner, 
 W. Conolly, one of an illustrious band of brothers, all distin- 
 guished in the service. I found there some young civilians 
 who had been senior to me at Haileybury, and began to 
 realise the importance of the position of a civil servant. 
 
 I hope that the absurd fictions of Burke and Sheridan 
 regarding Eohilcund and the Eohillas have been finally set 
 at rest. The fact is that the name Eohilcund is a kind of 
 accident. The province was always known to the natives not 
 as Eohilcund but as Katerh, from the name of the Eajpoot 
 tribe, who were predominant there, and was so known by 
 them down to my time. There are plenty of Afghan tribes, 
 but none of them have ever settled in India as tribes, but 
 only as individual adventurers, who sometimes founded 
 Indian families, and clustered in particular places. They 
 called themselves neither Afghans nor Eohillas, but Pathans. 
 There were a good many of them in the Upper Doab, and 
 in parts of Eohilcund, but it was not as settlers that they 
 VOL. i c
 
 1 8 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 dominated that country. Well on in the last century a 
 Pathan family (among many others who came to the front 
 in the break up of the Empire) obtained a temporary and 
 intermittent rule in Katerh, which lasted in a broken way 
 for some twenty or thirty years. The head of the family 
 was really not a Pathan at all, but a converted Hindoo who 
 had been received into a Pathan family. 
 
 Eohilla merely means a hill-man or mountaineer, 
 and is a term now rarely used in Northern India. Some- 
 times troops from the Afghan hills were called Eohillas, just 
 as our Scotch regiments are called Highlanders. It may 
 have happened that in some Mogul official documents the 
 chiefs who ruled or plundered in Katerh were called 
 Eohillas, and the country they ruled for a while was called 
 Eohilcund, or the Highlanders' country. We caught up 
 the name and perpetuated it. 
 
 The Pathans, ex-rulers or ruled, are but a very small 
 fraction of the population, even where they are most 
 numerous. They are, however, a fine people, quite different 
 from the Pathans of Afghanistan. They bear about the 
 same relation to them that the Frenchified Eomans did to 
 the Northmen of the North Seas are quite Indianised, but 
 superior to most Indians, and often well educated and 
 gentleman-like men. I can't forgive Burke and Sheridan, 
 but if I had been inclined to be severe upon Macaulay, who 
 ought to have known better, I should have been deterred by 
 the recollection of a mistake in my own early days, when I 
 first applied to be posted to Eohilcund, " because I wanted 
 to be in a hilly country," whereas Eohilcund is a great 
 fertile plain, without a stone or a hillock in its whole 
 expanse, and with upwards of five millions of inhabitants. 
 
 My services were required in the district of Badaon. I 
 was appointed Assistant-Magistrate and Collector there, and 
 commenced active administrative and judicial functions at 
 the age of nineteen. Badaon, though in Eohilcund, is not a 
 very characteristic Eohilcund district. Most of the districts 
 of that province impinge on the Terai or moist country near 
 the foot of the Himalayas, are rather abnormally green, and
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 19 
 
 have tigers and much game in the Terai. Badaon is the 
 outside district along the Ganges, and then stretches over 
 that river into the Doab, a great corn-growing country. 
 The town is an old historical town, but the station was 
 new and half-formed, having been recently changed from 
 another place in the district. There were no troops, and 
 only two or three Europeans there. I could not have had 
 a better master than my first magistrate and collector, 
 Fleetwood Williams. Though he was not at all old then, 
 he came to be, I may say, the very last of the old school of 
 civilians, making his home in the country, and never going 
 home during a very long term of service. He was very 
 active and enthusiastic, a great improver, and on excellent 
 terms with the natives ; and, what was the great benefit to 
 me, he was not one of those men who insist on monopolising 
 everything : whilst schooling his assistants, he gave them 
 plenty of scope and work. He took me into his house on 
 my first arrival, and started me well by precept, example, 
 and assistance. A young Indian official makes the plunge 
 into work, and the decision of cases at once, and it was well 
 for me that, joining in the rainy season, when marching is 
 impossible, I had an opportunity of quietly learning the 
 language and the work at the headquarters station. Of 
 course my practical knowledge of the language was then of 
 the scantiest, but when a young assistant is first intrusted 
 with petty cases, he has an experienced native as bear- 
 leader. Some extracts from a letter to my father a few 
 weeks after I joined may give an idea of the kind of thing. 
 I may explain with reference to the first sentences, that the 
 recollection of the very severe famine of 1838, when the 
 district had suffered much, and been much disorganised, was 
 then very vivid. 
 
 "BADAON, 8th September 1843. I take up my pen amidst a 
 very cheering scene, namely, heavy rain after a long break of 
 dry weather which threatened utter ruin to the crops, the 
 revenue, and the country. We have had a very heavy fall, and 
 there is promise of a continuance, all which is a most delightful 
 sight, since in my capacity of assistant-collector I have begun to
 
 20 
 
 look upon the weather with all the interest of a farmer, and to 
 sympathise with my superior in his hopes and fears. I am now 
 fully entered upon my work, or as much so as I can be until I 
 can thoroughly follow papers, etc. At present I am only in a 
 probationary state. I even now take as much business as I can 
 get, as I find that one is then so obliged to exert oneself to avoid 
 being nonplussed, that one learns infinitely faster than in any 
 other way. I have only very small cases made over to me in 
 the meantime for decision ; but others much more serious for 
 investigation, which I go regularly through, and then write an 
 abstract of the conclusions to which I come, which, with the 
 proceedings, goes to the magistrate, and he passes his order. Of 
 course I take a good long time to get through a case, but I do 
 the thing as steadily as I can. The worst of it is that there is 
 so much perjury, that after all it cannot be denied to be often a 
 toss-up whether the decision is right or wrong. The prosecution 
 is generally backed up by a prisoner being suddenly smitten by 
 his conscience, and confessing against the others ; of course 
 making his own share only that of a go-between, or very slightly 
 implicated accomplice. Some such snare is constantly brought 
 out suddenly with theatrical aids, so that one must be un- 
 commonly careful not to run away with any idea precipitately, 
 however clear it may seem. The only rule is to suppose every- 
 one to speak falsely till it is shown to be true, and everyone to 
 be a rascal till he is shown to be otherwise, while coincidences 
 and circumstantial facts beyond suspicion, however small, must 
 determine the matter. Unfortunately, however good a case a 
 man may have, he always makes it better, and gets into innumer- 
 able inconsistencies." 
 
 I may say that in these early days I accepted the 
 popular European view so unfavourable to native honesty, 
 more than I did after greater experience, and that I was 
 not nearly so prone to impute wholesale perjury to them after 
 I had seen something of the hard swearing in English 
 courts, especially when women are witnesses. 
 
 Further on in the letter I give some account of the im- 
 provements which the progressive magistrate was carrying out 
 in the city and some other towns in the district, one of which 
 I say is " Bilsi, said to contain grain enough stored up to 
 keep half the Upper Provinces for years in case of famine, 
 the Bunneahs storing it up against such a state of things."
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 21 
 
 My chief complaints were against the niggardliness of 
 the Government for not allowing us money enough for our 
 improvements, and for adequate offices and the like. "We were 
 very full of zeal for our particular district, and wanted a 
 great many things done for Badaon. 
 
 After about three months of the kind of thing above 
 described, I really began to understand the language and 
 the work pretty well could, as it were, swim a little with- 
 out assistance. Then came the cold-weather marching, of 
 which I had abundance ; that is the great advantage of a 
 rural district like Badaon, and it is very delightful at that 
 season. One of the first cold-weather functions was to 
 attend and keep order at a great bathing fair on the Ganges, 
 attended by vast numbers of people, women as well as men, 
 and where, according to the old custom, there is a combination 
 of religion, commerce, and amusement. Even the Europeans 
 are accustomed to gather together in a social way on those 
 occasions, when magistrates and military and planters all 
 fraternise together. Those districts were what was called 
 " regulation " that is, subject to the rule of law, as contra- 
 distinguished to non-regulation districts, where we did what 
 we liked. But the criminal law was very imperfect and 
 elastic, and I think we exercised a vigour somewhat beyond 
 the law. Here is the account I gave (writing home) of the 
 way we preserved property, and kept the peace : " We 
 encamped in the middle of the fair, being there to preserve 
 the peace, but we also found opportunity for various amuse- 
 ments. We had a picked Thanadar 1 down to manage matters, 
 with a strong turn-out of police, and stocks for the accommoda- 
 tion of some 300 bad characters, whom we caught and kept 
 there. All the rascals in the district had been previously 
 made safe at their respective Thanahs,and all suspicious people 
 found at the fair went to the stocks at once, while we had 
 a grand clearance of all the gipsies, dancing women, monkey- 
 men, bears, etc. etc., by sending them over to the next dis- 
 trict, as you used to do the vagrants at home ; so, altogether, 
 the arrangements turned out to answer beautifully, and we 
 
 1 Chief constable of a police station.
 
 22 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 had no trouble. A pair of bullocks which had been stolen 
 we accidentally found ourselves in a field of sugar-cane 
 when out pig - sticking, to the great admiration of the 
 assembled multitude, who were decidedly of opinion that a 
 Daniel must be come to judgment, when they saw that the 
 magistrate and his assistant in person had found what no 
 one else could find. The people whose sugar-cane our 
 elephants had done no good to, found themselves completely 
 in the minority. We found that we had an excellent 
 snipe-jheel close by ; but though I knocked down my first 
 two birds, very few others followed. We had some hare 
 and partridge shooting, and ducks, etc., in the jungle between 
 the branches of the Ganges." After a little further experi- 
 ence, the magistrate gave me separate executive charge of a 
 portion of the district, and I marched a great deal about it, 
 very proud of my functions. A good many horses were 
 bred in that part of the country, which went to the 
 cavalry, but we were able to pick up young mares of a very 
 good class at very moderate cost, so that with an Arab I 
 brought from Calcutta, and two or three country mares, I 
 was very well mounted, and did a great deal of riding 
 about. In addition to the ordinary camp work I often 
 went long expeditions to suppress riots, investigate robberies, 
 try to catch proclaimed offenders, and such like ; sometimes 
 with success, and sometimes without success. Here is an 
 account of a successful expedition taken from one of my 
 letters. " The day before yesterday an express arrived from 
 Bisowlee, an old Mahomedan city about twenty-five miles 
 distant, to say that the population had been brickbatting 
 one another, and were in a great state of excitement, and 
 ready for a general engagement. The news arrived about 
 nine at night, and I was deputed to go out there ; rather a 
 disagreeable duty, as we have no troops, and our own men 
 could not be spared. However, there was no help for it, 
 and I sent out my horses and forces, consisting of five 
 irregular cavalry (ten of whom are attached to the Treasury), 
 and mounting with the first dawn, startled the belligerents 
 by galloping in half an hour after the sun was up. I found
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 23 
 
 some villages full of the Thakoors (or Bajpoots), while other 
 villages were equally well filled with Mussulmans; the parties 
 having the evening previously been only prevented from 
 beginning the engagement by night setting in. This was 
 the great day of the Mussulman festival. However, it 
 turned out that the sight of a European officer coming down 
 upon them so suddenly was enough for most of the outlying 
 partisans, and many of the Hindoo leaders disappeared with- 
 out involving themselves further, so I had only to deal with 
 the people of the city. When I had turned out the Tehsil * 
 guard, the police, and the five Suwars, I had both sides 
 about me, exhausting their virulence in frantic cries for 
 justice. It seemed that the Hindoos had posted a fakir to 
 blow a shell close by where the Mussulmans were beating 
 their breasts in grief; hence the quarrel. After two days' 
 brickbatting, the Hindoos had shut up the shops, so that 
 the Mussulmans could not get their food and necessary 
 offerings, and would not carry out their Tazeas, 2 and con- 
 sequently the affair could not come to an end. I determined 
 to begin with an example, and called on the police to name 
 a house whence bricks had been thrown. They said ' Khan 
 Mull's ' and I issued a peremptory order to apprehend Khan 
 Mull forthwith, intending to put him in irons and send him 
 off. But I perceived a suppressed grin at this, and it turned 
 out that Khan Mull had been dead beyond the memory of 
 man, and that a large square was called by his name, like 
 somebody's ' Buildings.' This was a damper, and I did not 
 attempt to apprehend anyone else, but took advantage of 
 their complaints to put two policemen to ' protect ' each of 
 the leaders, and stopped the Hindoo trumpet, which it 
 appeared had not been used to be blown there, frightened the 
 bunneahs 3 into opening their shops, and the parties into 
 thinking they had better not fight. When I had satisfied their 
 reasonable demands, the mob dispersed, shops were opened, 
 
 1 Office of a rural revenue officer and magistrate. 
 
 - Representations of the tombs of the early Moslem martyrs, Hussan and 
 Hussein. 
 
 3 Hindoo shopkeepers.
 
 .24 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 the Tazeas were brought out to the place of interment ; and 
 leaving all the rest for a more leisurely settlement in court, 
 I again mounted, and got back to a comfortable dinner, 
 having ridden fifty miles and done a good day's work. That 
 I preserved my skin entire was more than I expected at 
 first, thinking of the misfortune which befell an assistant in 
 a neighbouring district about six weeks ago. He was sent 
 out to catch some proclaimed criminals, but caught a Tartar 
 instead, as he was signally defeated, the Thanadar command- 
 ing his forces killed, himself wounded with a matchlock ball, 
 while the criminals all escaped untouched, taking his pistols 
 with them." 
 
 That last sentence is rather sensational, such accidents 
 very seldom happening. Anything like open resistance was 
 almost unknown, except in such a case of criminals driven 
 into a corner and trying to escape. Nor were murderous 
 personal attacks at all common as on the Afghan frontier. 
 Only occasionally somebody ran amuck. Two or three of 
 the native officials of our court bore the mark of wounds, 
 and had lost fingers, etc. I always remembered a lesson 
 Williams gave me that in such a case, when one is taken 
 unawares and unarmed, there is no weapon so good as a 
 chair, and whenever there was chance of trouble, I was 
 always ready to present the chair. The legs of a chair are 
 very confusing to an enraged fanatic. 
 
 One begins with criminal and police work, but when out 
 in camp in the capacity of assistant-collector, I had much to do 
 with land questions, and much intercourse with the villagers 
 of a friendly character, appearing rather as the representative 
 of the benevolent head landlord, the Government, than as a 
 taskmaster ; though of course I had also to see that the 
 Government revenue came in, and to settle quarrels and 
 differences which might interfere with it. 
 
 After a very enjoyable cold weather, I .returned to 
 Badaon, where I lived with Charles Le Bas, the son of the 
 old Principal of Haileybury a friend who has gone to his 
 rest. Williams was very full of his improvements ; he 
 drained the city, improved the jail, established a large agri-
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 25 
 
 horticultural garden, and built a large swimming-bath, which 
 is the greatest of all luxuries in that climate. In the warm 
 weather we used half to live in that bath, and I became 
 very expert at swimming, riding inflated skins, etc. I had 
 still to go out on occasional expeditions, which made a 
 variety, even if it was hot. And so we got through the hot 
 weather and rains, and I became a pretty competent assistant. 
 In the following cold weather I was again out in camp, with 
 a division of the district in my charge, leading the same life 
 as before, but with greater experience and larger powers, 
 and entrusted with more important matters. The Lieutenant- 
 Governor, Mr. Thomason, came through on tour. He was 
 not a very effusive man, but was kind, and gratified me by 
 giving me a commission to inquire into some complicated 
 questions about the constitution and rights of certain villages, 
 of which I made report. I think I may say that I put 
 work decidedly first, and such sport as I did second. When 
 I was at Badaon, we had some great flights of locusts, not 
 the grasshopping things that they have in Cyprus, but 
 clouds of flying creatures. I remember them well ; at first 
 I mistook them for a storm-cloud coming, such as we have 
 in India, and then coming on like a storm they clouded and 
 darkened the sky. When they settled down, they broke 
 down a good many trees, but upon the whole the injury 
 they did was not very widespread. Much more serious was 
 the destruction of the crops by haiL It was very local, 
 a long band across the country, but within those limits the 
 destruction was total and absolute. In March 1845 it was 
 very bad in the district. I was sent out to make the 
 necessary inquiries, and to see what remission of revenue 
 was required. I was astonished by the completeness of the 
 destruction. The crops were not beaten down, but clean 
 cut, six inches or a foot from the ground, and within the 
 very bad area not an ear was left. It took me some time to 
 make the inquiry, till the hot weather was well upon me. 
 As I gained experience I got rid of the somewhat raw and 
 severe notions regarding the natives exhibited in the early 
 letters which I have quoted ; and I came to like them
 
 26 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 much. The village Zemindars, mostly Rajpoots or " Thakoors," 
 as they were called there, were a fine people, and very 
 tolerable cultivators. What they principally suffered from 
 was, that their women did not work in the fields, as the 
 Rajpoots have learnt from the Mahomedans to make it a 
 point of honour to shut up their women. The principal 
 fault of the Thakoors was their disposition to fight, which 
 sometimes brought both us and them into great trouble. I 
 do not think there were very many Pathans in Badaon, but 
 there were a good many Mahomedans of sorts, and the 
 Mahomedan gentlemen were a pleasant, well-educated, well- 
 mannered set of people. I remember a family of Sheikhs, a 
 sort of squires, of Sheikhpoora near Badaon, with whom we 
 were very friendly ; and there were a good many such 
 people about the district. I have always liked the Maho- 
 medans, and in religion I think they are only a kind of more 
 advanced Protestants. 
 
 I saw a good deal of a curious character who had a 
 considerable estate at Khasgunge, beyond the Ganges, in my 
 division of the district. He was universally known as 
 " Jimmy Sahib," the natives have a way of perpetuating 
 early names, but his real name was Gardner James 
 Gardner. He was the son of a well-known Colonel Gardner, 
 an English adventurer who took service with the Moguls in 
 their last days, and who was said to have married a Guzer- 
 atee princess. His son too was said to have run away with 
 a daughter of the Mogul ex-emperor, or a princess of some 
 sort of that house. Mahomedan establishments are pretty 
 large and various, and there were a good many princes and 
 princesses of sorts. He had one purely native and Maho- 
 medan establishment, and we never saw the ladies of the 
 family ; but he had also a separate establishment where he 
 received his European friends, and he was a kind of link 
 between the Europeans and the natives. I used to hear a 
 great many things from him, and got much information from 
 him, some true, some much more doubtful, and I was quite 
 friendly with him. He had some boys, I remember, rather 
 dark for such high lineage. It is said that the British
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 27 
 
 Gardner peerage now goes into that family, but I have not 
 heard if the heir has appeared to claim it. 
 
 It was in those days that, going about among the 
 villagers and settling questions between them, I laid the 
 foundations of a knowledge of and interest in Indian land- 
 tenures and customs which I have ever since retained. 
 There was the best opportunity for learning these things, for 
 the first " Kegular Settlement " made in India had just been 
 completed for the North -Western Provinces, i.e. a Land 
 Settlement founded on a regular survey and investigation of 
 all tenures and rights down to the lowest, and of the customs 
 and rules of every village. The principle was to take the 
 village as the unit of Government dealings, not the indi- 
 vidual cultivator. "Where there was an organised self- 
 governing community, the settlement was made with them 
 jointly sometimes with villages in which the proprietary 
 community were also mainly the cultivators sometimes 
 with ruling families corresponding to the " Meerasidars " of 
 the South. Where these were wanting some intermediate 
 person was recognised or created proprietor of one village 
 or of many. The village boundaries were settled, and then 
 a scientific survey establishment mapped the area of each 
 village. Within that area the interior subdivisions were 
 mapped out by an improved native survey, every field 
 being shown and numbered with the character and quality 
 of the soil. This last work was tolerable, but was far 
 short of the more scientific cadastral survey of modern 
 days. Then the name of each cultivator was given, with 
 the fields held by him, and the rates and amount payable 
 by him. From that basis the total Government demand 
 was settled a liberal margin being allowed for management 
 expenses and proprietary privileges. The cultivators were 
 distinguished into Mouroosee or Kadeemee (hereditary or 
 old), who had rights of occupancy at rates regulated and 
 recorded, and recent or casual tenants who had no such 
 rights. The usual rule was that twelve years' continuous 
 occupancy with settled residence was considered to entitle a 
 man to be reckoned as an old resident cultivator. But the
 
 28 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 general feeling in favour of continued occupancy was so 
 prevalent that there was generally little dispute on this 
 point. When the settlement was made with a proprietary 
 community, managing members were appointed, but there 
 was always a joint responsibility. The record of the customs 
 of each village, providing for the election and remuneration 
 of the head-men, the apportionment of the Government 
 demand, the management of common land, remuneration of 
 the village servants, and many other matters, was very 
 elaborate and exact ; and a reference to these constitutions 
 for the settlement of disputes as they arose threw a flood of 
 light on indigenous affairs. Thus it was that, especially in 
 camp in the cold weather, in charge of a portion of the 
 district, I came to know a great deal about these things. 
 The settlements had been in active progress for ten or twelve 
 years before I joined, and were just being completed then. 
 
 In the hot weather of 1845 I was again at work in the 
 station of Badaon, and in the summer of that year, when I 
 had completed full two years' work and had attained the 
 mature age of twenty-one, I felt that I was quite an old 
 Indian and experienced officer, and began to think that it 
 was nearly time for promotion. Indeed, though I say it 
 that should not, I had been thrown so much into practical 
 work that I believe I really was an accomplished assistant 
 with much knowledge of land-tenure and other matters. I 
 had acquired a complete colloquial facility in the languages, 
 rough no doubt, but effective, for I daresay my grammar was 
 defective, and my genders nowhere, and I admit that I never 
 became a polished scholar. 
 
 Those were days of much political excitement in India. 
 When I first joined, the retreat from Afghanistan, after the 
 great events there, had left the minds of both Europeans and 
 natives rather open to alarms. The conquest of Scinde 
 created much controversy. At the end of the year the 
 attack upon and fights before Gwalior brought war within a 
 measurable distance of us ; and after that the very unsettled 
 state of the Punjaub, and the succession of catastrophes at 
 Lahore, greatly unsettled men's minds, and presaged the
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 29 
 
 coming storm which broke in the autumn of 1845. Yet we 
 civilians pursued the even tenour of our way, as if there was 
 no danger. We had a complete confidence in the British 
 power. I only remember one incident that rather startled 
 us, when we discovered that the Zemindars of one of our 
 villages had dug up some old cannon which must have been 
 buried in the last century, and of which for two generations 
 no one had suspected the existence. However, having got 
 wind of it, we promptly seized the cannon, and they had no 
 opportunity of using them. 
 
 Though we were not afraid, I find in my early letters 
 that I had some pretty decided political ideas not very 
 different from those that I have held later in life. I must 
 admit that I was then an annexationist ; but then we had 
 not yet reached the natural limits of India, where I have always 
 thought we ought to stop. I was then, as I am now, very 
 much against the attempt to dry-nurse native dynasties, and 
 thought we should either leave them to manage things in 
 their own way, and let the strongest man come to the top 
 on principles of natural selection, or annex them and give 
 promotion to the civil service. We were always very keen 
 for anything which might lead to that. From the very first, 
 even on the voyage out, I very strongly condemned the 
 barbarities which attended our Chinese wars, and the destruc- 
 tion of Cabul as a revenge upon people struggling to be free. 
 I was especially severe on all Lord Ellenborough's pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 In the autumn of 1845 promotion came to me I was 
 appointed to act as a joint magistrate. That, then, seemed 
 very superior indeed to the grade of an assistant. The joint 
 magistrate is the second in command of the district. I was 
 not only promoted in rank, but was also promoted to what 
 was considered a much superior district and station 
 Moradabad. Moradabad is a large district further north in 
 Eohilcund, and abutting on the Terai and Himalayas. Close 
 to it too was the small native state of Eampore, which 
 represented the Pathan rulers of -the last century, or Eohillas
 
 30 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 as we then called them. Moradabad was a large town, and 
 both there and in Eampore the Rohilla Pathans were pretty 
 numerous. They were Soonees, but the opposite sect of 
 Sheeahs was also strongly represented in the town, and 
 the quarrels of the two gave us a great deal of trouble. 
 There was much more European society too than at Badaon, 
 and excellent big-game shooting in the district. I thought 
 myself very fortunate, and was considerably elated. My 
 superior, Wilson, afterwards Sir John Cracroft Wilson, 
 was a notable and rather rough character, subsequently 
 very well known in the Mutiny. He was then known as 
 Thug Wilson, having been formerly employed against the 
 Thugs. He was by no means so pleasant to deal with as 
 my first master had been, and was more inclined to keep the 
 district work in his own hands. The joint magistrate too 
 usually has to deal with the more important criminal cases, 
 while the magistrate superintends executive work ; and at 
 such a troublesome place as Moradabad I was bound to be 
 in the station when the magistrate was in the district ; 
 so, after all, I found that there were some drawbacks, and 
 that I had not so much liberty as at Badaon, while I had 
 more anxious responsibility. I lived with Hercules Scott, 
 the assistant, who, after serving for a few years in Rohil- 
 cund and on the Sikh frontier, retired, and became a Kin- 
 cardineshire laird. I remember too the native deputy 
 Wilayet Hussein, a gentleman-like little Mahomedan, who 
 rather affected European freedom of speech and action. I 
 believe he was a very good man, but after I left he happened 
 to be in charge of the station on one occasion when a bad 
 outbreak took place between the Soonees and Sheeahs, and 
 with his style of European superiority he was determined not 
 to suffer such scandals ; he called out his men, and promptly 
 shot down those whom he considered to be the worst dis- 
 turbers of the public peace. Unfortunately it turned out 
 that he himself belonged to the sect opposed to those whom 
 he shot down, and poor Wilayet Hussein got into very 
 serious trouble about it. I think we are rather hard upon 
 natives- who get into trouble ; we don't make the allowances
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 31 
 
 for them that we do for Europeans. Perhaps it was just as 
 well for me that I was kept closer to more regular work at 
 Moradabad, as I had had so much liberty at Badaon. I 
 have a pleasant recollection of the sociable intercourse of an 
 Indian station, such as we had there during the short time 
 I remained. 
 
 A relation of mine, the nearest I had in India, marched 
 through with his regiment, on his way to the Sikh wars. 
 This was John Christie, a very well-known and popular man 
 in those days. When an active cavalry subaltern and 
 adjutant of his regiment, in view of the coming Afghan war, 
 he had been commissioned to raise a regiment of irregular 
 cavalry for Shah-Shooja. It was always known as Christie's 
 horse, and with it he had been through everything in 
 Afghanistan, including the pursuit of Dost Mahommed into 
 the Hindoo-Koosh, and other adventures. At the time of the 
 Cabul massacre he was fortunately at Kandahar, whence he 
 took part in Nott's advance, and eventually brought his 
 regiment back to India. It was taken into the Company's 
 service, and numbered accordingly, but it continued to be 
 known as Christie's horse all the same. He knew every- 
 body, military and civil, and was very kind and useful to 
 me during my first years in India. Immediately after the 
 Sikh war he married one of the Balcarres - Lindsays 
 Scotch families, and especially Fife families, were always to 
 the fore in India ; he was a very devoted husband, and 
 people said he was never the same man after that. 
 
 Wilson, though rough, was not bad-natured after all, 
 and when the great shooting season came round in March, 
 he gave me a chance of tigers. I was still pale and young 
 looking, and he was rather astonished when he found that I 
 had ridden out forty miles to his camp before breakfast and 
 did not seem to feel it. I was well in at the death of two 
 or three fine tigers. Upon the whole, I do think that there 
 is more pleasurable excitement about orthodox tiger-shooting 
 than any other of that kind. One has no compunction about 
 killing the beast, and when a good tiger does get up, there 
 is something thrilling in his gruff voice, which one feels
 
 32 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 not only oneself, but through the elephant under one ; for 
 the elephant is very excited, and no wonder ; he bears the 
 brunt of the battle. There is very little real danger to the 
 sportsman if the thing is well managed by an experienced 
 hand, for the tiger never leaves the ground, and goes for the 
 elephant, not for the man. The only danger is the howdah- 
 tackle breaking, or an elephant misbehaving. An elephant's 
 natural mode of fighting a tiger is to throw himself down 
 upon the tiger and crush him with his weight, rolling upon 
 him till he is a pancake. That would be very awkward for 
 the rider, and no elephant is used that is not thoroughly 
 broken from that habit. Very many of the best sporting 
 elephants are females. The best of elephants are always 
 liable to panic they are very gregarious, and when raw 
 elephants take fright, it sometimes happens that no power 
 on earth will prevent the staunchest old elephants from 
 following them. On that account it is a very strict rule 
 of orthodox sportsmen not to beat for tigers in heavy tree 
 jungle, only in the patches of heavy grass left when the 
 weather dries and most of the grass plains are burnt. Tiger 
 shooting was the one weakness of noble civilians in that part 
 of the world, and one heard many wonderful stories. Oakley, 
 the judge of the Moradabad, was a great performer, and had 
 killed an immense number in his day. My only consider- 
 able tiger experience was in the Kohilcund Terai, and after- 
 wards in that of Oude. In this country one hears almost 
 more of the adventures of people who watch for tigers 
 on trees in other parts of India, and follow wounded 
 tigers. I saw something of that in the Central Provinces, 
 but to the orthodox school it seems poor sport. For my 
 part I never could sit for hours up a tree, watching for a 
 beast to come along. Those wounded tigers are very dan- 
 gerous too hi the Central Provinces we used to lose one 
 or two European officers almost every year by tigers. My 
 experience is that tigers rarely or never become man-eaters 
 when there are plenty of cattle; they prefer beef. I re- 
 member one or two places in the Central Provinces where 
 tigers took up a position in a barren hill-pass short of
 
 i EA&LY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 33 
 
 cattle, used to pick up the last old woman of a travelling 
 party, and created a great panic ; and in the Bengal Soon- 
 derbunds, where cattle cannot live, I have known tigers 
 bound out and carry off surveyors and such people. We 
 never heard of such a thing in the Terai, where cattle 
 abound. 
 
 Beyond the Terai lay the Himalayas, and the newly- 
 invented hill station of Nynee TaL It was out of our district, 
 but we were able to go up for a day or two. Scott and I 
 established a little cottage there, to which we used to ride 
 up. I remember well the youthful exhilaration as we 
 ascended, and the delight of a plunge in the cool lake when 
 we came up hot and steaming from the plains. I know 
 people say that is imprudent, but the best authorities assure 
 me that I was right in supposing that the hotter you are, 
 the better you can withstand cold. The grey Thibetan 
 ponies were wonderfully surefooted creatures slow and 
 prudent going up hill, but they could go down at a wonderful 
 pace. I remember Wilson taking me down from Nynee 
 Tal at an extraordinary rate ; I never expected to get down 
 safe, but I followed him, and one's spirits rise with the pace. 
 When we got down he turned round and said pleasantly, 
 " How did you like that ? " I replied in a Scotch drawl 
 which he was fond of mimicking, and in perfect good faith, 
 " Well, I think it was raather dangerous " and then I saw 
 by his laugh, what I had only half suspected before, that he 
 had been trying to take it out of me and frighten me, and 
 was rather disappointed that I had not given in and cried 
 for mercy. 
 
 I had really quite good health except for that world- 
 wide scourge of the human race, dyspepsia. Even in those 
 early days I had already consulted several physicians with- 
 out relief. A sensible doctor at Moradabad gave me no 
 other satisfaction than this, that the disease is incurable, 
 but that it would take a long time to kill me ; and so it 
 has. Some fifteen years later, an excellent doctor in Cal- 
 cutta prescribed this, " Smoke a little and wait till you are 
 forty." I tried that and then complained that I was still 
 VOL. i D
 
 34 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 not cured. " Well," he said, " wait till you are fifty." I 
 tried that too, and I think it has been the best prescription 
 of all. I treasure that prescription for the benefit of my 
 friends similarly affected. 
 
 It is early days to give general opinions on wide sub- 
 jects, but from this time forward my employment was so 
 much in rougher and wilder districts that I here say a word 
 or two about the native gentlemen and native officials of 
 our more settled provinces in those pre-English days for 
 in those days English was absolutely unknown to the higher 
 class of native officials in the Upper Provinces the Bengalee 
 Baboo was then only a very humble copyist in the English 
 office, and interfered in affairs not at all. I have already 
 expressed a favourable opinion of the Mahomedan native 
 gentlemen, and the Hindoo officials, bankers, and traders I 
 liked too. It is, I think, a very great mistake to talk as if 
 these people were uneducated because they did not know 
 English ; the fact is that many of the better classes and all 
 the officials were very well educated indeed, and had very 
 great literary facility. Of course they had not science, and 
 I do not think the modern education includes much science ; 
 but my belief is that the Persian, from which the literary 
 education of Northern India was derived, was, from a literary 
 point of view, every whit as good as English, and Latin 
 and Greek. I found it a great advantage that one lan- 
 guage sufficed for my executive career all over Northern 
 India ; everywhere, from Behar to the Indus, and from the 
 Himalayas to the Nerbudda, and beyond that, the Hindoo- 
 stance is substantially the same. The Punjaubee language 
 bears to that of the North-West Provinces almost exactly 
 the same relation that Lowland Scotch does to English 
 one easily passes from one to the other. But then for 
 civilised and complicated purposes, the language is only 
 made sufficient by grafting on Persian, and the Persian 
 itself is only adapted to difficult expressions by grafting on 
 Arabic, just as we graft on Greek, only very much more so. 
 I have sometimes been inclined to regret the supersession of 
 the Persian education so widely spread, but no doubt there
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 35 
 
 were difficulties. It would have been rather absurd for one 
 set of conquerors to have adopted and perpetuated the 
 foreign language of the previous conquerors. I remember 
 when the Penal Code had to be translated, it came to be 
 three-fourths Arabic, and nobody who had not a thorough 
 knowledge of Arabic could make head or tail of it. So also 
 it was impossible to modernise the meagre vernacular of the 
 Bengalees and Mahrattas without really constructing new 
 languages from the Sanscrit, as the modern Greek has been 
 built up from old materials. Upon the whole, perhaps, the 
 decision in favour of English was right, but I wish the 
 education had taken a more practical form, and had not 
 been made so purely literary. To return to the native 
 officials of the olden time, I still maintain that they were, 
 speaking generally, excellent men. They were very acute, 
 wrote with great facility and correctness, and thoroughly 
 understood their business. Of course they were not all 
 immaculate, but I believe that their alleged corruption and 
 rascality are very greatly exaggerated. Very much of the 
 corruption imputed to them consisted of nothing more 
 than customary fees and douceurs, such as were till very 
 recently received in most offices in this country, and are, 
 most people believe, received in a great many offices still. 
 But we are much harder upon natives who are found 
 out in little peccadilloes of that kind than we are upon 
 the officials of municipal and other offices in our own 
 country. 
 
 There was this great advantage, that so long as we were 
 satisfied with native education, we had an immense field to 
 choose from, much more so than when we ' limit the selec- 
 tion to thorough English scholars ; and we could get very 
 competent men at a very cheap rate. While I was at 
 Moradabad, the first Sikh war was waged, and at Sabraon 
 the Sikh army was finally beaten. The negotiations 
 subsequent to that event led to the cession to the British 
 of the Lahore territory south of the Sutlej, as well as of the 
 triangle between the Sutlej and the Beas known as the 
 Jullunder Doab, and it became necessary to make arrange-
 
 36 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 ments for administering the new territory. In the spring of 
 1846 I received a note from the Government of the North- 
 West Provinces to say that the Governor-General had asked 
 for some assistants to do duty in the Sutlej territories, and 
 offering me the option of going as one of them. I much 
 liked the idea of going on to the frontier territories, but then 
 I had just been settled in great comfort in what was con- 
 sidered about the best joint magistracy in the North- West 
 Provinces ; and to an assistant a joint magistracy seems 
 something very superior. I did not like the idea of being 
 classed among " some assistants " ; so I replied that if I was 
 to get any promotion, or to be employed in any superior 
 grade, I should be delighted to go, but that I was not 
 anxious to go as an assistant. I had been desired if I 
 accepted to write to Mr. Currie, Secretary to the Government 
 of India, and I wrote to him in similar terms. In a few 
 days I received a severe answer from Mr. Thomason, 
 saying that those generally helped themselves best who 
 helped the public best, and that the offer was cancelled. I 
 felt distressingly small. But a day or two after came an 
 answer from Mr. Currie, who took a much more favourable 
 view of what I had said, and told me that an officer was 
 wanted immediately to take charge of the district of Khytul 
 and Ladwa, the incumbent having been wounded in the 
 Sikh wars, and offering me that charge pro tem. Here was 
 a dilemma ; I was fired to the utmost with the idea of an 
 independent charge in a new country, but my own superior, 
 Mr. Thomason, had checkmated me. On the principle of 
 nothing venture nothing win, I determined to risk it ; 
 hurried off my servants and horses, " laid my dak " ; over- 
 took them near Seharunpore, and, mounting, made straight 
 for the Sikh country, over the Jumna. The fates were 
 against me still ; I was overtaken by a very violent storm, 
 benighted on a road no better than a native track, and had 
 a terrible business crossing the Jumna, where I was blown 
 away and almost drowned, in darkness and tempest, only 
 relieved by flashes of lightning. I remember it as if it were 
 yesterday. However, I persevered, and the next morning
 
 i EARLY DAYS AND EARLY SERVICE TO 1846 37 
 
 riding into Ladwa, took possession of what I may almost 
 call the warm nest of the rebel and fugitive Rajah of that ilk. 
 Being in possession I wrote a very penitent letter to Mr. 
 Thomason, and presently received his very handsome 
 forgiveness ; so that was settled.
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE SIKH COUNTRY 
 
 IT was in May, 1846, when I was just twenty-two, that I 
 took possession of my first independent command, and I 
 never afterwards reverted to any lower position. I was 
 gazetted to act as Deputy-Commissioner and Political 
 Assistant of Khytul and Ladwa, the easternmost district of 
 the Cis-Sutlej states. As Deputy-Commissioner I was 
 magistrate, collector, and judge, for in those non-regulation 
 provinces there were no separate judicial establishments ; 
 and as Political Assistant I had charge of a number of small 
 Sikh states. Khytul had been one of the largest of the 
 Cis-Sutlej states, second only to Puttiala, next to which it 
 ranked. In 1843, on failure of heirs, it had been declared 
 an escheat to the British Government, and a civil officer 
 with a small force of troops was sent to take possession. 
 But the Eanee decidedly objected to this proceeding, and 
 carried her objections to the point of routing the British 
 troops so completely that the fugitives next morning brought 
 the news of their own defeat to Kurnal, several long marches 
 off. The affair caused a good deal of noise at the time, just 
 after the Afghan retreat, and when the attitude of the Sikhs 
 was very doubtful. But by that time plenty of troops were 
 available ; a large force was marched to Khytul, the Eanee 
 succumbed, and the country was annexed. Henry Lawrence 
 was put in charge of the district, arranged the administra- 
 tion, and summarily settled it ; so it was not so very new 
 when I came. Ladwa, on the other hand, had only just been
 
 CHAP, ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 39 
 
 confiscated. From early days the Ladwa family had given 
 us a great deal of trouble. Sirdar Goordit Singh had been 
 one of the most conspicuous leaders among the Sikhs from 
 beyond the Sutlej, who had crossed that river and reached 
 the Jumna. Indeed, in a sense, he was about the foremost 
 of them all ; he had crossed the Jumna, possessed himself 
 of territory on both sides of that river, and led his horsemen 
 to the very walls of Delhi. But he was expelled from his 
 territory east of the Jumna, and coming into collision with 
 the British forces near Delhi at the beginning of the present 
 century, was repelled from thence. The troops, following up, 
 attacked and took his fort of Kurnal, and we established 
 there a large British cantonment, which effectually curbed 
 him and others. He submitted with rather a bad grace, 
 was allowed to retain the rest of his territory west of the 
 Jumna, and continued to hold it when we took the Sikh 
 states under our protection. He was still about the most 
 considerable of the Sikhs. from beyond the Sutlej, though 
 not nearly so large as some of the Cis-Sutlej Eajahs. His 
 son Ajeet Singh was never liked by our officers ; he was 
 related too to the Lahore family, and had some territory on 
 the Sutlej, which his father owed to Runjeet Singh ; so when 
 Sikh affairs became very threatening in 1845, he was 
 suspected, and though his territory was not interfered with, 
 he was required to come over and reside for a while at 
 Seharunpore in British territory, and was under surveillance 
 there, very much to his disgust. The first battles of the 
 Sikh war did not seem to have settled the matter, and soon 
 after Rajah Ajeet Singh, having secretly made his arrange- 
 ments and laid out horses, disappeared one night from 
 Seharunpore, rode night and day till he reached his outlying 
 territory on the Sutlej ; there raised every man he could 
 muster, and joined the Sikh army. He took part, I think, 
 in the affair at Buddowal, where that redoubtable hero Sir 
 Harry Smith was so badly mauled, and lost all his baggage 
 and ammunition. However, he eventually shared in the 
 defeat of the Sikhs, and being too far committed to make 
 terms, he became a fugitive, and we confiscated all his
 
 40 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 territory. That was the state of things when I took 
 possession ; nothing had yet been done, and I simply walked 
 into his house and fort, and was there surrounded by his 
 people, who had transferred their allegiance to us. This 
 they seemed to do readily enough. It was a completely 
 native establishment. I remember very well one man, 
 Boop Singh, an elderly white-bearded Sikh, and a very 
 pleasant, well-spoken person, who had been the Rajah's 
 jemadar (major-domo and head-man), and who was good 
 enough to serve me in the same capacity. I got on 
 extremely well with him, as if we had been together all 
 our lives. Our troops were then very fully occupied, and I 
 was left to shift as I best could, and had no British force 
 but a detachment of a military police battalion. If the 
 Rajah had come back with a moderate following to claim his 
 own again, it is not unlikely that the new dynasty might 
 have fared very badly, but he did not attempt that, and 
 eventually died a fugitive. 
 
 Between Khytul and Ladwa, and surrounding Ladwa, 
 were the circle of small Sikh states of which I had charge, 
 and of which I will say more shortly. 
 
 The permanent incumbent, Captain Abbott (another old 
 friend still living near me), having gone to the front and 
 been wounded there, very heavy arrears had accumulated, 
 and the only experienced assistant was just then obliged to 
 go away sick, so I had large arrears and a very heavy task ; 
 but I never make any difficulty about that whatever the 
 quality of my work, I think I can get through about as 
 much in quantity as most men. Khytul had hitherto been 
 the headquarters, and I had to go over there to settle 
 matters ; it is a large and rather wild district. Having 
 settled affairs there I came back to Ladwa, and seriously set 
 to work to settle that new territory. I preferred Ladwa, 
 and made it my headquarters as long as I was in the 
 district. At that time, however, I remained only a few 
 months, after which I was sent up to take charge of the 
 territory newly annexed upon the Sutlej, and to annex a 
 good deal more ; and after that I returned again to Khytul
 
 n THE SIKH COUNTRY 41 
 
 and Ladwa. I had no covenanted assistant, only a Christian 
 deputy-collector to look after the treasury and the routine 
 correspondence. For some years I lived entirely among the 
 natives, and worked through natives only. In one district 
 or other I remained in the Cis-Sutlej states till I went home 
 on furlough in 1851 ; and not long after my return I was 
 appointed in 1855 to the higher post of Commissioner of 
 the whole territory. It became a kind of second native 
 country to me, and I have always felt it to be so. Before 
 going further, then, I will give some general account of that 
 country, and may sometimes anticipate a little. 
 
 The country between the Upper Jumna and the Sutlej 
 was called by the Moguls " Sirhind," or the " Head of India," 
 and by the natives " Malwa," * or the middle land, being the 
 watershed between the streams flowing east and west. Lying 
 between the Himalayas and the desert, it is in fact the route 
 by which India has always been entered, and the scene of 
 the great battles where India has been won and lost. The 
 first settlement of the civilised Hindoos and the scene of 
 their early literary achievements was the country about the 
 Saraswati in the district about Thanesar and Ladwa ; and 
 the early Mahomedans, Moguls, and the Mahrattas had all 
 fought their great battles in that neighbourhood. The Mogul 
 emperors had made a sort of Grand Trunk road through 
 this country, and the remains of their Coss-minars 2 or 
 milestones and great caravanserais still existed in my time. 
 
 The principal Cis-Sutlej Eajahs, who are best known 
 (and who are still very much in evidence), were scarcely 
 proper Sikhs ; they were in their origin local leaders who 
 had risen to power first as marauders and then as rulers in 
 the eighteenth century. When the Sikhs became powerful 
 they found it expedient to adopt the Sikh religion ; but 
 when the Sikhs were defeated by the Mahomedans they 
 made terms with the Mahomedan powers and got titles 
 and recognition from them. When the Sikhs finally triumphed 
 they made the best terms they could with the Sikh leaders, 
 
 1 But it is not to be confused with the Central India Malwa. 
 2 Coss-miuar = mile-pillar, or milestone.
 
 42 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 and were classed among the Sikh Missals or confederacies 
 as ' Malwa Sikhs," to distinguish them from the proper Sikhs 
 of the Punjaub, known as Manjha Sikhs. With a good many 
 vicissitudes they managed to hold their own till, when hard 
 pressed by Pamjeet Sing, they obtained British protection in 
 1809. I need not say much about them here ; my dealings 
 with them were limited. My group of states belonged to 
 the Manjha class. But there is a curious story connected 
 with the origin of the Malwa Sikhs which I don't think 
 any one knows, and which I may here tell. 
 
 Far back from the Sutlej and near the centre of the 
 Malwa country is a place called " Mehraj," consisting of a 
 mother town with a good many daughter villages, and 
 inhabited by people of the dominant race of all that country, 
 the Jats. When the Mogul empire was breaking up, these 
 people too struck for independence and non-payment of 
 revenue. One of the daughter villages was named " Phool," 
 and it was the leading family who established the Cis- 
 Sutlej Eajahships to which I have just alluded; Puttiala 
 and Nabha, Khytul and Jheend, and one or two smaller 
 Sirdars, were all related to one another, and were known as 
 the " Phoolkian " family. If they had stuck together and 
 maintained their allegiance to the mother town, Mehraj 
 might have become another Ptome ; but they preferred to set 
 up on their own account, and what they conquered in 
 common they divided, and separated. Puttiala is the Putti 
 or share of Ala Singh, the first chief of that state, which 
 became much the largest, though Ala Singh was not the 
 senior of the family. I do not think it was on account of 
 respect for the place of their origin that these Jat Csesars 
 did not enslave their mother state, but rather because they 
 were so jealous of one another that if any one of them 
 attempted to do so, the others all combined to prevent him. 
 At any rate Mehraj remained an independent republic till, 
 with the rest of the country, it came under British protection. 
 We recognised the Sikh states as they existed, and Mehraj 
 continued a completely independent self-governing republic 
 down to my time the only real, well-established republic
 
 it THE SIKH COUNTRY 43 
 
 that I know of in India. It really was a very complete, 
 fully-equipped republic. I had political charge of it when 
 I went up to the Sutlej, and it is always a regret to me 
 that I did not more thoroughly study its laws and institu- 
 tions; but my hands were then very full, and I hardly realised 
 how unique it was. It was much more than a mere village, 
 municipal government ; it was diplomatically recognised as 
 a state, and had its own state administration and state jus- 
 tice. I saw regular prisoners with great logs of wood upon 
 their legs, just as I did at Lahore. There were no chiefs or 
 hereditary rulers ; the state was governed by its Punches 
 or representative elders. There was nothing of any feudal 
 system, or any division into conquerors and conquered. 
 Apart from a helot class which exists everywhere in India, 
 all the citizens were free and equal. It was a purely 
 indigenous state in situ, as it were. Most of the citizens 
 did, I think, become Sikhs, but they had nothing of the 
 Sikh organisation, which I will come to later. Unhappily, 
 as I think, this interesting republic was soon after wiped 
 out, when all the smaller Sikh states were mediatised and 
 reduced to the position of British subjects. It has gone 
 from us, and I am afraid we cannot recover the photograph 
 of it, which I should like to have had. I can find no record 
 of it except that when a British settlement of it was made 
 a few years later, it is noted that there were 6728 free 
 holders of Mehraj, besides 693 in a neighbouring place 
 called Chakian. 
 
 So much for the Malwa Sikhs. I have said that the 
 petty states of which I had charge about Thanesar and 
 Ladwa were of the class of Man j ha Sikhs from the Pim- 
 jaub. Theirs was quite a different position from that of 
 Mehraj, for they were not indigenous, but conquerors from 
 a distance, ruling over the indigenous people. They had a 
 curious and interesting feudal system which was only to be 
 found in that part of the country for Kunjeet Sing wiped 
 out everything of the kind as far as his power went. It is 
 a great regret to me that I cannot find any proper account 
 in print of the Sikh feudal confederacies; there are only
 
 44 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 general notices of them. The histories of the Sikhs and of 
 the Punjaub deal, I think, too exclusively with the rise of 
 the early Sikhs and the subsequent kingdom of Eunjeet, 
 and pass too lightly over the intermediate feudal stage in 
 which the modern Sikhs appear in their really distinctive 
 character. The fact is that the Sikhs have gone through 
 several separate stages. The original founder, Gooroo 
 Nanuk, the Hindoo reformer, lived several centuries ago. 
 His doctrine was peace and equality of man, and his 
 followers are the only true Sikhs, " learners " or disciples. 
 Those Nanuk Sikhs are very widely spread over almost all 
 India, though we know nothing of them, and take no notice 
 of them. It was after a long interval that, at the end of 
 the seventeenth century, persecution drove a small section of 
 Sikhs in the Punjaub to take up arms in the character of 
 military fanatics. They called themselves by the more 
 military title of " Sing," and do so still. It is we who 
 call them Sikhs. Gooroo Gobind Sing was their apostle. 
 After a short career, however, these Sings were completely 
 put down ; Gobind is said to have died in the service of a 
 Mahomedan ruler in the south ; and for a long generation 
 nothing more was heard of them. The early Sikhs, like the 
 early Christians, appealed to the humble, the poor, and the 
 needy, and drew their converts from that class. Gobind 
 most readily received the lowest class of outcasts and made 
 them members of the fraternity. It was essentially a lower 
 class movement. 
 
 When, thirty or forty years later, the Sings again raised 
 their heads and obtained a much greater development, their 
 first leaders were not the territorial classes, but rather 
 humbler people, mechanics and artisans and the like. The 
 most distinguished of the early organisers of the modern 
 Sings was Jussa Sing the Kalal that is, spirit-seller or 
 publican, who became head of what was called the Aloo- 
 walea Missal, and was the ancestor of the present Rajahs of 
 Kapoorthalla. 
 
 Another Jussa Sing, the carpenter, was also a great 
 leader and head of one of the principal Missals. Another
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 45 
 
 carpenter was head of a third Missal. A carpenter, too, 
 was the leader of the recent Kookas. I do not know why 
 mechanics have such a turn for reform ; perhaps they have 
 time and opportunity for reflection. Even at the present 
 day, the popular leaders are engineers and carpenters and 
 stone-masons. But to return to the Sings : In the middle of 
 the last century the principal agricultural tribes of the 
 Punjaub were rising and emancipating themselves from the 
 falling empire of the Moguls. Their leaders adopted the 
 tenets of Gobind as a sort of badge of independence, and 
 from that time the Sings became almost identified with the 
 Jats, and all the notable leaders and confederacies, with 
 little exception, were Jats. The Aloowalea Sirdars were 
 almost the only exception ; they were great leaders when 
 Eunjeet Sing's family was very small ; and even down to 
 the present century they did not acknowledge inferiority. 
 Our first treaty of 1806 was made, not with Eunjeet Sing 
 alone, but with Eunjeet and Futteh Sing (who was then 
 Aloowalea leader) conjointly ; ; indeed it was Futteh Sing 
 who negotiated the treaty in the joint names of the two. 
 In fact, however, Eunjeet Sing had then been for a good 
 many years quite predominant. He had established his 
 power as a military despot, and had quite suppressed the 
 popular organisation in the Punjaub. Meantime the Sing 
 confederacies had swarmed over the Sutlej into the Sirhind 
 province and beyond it, and had occupied all the country 
 not already firmly held by the Malwa Eajahs. They sur- 
 rounded the latter in a kind of horse-shoe along the south 
 of the Sutlej, the plain country at the foot of the Himalayas, 
 and then down along the west of the Jumna. In the 
 beginning of this century Eunjeet too crossed the Sutlej and 
 tried to suppress the liberties of the Sirhind province also. 
 In fact he did conquer all the country near the Sutlej, and 
 had carried his arms beyond that, when he was checked by 
 us, and by the treaty of 1809, which we forced upon him. 
 Thus then it happened that neither in the Punjaub nor near 
 the Sutlej did the original organisation remain. The only 
 survival of the proper Sing system was in the country near
 
 4 6 
 
 the Himalayas and the Jumna, which Runjeet was not per- 
 mitted to reach. It is on that account that the small states 
 in the eastern portion of Sikh-land were peculiarly interest- 
 ing. They survived down to my time, and were in full 
 force when I first took charge of that territory, being divided 
 between my district and that of Umballa ; but they were 
 soon after suppressed, and their memory is in danger of 
 perishing. 
 
 The curious thing about them was the complete and 
 fully organised feudal system which they exhibited. It is a 
 puzzle to understand how they had got it it must have 
 been a sort of spontaneous generation. For many hundred 
 years under the successive Mahomedan dynasties, the 
 Jats never had a chance of seeing anything outside their 
 village communities. It seems as if the same feudal system 
 which prevailed in Europe is a sort of natural instinctive 
 habit of the Aryan race when they go forth to conquer. 
 
 The modern Sings ceased to obey a Gooroo, or to affect 
 religious fanaticism; their adoption, more or less, of the 
 Sikh religion was only an incident as it were, and a badge, 
 as I have said, of opposition to the Moguls. Their organisa- 
 tion was quite of a military character. 
 
 The principal point which one learns from watching the 
 early stages of a feudal system is that the derivation of 
 fiefs from the king or the chief by his gift is the merest 
 fiction of the lawyers. It is quite the other way ; the early 
 feudal chiefs do not create and endow their following, but 
 are created and endowed by them. They are elected, in 
 fact, by the soldiers ; and it is only in later days that by aid 
 of regular troops and military combinations they acquire a 
 larger hereditary power. 
 
 The Sikh system is very like that out of which the 
 German system sprung. They formed Missals or military 
 confederacies. Twelve Missals were recognised in early 
 days. Each Missal elected its own supreme chief and sub- 
 chiefs, and every horseman had his rights and his share in 
 the common conquests. The combined Missals formed the 
 " Khalsa " or Sikh commonwealth. Just as in Germany
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 47 
 
 the tendency was to an elective Supreme Chief who had 
 very little power, and whose place was not hereditary. But 
 the chiefs of Missals, and minor chiefs, gradually acquired a 
 hereditary footing like the dukes and barons of Europe. As 
 in Europe too, when the chiefs consolidated their power, 
 they very often managed to suppress the common men, 
 and to become little despots. They hardly had time enough 
 fully to carry out the system of an elective supreme chief 
 who might have become a sort of German Emperor. There 
 was only a kind of very imperfect acknowledgment of a 
 common leader, up to the time when Runjeet Sing established 
 a despotism over all. Jussa Sing Kalal succeeded a previous 
 general-in-chief, and perhaps himself came nearest to the 
 supreme command as a popular leader. The Sirdars, great 
 and small, very much consolidated their power, and their 
 offices became entirely hereditary. In a few of the Missals, 
 the rights of the private horsemen survived, and survive 
 still, so far as these people now have any rights, as Jagheer- 
 dars. I remember a very curious body among the states in 
 my charge called the " Missal Jamarazan." They were not 
 a proper Missal, but only a fraction of one. They retained, 
 however, in their conquest near the Jumna, the original 
 organisation quite complete. There was a head Sirdar of 
 the Missal, a sort of constitutional monarch with very limited 
 powers indeed. Then there were sub-chiefs, inferior Sirdars, 
 owing him a feudal allegiance, " Zeildars " they were called ; 
 and then there were very numerous horseman's shares 
 each horseman holding his own little bit of territory. In 
 fact in my time, owing to the hereditary principle, even the 
 horsemen were sometimes split up, and a man might own 
 half a horseman's share, or a horseman and a half. More 
 frequently the chiefs of various degrees held considerable 
 territories unembarrassed by any independent rights of their 
 followers. But there was a great deal of feudal superiority 
 and allegiance among the different chiefs, and their rights 
 and obligations were very exactly regulated. It would be a 
 great mistake to suppose that they were at all mere savage 
 conquerors ; all their rights and constitutional liabilities
 
 48 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 were regulated as nicely as in any European confederacy. 
 The only want of completeness was caused by this, that 
 as most of the Sings had been suppressed by Eunjeet, those 
 who survived in the Sirhind country were not complete 
 Missals, but broken fractions of several different Missals. 
 
 From the time that the Sikh states were taken under 
 our protection, in 1809, the British Government became the 
 supreme power over all, and the Political Agent on the 
 frontier had the function of keeping the peace among them 
 and settling their quarrels. In the course of these dealings 
 the somewhat uncertain and antagonistic claims became 
 settled and certain, and the whole system was put upon a 
 recognised and well-defined footing. The early administrator 
 of the Sikh states was Captain Murray, who seems to have 
 written an account of them which I have not been able to 
 find. In later days, down to the time of my arrival in 
 India, the very able and much respected representative of 
 the British Government on the frontier was George Eussell 
 Clerk. He was afterwards well-known as Governor of the 
 North- West Provinces of Bombay and of the Cape of Good 
 Hope, and died only the other day at a very ripe old age. 
 But much as his name is connected with very excellent work 
 in all those positions, he will always be best remembered as 
 George Clerk of the Frontier Agency. He thoroughly under- 
 stood both chiefs and people, and had a very great hold 
 over them. 
 
 When we took the Sikh states under our protection, we 
 guaranteed to them the maintenance of all their existing 
 powers, and they had complete jurisdiction in their own 
 domains, like the Highland chiefs with the privilege of pit 
 and gallows. When I came to Ladwa, there were living 
 near there two people who bore the evidence of the Rajah's 
 power. A woman of his establishment and a young man 
 were suspected of being too intimate. He had the woman's 
 nose cut off, and chopped off both the youth's hands ; but 
 that was entirely his right, and no one could interfere. 
 Within a very few years, the Sirdars of Shahabad had form- 
 ally executed at least one old woman for witchcraft, if not
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 49 
 
 more. That was a little too much for us, and latterly some 
 restriction was put upon capital punishment. Speaking 
 generally, however, our jurisdiction was only what may be 
 called an inter-state jurisdiction, to settle the quarrels 
 between the different states and chiefs. When we first 
 took charge there were many open sores and unsettled 
 quarrels, but these were gradually adjusted. The greatest 
 difficulty was in regard to those possessions which were 
 held by several or many sharers in common ; not only did 
 members of the same family or same Missal thus share some 
 of their possessions, but not unfrequently claimants totally 
 unconnected with one another settled their differences by 
 halving disputed villages, an arrangement certainly not con- 
 ducive to peace and quiet. The villages so halved were 
 known as " Chaharamees " ; literally " fourthed " villages, 
 the fourth being arrived at in this way, that one-half of the 
 produce was supposed to belong to the village cultivators, 
 and one-half to the ruling power. In a chaharamee village 
 each of the rulers took half of the ruler's half ; that is, a 
 fourth. Though in common parlance one-half was the 
 ruler's share, that is an outside exaction, and it is seldom 
 that so much is really taken. I think much the same rule 
 prevails all over the world, wherever the system of division 
 of crops is adopted. I was very much surprised to find 
 that in the Western States of America, when land is let " on 
 shares " as it is called, there also the owner generally claims 
 one-half, though, I believe, he supplies nothing but the land, 
 and a rough western house and buildings. 
 
 For many years we had no desire to annex any part 
 of the Sirhind country, and on failure of heirs we gene- 
 rally indulgently allowed the Eanees 1 to hold the smaller 
 possessions under the system which prevails in regard to 
 private property. It is a curious part of the Indian system 
 that on failure of sons, daughters may not succeed to real 
 property, but Ranees may. These Ranee holdings often 
 give a great deal of trouble ; they were very liable to get 
 into bad hands. A considerable state in my charge was 
 
 1 Ranee = queen ; in these cases'the Ranees would be widow-queens. 
 VOL. I E
 
 50 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 that of Thanesar, a territory which included the classic 
 ground of the ancient Hindoos, and the most sacred places 
 on the Saraswati. The half share of one Sirdar, who had 
 died without heirs, was held by the British Government, 
 while the other half was held by a Eanee ; rather a com- 
 plicated arrangement. The Eanee was the daughter of the 
 former Sirdar of a small state farther north, beyond my 
 jurisdiction. On one occasion I had some correspondence 
 regarding a matter connected with this latter state, and I 
 observed that the name was the same as that of a very 
 famous leader of the Missal to which it belonged, who had 
 defeated the Mahomedans on a great occasion in the first 
 half of the last century Baghel Sing, I think his name 
 was. " Oh," my native official said, " it is the same man." 
 " Dear me," I replied, " he can't have lived as long as all 
 that ! " and then it was explained that my correspondent 
 was not literally the man, but his widow representing him, 
 who, according to custom, retained his name and seal. 
 Baghel Sing was, it seems, a youngish man when he de- 
 feated the Mahomedans. Long after he married a young 
 wife, and that young wife was the old lady who corre- 
 sponded with me in the name of Baghel Sing. Between 
 them they covered a good deal over a hundred years. Not 
 very long after, the old lady died ; her daughter, the Eanee of 
 Thanesar, went to the funeral, there caught cold, and died 
 too. My head-man, when he brought the news, said in all 
 gravity : " Great is the Ikbal l of the Sirkar (government)," 
 meaning that we had as it were got two birds with one 
 stone, and appropriated both territories. 
 
 Most of the states in my charge were not very large ; 
 the rulers had revenues varying, say, from about 5000 to 
 5 per annum. 
 
 Speaking generally I liked these Sikh Sirdars they 
 were pleasant, frank, good sort of fellows, and with most 
 of them I was on excellent terms. The Eajah of Jheend 
 was a larger man, and not exactly in my circle, but he 
 was very near it. I much liked him, as did all European 
 
 1 Ikbal = good fortune.
 
 it THE SIKH COUNTRY 51 
 
 officers with whom he came in contact. He was always 
 ready to be useful to us, and afterwards did excellent service 
 in the Mutiny. I remember an instance of especial good 
 tact on his part. He invited me to the christening of his 
 heir, or to what corresponds to a christening in a Sikh 
 family, and asked me to dine with him on that occasion. 
 The evening before, however, he sent over to say he had 
 expected a cook up from Delhi for the occasion, but the 
 cook had failed him, and if I did not mind bringing my 
 own cook and my own dinner, perhaps it would be better. 
 I was most pleased to do so, brought them accordingly, 
 dined with comfort, was saved the ordeal of native food, 
 had a very pleasant evening, and retired, most grateful 
 to my friend the Rajah. The smaller chiefs used often 
 to visit me. I remember one Sirdar, who was a particular 
 friend of mine (I think he belonged to the Shangurh 
 Missal), who always brought a little brass cup in his 
 pocket, which he used when he was invited to take a 
 dram. They had no scruples on that point, but I really 
 don't think many of them indulged to excess. Certainly 
 I saw or heard very little of the excessive orgies which the 
 historians of the Punjaub depict as having disgraced the 
 court of Eunjeet Sing. If the Sikhs sometimes take a good 
 deal of liquor and a little opium, we must remember that 
 they are in a sense driven to that kind of indulgence by 
 the prohibition of tobacco. The old Sikh Gooroos l seem 
 to have shared the aversion of James I. to that weed, and 
 positively prohibited it ; but they forgot to prohibit more 
 injurious stimulants. The Sikhs have sometimes been 
 accused of a liking for opium, and I have sometimes heard 
 it said of a particular village : " Oh, they are Sings, and 
 regular ' Poshtees ' or opium-eaters." The cultivation of the 
 poppy was free in those territories then. But opium-eating 
 never spread very largely ; it is not an Aryan habit. It 
 is alcohol that, in their capacity of relations to ourselves, 
 they more affect. Upon the whole, the Sirdars get on 
 pretty well with their subjects. I only remember one of 
 
 1 Gooroo is the title given to the founders of the Sikh schism from Hinduism.
 
 52 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 them who was an exceedingly bad ruler, and whose villages 
 were half-deserted. Sir Henry Lawrence in his younger 
 days was a frequent contributor to the press, and in an 
 article on the Sikhs he draws rather a highly -coloured 
 picture of them, as having been a sort of caterans, like the 
 Campbells and Macgregors of the Highlands. I hope he 
 is quite mistaken about the Campbells, always a most 
 respectable race ; but if he means to compare the Sikhs to 
 the Macgregors and other troublesome clans, whom the 
 Campbells had so much trouble in keeping in order, it is 
 rather hard upon the Sikhs. 
 
 When we began to acquire territory intermixed with 
 that of the Sikh Sirdars, and to deal with the Zemindars 
 in our liberal way, it gave rise sometimes to considerable 
 difficulties between the Sikhs and their subjects. When 
 we become responsible for the peace of the country, we 
 cannot allow the sacred right of rebellion, the safety-valve 
 in such cases, to be fully exercised. The dominant Sikhs 
 were exactly the class from which our landlord class has 
 come. But then the indigenous Zemindars had pretty 
 strong views as to their rights, and were not willing to 
 submit quietly to be reduced to the position of mere 
 villeins. In the larger states there was not generally very 
 much difficulty ; there the position of the village com- 
 munities was recognised ; they retained their village self- 
 government, and only paid their customary revenue to 
 the state. Indeed sometimes these villages were almost 
 too strong for the rulers, and paid with considerable 
 difficulty. The villages were almost all walled and fortified. 
 I remember one strong village in Khytul, which for 
 generations had made it a point of honour never to admit 
 a Government officer- within their walls ; they paid the 
 revenue over the wall, and that was enough. In that same 
 village the different " Pattis " l were barricaded against one 
 another. They all combined against an outside foe, but 
 could not trust one another. There is a considerable place, 
 Jagraon, capital of the former Aloowalea territory near the 
 
 1 Patti= subdivision of a village.
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 53 
 
 Sutlej, which I annexed a little later ; it consisted of a 
 central town of considerable importance and seven cir- 
 cumjacent " Pattis." The Pattis, or wards, were not 
 unfrequently, as in this case, of different castes and even 
 different religions ; but they had a tolerable modus vivendi, 
 and reminded one of the different tribes and gentes which 
 combined on the seven hills of Rome. When our strong 
 arm came to rule them, the most refractory villages sub- 
 mitted quite quietly. 
 
 Under the protected rfyiine the principal difficulty 
 between the rulers and the ruled was at the place of 
 residence of the chiefs, where their requirements came 
 very hard on the resident population. But where the 
 rulers were very numerous and not of very high rank, 
 as in the case of the democratic "Jamarazan Missal," 
 which I have mentioned, in the course of fifty or sixty 
 years' occupation they had managed by hook or by crook to 
 get enough land for their own cultivation, etc., and had 
 come to terms with the local Zemindars. If things had 
 gone on so, the Jamarazan state might have peaceably 
 arranged itself into equestrian and plebeian orders, till 
 some Jat Gracchus demanded for the people a share in 
 the further lands which they might have helped to win. 
 
 For the first quarter-century of our protectorate we had 
 no British territory in the province. Then, as Eanees 
 and others died without heirs, we acquired a title in the 
 capacity of feudal superior of all and ultimate heir to all 
 lapses. The rule was established that collaterals should 
 succeed to all territory ever held by a common ancestor, 
 but that acquisitions made after a parting of the branches 
 of the family did not go to another branch, but lapsed to 
 us on failure of direct heirs. Small British possessions 
 were thus acquired at Umballa and Loodiana, and made 
 very convenient headquarters for our frontier agents. 
 Then, a little before the first Afghan "War, the Ranee 
 of Ferozepore, a small territory on the Sutlej, far in ad- 
 vance, in the Lahore direction, died. It was very doubtful
 
 54 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 whether we were entitled to it, or whether it was a Lahore 
 fief; in fact, in the early lists it appears as a dependency 
 of Eunjeet Sing. But we were then very keen about the 
 navigation of the Sutlej and Indus, and Eunjeet, willing 
 to oblige, yielded the point. The place was very handy to 
 us, when we were in alliance with him, for the Afghan War, 
 and was made a great depot for our troops. Afterwards 
 the Sikhs much complained that when the war was over 
 we made it a strong permanent cantonment, and, as they 
 thought, a sort of menace to Lahore. Indeed, when we 
 came to be on bad terms with them, many people thought 
 that so advanced a post was not strategically profitable. 
 
 In 1843 we annexed Khytul, and made, as has been said, 
 our first large acquisition. And when once we had begun to 
 make small acquisitions by lapse a good many others followed. 
 In 1846, after the war, came the great acquisitions from 
 Lahore, the Aloowalea chief, etc. A few years later all the 
 smaller states were deprived of power, and their territories 
 brought under British administration ; so now the province 
 is in great part a British province, and we completely 
 surround the larger Protected States which still remain. 
 
 I confess I had a good deal of sympathy with the 
 smaller states when they were reduced under British rule, 
 and could not help thinking it was difficult to justify the 
 measure as a strict question of faith. It was put on the 
 ground that in the Sikh war they had failed to fulfil their 
 feudal obligations actively to assist us ; but the war was 
 very sudden, their situation very difficult; and, so far as 
 we discriminated, it was not with regard to the conduct of 
 each individual state, but only with regard to size ; we 
 reduced the small and spared the great. Nabha, which 
 certainly behaved very ill, and was sentenced to a penal loss 
 of territory, was allowed to retain power, when the smaller 
 states, good and bad, were all reduced. The fact is, however, 
 that as matter of expediency the measure had become 
 almost necessary. When our territory became intermixed 
 with native territory to an excessive degree there were 
 insuperable difficulties in dealing with crime, cattle-lifting,
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 55 
 
 and the like. And the Zemindars, who saw how their 
 neighbours were treated by us, were less and less willing to 
 submit to Sikh exactions. Still I think there might have 
 been some discrimination. I should much have liked to 
 have seen, for instance, the Mehraj republic spared, there 
 was no war of classes there, and perhaps the Jamarazan 
 Missal too, after a little regulation. 
 
 However, they are gone and cannot be recalled, and in 
 the absence of available record of them, the memory of 
 them seems only to remain in my recollection all who 
 knew them are gone or going. 
 
 When the Sikhs were deprived of their powers as 
 rulers, it was necessary also to settle about their revenue. 
 We could not simply turn them from rulers into landlords, 
 for a ruler, whether Highland chief or Sikh chief, is not a 
 landlord unless the lawyers manage to make him so, and 
 Jat Zemindars are not so submissive as Highland clansmen 
 became after they were suppressed by the whole power of 
 the British Government in 1746. Landlords the Sikhs 
 were in a sense, and absolute rulers they had been in a 
 sense, but for all that the rights of the people were regulated 
 and much protected by customary and moral laws, and they 
 had always the sacred right of rebellion to fall back upon. 
 We could not allow the matter to be fought out in that way, 
 so we intervened and made a settlement, a regulation and 
 definition of the rights of the superior landlord, and the 
 privileges and obligations of the holders of the soil. In 
 short we then did in Sikh-land precisely what was done in 
 Ireland under the Act of 1881, except that in the latter 
 case only a rough and summary settlement has been made, 
 whereas the Sikh villages were regularly settled after survey, 
 etc. etc., by a regular Settlement Department, and there is 
 this further possible difference, that after that regular 
 settlement the Sikhs got the rents adjudged to them quite 
 punctually. Perhaps a similar result might follow a 
 similar system in Ireland. 
 
 I have dwelt so long on the small Protected States, 
 rather because there is such an absence of a precise account
 
 56 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 of them than because in those days they formed the most 
 considerable portion of my work ; on the contrary, that was 
 the part of my functions that was the least laborious, and 
 where I had the least discretion. In a long course of 
 political administration their rights had come to be so well 
 defined, and everything was so exactly regulated by strict 
 precedent, that there was not very much room for interfer- 
 ence, and my inclination has always been to leave native 
 states of all kinds alone as much as possible, and let them 
 manage things in their own way, subject to the penalty of 
 very serious interference if they bring on any catastrophe, 
 rather than to attempt to Europeanise and dry-nurse them, 
 and make them a mongrel cross between European and 
 native administration ; so while they lasted I let them go 
 their own gate as much as possible. 
 
 My real hard work was the administration of the 
 British districts in my charge. There I was very nearly 
 in the position of a benevolent despot. In those non- 
 regulation districts we were told to follow the spirit of the 
 regulations, but that was very elastic, and I did pretty much 
 what I thought just and right. My superior was Colonel 
 Mackeson, Commissioner of the Cis-Sutlej states, an able 
 political officer, for whose memory I have much regard ; but 
 he had very little experience of civil administration proper, 
 and was an extremely slow, deliberate kind of man. He 
 interfered with me very little indeed. Perhaps in some 
 respects it was not good for me to have so very much 
 unguided liberty. I might have been better in some ways 
 if I had been under the iron and strict rule of John 
 Lawrence, who was Commissioner of what was called the 
 Trans-Sutlej states, but we had no connection with him. 
 However, it suited my temperament very well to be law- 
 giver as well as administrator on my own account, and to 
 be thus thrown on my own resources, with a free hand. 
 
 As from this time forward most of my service was 
 very much connected with military men, whether as my 
 superiors in early days, or working under me later on, I
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 57 
 
 may here say that the somewhat jealous feeling in regard to 
 Lord Ellenborough's dealings in putting military men in 
 the place of civilians, to which I have alluded, referred only 
 to the passing phase of injustice which we thought we 
 had suffered at Lord Ellenborough's hands. For the rest, 
 throughout my service I have always liked and heartily 
 appreciated my military colleagues in civil work, and think 
 they have thoroughly deserved the credit they have acquired. 
 Xo doubt they had not the early training that we civilians 
 had, and some of them were put in by mere patronage. 
 But on the other hand many of them brought themselves to 
 the front by a sort of natural selection, and were in fact 
 select men, with special qualities, taken from the great mass 
 of officers, at a time when there was not very much selection 
 for the Civil Service. That is, I think, why so many of 
 them became distinguished civil administrators, from Sir 
 Thomas Muriro downwards. 
 
 At the same time I confess I have shared, just a very 
 little, some of the popular prejudice against some of the 
 Indian "Politicals" as distinguished from the civil adminis- 
 trators, I mean men employed in looking after and nursing 
 native states. They were sometimes young men without 
 any civil training, yet too much inclined to interfere with 
 native methods, and to assume to themselves the role of rulers 
 behind a screen of native form. I think too a good many of 
 them were rather too much connected with the Indian press, 
 and too apt to get their heroic deeds rather over-puffed by 
 that medium. In the management of the Punjaub under the 
 Residency system from 1846 to 1849 I rather think that 
 there was a good deal of that sort of thing. Perhaps it 
 was on account of the dislike to the alleged interference of 
 comparatively young military officers in political employ- 
 ment with officers of high rank, conducting operations 
 in the field, that there grew up the modern idea that in 
 operations involving both military and political considera- 
 tions, Generals must not be controlled by civil officers, but 
 must have a free hand. I do not agree in that. As 
 matter of history I don't think there is justification for it.
 
 58 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 I do not think that any of our military disasters, within my 
 recollection, can fairly be attributed to any civilian interfer- 
 ence. In the worst disaster of all, that at Cabul in 1841, 
 it is now admitted that the civil head did the best that he 
 could under the circumstances, and that the catastrophe 
 was the result of military weakness and want of arrange- 
 ment. The fact is that though our naval officers are very 
 generally diplomatists, and continually called upon to act 
 as such (a function which they have often extremely well 
 performed), it is not so much so with the British army. In 
 the rare case of a man combining civil and military qualifica- 
 tions and command, that is a great advantage ; but it is not 
 often so. Sometimes the cry for freedom from civil control 
 is rather a jingo cry, and a demand for too unchecked 
 military methods. 
 
 But I must go back to my district work. In several 
 publications I have explained the constitution of the demo- 
 cratic villages of Northern India and their government by 
 their representative Punches. The term " Punchayet " is 
 principally known in this country in connection with judicial 
 arbitration, but it is more often applied in India (in a 
 somewhat abbreviated form) to the council of administration 
 by which villages and other self-governing bodies, castes, 
 trade guilds, and even armies, when they have thrown off 
 allegiance, are managed. Panch or Punj means five, but 
 the number of representative elders is not necessarily five 
 it varies a good deal. The Indian proverb, " Punch men 
 Promeshwur," or "in the Punch there is God," is the equivalent 
 of " Vox populi vox dei," or perhaps should be put a little differ- 
 ently, " The voice of the representative assembly is the voice 
 of God." All the experience I had in India led me to the 
 belief that, at anyrate in my day, before modern demands 
 were formulated, the best system for that country was a 
 paternal despotism above with local self-government below. 
 
 I have already alluded to the Jats, the predominant 
 people of the whole of what I may call northernmost India,
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 59 
 
 excepting only the Himalayas, for the Jats never in any 
 degree penetrated into the hill country on the north they 
 seem to have been later comers from the west. They may 
 be identical with Jutes or Getse, and Getae may or may 
 not be Scythians, it depends on the further question, What 
 is a Scythian ? This at least is very certain, that the Jats 
 are in no degree Tartar or Turanian, but on the contrary in 
 every respect intensely Aryan in their features, in their 
 figure, in their language, and particularly in their institu- 
 tions. Indeed, I may confidently say that in all India, not 
 beyond the Ganges, there is no trace of Turanian blood 
 whatever of colour or other modification the Aryans have 
 received by mixture of race comes from the dark aborigines 
 of India. Of that intermixture there is no doubt more or 
 less, just as in this country Celts and others are mixed with 
 a prehistoric race. In the case of the Jats and other people 
 of the Punjaub the intermixture is less, not more. The Jats 
 were so much the principal agricultural class that in the 
 Punjaub countries they were often called " Zemindars " 
 (quite literally " landholder "), and a man will often say, " I 
 am of the Zemindar caste." So that the word there means 
 a cultivator, not a large landholder, as in Bengal. 
 
 My impression is that in Khytul and Ladwa, except the 
 ruling class and their followers, few of the people were Sikhs. 
 
 As soon as I had got rid of the most pressing work I 
 set-to in earnest at th& settlement of Ladwa. When 
 territory is taken a settlement generally means the change 
 from the native system of taking a share of the produce and 
 other dues, to a fixed money payment for each village. The 
 foundation of the public land revenue is a share of the crop, 
 like a tithe or a landlord's share, under a metayer system. 
 Sometimes the crop is actually divided, sometimes the 
 produce is estimated and the Government share is taken in 
 money at market rates. And there are usually a good many 
 extras taken under our system. We cannot go into 
 details, and therefore it is that we commute the whole for a 
 money payment, dealing direct with the villagers instead of
 
 6o MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 letting the Government dues with farmers, as native govern- 
 ments often do. Till they become accustomed to our system 
 the villagers do not always like it, for it throws much 
 responsibility on them, and the risk of seasons. But they 
 already have a system of repartition among themselves, 
 according to their shares, by which they have been accus- 
 tomed to distribute various common burdens and common 
 expenses. And when the revenue is once fairly settled in 
 cash on terms which they accept, they manage well enough and 
 soon accommodate themselves to our system. They always 
 have their bankers and moneylenders to help them through. 
 The Rajah of Ladwa was by no means a model ruler, 
 indeed our officers had considered him a very bad one, yet 
 when I went into his revenue accounts and system I was sur- 
 prised to find how regular everything was, and how much that 
 we had supposed to be mere arbitrary high-handedness was 
 really very precisely regulated by custom and precedent, and 
 the subject of very exact accounts. There was, too, a great 
 deal of political economy in the system. The ruler's share of 
 grain was a smaller proportion when the crop was estimated 
 than when there was an actual division on the threshing-floor, 
 allowance being made for the sanguineness of estimates, e.g. 
 if two-fifths (a not uncommon rate) was taken on division 
 one-third would be taken in estimate. Again, in the case of 
 irrigated land a smaller proportion was taken, probably one- 
 fourth, so much of the produce being in that case due to the 
 cultivator's labour and expense in irrigation. The more 
 valuable crops, such as tobacco and poppy, were not divided, 
 but paid special money rates. Even the forced or rather 
 unpaid labour, which generally seems to be such a tyranny, 
 was very precisely regulated. Each village was bound to 
 furnish certain helots either at certain seasons or all the 
 year round. If the labour was not required a money com- 
 mutation on a well-established scale was paid. These helots 
 themselves were not unremunerated labourers : they were 
 entitled to 'well-regulated dues out of the village produce, so 
 much out of each load. In the settlement of the tithe 
 questions many lessons may be learned from native Indian
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 61 
 
 experience. Indeed I believe that the principal agent in 
 the English commutation of fifty years ago was Mr. Jones, our 
 Haileybury Professor of Political Economy ; and probably he 
 compared European and Indian systems with much advan- 
 tage. The dues exacted by native rulers beyond the regular 
 share of crops were sometimes harsh and rather grotesque, 
 but they were not without precedent in Europe, and were, I 
 should say, much better regulated in India ; if tyrannically 
 imposed at first they were definite, and the established rates 
 were well observed. I remember one exaction in the Ladwa 
 territory, called " Kasoor keemut " or " default of price," 
 meaning a compensation to the Rajah for a bad market for 
 his grain. And there was a percentage levied as a benevol- 
 ence to meet the expense of the marriage of the Rajah's son. 1 
 Our system was to knock off these extras and make 
 a liberal reduction in the average of the regular dues before 
 fixing our settlement revenue. We generally succeeded in 
 making the people very well content. After a few months' 
 work I had settled the revenue over most of the Ladwa 
 territory. 
 
 In the Khytul district my principal difficulty was about 
 cattle - lifting. It was a dry, hard kind of country, the 
 water in the wells very remote from the surface, the cultiva- 
 tion limited, and much of the country was covered with 
 small jungle. The people were almost more graziers than 
 farmers rather a wild, rough set and they indulged in 
 cattle-lifting on a very large scale, not only for the profit of 
 the thing, but taking a sort of pride in their exploits, like 
 Highland caterans. Not unfrequently they would drive off 
 hundreds of cattle in one " lift." There was a wonderful sys- 
 tem of following the " khoj " or track by a sort of professional 
 " khojees," or trackers, of great skill. They could follow not 
 only a herd but single cattle and single thieves by the track, 
 over hard and dry ground, in a wonderful way. The tracks 
 were for the most part scarcely visible to the ordinary eye, 
 
 1 I see I have dealt with these subjects in Systems of Land-tenure, 
 published by the Cobden Club.
 
 62 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 but every now and again they would show on a favourable 
 spot a repetition of some peculiarity in a footmark in a way 
 which was very convincing of the genuineness of the track. 
 The rule was that, if the track was brought home to a 
 particular village, the people there were bound to carry it 
 on to another or to make compensation. If the territory 
 had all been British we might have managed to reduce the 
 practice of cattle -lifting within moderate limits, but the 
 intermixture of native states made it very difficult indeed. 
 When we carried the track to one of the states we claimed 
 compensation from them, but of course that led to many 
 disputed questions. Khytul had a long and involved 
 boundary with Puttiala, and though these larger states 
 were not in my political charge I exercised a jurisdiction 
 over them for questions arising on the border. Now that 
 they have survived when the smaller states are swept away, 
 and when native states are made so much of, and Puttiala 
 and a few others have risen to such very high rank and 
 consideration, it rather astonishes me to remember the 
 summary way in which I used to treat them when I was a 
 very young man. They were then regarded as being, though 
 larger, not different in their relation to us than the smaller 
 protected Sikh states. The usual mode of suppressing a 
 demand was by what was called a dustuk that is, telling off 
 certain representatives of the British power to live at free 
 quarters on those whom we desired to coerce, till satisfaction 
 was obtained. When a herd of cattle was traced to Putti- 
 ala territory, I have not unfrequently ordered, " Send a 
 dustuk of ten Sowars (horsemen) on Puttiala." It was 
 something like our practice of sending men-of-war to exact 
 satisfaction in Africa or the Pacific, except that instead of 
 bombarding them we only insisted on quarters and rations 
 for the men and horses of our dustuks. In reality it fell on 
 the offending villages rather than on the state. I hope I 
 may say I was reasonable and ready to listen to what they 
 had to say, from whichever side the complaint came. And 
 we generally managed either to get satisfaction or to com- 
 promise the matter in some way.
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 63 
 
 The favourite method of compromising matters in cattle 
 and similar cases was for the plaintiff to demand the oath 
 of the defendant. That was a very solemn affair. And it 
 was a strict rule that if the oath was so demanded no other 
 evidence could be offered ; the plaintiff having elected to 
 take the oath, was finally bound by it, whatever the result. 
 In such cases they were sent out of court to take the oath 
 in their own way, with their own solemnities. And it was 
 generally understood that the accused parties either took 
 the oath and cleared themselves, or compromised and made 
 satisfaction, and we were told it was all right. I have, 
 however, known a boundary dispute similarly referred to 
 oath, where a venerable man seemed to have made up his 
 mind to sacrifice his soul for the benefit of his community, 
 and took a huge cantle out of the grazing grounds of the 
 opposite village. These boundary disputes were sometimes 
 very serious and led to much fighting. So did sometimes 
 opposing claims to water. But on the whole it was wonder- 
 ful how well very complicated claims to various shares in 
 the few and scanty rainy season water - courses of that 
 country were regulated by law and custom, both in regard 
 to the obligation to effect the necessary repairs and in 
 regard to the complicated distribution of the water, parti- 
 cular days and particular hours being allotted to each 
 village. 
 
 The town and station of Khytul were bounded by a 
 large tank, filled in the wet season from a water-course of 
 this kind, to which was attributed the excessive unhealthi- 
 ness from which this place suffered for some years. After 
 the Eanee's resistance it was thought necessary to garrison 
 the place with troops, but they had to be removed on account 
 of excessive unhealthiness it proved a perfect Golgotha. 
 Yet it is certain that the place had been healthy enough 
 before, and after a few years it became and continued 
 healthy again without any apparent change in the physical 
 conditions ; the tank was there always and filled in the same 
 way. It is one of those mysteries waves of disease of 
 which we have not penetrated the secret.
 
 64 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 There was a fine palace at Khytul, but I did not stay 
 there more than I could help. I best remember it in 
 connection with one personal incident. There was about 
 the palace a large Indian bird, tame, and with its wings 
 clipped, and one day when I was riding rapidly in, on a 
 tall and rather skittish mare that I had brought with me 
 from Kohilcund, this gigantic bird suddenly met the mare 
 with a flutter and outstretched wings. I went over her 
 head and was picked up totally unconscious. A camel 
 express was sent off to Umballa, some sixty miles away, for 
 a surgeon, there were no telegraphs then, and when he 
 arrived in hot haste with his instruments, he found me as 
 well as ever. I have several times in the course of my life 
 had knocks on the head which rendered me totally un- 
 conscious for some time. On another occasion, a few years 
 later, I walked over a precipice in the Himalayas in 
 absence of mind, but on every occasion I have presently 
 come to myself and suffered no inconvenience or ill effects 
 of any kind from the moment of recovering consciousness. 
 I think I must be pretty hard-headed. 
 
 In the course of the autumn of this year, 1846, I was 
 relieved of Khytul and Ladwa by the return of Captain 
 Abbott, and I was then ordered to take charge of the new 
 territory south of the Sutlej, between Loodiana and 
 Ferozepore, and running back to the boundaries of Puttiala 
 and Nabha ; I accordingly marched up there and took 
 charge. 
 
 My new district was called " "Wadnee," from a somewhat 
 remote fort which gave some trouble to our advancing army, 
 but station buildings were never provided there, and I 
 remained in camp for some months. To guard against 
 opposition I was provided with quite a little army of a sort, 
 viz. several regiments provided by the larger Protected 
 Chiefs, and I marched about hi great state ; but I soon found 
 that these forces were not required and gradually dispensed 
 with them. 
 
 The country was a fine, open agricultural country, with 
 a very good soil, only in parts the rainfall was apt to be
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 65 
 
 scanty. Great rivers differ curiously in their fertilising 
 qualities. The Jumna, coming from the southern faces of the 
 Himalaya, carries little good silt ; on the contrary, near its 
 issue from the hills it often throws up quantities of sand so 
 as sometimes to come and destroy good land. The Sutlej, 
 on the other hand, rising far away behind the snowy range 
 and receiving few tributaries from the southern Himalayas, 
 is extremely fertilising. Much of the tract within reach of 
 its flood waters is most excellent further back the soil is 
 still good, and in a tolerable year is covered with great 
 sheets of cultivation. But further back still, some marches 
 from the river, and verging towards the desert, the country 
 becomes very arid, though the soil is still excellent. It used 
 to be said that the people there were content if they got 
 a crop once in five years, but then they got a bumper one. 
 
 The people of all this country are, I think, the finest in 
 India. They differ little from those in the Lahore- Amritsar 
 country on the other side. The population seems always 
 to be so arranged that the lazier people were in the low 
 land nearer the river, a more manly and independent set 
 in the great uplands beyond, and the hardest and toughest 
 of all in the dry precarious lands at the back. The middle 
 ones I like best for all purposes, and they are the most 
 numerous. Most of them are Jats, but there are intermixed 
 a good many villages of Mahomedan Eajpoets, of Eains, a 
 more highly cultivating or gardening class, also mostly 
 Mahometans, and a few others. Speaking generally they 
 are excellent cultivators, excellent soldiers, and they form 
 excellent self-governing communities. Their principal fault 
 was the private war which villages sometimes earned on 
 with one another, like so many Greek republics wars 
 which sometimes lasted for years, or almost generations. 
 When I first took charge I could even hear the guns in 
 some of their actions. But we soon forbade that, and they 
 became very quiet. 
 
 Much of this district is said to be among the most 
 " Sikh " parts of the country, and the gazetteers and census 
 returns seem to confirm that. Yet I have some doubt of 
 VOL. I . F
 
 66 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 the strict correctness of the returns. I have always felt 
 the truth of a remark of several early travellers, which I 
 have noticed, " How few Sikhs you see in the Sikh country." 
 To be a regular Sikh of the Gobind persuasion, a man must 
 be regularly initiated, he must abjure tobacco, let his hair 
 grow and coil it up in a knot, wear an iron ring on his arm 
 and so by his dress and get-up a full-fledged Sikh is 
 distinguished. In that shape one seems to see but few of 
 them. The fact, I think, is that a great many become a 
 kind of half-Sikhs, and profess or put aside that religion 
 according to circumstances ; indeed, I have recently received 
 a printed paper by a distinguished Sikh in which he laments 
 the degeneracy of the age in this sense. I remember once 
 pressing a man with the question whether he was a Sikh 
 or not. He at first, with the somewhat Scotch-like caution 
 which distinguishes them, tried to fence with the counter- 
 question, " Why I wanted to know." But when at last I 
 persuaded him that I had no object beyond curiosity, he 
 explained that he was not a Sikh, but said he had two 
 brothers who were, having long served at Lahore. No 
 doubt there are a great many such families in all that 
 country. I remember the representative of one of the 
 greatest families of the Punjaub, the Attareewala Sirdars, who 
 had originally come from a village south of the Sutlej, who 
 keenly pressed a claim to a small share in that village. I 
 thought the claim rather doubtful and out of date and said, 
 " Well now, you are a great Sirdar with great jageers in 
 the Sikh kingdom : is it really worth your while to come 
 and press this small claim here ? " " Yes," he replied with 
 some philosophy ; " but kingdoms (raj) and jageers pass 
 away village rights go on for ever." 
 
 We are so much inclined to call all non-Mahomedan 
 Punjaubees " Sikhs," and to insist on the men we enlist being 
 " Sikhs," that I fancy we may have added considerably to 
 the number of real or nominal professors of that faith. All 
 the Punjaub Jats are called Sing as a name, whether they 
 are Sikhs or not. Because a man's name is Earn Sing, it 
 does not follow that he is a Sing in the Sikh sense.
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 67 
 
 One used to hear a great deal of the extreme Sikh 
 military fanatics, the " Akalees " or " Immortals " but I 
 think Runjeet must have put them down very much. I never 
 saw many of them, and all those I ever had to do with proved 
 to be extremely inoffensive individuals and gave no trouble. 
 
 In the Wadnee district too there had been some inter- 
 regnum. I found a good many arrears, 'and a good many 
 things to settle before I could get to work on the new 
 annexations and settlements which were to be entrusted to 
 me, and before I came to that the Governor-General, Sir 
 Henry Hardinge, came up with all his camp on his way to 
 settle the affairs of the Punjaub. He crossed the Sutlej to 
 Bhyrowal on the Beas, where the well-known treaty of 
 Bhyrowal was signed. I went down to that side of my 
 district and rode across to pay my respects. I had started 
 without notice and without change of horses, and before I 
 reached the Governor-General's camp, my horse showed 
 signs of giving in. I went to a considerable old Sikh 
 official on the road, explained who I was, and asked for the 
 loan of a horse ; but all his horses were unfortunately lame, 
 etc. I rose in some disgust, but then he seemed amused at 
 the high dignity of such a beardless boy, and patting me on 
 the back in a way I did not at all like, said, " Come, we will 
 send you away ' khoosh ' " (happy), and he got out a really 
 fine horse. I remember mounting him a big dun animal 
 with a painted tail such as natives love and riding off 
 in. recovered spirits. He .^carried me well into the camp, 
 and I was there very civilly received. I there saw a good 
 deal of the Governor-General and his staff, Mr. Currie (soon 
 afterwards Sir Frederick), and the Lawrences, and I was 
 much interested in all that was going on. To my great 
 satisfaction, the Governor- General invited me to come and 
 meet him at Lahore, and I was correspondingly crestfallen 
 when Mr. Currie said, " Nonsense ; he knows nothing about 
 it, you can't leave your district at present," so I went 
 back. However, a few days later, one night when I was in 
 my solitary tent, an express came to summon me to Lahore. 
 It was some seventy miles distant, but I was keen to obey
 
 68 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 the summons ; I laid out horses and a swift riding camel 
 during the night, rode out early in the morning, overtook 
 the camel half-way, and did the rest of the journey upon 
 camel-back, arriving early in the afternoon. I have not had 
 occasion to travel very much upon camels, but I like them. 
 People who have stiff seats cannot endure them. It is not 
 at all like riding* a horse; but if one can make one's joints 
 loose and pliable, I think the motion quite comfortable. 
 In India we do not perch on the top of the hump in the 
 ridiculous way they do in Egypt, but have a comfortable 
 saddle seated for two, before and after the hump. A good 
 Indian riding camel is a very large, powerful, well-groomed 
 animal ; far finer, I think, than anything I have seen in 
 Egypt. They go very long distances at a moderate pace 
 say five to seven miles an hour. On this journey I passed 
 through the heart of the Manjha Sikh country, the nursery 
 of the Lahore soldiers. They could not be expected to be 
 very amiable after their defeat, and when their country was 
 being surrendered to a sort of British tutelage. I saw 
 groups of them standing about near the villages ; they 
 seemed rather sulky and took no notice of me, but neither 
 did they molest me, and I got through all right. 
 
 I had a very pleasant visit to Lahore. I was put up 
 by the Lawrences, who were living in a native house there 
 in a very rough way. They were not the men to need 
 luxuries, and I saw a great deal of what was going on. 
 John Lawrence I always admired, a regularly educated 
 civilian, and the best type of the class. He was perhaps a 
 little hard on the upper classes of natives, but he was cer- 
 tainly right in his principle of looking to the happiness and 
 welfare of the masses. Henry Lawrence was much more a 
 man of " heart," and very much more popular ; but he had 
 a very limited civil experience, and that of a very rough 
 kind. He had a sympathy and indulgence for the native 
 chiefs, but did not exaggerate their virtues, or trust them 
 exceedingly ; it was rather that he advocated what I have 
 called the " political " system, the dry - nursing native 
 administration by European officers, in preference to a
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 69 
 
 regular civil administration. The system which was then 
 introduced into the Punjaub was . practically his, though he 
 had to go home ill not very long after, and Sir F. Currie 
 was sent to administer it with greater dignity and greater 
 powers. I saw and heard a great deal that was interesting 
 in the city and the camps that surrounded it ; though we had 
 taken the real power, the forms of a great native kingdom 
 were still maintained. I was present at a great Durbar, at 
 which the infant Maharajah Duleep Sing was produced as 
 the head of the state. My impression is that it was a 
 mistake to have recognised him as a nominal ruler, and that 
 it would have been better to have dealt in name as well as 
 in fact with the leaders of the Sikh " Khalsa " or common- 
 wealth. Duleep had no real right. Eunjeet was a mere 
 military monarch, the beginning and practically the end 
 of his dynasty ; and his descendants had no more legitimate 
 right than Eichard Cromwell or the Buonaparte family. No 
 one for a moment supposed that Duleep was really the son 
 of Eunjeet, and if he had been, he would not have been the 
 legitimate heir, for there was an undoubted son of the last 
 Maharajah, Sher Sing. But because we conduct our affairs 
 in the name of a sovereign who reigns but does not govern, 
 we must have some kind of king to deal with everywhere, 
 whether it be in Asia, or in the wilds of Africa, when some 
 black , pretender signs away a great country for a barrel of 
 rum. In this case it was the fact that, though the very 
 existence of Duleep Sing had been unknown for years after 
 his birth, and the death of the Maharajah, in the confusion 
 which followed the murder of Sher Sing and his eldest 
 son, the intriguing and ambitious mother of Duleep had got 
 him recognised for a time. We gave him a title which he 
 never would have had if we had allowed the next turn of 
 the wheel to take place ; and a very troublesome embarrass- 
 ment he has been to us. However, by recognising the minor 
 we had an opportunity of trying the political dry-nursing 
 system. It did not prove successful in this case, at any rate. 
 During my stay at Lahore I had much opportunity of 
 hearing very various views of Indian politics from very
 
 70 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 various people of civil and military experience, and did my 
 best to inform myself on many questions ; but I was only on 
 a visit, and after a few days I returned to my own district. 
 Both at Bhyrowal and Lahore I had been treated with 
 much personal civility by the Governor-General, and, having 
 completed his business at Lahore, his return march was 
 through the length of my district. I went to meet him, 
 and escorted him throughout his march, which, owing to 
 some delays, lasted for a considerable time before he reached 
 the further limits of my " principality," as he called it. He 
 treated me with great kindness and soldierly frankness, and 
 made me free of his table, in fact, for the time, one of his 
 staff and family ; and I saw a great deal of him and those 
 about him Mr. Currie, a sort of prime minister ; his sons, 
 the present Lord Hardinge and General Hardinge ; an old 
 Colonel Benson, a great authority on military matters ; 
 Colonel Wood, and others. 
 
 I was not then high enough up to know much of the 
 official ability of Sir Henry Hardinge as distinguished from 
 his advisers. My impression is that he was a good common- 
 sense man, who took care not to go too far beyond his metier 
 in civil affairs, and in that way managed very well. In 
 regard to the most important matters of his administration, 
 the Sikh war, and the arrangements he made in the Pun- 
 jaub, if it could be at all imputed to him that the war was 
 unnecessarily hastened, it could only be said that he perhaps 
 too implicitly accepted the assertions of his official represent- 
 ative and adviser on the frontier. But if the war was to 
 be, it was in many respects fortunate that it occurred when 
 so competent a military man as Sir Henry Hardinge was 
 there to look after Sir Hugh Gough and the political 
 negotiations at the same time. Eegarding the subsequent 
 arrangements, it was perhaps inevitable that the" eventual 
 annexation should be preceded by an intermediate stage, 
 such as the Governor-General made with the advice of Henry 
 Lawrence, and it relieved us of some present difficulties. 
 Goolab Sing's recognition in his own country was probably
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 71 
 
 politic enough, but the cession of the valley of Cashmere 
 (with which he had previously nothing to do) was unfor- 
 tunate. 
 
 Personally I had every reason to like Sir Henry Hard- 
 inge, and I have a very pleasant recollection of the time 
 I spent in his camp, and of the kindness I received from 
 him at all times in India, and afterwards when I came home 
 on furlough. The marching through my principality in that 
 cold-weather season was very enjoyable, and Sir Henry, after 
 the successful issue of that anxious war and the peaceful 
 conclusion of the subsequent negotiations, was naturally in 
 high spirits. He was a good deal amused by our Indian 
 ways and habits ; even the animals seemed to amuse him, 
 as when a herd of antelopes, following one another like head- 
 strong sheep, as they sometimes do, almost leaped over the 
 heads of the marching column. He was fond of telling a 
 story against me, alluding to our use of Indian words, that 
 when suddenly asked what was meant by " pucka, " in my 
 difficulty of explaining I said, " Oh, anything that is not 
 ' cutcha.' " Pucka is a word which was always being used ; 
 it literally means " cooked," but is applied in various senses, 
 not only to a " pucka " house (a brick-built house as dis- 
 tinguished from a mud or " cutcha " house), but also to a 
 " pucka " fellow, or good fellow. A " pucka " (permanent) 
 appointment ; a " pucka " (metalled) road, and so on. Some 
 Indian words are very expressive. A favourite story of his, 
 of Indian official conservatism, which he asserted to be 
 literally true, was this : In some military re-arrangements a 
 sentry was found in an out-of-the-way part of the Governor- 
 General's park at Barrackpore, whose use no one could discover. 
 Enquiry was made, and at last the old record showed that 
 there had been a paling there which was fresh painted ; a 
 sentry was put to keep people off the paint. The paint 
 dried ; months and years rolled by, changes took place in the 
 staff, the paling rotted away and disappeared, but the sentry 
 had got upon the order book ; he was regularly relieved, and 
 kept steadily pacing up and down till he was discovered in 
 Lord Hardinge's time. On the other hand, we younger
 
 72 MEMOIRS Of* MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 Indians secretly laughed at the Governor-General's want 
 of adaptation to Indian ways. To the last he never learnt 
 to pronounce the word "Punjab" or Punjaub, and always pro- 
 nounced it very short, like "jab " in jabber. And though his 
 manners were soldierly and simple,he never would adopt a use- 
 ful Indian costume in travelling, but stuck to his British ways. 
 Notwithstanding his personal civility to me, I long carried 
 about an official grievance that I could not get confirmed 
 in my appointment, because there was always question of 
 economising by eventually abolishing my district, and I was 
 always kept acting. It was not till a good deal later that I 
 was gratified by being confirmed, with retrospective effect as 
 regards pay, etc. 
 
 When I was with the Governor-General we went over 
 all the battlefields of the previous season, and I naturally 
 heard all those battles fought over again. I need not say 
 anything about the military questions involved, and I cannot 
 say, because I do not know, what was the truth as regards 
 the alleged negotiations with some of the Sikh leaders, and 
 the treachery ,to their own side of which they have been 
 accused. I should not think that there was really anything 
 to detract from British honour and good faith ; probably it 
 only amounted to this, that the Sikh leaders were very dis- 
 united and inclined to work every man for his own hand. 
 
 But I here digress a little to say something of the 
 circumstances which led to the Sikh war, of which, having 
 been in charge of the districts which were the scene of the 
 disputes leading to war and of the great battles, I came to 
 know a good deal. Situated as we were, it was perhaps 
 inevitable that we should come into collision with the Sikh 
 army sooner or later. It is true that several accounts 
 agree that in the period immediately preceding the war, 
 when matters were becoming very serious and the army had 
 for the most part taken affairs into their own hands, they 
 maintained for a while wonderful order at Lahore, and 
 through their Punches exercised an almost Puritanical 
 discipline in the military republic. But that did not last
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 73 
 
 very long, and there had been such a succession of revolu- 
 tions that with the best of management on our part there 
 was always great danger, especially when we had taken 
 Scinde, and occupied ourselves about the navigation of the 
 Sutlej and Indus. The immediate collision was, however, 
 I think hastened by imprudence on the part of the British 
 Frontier Agent, Major Broadfoot. I knew of some things 
 done by him which it would be difficult to defend. But 
 he paid the penalty by his death in the actions which 
 followed. I am one of but very few survivors who know 
 the real facts, and I should not have thought it desirable to 
 rake them up if there had not been published the other 
 day a biography of Major Broadfoot which puts them, 
 I think, in a very misleading way ; therefore I wish to say 
 something of what I know. To my surprise Broadfoot's 
 biographer not only publishes in full those things which 
 I thought were known only to myself and one or two 
 others, and better kept dark, but a great deal more all, as 
 he seems to think, to the glorification of his hero. 
 
 No doubt Broadfoot was a man of much ability and 
 energy. He was a Madras officer who had served some 
 years in that army, had then been some years at home, was 
 employed in the East India Military College at Addiscombe, 
 and studied the art of war before returning to his duties at 
 Madras. He wore spectacles, and was, I think, rather a 
 military -professor sort of man ; during his subsequent 
 service he seems to have kept copious journals and 
 correspondence. When he was selected to command a 
 corps of Sappers and Miners in Shah Shoojah's service in 
 Afghanistan he proved to be an excellent officer, even if 
 somewhat given to find fault with his superiors, as we now 
 see from his papers. He was especially distinguished in 
 the defence of Jellalabad when that place was beleaguered by 
 the Afghans, and was a leading spirit in the brave resist- 
 ance which made the garrison illustrious. When, then, he 
 returned to India early in 1843, he was certainly a 
 distinguished soldier, though his biographer would have 
 done better not to have published so much to detract from
 
 74 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 many established reputations in order to claim an excess of 
 credit for his hero. However, Broadfoot was very rightly 
 promoted and decorated. 
 
 Just then Lord Ellenborough was turning out the civil 
 administrators of several Non-Eegulation Provinces, and 
 putting untried military men in their places. He particu- 
 larly delighted to honour Afghan heroes, and turning his 
 eyes on Broadfoot he appointed him to succeed an old civil 
 servant as Commissioner of the Province of Tenasserim, 
 being our then Burmese possession. As Broadfoot had then 
 not one day's civil experience, and was put not only into 
 civil employ, but per saltum at the head of a considerable 
 province, with many "civil officers under him, this was 
 a pretty strong measure. However, he lost no time in 
 justifying his appointment in Lord Ellenborough's eyes ; he 
 went beyond his master, and without delay vigorously 
 denounced all that had gone before him as bad and corrupt 
 in the extreme. That may have been just or unjust ; I 
 know nothing of the internal history of that country. In 
 the autumn of the following year, 1844, a vacancy having 
 occurred in the office of Agent on the North-West Frontier, 
 Broadfoot was appointed to that post. He must have been 
 very ignorant of the country and people when he joined at 
 Umballa, but he had no misgivings and at once proceeded 
 to act on his own views without much regard to those 
 of his immediate predecessors. He seems to have been 
 amiable to his friends in private life, but in public matters 
 his tendency was to be arrogant and overbearing. He had 
 had some differences with the Sikhs when he marched up 
 to Afghanistan, and he was not inclined to be conciliatory 
 to the Lahore Durbar. 
 
 The occasion of quarrel was the Lahore territory south 
 of the Sutlej. By the treaty of 1809, Eunjeet Sing kept 
 the territory he had already acquired there, but bound 
 himself not to make any further encroachments, and it was 
 stipulated that he would " never maintain in the territory 
 occupied by him on the left bank of the Sutlej more troops 
 than are necessary for the internal duties of that territory."
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 75 
 
 Having made the treaty, Eunjeet most faithfully observed it. 
 He was indeed anxious to oblige us and keep on good 
 terms with us, and yielded several disputed questions. As 
 matter of friendship and avoidance of mistrust, I believe he 
 used to inform our agent when he sent troops across for 
 his own internal purposes. But there is not a trace of any 
 obligation beyond that above stated. 
 
 Broadfoot, however, not only acted as if the Lahore 
 territories, Cis-Sutlej, were entirely under his control, but, 
 as I now learn for the first time from his biography, he 
 seems to have set up a formal claim to such a control, and 
 asserted that this Lahore territory was just as much under 
 his "jurisdiction," as he called it, as any of the small 
 Protected States. Nay more, that if we go beyond mere 
 " words to institutions and facts, the Sovereignty of the 
 Queen, the Company, and the Government of India in the 
 Maharajah's Cis-Sutlej territory will be found to be as 
 complete and undoubted (among natives capable of thinking 
 at all) as over the district of Hooghly." l His biographer 
 says that the Government accepted this view, but does not 
 give the text of that acceptance. I can only say that I 
 cannot find a word in the treaties or agreements of any kind 
 to support it, and in all my connection with the office never 
 saw anything to justify it. Broadfoot admitted that his 
 immediate predecessor in the agency, Colonel Eichmond, had 
 taken an opposite view. And it seems that the man who 
 of all others had the greatest experience and weight in 
 these matters, Sir George Clerk, when he heard what was 
 going on, sent to the Governor-General a memorandum 
 expressing strong views on the subject, which was forwarded 
 to Broadfoot. The latter, however, had no respect whatever 
 for Clerk's opinions. In his reply he spoke of strong language 
 used by Clerk, which he ascribed to the heat of controversy, 
 when men's personal interests had been jostled, and not to the 
 possibility of Clerk holding an opinion which he (Broadfoot) 
 could not but look on as preposterous, and he firmly main- 
 tained his own view. He even ventures very covertly to 
 
 1 Life of Broadfoot, p. 336.
 
 76 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 insinuate that Clerk had instigated and assisted the Durbar 
 in their reclamations. 1 He acted on and beyond the view 
 above expressed, and interfered more than we ever did in a 
 Protected State. He avowed that he had arranged to occupy 
 the Lahore territory, Cis-Sutlej, in case anything should 
 happen to Duleep Sing, who was then ill. And he forbade the 
 Durbar to send any troops over for any purpose whatever. 
 
 Good as the people of that country are, most of them 
 were about the last people in the world to pay revenue 
 when there was any doubt who was master and any chance 
 of escaping paying to any one. In the uncertainties of 
 those days, and the difficulty the Durbar had in enforcing 
 their authority south of the Sutlej, there were villages 
 which had not paid up for years, and I know that there were 
 a good many which during the Broadfoot regime had never 
 paid a farthing. There was a rather remote tract in the 
 " Bangar " or highland, called Kote Kapoorah, regarding the 
 possession of which there had been some dispute, but which 
 had once been finally settled to belong to Eunjeet. The 
 people were always rather troublesome, and in those days 
 they certainly set the Durbar at defiance to the extent at 
 least of not paying their revenue. In March or April, 1845, 
 the Durbar sent one Lall Sing Adalutee " Adalutee means 
 judge" to proceed to Kote Kapoorah, with an escort, nowhere 
 put higher than 200 irregulars, to try to assert their authority 
 in Kote Kapoorah. They had crossed the river and pro- 
 ceeded only a few miles to their first encampment at a 
 place called " Palwandee " in Lahore territory. Broadfoot 
 happened to be in camp not far off, and a British European 
 regiment was close by on the march to Ferozepore. He 
 roughly and very peremptorily ordered the Sikh party back 
 over the river. Lall Sing, not willing to risk a collision, 
 obeyed, returned to the river, and embarked his men. But 
 Broadfoot, not satisfied with this, followed them in person, 
 and finding the last boat containing the leaders on the 
 point of shoving off, he insisted on capturing them. At 
 least one shot was fired to bring them to, and most accounts 
 
 1 Life of Broadfoot, pp. 324, 325, 336.
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 77 
 
 say that a man was killed, but there seems to be a doubt 
 about that. At any rate the Sikh leaders were captured 
 and detained. The shot then fired has been described as 
 the first in the Sikh war. The affair gave rise to great 
 irritation. Broadfoot seems to have felt that he could 
 hardly justify the making prisoner of a Lahore judge on 
 Lahore soil ; he put it on the ground that in decamping 
 they had not paid the villagers for the supplies they had 
 had and the damage they had done. He made them pay 
 for that, and finally let them go. Even from his own point 
 of view, viz. regarding the Lahore territory south of the 
 river as a Protected State, such a proceeding was wholly 
 unjustifiable. In a petty matter of supplies we never 
 should have dreamed of interfering between a Protected 
 Chief and his subjects. 
 
 Still more irritation was caused by a dispute about a 
 place near the spot where the Sutlej issues from the hills, 
 called " Anandpore-Makkowal." It was a sort of sacred 
 place, held by the Sikh priests called Sodees. There had 
 been question who had the control over it, but it was 
 thought better that a Sikh sacred place should be under 
 the Sikh ruler, and it was yielded to Eunjeet. Neverthe- 
 less when some disturbances took place there in 1845, 
 Broadfoot insisted on interfering, and on account of the' 
 religious questions involved the affair caused much excite- 
 ment. The Durbar seem to have formulated a sort of bill of 
 grievances, which they presented to the British Government. 
 They complained of the garrison of Ferozepore, and 
 especially of the famous bridge of boats which had been at 
 that time sent up from Scinde with a military equipment, 
 and which they, not without reason, said could only 
 be designed for aggressive purposes. It certainly was 
 unnecessary for defence, and was paraded in an ostentatious 
 way. The boats were afterwards made over to me, and 
 proved a sort of white elephant they were much too large 
 and heavy for those waters. The Durbar were further very 
 bitter about the affairs of Palwandee and Anandpore- 
 Makkowal, and generally about Broadfoot's conduct. If he
 
 78 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 refused to allow them to relieve their guards in the Cis- 
 Sutlej territory they must deal with the Governor-General 
 direct. 
 
 It is recorded in the annals of history, or what is called 
 history, which will go down to posterity, that the Sikh 
 army invaded British territory in pursuance of a determina- 
 tion to attack us. And most people will be very much 
 surprised to hear that they did nothing of the kind. They 
 made no attack on our outlying cantonments, nor set foot in 
 our territory. What they did do was to cross the river 
 and entrench themselves in their own territory. Taken by 
 itself that would be a clear breach of the treaty. But 
 under all the circumstances Major J. D. Cunningham, the 
 historian of the Sikhs, seems to have much to bear him out 
 when he says that they honestly believed that they were 
 acting in defence of their territory. Broadfoot's doings in 
 regard to it came very near a political annexation ; and as 
 regards the revenue, if, owing to his bearing towards them, 
 the Sikhs failed to get it, they could hardly be expected to 
 be quite content, because we had not yet taken the money. 
 In irritation they crossed the river and defied us to turn 
 them out, and so war came. However, as I have said, 
 probably a collision must have occurred sooner or later, 
 and I have only been led into this statement by the 
 biography of Broadfoot. Biographers will over-exalt their 
 heroes. 
 
 When the Governor-General had passed beyond my 
 limits I set to in earnest to the work appointed for me. I 
 had nothing to do with the determination to annex part of 
 the Nabha and Kapoorthalla territories. I was only the 
 executive officer to carry out the measures determined on 
 by the Government. In consequence of the misconduct of 
 the Rajah of Nabha in connection with the war, he was 
 sentenced to lose a certain proportion of his territory, of a 
 certain value, and I had to select and value the territory to 
 be taken and add it to my district. It was rather a dis- 
 agreeable duty, for the Nabha people naturally did not at 
 all like it, and were not in the best of humours. However,
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 79 
 
 with some trouble I managed what was required, and took 
 possession of the new acquisition. My proceedings were 
 approved by the Government of India, and so the matter 
 ended. 
 
 The occupation of the Aloowalea territory was a much 
 larger affair. The Aloowalea chief, now known as Rajah of 
 Kapoorthalla, had a very difficult position in the war. I 
 have mentioned the family as having been one of the 
 principal among the Sikhs, and Futteh Sing Aloowalea as 
 having been conjoined with Runjeet in the first treaty with 
 us in 1806. Runjeet and he were great friends and ex- 
 changed turbans the native symbol of brotherhood. But 
 such affection on Runjeet's part was sometimes dangerous, as 
 when he insisted on exchanging turbans with the fugitive 
 Shah Shoojah, and as an incident took the Koh i Noor dia- 
 mond with the Shah's turban. The Aloowalea had taken a 
 large part in affairs south of the Sutlej, and when our 
 protectorate was extended over the Sikh country there, he 
 found himself with about an equal territory on each side of 
 the river. Afterwards there was some unpleasantness 
 between Lahore and Kapoorthalla, and to have two strings 
 to his bow the latter was probably not sorry to be con- 
 sidered a Protected Chief south of the river rather than a 
 Lahore feudatory. However, a man cannot serve two 
 masters, and when we quarrelled with the Sikhs, the then 
 Rajah of Kapoorthalla found himself in the very unpleasant 
 dilemma of having territory yielding five or six lacs of 
 income on one side of the river and six or seven lacs on the 
 other, and being called on by both powers to take their side. 
 I believe we conveyed to him an offer of some sort of 
 guarantee that if he would come over to us we would hold 
 him harmless ; but his home and family were on the other 
 side, he hesitated and vacillated, and I believe some of his 
 men willingly or unwillingly joined the Lahore army. We 
 admitted the difficulty of the case, and the Government took 
 time to consider it; but by the end of 1846 it was decided 
 that, as he was bound to Lahore beyond the Sutlej, and 
 had only done his duty by his suzerain there, he might
 
 8o MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 retain his territory on that side as a feudatory principality, 
 but that he had failed in his obligations to us, and therefore 
 all his territory south of the Sutlej must be confiscated. 
 It was mostly adjacent to my district of Wadnee, and I was 
 to occupy it and annex it. The Eajah accepted the decision 
 with dignity and good grace, and his people handed over 
 the territory to me without difficulty indeed they rendered 
 me every assistance that I could expect in regard to their 
 accounts and official arrangements, so my task was not 
 unpleasant and proved most interesting to me. I found 
 the territory good, and the people the best and pleasantest 
 I have ever had to deal with ; their villages were a model of 
 constitutional government. The capital of the territory was 
 Jagraon, the peculiar constitution of which I have already 
 mentioned. 
 
 What I undertook, after taking possession and making 
 the first arrangements, was a summary settlement ; but for 
 facility of administration, and being led on by interesting 
 questions as I went, I carried my proceedings somewhat 
 farther, so as to make some sort of record of the constitution 
 and conditions of each village. In carrying this out I lived 
 very much among the people and came to know them very 
 well indeed. The making a settlement of this kind is 
 a sort of battle with them. I had to insist on getting the 
 dues of the state, and they had to minimise their liabilities as 
 much as possible ; but I found them a good natured people. 
 I was able to make considerable reductions on the various 
 demands of a native government, and so it went off very 
 well and amicably. From the native accounts, etc., I could 
 form a good idea about what each tract ought to pay, and 
 then I got the head-men together to assist in dividing the 
 amount among the different villages. I used to ask on the 
 whole a little more than I meant to take, and when that 
 was divided among the villages I said I would let off a 
 little if they could agree among themselves which were the 
 hardest pressed ; often they would agree wonderfully well in 
 telling me where the shoe pinched. They had not been so much 
 governed and, as it were, landiordcd as the people of Ladwa.
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 81 
 
 Each village had been more accustomed to deal with 
 the Government as a whole, and the villages were stronger 
 and more independent than those of Ladwa, which more 
 approached to a Hindoostanee sort of country. For reparti- 
 tion among themselves they had well-known "plough" 
 shares ; there might be sixty-four or eighty (or whatever the 
 number might be) plough lands in a village, and a man 
 might own a plough land or half or three quarters of a 
 plough land. 
 
 Each village had a complete self-government. There 
 were also people generally known as representatives of 
 Pergunahs or larger tracts, who used to treat with the Govern- 
 ment on certain matters. On the whole, their system of 
 local government was really, I believe, exceedingly good. I 
 do not by any means say that they were free from the abuses 
 which afflict corporations all over the world. There was 
 often an opposition party who accused the village Punch of 
 various malversations, overcharges for public entertain- 
 ments, bribes, etc., and such like matters, just as if they had 
 been situated in the London of to-day; but at anyrate I 
 don't think these were worse than in civilised countries, 
 rather I believe that they were not nearly so bad. I could 
 not altogether refuse to listen to such complaints, but did 
 not do so too readily. I always hold that no local govern- 
 ment will succeed unless it is very much left to itself; we 
 must take the good and the bad together ; and I only 
 interfered as a sort of Local Government Board to enforce 
 reasonable audit, and to ensure a free election or selection 
 of the members of the Punch. I have always thought that 
 throughout India a very great deal of harm has been done 
 by the interference of our authorities, both executive and 
 judicial (especially judicial), with indigenous village corpora- 
 tions. Nothing can be perfect in this world, but a certain 
 latitude must be given to popular representatives, and the 
 fabric falls to pieces when every litigious person is allowed 
 to bring everything into question in every court. I think 
 there is a great deal too much of that in this country, and 
 there is still more of it in India, with the result that the 
 VOL. i G
 
 82 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 small self-supporting municipalities, which held their own in 
 the worst of native times, have been very much weakened 
 and degraded, if not dissolved. I look upon the discourage- 
 ment of the small indigenous municipalities as the great 
 blot and weakness in our rule, and think it is by no means 
 compensated by beginning at the other end with big 
 institutions on a larger scale, which most of the people do 
 not comprehend. Even our own municipalities are brand- 
 new European sort of things, not at all indigenous. My 
 wish has been to begin from the indigenous village, and 
 work upwards to greater things. Certainly my experience 
 of the village institutions on the Sutlej, where perhaps they 
 are at their best, made me appreciate them very much 
 indeed, and think that they were not only good for India, 
 but for some other countries as well. In fact I can 
 deliberately say that, far from imposing my ideas on these 
 people, it was from them that I learnt ideas of local self- 
 government which I retain to this day, and which I have 
 brought with me to my native country. I wish that I 
 could see under our Local Government Bills a lower stratum 
 of village institutions, the basis for the whole superstructure. 
 
 The native village may be said to have been composed of 
 three classes the freemen, the main and governing class, 
 the merchants and moneylenders, and the artisans and 
 inferior classes. The Khatrees, the mercantile class of the 
 Punjaub countries, are a very superior class ; and though 
 they are no doubt often usurious, the villages could not get 
 on without them. They are found far over the Indus in 
 Afghanistan and Central Asia, and one Afghan sometimes 
 accuses another of stealing his Khatree. The artisans and 
 inferior classes often hold land, and it was a moot point 
 whether they had any rights in the land. That gave rise 
 to bitter controversies a few years later, and I may say that 
 when the country came fresh from native hands and I 
 asked how these people were to be entered, the Zemindars 
 generally said, " Oh, put them down, they have paid as we 
 paid, and they can go on paying " ; so that, though perhaps
 
 THE SIKH COUNTRY 
 
 without a voice in the management, a sort of right of 
 occupancy at least was generally admitted in those days. 
 
 Apart from the representative Punches, there were 
 generally found in a large tract of country two or three 
 venerable and respected men, who had come to be the 
 fashion, as it were, as referees in cases of dispute, valuations, 
 etc., and who received fees or presents for their trouble, 
 reminding one very much of the class of professional arbitra- 
 tors sometimes found among us. I am bound to admit that 
 their complete honesty was sometimes in some degree im- 
 peached ; when men become too much the fashion, they 
 are apt to be spoiled. The women, especially the Jat women, 
 were generally pretty conspicuous in that part of the 
 country in fact in all positions, high and low, women are a 
 good deal to the front in Punjaub countries. They are capital 
 workers, sometimes not without education, and often insist 
 upon a voice in the family business. One or two of the 
 more pretentious Jat tribes have been accused of female 
 infanticide, but if there was anything of that kind, it was 
 only in certain limited families, for in truth a Jat girl was 
 a valuable possession, useful to her possessors, and readily 
 paid for when taken in marriage. I can't conceive why 
 any one should want to infanticide such women. My 
 trouble was quite the other way ; to decide adverse claims 
 to women. A special source of dispute was the obligation 
 of widows (under the law, as understood by the men at 
 least) to marry their deceased husbands' brothers. They 
 had a contrary way of asserting their independence by 
 refusing to do so. I am afraid the law that I administered 
 was rather judge-made law ; my doctrine was that if they 
 refuse they must show reasonable cause. The parties used 
 to come before me with much vociferation on the female 
 side, and I decided whether the excuse was reasonable. 
 But if the man seemed a decent man, and the woman could 
 give no better reason than to say " I don't like him," I said, 
 " Stuff and nonsense, I can't listen to that the law must 
 be respected " ; and I sometimes married them then and 
 there by throwing a sheet over them, after the native
 
 84 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 fashion for second marriages. So far as I could learn, those 
 marriages generally turned out very happily. 
 
 In my business with the people my habits were those 
 of extreme patriarchal familiarity. When I had, as I con- 
 stantly had, to settle their disputes or to arrange their dues, 
 I was sometimes almost mobbed and dragged about by main 
 force to see what they wanted to show me. They had 
 some irreverent Oriental customs which I confess I did not 
 dislike, there was a healthy frankness about them. The 
 Oriental expression for tyranny and misgovernment is 
 " darkness," " there is darkness over the land." When 
 people thought that their particular grievances had not been 
 sufficiently redressed, they sometimes appeared in the middle 
 of the day with flaming torches to indicate that there was 
 darkness, and loudly called for redress. Another fashion 
 of aggrieved parties was to appear in court with straws in 
 their mouths, to indicate that they were reduced to the 
 condition of mere cattle. I remember a man finding me 
 under a tree in my garden to make a very confidential 
 complaint of corruption against one of my subordinates. " The 
 villain," he said, " took 100 rupees from me to decide in my 
 favour, and now he has sent back my 100 rupees, for he has 
 taken 200 rupees from the other party to decide in his 
 favour, and if you want ocular proof, here it is." He threw 
 down a bag of rupees, and seemed to think that absolute 
 and conclusive evidence of his charge. 
 
 As the season advanced, I got possession of a house in 
 a convenient situation, and worked away at my settlement 
 throughout the hot weather and rains, excepting a short 
 visit to Simla. I .concluded the work, and wrote a report 
 of it, of which I was rather proud. The loss of that report 
 was my principal grief when I lost all my papers a few 
 years later, but I think I have brought most of the ideas I 
 then acquired into subsequent publications. Altogether the 
 time I spent in the Wadnee district, and especially in the 
 settlement of the Jagraon territory, is to me one of the most 
 satisfactory recollections of my life.
 
 n THE SIKH COUNTRY 85 
 
 A man I saw a good deal of in those days, and who 
 had a curious history, was Wazeer Khan, a Eesaldar in my 
 uncle John Christie's regiment of horse. He was a 
 Eanghar or Mahomedan Eajpoot of a village in my district, 
 a man simple in manner, with a strong provincial accent, 
 but a very fine soldier. The Eanghars have rather a bad 
 name, and certainly they are not such good cultivators as 
 the Jats, but some people say that it is really as much their 
 misfortune as their fault, because their customs will not 
 permit their women to work in the fields. Wazeer Khan, 
 though rustic in his address, must have been a man of much 
 influence in his village and tribe, for when Christie was 
 raising his regiment for Shah Shoojah, Wazeer brought a 
 very large number of men at his back, and, like the son of 
 a Highland gentleman in the last century, was made 
 Eesaldar, or Captain of a troop at once. He was a very 
 favourite officer of Christie's. On one occasion in Afghan- 
 istan, when they had got the worst of it and were pursued 
 by the Afghans, Christie's horse fell into a water-course and 
 broke its neck. Wazeer Khan, who was close to him, 
 insisted that he should take his horse and escape. He said, 
 " I am a Mussulman, I will manage with them somehow, 
 but you have not a chance ; get up and be off," and he did. 
 Wazeer Khan found his way into camp the next day to 
 Christie's great delight, and was honoured and decorated by 
 the Government. When he came home on leave and found 
 his commander's relative the great man of his district he was 
 very much pleased ; he used often to visit me and talk over 
 many things ; but he always behaved like a gentleman, and 
 never tried to utilise the position to influence me, or meddle 
 in local matters, as most natives would under the circum- 
 stances. I always liked seeing him. Once only I remember 
 a shade of sadness when he was telling me how he entered 
 the service as a Eesaldar. He said, "That is what I have 
 been all along and always shall be ; there is no promotion 
 from that for a black man." I did then realise how hard 
 that position is for a native under our system. If he had 
 been in the Eussian service he would have been a Colonel
 
 86 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 over and over again, but he seemed quite hearty and good- 
 natured about it. He served on another ten years, the 
 senior native officer of the regiment, till the Mutiny came. 
 Other regiments were false, but Wazeer Khan's remained 
 faithful, and was part of the force besieging Delhi. But 
 then an unfortunate incident occurred ; the regiment, when 
 taken into the British service, was numbered the 9th ; there 
 was another regiment, the 8th, which had joined the 
 mutineers, and both wore scarlet uniforms very like one 
 another. One day late in the siege, the 8th made a very 
 daring and successful raid into our camp, and did a great 
 deal of mischief before they could be checked. It was a 
 mismanaged affair, and there was a great deal of recrimina- 
 tion about it. The officers who were blamed declared that 
 they were misled by the resemblance of the 8th to the 9th 
 regiment, and I believe quite unjustly accused the 9th 
 of having been in correspondence with the 8th and facilitated 
 their exploit. We were then very sore about the unexpected 
 defection of some of the Mahomedan irregular cavalry 
 regiments ; a cry was got up against the 9th, and the 
 General, in deference I believe to that cry rather than acting 
 on his own judgment, moved the 9th out to a more isolated 
 position on the edge of the camp a distrust which was 
 much resented by the officers of the 9th. Wazeer Khan 
 felt it very much, being, as he thought, such a specially 
 honoured servant of the Government. Eemonstrances failed 
 to obtain redress, and one day, while the European officers 
 were at mess, Wazeer Khan took command of the regiment 
 and marched over to the enemy. The end was then near ; 
 he fell fighting against us, and never came home again. 
 
 At Simla I saw Mr. Thomason again ; had the benefit 
 of his counsel about my settlement work. I found he had 
 entirely forgiven what had passed when I first came to the 
 Sikh country. I also saw then and afterwards a good deal 
 of another notable man whose pursuits and knowledge 
 interested and assisted me much, H. M. Elliot, who had 
 succeeded Sir F. Currie as Chief - Secretary with the 
 Governor -General the Sir Henry Elliot well-known in
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 87 
 
 those and subsequent years, not only as a high official, but 
 also as the accomplished author and scholar, the best authority 
 upon matters of Indian history, and the customs, manners, 
 and philology of modern India. It was, and long continued 
 to be, a great pleasure to me to sit at his feet. But while 
 I learnt much from him, and found his personal converse 
 most agreeable, I also found that he had strong views on 
 the necessity of economy, and of making the Sikh country 
 pay. To that end he wished to reduce the number of 
 districts ; and in fact, before the end of the year, that which 
 I had apprehended did happen ; when I had completed my 
 work, made everything square, and got the territory into 
 order, my district was abolished ; the territory was divided 
 between Loodiana and Ferozepore, hitherto not very large ; 
 and I had again to be provided for. A vacancy had occurred 
 in Khytul and Ladwa, and I was sent (back) there again. 
 
 I did not like this very much, as I would rather have 
 been nearer the frontier ; but I knew the district, and, after 
 all, was glad to be settled somewhere. As long as the cold 
 season and camp life lasted, I was happy enough. The first 
 thing I did was to lay the foundation of a house at Ladwa, 
 of which I was myself the architect, and by the time the 
 hot weather was well upon me I was able to occupy it. 
 Still the district was by this time a comparatively settled 
 district ; my work was the regular district work, and, after 
 the excitement of new annexations and new settlements, I 
 found it rather dull in the absence of European society. I 
 have already said so much of the district that I need not go 
 over that again. When the camp time was over I occupied 
 my leisure a good deal with gardening ; a taste which 
 I had brought from Scotland, and which I now had an 
 opportunity of indulging in a country where things grow 
 very much quicker. Ladwa (very unlike Khytul) is within 
 the green sub -Himalayan zone; fruit-trees and vegetables 
 grew well there ; and the Rajah, with all his faults, had one 
 redeeming virtue in my eyes, he had planted some most 
 excellent mangoe-trees. I have always maintained that a
 
 88 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 really good mangoe is far and away the best fruit in the 
 world, and for a good many years I made myself a sort of 
 apostle of mangoes, and grafted them and planted them 
 wherever I went. There is a good deal of difference of 
 opinion about them, but I attribute that to the variety of 
 mangoes and the eating of bad ones. I do not think it is 
 possible for any one with a well-balanced mind, and a palate 
 not absolutely depraved, not to appreciate a mangoe of the 
 true kind. There are everywhere thousands and thousands 
 of ungrafted mangoe trees which bear detestable fruit ; it is 
 only in certain places and with very great care that the 
 best grafted mangoes grow. No doubt they were invented 
 by the Portuguese in Western India, and they are still 
 called Bombay mangoes. I may have been unlucky, but I 
 never tasted one from Bombay that I thought at all equal 
 to those that grew at Seharunpore, Ladwa, Lucknow, and 
 even at some places in Bengal. I had in my compound at 
 Moradabad the first Bombay mangoe trees that were brought 
 into Upper India, and my only regret, when my ambition 
 was gratified by promotion in the Sikh country, was that I 
 had to leave the mangoes, which I had watched with affection, 
 before they were ripe. I was happy there indeed when 
 I found them growing even better at Ladwa, though I felt, 
 or ought to have felt, a little base to enjoy the poor Rajah's 
 mangoes as I did, while he was a sad fugitive. However, I 
 occupied myself, grafting new trees, which I carried or sent 
 to various stations. The finest mangoe tree I ever knew 
 was one I found at Lucknow ; not like a Bombay mangoe, 
 but a larger, lighter-coloured fruit of an exquisitely delicate 
 flavour. I hastened to multiply that fruit, but the grafts 
 all failed, and then I discovered that the tree itself was in 
 failing health ; it was too good to live, and that best of all 
 fruits passed out of the world. 
 
 Ladwa used sometimes to get almost too much water. 
 The channel of the old Saraswati was a few miles on one side, 
 and the western Jumna canal a few miles on the other. The 
 latter we looked upon as a great infliction in that district ; in 
 the upper part of its course it ran in a semi-natural channel,
 
 THE SIKH COUNTRY 
 
 and gave no irrigation, but was the scource of great unhealthi- 
 ness, causing the abandonment of the once notable military 
 station of Karnal. In my time a Medical Commission was 
 sent to examine the question ; they poked the spleens of all 
 the population for some miles back from the canal, and 
 showed by diagrams that the size of the spleens was exactly 
 in the inverse ratio to distance from the canal ; but they 
 did not find a remedy. Every one has always said that the 
 canal should be wholly realigned, but generations passed, and 
 it never was done. I believe something more or less has 
 been done now, but whether it is effective I do not know. 
 
 A geographical theory I formed, which seems to me 
 clear almost to demonstration (though I have never heard 
 that it has been generally accepted), namely, that the famous 
 old river, the Saraswati, is no other than the stream which 
 we now call the Jumna, and that it formerly flowed west to 
 the Indus instead of as now east to the Ganges. It is 
 certain that there was in ancient days a great river, the 
 Saraswati, where now there is a comparatively petty 
 stream. That great Saraswati is a historical fact, and 
 the scene of most of the ancient Hindoo literature. Now, 
 between the Sutlej and the Jumna the outermost range of 
 the Himalayas is perfectly unbroken there is no pass over 
 it less than some 5000 feet high, and it is impossible that 
 any large river could have come out there. On the other 
 hand, the Jumna is some 200 feet higher than the Sutlej ; 
 only the slightly raised river bank separates the waters of 
 the Jumna from the head waters of the modern Saraswati 
 and other streams flowing westward. Very little effort is 
 necessary at the present moment to deflect the Jumna 
 water into the western channels. Much of the spill-water 
 already goes there, and so does the western Jumna canal, only 
 deflected by slight temporary embankments in the low season. 
 It is the most natural and easy thing in the world to suppose 
 the Jumna to have once flowed westward. There once was 
 a great river flowing westward ; the present stream of the 
 Jumna is the only river which could have gone there there- 
 fore that river was in fact the stream of the Jumna. Q. E. D.
 
 90 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 However, notwithstanding my regular work and the pro- 
 pagation of mangoes, and these speculations about the 
 Jumna and other matters, I did begin to get tired of 
 working so long in a solitary way out of the world. I 
 began to think that, although my independence and the 
 want of interference on the part of my superior had had its 
 advantages, there were disadvantages also, inasmuch as the 
 slowness of his methods prevented some of the reports 
 and other matters on which I prided myself from getting 
 any further, and coming under the notice of the Government, 
 and those whose good opinion I would have valued. I find 
 in my letters to my family at home in those days, a good 
 deal of grumbling, and, I must confess it, a good deal of self- 
 laudation, born of solitude. I asserted in the confidence of 
 my private letters that I knew far more about revenue and 
 some other matters than any officer in the Cis-Sutlej states, 
 and that at present I had hardly sufficient scope for origin- 
 ality and reputation. I am sure that I stuck to my work 
 none the less ; but I did relieve myself a good deal in letter- 
 writing. I find some radical speculations as to home politics 
 and in favour of changes then not ripe, but which have 
 since been reached. Before long, however, Indian politics 
 became much more exciting, and my letters were filled with 
 that subject. In that year, 1848, the revolt of the Punjaub 
 took place, leading to the operations known as the second 
 Sikh war. I was not surprised at what had occurred. I 
 had always prophesied that the arrangement of 1848 would 
 not succeed. The native government leaders and army 
 were maintained, but they were wholly overridden by a set 
 of young politicals who magnified their exploits in their 
 communications to the press, but irritated and alienated the 
 Sikhs. That second war was bound to come, and the result 
 was a much more satisfactory settlement. Meantime, how- 
 ever, it was a serious and somewhat protracted war. Placed 
 in the rear as I was, my part in it was only the somewhat 
 inglorious but not unimportant part of finding supplies and 
 carriage for the advancing troops. John Lawrence first rose 
 to distinction by doing that for the troops going to the
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 91 
 
 Afghan war, when he was magistrate of Delhi. The system 
 of supplying carriage was thoroughly unsatisfactory. We 
 were then in a transition state, between the days of Sir 
 Arthur Wellesley, when the professional Brinjaras l used to 
 accompany and supply armies, and a civilised commissariat. 
 A commissariat department there was, but it always seemed 
 to me that in time of trouble their principal function was 
 to requisition the civil authorities, and take credit for what 
 they got from them. On the other hand, the civil autho- 
 rities had no funds and no regular system for maintaining 
 carriage ; they were obliged to hire it or seize it as best they 
 could when the necessity arose, in a hand-to-mouth kind of 
 way. My district had considerable resources in the way of 
 carriage, and I did all I could. There was not much diffi- 
 culty about such camels as we could furnish ; the camel-men 
 were accustomed to be hired, and went willingly enough as 
 far as the Punjaub ; but carts were required on a larger 
 scale, and it was necessary to seize them. They were well 
 enough paid when they got into work, but some were fit and 
 some were not fit for that sort of thing. The military 
 officers objected to pay full rates for those that were inferior, 
 and the cart -men struggled against their fate by passive 
 resistance, and causing their wheels to come off. A good 
 cart had very great difficulty in ever getting away when 
 once seized. I remember a man who assured me with much 
 circumstantiality, and convinced me of the truth of his story, 
 that having been sent off on one job, he was seized again 
 and again, and never saw his wife and children for fully 
 three years. Once we begin to seize we always must seize. 
 I remember when I was up at Simla, in my private capacity, 
 much disliking the way in which the hill-men are pressed, I 
 made a voluntary bargain with some men. All was arranged ; 
 the bundles divided and counted out to their satisfaction ; 
 the hour for starting the next morning fixed, when their 
 leader handed a paper to me with a list of the names, and 
 said, " Of course you will get the order sent to the police to 
 
 1 Brinjaras are owners of pack-bullocks, which used to do much of the 
 carrying trade of Upper and Central India.
 
 92 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 seize us " ; they thought it wholly irregular to go without 
 being seized ! 
 
 Presently we had the materials for a little excitement. 
 The resident at Lahore sent down to say that they had the 
 most authentic information that an outbreak was to take 
 place at Khytul, and that plans were laid for massacring us 
 all. The information obtained by the Lahore politicals, 
 though very positive, was much wanting in definite particu- 
 lars, which could have enabled us to act, and I was inclined 
 to disbelieve it altogether. I knew that the Khytul force 
 which had resisted us five years before had totally dis- 
 appeared the Eanee was living at a sacred place on the 
 Saraswati, with very unwarlike surroundings, and in quite 
 friendly communication with me. The villages had all 
 made their own separate terms ; a good many of them 
 might readily enough have rebelled to get off payment of 
 revenue, or perhaps in some cases about individual grievances, 
 cattle cases and the like, if things had been going badly 
 with us. But any combined movement on their part in 
 favour of the Sikh dynasty I believed to be quite out of the 
 question. The fears of the Government had, it seemed, been 
 communicated to the Commander-in-Chief ; and some troops 
 had in consequence been detained at Umballa, so I was 
 obliged to treat the affair with some respect, but nothing 
 whatever came of it. Then a little later the Rajah of 
 Ladwa, who had been captured and confined in the fort at 
 Allahabad, managed once more to make his escape, and we 
 were put upon the qui vive to resist him if he made 
 any attempt upon Ladwa, or to try to recapture him if we 
 got a chance. A detachment of troops was sent out to 
 assist us, but he gave us a wide berth, found his way to the 
 Punjaub, and was never caught again. 
 
 Though my life was generally a pretty solitary one, 
 these episodes brought me into contact with a good many 
 people ; I pretty often rode in to Umballa, and visited some 
 other places. Lord Dalhousie had now succeeded Lord 
 Hardinge, and in consequence of the new Sikh war he came 
 up country. The Cis-Sutlej was then very metropolitan ;
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 93 
 
 whenever anything was going on we always had the 
 Governor-General and the great men among us. I paid my 
 respects to Lord Dalhousie, but of course he then only knew 
 me as a young man in charge of a district somewhere in the 
 jungles. As such he treated me civilly ; made out who I 
 was, and reminded me of that which had not occurred to 
 me, that he was the Lord Ramsay who had made his first 
 political essay by unsuccessfully opposing Sir John Camp- 
 bell at Edinburgh when I was a boy. However, I had to 
 go back to my district and occupy myself in administering 
 justice, collecting revenue, and seizing bullock-carts. I did 
 have the feeling that my energies were exercised somewhat 
 in the dark, and that I had not the opportunities of name 
 and fame which had come to others. I made up my mind 
 that there was nothing for it but to do my duty in virtuous 
 obscurity. The Sikh war went on, and after a long struggle 
 things began to turn in our favour in the early part of 1849. 
 Then it was that I suddenly emerged into a sort of fame in 
 a way that I least of all expected, and which surprised no 
 one more than myself. I had never been taught English ; 
 had had no practice beyond official letter-writing, and did 
 not think that I had any particular gift that way. Nor 
 have I ever had, at any time of my life, what is called a 
 " connection with the press." I have very severe views as to 
 the obligation of a public servant to devote himself wholly 
 to the Government service. Still I had solitary evenings 
 upon my hands, and after having written some pretty long- 
 winded letters to my family at home, I did at last a little 
 avail myself of that safety-valve of the unappreciated, a letter 
 to the newspapers. One or two letters that I wrote upon an 
 Indian subject, of interest long gone by, were pretty success- 
 ful ; and then I was encouraged to attempt a series of letters 
 on the great events of the day, in connection with which I 
 fancied that I had acquired a good deal of knowledge. As 
 I was not in a position openly to advise the Governor- 
 General, I took upon myself to do so anonymously in 
 letters addressed to him in the Mofussilite, a then popular 
 paper, and signed " Economist." I affected the character of
 
 94 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 a man of much age and mature experience ; and dealing with 
 the political situation, and especially with the character of 
 the people of the country, I strongly urged upon him the 
 advantage of a thorough policy ; that is, of annexing the 
 Punjaub, and completing our dominion in India up to its 
 present boundaries, while at the same time I insisted that 
 we should not go beyond those boundaries, and should not 
 cross the Indus. Political disquisitions were mixed up 
 with a very free handling of prominent men and their 
 recent actings ; when history is being acted, personal com- 
 ments of that kind are apt to tell It really was the case, 
 as I told my father at the time, that the letters were hastily 
 and roughly written, in mere after-dinner hours, but they 
 involved subjects on which I had thought a good deal, and 
 coming just at the right moment, when men's minds were 
 greatly occupied with the question what was to be done, they 
 had an extraordinary success. That success was greatly 
 enhanced by the mystery as to the authorship. To my 
 great delight I heard wherever I went endless speculations 
 on the subject. They were attributed to all sorts of distin- 
 guished men ; some said that this or that great man was 
 pressing his views upon the Governor-General in this form 
 some said that the Government had resolved on annexa- 
 tion, and were putting out these letters as a feeler and 
 some, that they hoped the Governor-General would not be 
 misled by that idiot " Economist." When it was allowed to 
 come out that the guesses were all wrong, and that the 
 letters were the work of a young man whom no one had 
 ever thought of or heard of, there was a fresh access of 
 curiosity in another form ; and when at the right moment, 
 by a judicious breach of confidence, the actual authorship 
 came out, I found myself, as I have said, in a sense famous, 
 and received endless compliments from the Governor- 
 General downwards. My father had a very serious illness 
 that year, and a very great element of my satisfaction was 
 the pleasure which these successful letters gave to him in his 
 convalescence. The Punjaub was annexed, and the system 
 of administration was very much that which I had advo-
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 95 
 
 cated. I had dealt very freely with Henry Lawrence, to 
 whose policy of a Protectorate I was opposed, and that 
 placed me in some difficulty as regards the new administra- 
 tion of the Punjaub, of which he was still the head, but I 
 had the warm countenance and support of Sir Henry Elliot, 
 and Lord Dalhousie treated me with marked kindness and 
 civility, notwithstanding the freedom of my remarks. 
 Alluding to my having compared him to a boy hesitating to 
 rob an orchard, he said I would learn that there was a time 
 for all things, even for the robbing of orchards. Talking 
 over the question of the Punjaub, he quite admitted that 
 there was very much to be said for niy view of stopping at 
 the Indus ; indeed I think he said that he himself would 
 decidedly have preferred that, if the conduct of the Afghan 
 Pailer had permitted but inasmuch as before the Sikh war 
 was concluded, the Afghans had come down and tried to 
 help themselves, he considered that he was quite prevented 
 from considering any such course. I cannot help thinking 
 that, looking to the retreat we have made both in Afghan- 
 istan and other parts of the world without any very fatal 
 results, this was hardly a sufficient reason for taking the 
 Trans-Indus territory, which we had never held as our own ; 
 and that Lord Dalhousie's reasoning partook of that some- 
 what excessive pride which was perhaps to some extent a 
 blemish on his great public character. 
 
 Since that time I have lived and worked for upwards 
 of forty years, but I think there are still survivors of 
 ancient days who know me best by those letters of 
 " Economist." 
 
 Though Henry Lawrence, with whose system I dis- 
 agreed, while I admired the man, was for a time at the 
 head of the new administration, he was soon removed to 
 other duties. And while I had not served under John 
 Lawrence, nor been immediately his disciple, I did alto- 
 gether adhere to his system, and admired his administration. 
 The main gist of my recommendations for the future 
 management of the Punjaub was to preserve as much as 
 possible good indigenous institutions ; to supplement and
 
 96 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 fortify them, but not to sweep them away in too great a 
 hurry. As regards British officers, I said : " You must 
 avoid, first, the violent anti-regulation man, who will be guided 
 by no rules of business or system or orders whatever, but 
 does, or omits to do, everything, simply because it is for- 
 bidden or enjoined by rule. Such characters are not 
 uncommon in some provinces. On the other hand, you 
 must equally avoid violent regulation men, who, without 
 the least regard to the circumstances of the country, turn 
 everything upside down, and will have all things imme- 
 diately cut according to the pattern provided for a very 
 different state of things. They destroy all that has pre- 
 viously existed, and very generally fail in substituting 
 anything manageable instead. I have always insisted on 
 that which was a cardinal maxim of John Lawrence's 
 policy, namely : ' Do a thing regularly and legally, if you can 
 do it as well and vigorously in that way as irregularly and 
 illegally.' " Some people cannot understand that view, and 
 are irregular only for the sake of irregularity. As it turned 
 out, I believe that the Punjaub was administered in a model 
 way, far better than any other Indian province. 
 
 Much of the matter of " Economist " is now out of date. 
 Much was personal, and need not now be repeated, and a 
 good deal I have already expressed in what I have now 
 written ; but I venture to think that so much of what I 
 prophesied has come true in practice, that I think I must 
 here reproduce some passages of a general character. Per- 
 haps they may be considered to show that I was in the 
 main pretty right. My more recent opposition to excessive 
 annexations and extensions of the British Empire may 
 possibly be thought by some inconsistent with my ardent 
 advocacy of annexation in bygone days. But my side of 
 the case is, that from the very first I avowed the desire 
 to reach the natural limits of India, and to stop there. 
 Forty or more years ago I was as much opposed to going 
 beyond the Indus into Afghan districts (and, I may add, 
 to going beyond the Bay of Bengal to Burmah) as I have 
 been to occupying Egypt and some other parts of Africa.
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 97 
 
 I still very much believe that the view I always held 
 about the Indus boundary was right, and that it would 
 have been very much better in many ways if we had 
 abstained from annexing the Trans-Indus districts inhabited 
 by an Afghan population. Not only are they unprofitable 
 in themselves, but they put the ruler of Cabul in an alto- 
 gether false position deprived as he is of the really 
 Afghan valleys of Eastern Afghanistan, while he holds 
 a great deal of non-Afghan territory on the west entirely 
 exposed to the Kussian power, and practically at their 
 mercy. He is not in real contact with us, owes no territory 
 to us, and holds nothing of which we can easily deprive 
 him in case of need. 
 
 VOL. I
 
 EXTRACTS FROM INDIAN NEWSPAPERS DURING 
 THE FIRST HALF OF 1849 
 
 THE FRIEND OF INDIA 
 The Punjaub Annexation. 
 
 The last number of the Edinburgh Review has an article on 
 the Punjaub, written with great ability, and exhibiting, through- 
 out, a complete knowledge of the subject. After a rapid but 
 very lucid description of the rise and progress of the Sikh 
 monarchy under Runjeet Sing, and the progress of anarchy 
 under his successors, the reviewer touches briefly on the cam- 
 paign of the Sutlej, in 1845 and 1846, and then proceeds to 
 describe the provisional arrangements made by Lord Hardinge, 
 which were based on the policy of not annexing the Punjaub 
 to our own territories, but of improving and consolidating a 
 native cabinet under our own auspices, and then resigning the 
 country into the hands of a Sikh Government. The article con- 
 cludes with the following observations : 
 
 " Perhaps a little respite may still be obtained by some ingenious 
 modification of the conditions of our last protectorship, yet we can 
 hardly persuade ourselves that the ultimate result will be anything 
 but the advancement of the British frontier, to that river which forms 
 the historical boundary of India. That this consummation has been 
 forced upon us, he must be a bold historian who would deny. For 
 nearly half a century we acknowledged in Runjeet Sing an ally 
 and neighbour after our own hearts, one who was master of his own 
 position and who could respect ours. For years again we watched 
 the gathering tempest with only too great forbearance ; and, in our 
 endeavours to avoid offence, permitted it to burst abruptly on our 
 heads. Yet not for all this did we exact a penalty ; but instantly 
 relinquished our rights of conquest ; and lent the best aids of both our 
 arms and our counsels to that very state which had been gratuitously 
 arrayed for our destruction. Our experiment may have failed ; but
 
 CHAP, ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 99 
 
 the failure can entail upon us no imputation save that of too great 
 abstinence, too great generosity, and too charitable a conception of the 
 disposition of our foe." 
 
 As far, therefore, as this review can be considered as ex- 
 pressing the intentions of the present Ministry, we may regard 
 the annexation of the Punjaub as a measure which they have 
 made up their minds to carry out. 
 
 The policy and the necessity of annexation have also been 
 advocated by one of the most able and powerful writers among 
 us, in the columns of the Mofussilite. He has hitherto veiled 
 his talents under the anonymous signature of " Economist," and 
 this circumstance has deprived him of that personal applause 
 which his communications have so well merited, but it has also 
 been attended with this advantage, that it has enabled the 
 public of India to examine his assertions and his deductions 
 upon the ground of their own intrinsic merits, without any of 
 that bias, favourable or unfavourable, which his identification 
 might have created. We only echo the general voice of the 
 community when we say, that these papers are among the ablest 
 which have appeared on the subject, and that his arguments for 
 annexation appear irrefragable. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS OF "ECONOMIST," WRIT- 
 TEN JANUARY, FEBRUARY, AND MARCH, 1849, 
 AND PUBLISHED IN THE NORTH INDIAN JOUR- 
 NAL, CALLED "THE MOFUSSILITE" 1 
 
 A LITTLE ADVICE TO THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA RE- 
 COMMENDED BY AN OFFICER OF PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 What is to be done with the Punjaub ? 
 
 It is now for you, my Lord, to fix the permanent limits of 
 our Indian empire. The Pillars of Hercules must now be 
 established. We approach (at least I hope we do) the termi- 
 nation of a struggle with the last great military power in 
 India. To advance further into Asia were a folly not likely 
 to be attempted after past experience. The great empire of 
 Hindoostan differing in its parts, yet retaining a wonder- 
 ful similitude throughout in the character, the habits, and the 
 
 1 See pp. 93-96 for an account of the publication of these letters.
 
 ioo MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 institutions of its people, is now our own. A lasting line of 
 demarcation must be drawn ; permanent landmarks must be 
 set up ; and then, having disposed our external defences, we may 
 turn to internal management. You must treat the Punjaub in a 
 way that will be affected by no temporary changes. Hold it for 
 good, or give it up for ever. 
 
 India may be said to have a double boundary. The great 
 desert running up from the Ocean to within 100 miles of the 
 Himalayas separates Hindoostan and the Dekkan from the plain 
 of the Indus. The line of defence between these countries may 
 thus be reduced to the Isthmus between the desert and the 
 Hills what now forms the Cis-Sutlej territory. Here exists 
 no natural barrier (for I hardly consider the Sutlej or the Beas 
 to be such), nor has art supplied the want by a chain of forts. 
 But the tract is narrow enough to be defended by an army in 
 the field. Hindoostan can only be entered by a superior force. 
 The protecting army cannot be eluded. So long as we maintain 
 in the Cis-Sutlej territory an army competent to meet all comers, 
 so long is Hindoostan protected. 
 
 On the other hand, beyond the Indus we have a second 
 boundary in the great mountain chain with which nature has 
 hedged in India, as with a ring fence. The boundary line is here 
 much extended ; from the sea to Cashmere the distance is great. 
 But then we have the defence of a natural mountain barrier. 
 The mountainous country is too poor to maintain a force 
 dangerous to us in the field. From a military invasion of 
 Afghans or Belochees we have nothing to fear; and to a 
 foreign army India is only accessible by one or two difficult 
 passes, which if we defend with but a moderate force, no power 
 can obtain entrance. You must now choose one of these two 
 lines of military defence. Either occupy the Punjaub withdraw 
 from the cantonments east of the Beas and Sutlej all troops 
 but those required for internal administration post along the 
 line of the Indus the force destined for the general defence of 
 the empire, and be prepared on the occurrence of alarm to 
 blockade the Khyber and the Bolan. Or if you are not pre- 
 pared for this, withdraw from the Punjaub and Scinde draw 
 your military cordon across the Cis-Sutlej territory build forts 
 and tell off an army to be permanently stationed on the 
 Frontier, and at any time prepared to re-enact the scenes of 
 '45-'46 to repel the occupants of the Punjaub whenever they 
 may choose to measure their strength with us but never again 
 to cross the Sutlej. 
 
 The occupation of a country depends on three considerations.
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 101 
 
 1. The difficulty of getting it. 2. The difficulty of keeping it. 
 3. The advantages derived from its possession. The difficulty 
 of getting the Punjaub it is unnecessary for me to enter into. 
 The force of circumstances has already decided that point. 
 
 The difficulty of keeping the country is a more fitting subject 
 of argument. I believe that this difficulty has been very much 
 exaggerated. Nothing is more firmly established by experience 
 than the facility with which territory is retained when made 
 our own the indisposition of the people to domestic, rebellion. 
 This fact could not be better exemplified than in the present 
 year. The war has been protracted there has been, if I may 
 so speak, every encouragement to rebellion. Yet even in the 
 proper Sikh country has there been no popular war. The 
 villages have not risen the brothers and relatives of Shere 
 Sing's soldiers have taken no part in the fight. We are opposed 
 but by the regular army which we left in existence. If there 
 has been a little desultory warfare it was but the last effort of 
 Sirdars and Rajahs whom we had not quite stripped of their 
 resources. 
 
 Whatever it may be geographically, the Punjaub is un- 
 doubtedly ethnically a part of Hindoostan. Its people, though 
 more hardy, are in all their moral and political characteristics 
 the same. They are equally prepared to acquiesce in a foreign 
 rule equally accustomed to look on such as their normal state. 
 The great mass of the population between the Jumna and the 
 Ravee, and that from which the Sikh army is chiefly supplied, 
 is "Jat," a tribe of whom it may be truly said that they 
 habitually as much excel in the arts of peace as they occa- 
 sionally do in those of war. They make good soldiers but 
 equally good subjects. 
 
 With the exception of the castes of the Bunniah genus and 
 small loose population of the towns, and the artificers and 
 people of servile race in the villages, the remainder of the 
 population is Mussulman not turbulent Pathans but agricultur- 
 alists of converted Hindoo castes, good cultivators and quiet 
 subjects, with all the industry of Hindoos Avithout their re- 
 ligious bigotry, and at the same time without the pride of the 
 Mussulman ; in fact a people who have politically ceased to be 
 Hindoos without politically becoming Mussulmans just the sort 
 of subjects we want. 
 
 I do not refer to the Un-Indian tribes about Peshawar and 
 the extreme frontier. Of them I shall more particularly 
 speak when I come to the detail of the Western boundary, and 
 point out the coincident ethnical and geographical line which
 
 102 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 there exists. In the meantime I assert, that the population of 
 the plains on this side the Indus is one eminently fitted to 
 make good subjects, that it is either " Jat " or agricultural 
 Mussulman, and that both are all that we could desire. I 
 have not mentioned the Sikhs, because they must be separately 
 touched on. I believe that I shall be able to refer the greater 
 portion of them to the general Jat population, and the re- 
 mainder may easily, and at no great cost, be rendered quiet 
 and contented like the petty Sikh Pattidars in the protected 
 territory. But here it will be necessary to digress a little to 
 show who the Sikhs of the present day are : a subject on which 
 much misapprehension exists. 
 
 ECONOMIST'S ADVICE TO THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL 
 A Digression showing who the Sikhs are. 
 
 It has been customary to suppose the Sikhs a separate tribe 
 apart from the population of the country, and separated there- 
 from by a well-defined religious and political line. Now this 
 may have been pretty correct in former times ; but we shall go 
 very far wrong, indeed, if we suppose that this standard at all 
 applies to the mass of Sikh soldiers in the regular army 
 by which we are now opposed. The original founders of the 
 Sikh religion designed it as an entirely new and a proselytising 
 creed, which might absorb both Mussulman and Hindoo. 
 Circumstances soon placed the Sikhs in violent antagonism to 
 the Mahomedans, and they naturally more and more drew 
 towards Hindooism and readopted the tenets and the prejudices 
 which they had once abandoned. Gradually the boundary line 
 between Hindoos and Sikhs became ill -defined, till eventually 
 the distinction of castes has been admitted, and a man may now 
 become a Sikh without ceasing to be a Hindoo. In fact the 
 Sikhs are held together by no religious, but by a purely political 
 bond. Some go the whole length, and become out and out 
 Sikhs, some become Sikhs for the time being, or just as long as 
 it suits their convenience, some stop half way, call themselves 
 " Sings " and let their beards grow, are Sikhs among the Sikhs 
 Jats among the Jats but the distinction of castes is retained 
 by all. Moreover, we see that the Lahore Political Union is 
 composed not of Sikhs alone, but of people of all creeds. 
 Altogether I think I may safely assert that no peculiar Sikh 
 religious fervour has anything to do with the valour displayed
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 103 
 
 by the Sikh army. It is a political union and nothing more. 
 The Sikh army is courageous not because it is Sikh, but because 
 its ranks are filled from a population capable of making good 
 soldiers. It so happens, however, that they have practically all 
 the advantage of uniformity of caste, and freedom from incon- 
 venient prejudices, because the mass of the soldiers are " Jats," a 
 people who rank low as Hindoos, but very high as soldiers. 
 That is the real secret of their strength. The Sikhs are for 
 practical purposes a confederacy composed of Jats, and we are 
 now opposed by the same people who opposed us at Bhurtpoor. 
 
 We must analyse the Sikhs of the present day to discover who 
 are true Sikhs, and who are merely Jat soldiers, drawn from the 
 Jat villages, servants of the Lahore state passing as Sikhs for 
 the nonce, but really forming no separate or dominant class. 
 The valour and strength of the Sikh army lies in the latter class ; 
 they can easily be absorbed in the population from among which 
 they came, and, by a few years of good management, may be made 
 to disappear altogether, or to appear only as useful citizens. 
 
 Eunjeet Sing was the greatest enemy of the Sikh confederacy. 
 He founded an empire by extinguishing and absorbing the Sikh 
 missals. That empire is called Sikh because its head was a Sikh, 
 and many of its servants and soldiers were Sikhs ; but it in 
 reality rested on the same foundation as that on which Indian 
 empires have rested from time immemorial not a national feel- 
 ing, but the mere possession of a tract of country, and the 
 power derived from its revenues. 
 
 The Sikhs ended when Runjeet rose. They in fact regarded 
 him little more favourably than if he had been a foreign con- 
 queror. The regular soldiers are quite different from the old 
 Sikhs. They come from the villages on either side the Sutlej. 
 They are members of the Jat village communities and servants 
 of the Lahore state, just as our Sepoys are in our regiments. 
 One brother ploughs the paternal fields, while another has taken 
 service at Lahore, and many have returned, both before and 
 since the war, to resume their original functions. It is a 
 remarkable fact that they really make the best cultivators. 
 They are somewhat troublesome in their own villages, as people 
 who have seen the world will be are not always willing to be 
 controlled by their respectable elders discover abuses and insist 
 on reforms. But they exhibit no bad spirit. They have plenty 
 of money, seem to have had nearly enough of soldiering, and 
 are well content to settle down. If they are but understood, if 
 their grievances are attended to, and they are restored to that 
 position in their villages which they would have held had they
 
 io 4 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 not taken service, I make no doubt that the class will never be 
 troublesome. Such are the new Sikhs the flower of Kunjeet's 
 army, and our real opponents. Dissolve the Sikh army, and 
 they are no more seen. Very different are the old Sikhs ; they 
 are not to be found in the ranks of the staunch infantry. They 
 have existed too long to retain their virtue. A long course of 
 idleness and opium have destroyed their energies, and they have 
 yielded the palm to young Sikh-land ! Some among them may 
 exhibit occasional courage and fanaticism, but it is not lasting. 
 
 This class I would, where necessary, dispose of by providing for 
 them on a small scale like the Pattidars of the protected states. 
 
 To sum up, the abstract of what I have said is this that 
 the Sikh army is composed of two classes, the most important 
 the regulars or new Sikhs who will never appear without the 
 nucleus of a regular army and the irregulars or old Sikhs, 
 much less important, who may cheaply be bought off. Of the 
 old Sirdars some few entered on a new character under Runjeet, 
 as servants of the state. The majority of the servants of the 
 Durbar, and of the Durbar itself, are mere creatures of circum- 
 stance utterly without nationality. Tej Sing, the late Sikh 
 Commander-in-Chief, is a Brahmin of Seharunpore, who served 
 Runjeet and became a "Brahmin Sikh." From such people we 
 have nothing to fear, nor need we go to any great expense in 
 providing for them. In short, the Lahore monarchy is like any 
 other native kingdom. If we do but dissolve it, in a few short 
 years the place whereon it stood shall know it no more. 
 
 Arguments for Annexation. 
 
 If any of the soldiers still prefer military service to enjoying 
 in retirement the good things which years of misrule have 
 thrown into their hands, they may serve us just as well as they did 
 Runjeet Sing. The Sikh frontier regiments have behaved well 
 and if but a small proportion of them are old soldiers of the 
 Lahore army, it only shows that the handsome pay and easy 
 service were not a sufficient inducement to draw out men well- 
 to-do in the world, and who had had enough of soldiering. 
 Lord Hardinge was determined to have Sikh regiments and 
 certainly the number of disbanded or resigned soldiers in our 
 territory was very great but one had married a wife, another 
 had bought a field, a third was putting forth a claim to take 
 place as one of the elders of his village, and the Commandants 
 of the new regiments (appointed before the men were found) 
 were obliged to go into the highways and byways, beating up
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 105 
 
 in the villages for recruits, and enlisting, as Sikhs, men who 
 only became Sikhs on entering the corps. However, they are 
 none the worse for our service for that. They are of the same 
 class from which the Sikh soldiers sprung. 
 
 I hope then that the facts which I have stated are sufficient 
 to bear out my assertion, that the population generally will be 
 easily managed, and that the Sikhs are by no means an insuperable 
 difficulty. My facts are in some degree at variance with gener- 
 ally received opinions, and to test them you must look somewhat 
 deeper than the surface of Courts and Camps. For their 
 correctness I must appeal to a careful investigation of the 
 interior of the people. I have derived my facts from experience 
 of the most pi-adical description I have been behind the scenes 
 I have lived among the people I have had to do with them 
 in their villages, in their home*, and in their fields ; and I am 
 thoroughly convinced that no population in India possesses a 
 larger proportion of industrial elements and a smaller proportion 
 of elements of an opposite quality. The old Indian system of 
 village communities is yet in full force. Each community has its 
 own internal constitution each is independent of the other each 
 pays its revenue to the powers that be and cares not to inquire 
 too curiously the source frpm which that power was derived. 
 Such is the people which I recommend to your adoption and 
 in the people I include the Sikh soldiers and other servants of 
 the Lahore state who are drawn from the general population. 
 
 If then you are satisfied, that the elements of the Lahore 
 state may be speedily dissolved like all the Indian empires 
 which have preceded it that the old Sikhs are but the shadow 
 of their former selves, and neither difficult or dangerous to deal 
 wit^j that the new Sikhs are but individuals drawn from the 
 general population, and that that population is neither turbulent 
 nor troublesome if, I say, you are satisfied on these points, you 
 must be convinced that there is no internal difficulty in keeping 
 the Punjaub. I have made my statement, and I leave it to you 
 to verify my facts. 
 
 It is unnecessary to combat the argument, that the events of 
 the present year stultify my reasoning. The Lahore state and 
 army have never been dissolved. That army is engaged in a 
 last struggle for existence. I argue on the supposition that the 
 army is dissolved, and the Punjaub held by British forces. 
 
 We have, on the one hand, a quiet and disarmed country 
 yielding a considerable revenue forming the natural boundary 
 of India, and a sure defence against external enemies peace 
 secured to India and the ignominy of retreat averted. On the
 
 io6 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 other hand an armed and too formidable neighbour, causing us 
 great expense in the maintenance of an army of observation, 
 and yet dividing with us the proper empire of India a stepping 
 stone and an aid to foreign invasion a source of continual 
 bloodshed and a lasting instance of our inability to cope with 
 a persevering foe. Look on this picture, and on that. Say 
 which you will choose. 
 
 Above all things and before all things keep continually 
 in mind that there must be no half measures. Rather a 
 thousand times rather retire from the country altogether. 
 Have a starling taught to holloa in your ear unceasingly " no 
 half measures" "no half measures" I believe you are now 
 pretty nearly cut off from the possibility of compromise, so 
 think no more of it. Look straight forward consider that you 
 have burnt your ships (or that the Sikhs have burnt them for 
 you) and all will become easy. 
 
 Farm of Civil Government in the new Province. 
 
 If we retain military possession of the Punjaub, in what form 
 should the country be governed ? Directly by ourselves or in a 
 native form ? 
 
 You may suppose from the line I have taken, that I will no 
 more admit the propriety of compromise in the form of Civil 
 Government than on the question of military occupation. To 
 adopt half measures in civil affairs would be a blunder second in 
 importance only to a similar course in military affairs. I am not one 
 of those who believe that every Native Government is necessarily 
 and invariably atrociously bad. The country may sometimes 
 prosper under native rule, for it is an unexplained and inexplic- 
 able truth that natives generally like to be bullied in moderation 
 in their own way, nearly as well as to be particularly cared for 
 in ours. With some good points the native system has many 
 faults. Still, it cannot be denied that ours has also many and 
 serious defects of in-adaptation of the country, and it comes, like 
 many other similar questions, to this, that a good European is 
 better than a bad Native Government a good Native Govern- 
 ment better than a bad European Government. A Native 
 Government may therefore be good or bad. A double Govern- 
 ment is most assuredly and unmitigatedly bad. Of that be well 
 convinced. It is simply a combination of the evils of either 
 system. If the Punjaub must be abandoned, we know the extent 
 of the evil, and another Runjeet may some day spring up ; but 
 if you attempt a double Government the evil is a wasting canker.
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 107 
 
 By all means adopt and engraft iipon our own the best parts of 
 the native system of administration, but attempt not to make 
 concurrent two incompatible systems. It is the worst kind of 
 political immorality, the worst time-serving, the greatest injustice 
 to the country and to the people, which would sanction any such 
 arrangement. The subject has been so often discussed in this 
 light, that it will not be necessary to go over very fully all the 
 arguments on the subject. Certainly, all experience is against 
 it, and of late, I am happy to say, almost all opinion too. Yet, 
 strange to say, men often for long follow in practice that which 
 has been already exploded in theory, and it is well that you 
 should hold yourself warned against it. The latest experiment 
 at Lahore is anything but calculated to encourage its repetition 
 and I believe that the fault lay much more with the system than 
 with the individuals. Sir Henry Lawrence, in spite of all that 
 has been said, is a man of talent and very great energy. Sir 
 Frederick Currie is by no means a bad man of business, but 
 neither had it in his power to introduce any system. In fact, the 
 Native Government was utterly disorganised, and no other was 
 substituted. The Eesident and his Staff were to give advice 
 and that is a duty for which any one is good enough. It 
 requires no particular qualifications. It is quite unnecessary 
 that a man should have drudged in a Cutcherry or that he 
 should know anything about the country respecting which he is 
 to advise. Nott's description of Politicals may be somewhat 
 exaggerated, and there has no doubt existed in India a school of 
 Political officers of considerable experience and merit in their own 
 line ; but I must say that the modern style of Political non- 
 descripts, who cover the face of the Punjaub, I do not com- 
 prehend. It is quite startling the way in which hitherto 
 unheard-of Politicals start up in every corner, to be chronicled in 
 the pages of the Delhi Gazette and in truth, one way and another 
 getting up conspiracies or suppressing them taking forts or 
 keeping them fighting battles and wigging kardars they have 
 hugely illustrated themselves. Still I have yet to learn that the 
 Punjaub is governed. The twenty-two lakhs a are not paid up 
 the country is not contented and the system is not understood. 
 And it never will be otherwise with a double Government. 
 
 There is nothing on which so much depends as the feeling of 
 self-responsibility. If the natives are left to themselves, they 
 feel that everything rests with themselves, and they are not 
 altogether depraved. Take away this feeling support them 
 with a military force interfere vexatiously in their civil system 
 
 1 A lakh = 100,000 rupees, and was then worth about 10,000.
 
 io8 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 and they become but the corrupt instruments of a corrupt 
 system. They lose all power of doing good, and but apply their 
 remaining strength to do unmitigated evil for their own selfish 
 and sordid ends. I utterly deny the possibility of a respectable 
 Native Government supported by our troops and over-ridden by 
 our Politicals. If you take away the "sanctions" (to use a 
 juridical phrase) to good conduct you must also take away the 
 poAver and reduce them to a subordinate position. 
 
 No compromise will succeed. You must make up your 
 mind. If you keep the Punjaub it must be in our own name. 
 To retain a Native Government is but to incur all the responsi- 
 bility, anxiety and difficulty of governing without obtaining any 
 of the advantages either to ourselves or to the country. 
 
 The people of the country would not feel themselves 
 thoroughly our subjects. They would be exposed to the evils 
 of either system ; they would be serving two masters. Unquiet 
 and uncertainty must prevail, and all progress be much retarded. 
 
 Can you then hesitate ? I hope that you will not. In 
 whatever way and on whatever principles the territory may be 
 administered, let it be avowedly and honestly on our own 
 account. I would employ respectable natives, and I think that 
 you may much improve by borrowing many things from the 
 natives, and dropping many things which we have hitherto 
 considered essential. Into this I shall go when I come to treat 
 of the mode of administration. In the meantime I but advocate 
 the straightforward course of declaring the country our own, to 
 be administered as shall appear best. 
 
 On the Determination of the Western Boundary, Civil and Military. 
 
 The plain of the Indus is bounded throughout by a 
 mountainous country, and at this point there is also, as I have 
 already noticed, a well-marked ethnical line. A complete change 
 of race takes place. The people whom we now meet differ in all 
 their characteristics from the people of India. In India itself, 
 although there are several Mahomedan classes professing the 
 religion, bearing the name, and in some degree assuming the 
 character, of foreign races yet they have in fact socially and 
 morally as well as in their blood become amalgamated in the 
 country of their birth. In spite of outward differences, the 
 Hindoostanees are in essentials one people. It is very different 
 when we overstep the boundary. The tribes surrounding 
 Peshawar are other in their habits, in their political institutions, 
 and in their whole development. They know not the principle
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 109 
 
 of passive obedience. A Yoosufzaie with his peculiar appearance 
 and language, trailing matchlock, dirt, impudence, and utter 
 faithlessness, is about as unpromising and undesirable a subject 
 as we could wish to find. Moreover, most of the country in 
 which these tribes are found is far from productive. You will, 
 therefore, hardly think of extending your tax-collecting machinery 
 into such unprofitable soil. 
 
 I do not think that it would be expedient or politic to exclude 
 from our rule any portion of the country which properly forms 
 part of India, and which at any rate includes all on this side the 
 Indus. I know that rivers do not bound races but it so happens 
 that on the other side of the Indus the change of races takes 
 place. 
 
 But what are we to do with Peshawar and the other similarly 
 situated territories? They are eminently subject to the dis- 
 advantages which I have pointed out. They have no defence 
 but are exposed to invulnerable assailants the dwellers in the 
 hills. Every one who has held them has been constantly in hot 
 water. The revenue must each crop be collected by regiments 
 of infantry, and order (or rather disorder) must be kept by 
 shifts utterly beneath our dignity. It is therefore highly 
 inexpedient to attempt to hold in our own name the territory 
 in the outskirts of the hills. 
 
 But although it is not easy to hold this territory, it is very 
 easy to invade and at any time take possession of the submontane 
 portion of it. It cannot maintain a regular army of any 
 strength. While, therefore, our cantonments are on the Indus 
 it is completely at our mercy. 
 
 I would take advantage of this state of things to turn it to 
 account in another way. I would bribe Dost Mahomed into 
 friendship by giving him as a " fee " from us, and on condition 
 of an alliance offensive and defensive, the country between the 
 Indus and his own possessions. I think this better than giving 
 it to some separate Chief, because in the one case the advantage 
 would be but negative the getting rid of a losing concern ; in 
 the other we should have the very positive, and considerable 
 advantage of gaining a direct and powerful hold on the Cabul Chief. 
 Holding his best territory at our pleasure, we should but look 
 to his feeling of self-interest, and we might reasonably demand 
 important concessions in virtue of our gifts. I would, therefore, 
 when you have beaten the Sikhs, propose to Dost Mahomed to 
 accept the territories alluded to on the following conditions : 
 
 1. They are held as a fief of the British Crown and homage 
 done accordingly.
 
 no MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 2. An alliance offensive and defensive our enemies to be 
 his enemies, and our friends his friends. 
 
 3. An Ambassador to be received at Cabul as between two 
 friendly powers. 
 
 4. The Suzerain to have the privilege of marching through 
 the territory to blockade the Khyber Pass when such a step shall 
 seem necessary. 
 
 I imagine there could be little doubt of the acceptance of 
 these terms, and I say that, if the arrangement were carried out, 
 our frontier would be much better and more cheaply secured 
 than is otherwise possible. 
 
 The accession of territory would not be sufficient to render 
 the Afghans a dangerous power. In fact it would give them 
 more work at home. The revenues would not be very large. 
 The Dost would still be unable to support an efficient regular 
 army and his irregulars never would dare to attempt to cross 
 the Indus in the face of our troops. On the other hand, it 
 would no longer be in his power to intrigue with foreign states. 
 Our Ambassador in his capital, and our troops close at hand, he 
 would be too closely watched. No danger could approach us 
 without ample warning and abundant opportunity for making 
 the moderate preparations which would be required. I therefore 
 strongly urge that we take as much as is good for us, fix our proper 
 boundary on the Indus secure an ally with the remainder, and so 
 we shall, at the same time, bound and protect with outworks 
 our Indian empire. I commend my plan to your consideration. 
 
 Here follows a long letter on " The Administration of 
 the Punjaub when Annexed." But I have already indicated 
 the gist of my recommendations, and it deals so much 
 with persons, and some details as well as principles, that I 
 omit it. 
 
 I annex extracts from another letter of the " Economist " 
 series, discussing 
 
 Some of tlie Arguments against Annexation. 
 
 MY LORD, I am sorry to see that the English papers are 
 not yet unanimous as to the policy to be pursued in the Punjaub. 
 Some very absurd fallacies concerning the Punjaub, the Sikhs, 
 and the Afghans have gotten possession of the English mind. 
 It is not denied that geographically and historically the Punjaub 
 is part of India but people at home cling to the belief that it is
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY in 
 
 filled with an unruly and desperate population, and the fear that 
 to hold it would be to walk on hidden fires and ever since the 
 Cabul catastrophe they have a respectful dread of the Afghans, 
 and are haunted with the idea that to advance our frontier is but 
 to " fly to evils which we know not of." It has been my object 
 to show you that the Punjaubese are not ungovernable, and that 
 on the Indus we have in all human probability that much wished 
 for object, a "finality" inasmuch as the Afghans are, as an 
 offensive military power, utterly contemptible. I trust that you 
 estimate the supposed difficulties at their true value. 
 
 After all, fear is the prevailing argument against annexation. 
 The Times talks of the martial tribes commencing with the 
 Sutlej. But you are not " afraid " ! You know better. You 
 know that the Sutlej is the boundary of no tribe or class of 
 tribes. The Sikhs do not commence with the Sutlej. In fact, 
 much of Sikh-land lies to the east of that river. The population 
 on either side is the same, the Sikhs are the same the Jat 
 soldiers are the same the cultivators are the same. Yet it is 
 admitted that the territory on one side is quiet and manageable 
 then why not that on the other side. If you are still uncon- 
 vinced, let me show you a village on this side and on that, and 
 you will find no point of difference. Let me take you into a 
 village on the left bank of the Sutlej, and I will show you first 
 the old Sikh comparatively weak separated from the population 
 and depending on the favour of Government for a subsistence. 
 Next you shall see scores of the new Sikhs, men who once served 
 in the Lahore army now returned to their places in their own 
 villages very likely disavowing the character of Sikhs altogether, 
 and making the best and most active cultivators. Lastly, you 
 shall see the fine Jat race which inhabits that country and 
 members of which may be induced to turn Sikhs and serve in a 
 regular army on being paid. There is something manly and 
 substantial about their character. In soldiering they like to be 
 among the regulars and are seldom found among the irregulars 
 and the tawdry tail of great men. In cultivating they are 
 regulars too. They are all for long leases and money payments. 
 They make their own arrangements and pay their revenue like 
 men. In ordinary seasons I know no part of India, the internal 
 economy of which presents so pleasant a sight. There is a 
 healthy tone which it is pleasant to witness, and a healthy popu- 
 lation pleasant to deal with. They are not unruly, but are 
 remarkable for the respect paid to our rule. Even an ordinary 
 affray is now almost unknown. In short they like our system, 
 and think that it fully compensates for the gain to some of their
 
 112 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 members in the predominance of the Sikh army. Ask these people 
 whether they would like to go back to a double Government. 
 It is the only proposition that might perhaps induce them to rebel. 
 
 Cross, then, the river and you enter no new country. Your 
 materials are precisely the same. The zemindars have not yet 
 had the same advantages, and the Sikh soldiers have hitherto 
 continued to serve. But annex, and within six months, if things 
 are managed by people who understand them, the country will 
 assume exactly the same phase as the Cis-Sutlej territory almost 
 all parties will give in their adherence to the new state of things 
 men's minds will be set at rest imaginary difficulties will 
 disappear as if by magic. The Sikh country will speedily 
 become one of our best and quietest possessions. 
 
 I have spoken more particularly of that portion of the Punjaub 
 from whence the Sikhs spring. Of the other portions it has not 
 been pretended that there is anything to dread. They are now as 
 they were when the country formed a " peaceful province of the 
 Mogul empire," with this exception, that they dislike the Sikh rule 
 and would welcome our ingress with most sincere satisfaction. 
 
 Rohilcund and the Rohillas had at one time a great name, 
 and can anything be quieter than that country now is 1 Look at 
 the records of the old districts of Rohilcund and you will see 
 that when we first took possession, things were by no means so 
 quiet nor the people so apt nor so much respect paid to our 
 name as has been and will be the case in any part of Sikh-land. 
 Armed parties traversed the district wings of regiments with 
 guns went out to collect the revenue from refractory villages. 
 Yet things soon quieted down, and no one now looks on Rohil- 
 cund as a country held but by the force of bayonets. Much 
 more easily would the Punjaub be brought to the same state. 
 
 The Sikhs as a military class are much more tractable and 
 more easily moulded to our purpose than Rohillas or other 
 military Mussulmans. I cannot too often repeat, and you cannot 
 too carefully bear in mind, the grand distinguishing mark of the 
 Sikhs, as compared with other Indian soldiers, in their not having 
 yet lost their connection with the soil and their character of 
 agriculturalists. They are fine fellows, without prejudice or 
 nonsense of any kind, who can turn their hands to anything. 
 They have not forgotten their origin. Indeed, I think the Sikhs 
 and Jats of the frontier a people whom we should particularly 
 cherish and attach as our subjects. They have much more of 
 our own character than any other Indian race. They can and 
 do look up to us and as soon as the intoxication of recent power 
 has subsided the obedience of all will be hearty and willing.
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 113 
 
 Make much of them, my Lord. You fear to grasp a serpent 
 but you may yet find it a faithful servant ; situated on the 
 frontier of India they are most desirable subjects, for they may 
 be used at any time against the Mahomedans beyond the 
 boundary. Their sympathy with our Government, conduct, 
 character, and habits, will always be much greater than with any 
 other foreign race. 
 
 You need not distress yourself with vain fears. Never was 
 there a better hand. You have but to play it. It is not, as one 
 of the papers says, a choice " between dangerous neighbours and 
 unruly subjects " but between dangerous neighbours and quiet 
 useful subjects. The popular delusion is the very opposite of 
 the truth and you will, I trust, prove it to be so. 
 
 Thinking, as I do, that the Jats and Sikhs make good 
 subjects and good soldiers, I think that if you increase the army 
 you cannot do better than offer service to those who wish it. 
 The Sikh regiments have answered well, and the eating our salt 
 would give us an additional hold on and connection with the popu- 
 lation from which the men are drawn. Besides, late experience 
 goes to prove that they are much better men than the " Poorbea " 
 Sepoys. They have also fewer prejudices they can put their 
 bundles on their own heads when occasion requires they eat 
 from the same common cooking vessel are altogether more hardy 
 and Europeanlike in their habits. They would be a great acces- 
 sion to the army. 
 
 The Times makes the question of annexation depend on 
 obtaining a "finality," asks where we are to stop, whether we 
 shall annex Afghanistan too 1 I answer certainly not, for reasons 
 which I have already mentioned. Afghanistan would not pay, 
 it is no part of India, its inhabitants are not Indians. The more 
 the Dost and his subjects fight among themselves the better for 
 us. The Indus is our "finality." 
 
 It just comes to this, will you make a temporary arrangement 
 or a permanent one 1 Will you look to the security of the 
 frontier, or to empty names 1 Will you do justice to the country 
 which providence has placed at your feet ? Your mission is a 
 great one and you must fulfil it, but before all things remember 
 that if withdrawal is a cowardice any half measure is a double 
 cowardice, the cowardice that prevents you from annexing and 
 the cowardice that prevents you from withdrawing. Take either 
 course, but beware of the fatal middle course. If you withdraw, 
 the work has but to be done over again, if you compromise we 
 are inextricably committed. 
 
 VOL. I I
 
 II 4 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 "ECONOMIST" CONGRATULATES THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL 
 
 MY LORD, At last we breathe again more freely at last 
 the clouds of doubt and suspense are made glorious summer by 
 the Sun of Annexation. The 29th of March 1849 will long be 
 memorable in Indian history, and long will be famous the name 
 of the ruler who has given a "finality " to the Indian empire. 
 My Lord, I do most sincerely and heartily congratulate you. 
 The Sikh power, the Sikh army, the Empire of Runjeet Sing, 
 are things of history. The permanent pacification of the country 
 follows from annexation as naturally as effect can follow cause. 
 Any serious disturbance is next to impossible. The means of 
 disturbance no longer exist the spirit and the will must speedily 
 die out. The Sikhs will soon be known, but as a quiet and 
 agricultural people. The Punjaub will be a submissive and 
 prosperous province, yielding in the arts of peace to none in 
 India, and it may be (if advantage is taken of so fair an oppor- 
 tunity of introducing into our system the improvements Avhich 
 experience suggests) surpassing all in good government in the 
 adaptation of institutions to the circumstances of the people, and 
 the contentment of an industrious yet manly population. It will 
 be found that even if barren tracts make the whole revenue not 
 very large in proportion to the gross area, yet the large fertile 
 territories will yield a considerable and easily collected revenue, 
 which is a clear gain to our Indian finances and more than a 
 clear gain, for it will not only be an addition to our rent roll, 
 but may almost be made the means of diminishing our expendi- 
 ture inasmuch as we shall now be free from the enormous cost 
 of defensive and offensive measures of constant repetition and 
 little intermission. No humane man could have by any act of 
 his permitted the recurrence of the scenes of carnage and 
 sickening waste of human life, which have ensanguined the last 
 years of our history. No wise or benevolent man could have 
 refused to bestow on a subject people that liberty to sow in seed- 
 time and reap in harvest, which forms the simple economy of an 
 Indian population, and by the aid of a genial climate and certain 
 self-contained institutions natural poor-laws and immemorial 
 village corporations perhaps gives more human happiness than 
 the more complicated rights and more artificial institutions which 
 distract Europe. I don't know whether you meant to enhance 
 the value of the boon when you kept the world so long uncertain 
 and distrustful about annexation ; but it is now apparent that 
 distrust was out of place. The measure is well-weighed, deliberate 
 and complete and the public voice on the subject will be
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 115 
 
 unanimous. Other Governors-General have added to the Empire, 
 but you have completed it ; others have conquered successive parts, 
 but you have consolidated and secured the whole. For the first 
 time India is really our own nay, more, for the first time India 
 is under the dominion of any one master. You are the first sole 
 ruler of the most famous country in the world. You occupy a 
 throne which has been, since ambition first appeared in the world, 
 the golden prize for which all have struggled, but none have fully 
 obtained. And you may be proud of your position. You have 
 achieved it, and I hope that you may keep it long. You have 
 wronged no man, but you have done your duty, and done it well. 
 Having attained the finality of conquest and of empire thus 
 early in your reign, for you may be prepared the double glory of 
 both consummating a career of war and originating a career of 
 peaceable reformation. I hope that it may be so. A reformation 
 is wanted. The laws, the customs, and the consciences of a 
 northern race and an artificial society must be more approximated 
 to the plain practical understandings of an Asiatic people who 
 WILL hold that black is black and white is white, whatever 
 philosophers may say to the contrary. But on this I may not 
 now enter. I will but once more congratulate you on your 
 position and I am sure that all India and all Europe will, with 
 one accord, join in the congratulation. 1 
 
 On the occasion of the changes caused by the annexa- 
 tion of the Punjaub I might very well have looked for 
 promotion there, and the Governor-General was very ready 
 to promote me ; but my pronounced opinions were rather an 
 obstacle during the regime of Henry Lawrence and the 
 officers whom he had introduced ; and knowing the Cis- 
 Sutlej so well, I was very well content when it was 
 arranged that I should be promoted to a superior grade, 
 and posted to the district of Loodiana, while I was made to 
 this extent a pluralist that I was also put in charge of 
 Thuggee department in the Punjaub, with a separate allow- 
 ance for that. So I was transferred to the Loodiana 
 district. I joined at the very hottest of a remarkably hot 
 season ; but I soon settled to work, and was much satisfied 
 with my position. Most of my old Wadnee district was 
 
 1 The extracts from "Economist's" letters, described above at pp. 93- 
 95, end here.
 
 u6 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 now included in Loodiana, especially the Jagraon territory, 
 of which I have said so much ; while on the other side 
 the district stretched up nearly to the foot of the Simla 
 hills. My settlements of Jagraon and other territories 
 were working well, and I believe that they have stood the 
 test of regular measurements, and have not been much 
 disturbed. Of course there have been varieties of seasons ; 
 but precarious as is the rainfall of much of the Cis-Sutlej 
 territory, I do not think that it has been very gravely 
 affected by any of the modern famines. There is no saying 
 when these things may come. I do not think I have ever 
 mentioned how constant in the mouths of all the people of 
 that territory was the reference to the great famine of 
 1783 the famine of the year '40 it was called, meaning 
 the year 1840 of the Hindoo era. Every deserted site of 
 an old village, every memory of misfortune, every drawback 
 of every kind, was always attributed to that evil era. The 
 reality must have been very severe indeed. 
 
 I have said so much before of the people and institutions 
 of those districts that I need not repeat that ; and, in truth, 
 during the time I was at Loodiana I was a good deal dis- 
 tracted by the work of the city and cantonment, and the 
 passing through of camps and great men. The city was an 
 important one; there was not only a large mercantile element, 
 but it was also a very considerable manufacturing centre 
 there was a large colony of Cashmerees who carried on an 
 excellent shawl manufacture, and there was a large manu- 
 facture of cotton goods. Much more than hitherto it fell 
 to me to decide considerable civil actions, under the non- 
 regulation practice by which I was civil judge as well as 
 magistrate and collector. How we managed I don't quite 
 comprehend, for we knew very little of any civil law, to say 
 nothing of the various laws administered to various races. 
 But the real truth is that in most cases we merely super- 
 intended the administration of native law and custom by 
 the people themselves ; it was only in special cases, not 
 regulated by native law, that we administered the law of 
 equity and good conscience according to our lights. Not-
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 117 
 
 withstanding the removal of the European infantry on 
 account of the recent disastrous fall of the barracks, there 
 was still a large military cantonment at Loodiana. The 
 place was very much in the world, and every one came and 
 went that way. My mode of life was very greatly changed 
 from what it had been for some years past. I bought 
 a large and conspicuous house with very pleasant surround- 
 ings which had been for a generation the frontier of India, 
 the residence of the Frontier Agent ; and I there saw 
 a good deal of company, entertained my friends, and 
 received many visitors. The place used somewhat jocosely 
 to be called " Castle Campbell," but I do not know if that 
 name was continued. I had to combine much station work 
 with my regular district work. Without going into details 
 I may here quote a description which I published two or 
 three years later of the life of a district officer, in writing 
 which I had no doubt a good deal in my eye my experience 
 at Loodiana. 
 
 Ladies in cantonments are occasionally somewhat 
 unreasonable, as when they send a servant to a magistrate, 
 and request that he may be punished for disobedience and 
 another sent in his place. Once at Loodiana I was startled 
 by a letter brought in hot haste from an officer of consider- 
 able rank to tell me that his wife had been attacked by 
 robbers on her way to Simla, and despoiled of her valuables. 
 I was amazed and disturbed, and sent off emergent forces to 
 scour the country, but could hear nothing of the occurrence 
 till I got by post a note from the lady to say she did 
 think she had been robbed of her watch, but she had found 
 it under her pillow, and was sorry to have troubled me. 
 
 I had abundant opportunity for making local improve- 
 ments, for which I have always had a taste. In a large Indian 
 town there is no general indigenous municipality, though 
 all the different trades have their guilds and committees of 
 management. When a new officer takes charge, the City 
 Guilds come officially to pay their respects to him. All 
 the principal trades are represented, and among them the
 
 u8 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 ladies who have a trade which may not be mentioned. In 
 the absence of a general municipality, the magistrate of the 
 district managed matters in most cases very beneficially, 
 I believe, though sometimes perhaps with rather a high 
 hand. When I wanted to make a new street or other 
 improvement I made it, and assessed the compensation for 
 injuries in a reasonable way not in the preposterous way 
 that they do in this country. I remember one old woman 
 who carried her opposition to my new boulevard to an 
 extreme, and whom neither force, fraud, nor persuasion 
 would induce to move, even when we offered her very 
 liberal terms ; at last the workmen, coming in her rear, 
 unearthed her in situ, as a toad is unearthed in the 
 primitive sandstone. 
 
 I have had a great deal to do with the making of 
 bridges of boats the ferries of both the Sutlej and Jumna 
 pertained to the Cis-Sutlej states and I flattered myself 
 that I made those bridges remarkably well, with the aid of 
 a native engineer of Loodiana named Punjab Mistree, 
 a great friend of mine. Sir Charles Napier's boats turned 
 out so badly, and the military so much depended upon me 
 for their passage of the rivers, that I conceived rather a 
 contempt for the Eoyal Engineers, and thought that my 
 Mistree was better than any of them. But I confess that 
 I changed my mind a few years later when, during the 
 1 >ost - mutiny campaign, I examined a bridge made over 
 the Gogra at Fyzabad by a Captain Nicholson of the 
 Engineers. It was a very good and neat piece of work, 
 and I admitted that he had beaten me. 
 
 In the cold season I had a long visit from my youngest 
 brother, John Scarlett Campbell, who had been posted to 
 the North-Western Provinces. I had several friends and 
 relations in cantonments. And, later in the season, my old 
 friend Brandreth brought out from England a charming 
 wife, and paid me a very pleasant visit. The Governor- 
 General came through in camp, and him (Lord Dalhousie) 
 too I escorted through my district, as previously Lord
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 119 
 
 Hardinge. Colonel Mackeson had been moved to the 
 Peshawar division, and George Edmonstone, having suc- 
 ceeded him, also came with his wife and paid me a visit. 
 Mackeson, it will be remembered, was afterwards killed by 
 an Afghan at Peshawar. I used to see a good deal of 
 a well-known man, Colin Mackenzie. Personally I liked 
 him much, but as often happens with military men who 
 have a religious call, his zeal outran his discretion, and he 
 too was assassinated in the Deccan in consequence of his 
 having interfered with native religious processions on a 
 Sunday. I escaped coming into collision with Sir Charles 
 Napier, then Commander-in-Chief, whom I no more admired 
 than he admired Indian civilians. He objected strongly to 
 my overriding some irregular cavalry whom I had as an 
 escort, saying that Her Majesty's soldiers were not meant 
 to be galloped off their legs behind rushing young civilians ; 
 but I managed to steer clear of him. 
 
 The ex-Eoyal family of Afghanistan, i.e. the family of 
 Shah Shoojah and Shah Zeman, were at Loodiana under 
 my charge. There was a pleasant Afghan called Salah 
 Mahomed, who had effected the release of the prisoners, 
 and in consequence had to leave Afghanistan on a hand- 
 some pension from us. I used to take tea with him of a 
 morning, and could not but feel that there was a heartiness 
 and adaptation to our manners in the Afghan which one does 
 not usually find in natives of India, One day there was 
 great excitement in the Royal quarters, and word was 
 brought to me that the Royal ladies had broken out and 
 were coming to appeal to me about their grievances. That 
 would be a dreadful disgrace to any Mahomedan ladies, 
 and frightful on the part of princesses of the very highest 
 rank. It turned out that there had been a severe quarrel 
 in the palace, and the ladies, besides appealing for justice, 
 thought that by disgracing the family they would have 
 revenge upon their lords. In fact some of them did come, 
 and having heard so much from people who had been in 
 the Afghan War of the beauty of the Afghan ladies, my 
 curiosity, to put it mildly, was raised to a high pitch. In
 
 120 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 truth, however, the ladies who arrived were of a mature 
 age, and somewhat passtes. The family being of such high 
 rank it was difficult suitably to mate them, and the palace 
 was full of very old maids who had been the principals in 
 the rebellion. 
 
 My " Thuggee " duties were important and interesting. 
 The Indian Thugs and their crimes have become familiar to 
 the public, and General Sleeman, the main instrument of 
 their suppression, has written a very interesting volume 
 about them. But I doubt if our methods of dealing with 
 them have been at all generally understood. That matter 
 is important, not only as regards the safety of life in India, 
 but also as a lesson in dealing with organised crime, which 
 may be useful as applied to other countries besides India, 
 so I will here say something on the subject. Throughout 
 India Thuggee had been mostly put down before I had 
 anything to do with it, but there had been recently a some- 
 what serious recrudescence of it in parts of the Punjaub, 
 and a special branch of the Thuggee office had been 
 established to deal with it there, of which I had charge. 
 We did manage to put it down, after bringing to justice 
 a number of the offenders. 
 
 We worked mainly by a system of approvers and con- 
 fessions, through which we obtained evidence, and we were 
 exempt from the ordinary rules of criminal procedure, being 
 allowed to keep suspects in our own charge, to work on 
 them through trained approvers, and to conduct everything 
 in our own way. But we were bound to commit the accused 
 for trial eventually, and the trial took place before an 
 independent tribunal, exactly as in the case of any other 
 prisoners. It is evident that a system of that kind required 
 to be worked with extreme carefulness and delicacy. When 
 once a man was induced to confess, he was very apt to try 
 to earn a pardon and gain the position of a privileged 
 approver by carrying his confessions almost to excess. He 
 would indeed boast of the number and atrocity of the 
 murders he had committed, and relate their details with a 
 sort of gusto. One man would say, " I have committed 5
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 121 
 
 murders " ; another would say, " Oh, that's nothing don't 
 listen to him; I have committed 150." The practice 
 was to take down all the details of their statements with all 
 the accompanying circumstances in great detail, and with 
 scrupulous exactness, often referring to crimes committed 
 many hundred miles distant in company with confederates 
 who were named. The Thuggee department had offices 
 all over India, and statements made by different men in 
 different places, without the possibility of communication, 
 were scrupulously and carefully compared. Nothing was 
 accepted unless the facts alleged were corroborated from 
 independent sources. The practice was to bury the bodies 
 of the murdered men, and very generally their friends and 
 relatives knew nothing of what had become of them. When 
 we got a story confirmed by the concurrent testimony of 
 several approvers, we made them show where the bodies 
 were buried, and found the bones ; and by the clues which 
 the approvers gave (they often travelled with their victims 
 for days before murdering them) we hunted up information 
 about the victims, and learned that such persons really had 
 been travelling at the time described, and had been missed, 
 and that they had property such as was described by 
 the approvers. When the case thus came out, and the 
 approvers were confronted with the accused, the latter very 
 generally confessed. In such cases confession is a wonder- 
 fully potent means of discovering the truth. In India our 
 object is to put down crime, and we have no sentimental 
 objections whatever to inducing a man to criminate himself, 
 if he does so in such a way that the confession is clearly 
 proved to be true by the verification of the facts related. 
 The practice was that a likely man was admitted as an 
 approver conditionally ; that is, if we were satisfied that his 
 story was true, and that he was likely to do good service 
 in bringing others to justice, we sent him up for trial on the 
 condition only that his life would be spared. He pleaded 
 guilty, but an Indian judge is not satisfied with that ; we 
 had to prove the facts besides. If he was convicted the 
 sentence of death was commuted to imprisonment for life,
 
 122 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 on the condition that he would give us every assistance, and 
 at all times disclose all he knew. From that time the 
 approvers became a sort of government servants ; they were 
 never set free, but lived under surveillance in appointed 
 places, and were always liable to be sent back to penal 
 servitude if they played false. What had to be most care- 
 fully guarded against was any attempt at blackmailing on 
 the part of these men ; any laxness in their supervision 
 would have been most dangerous, nay, fatal. But when 
 the thing was really well managed, with thorough care, 
 fraud was almost impossible, and the results arrived at were 
 far more certain than in most criminal trials. After 
 General Sleeman's account of Thuggee cases I will not 
 attempt to narrate mine, which were upon the whole on a 
 smaller scale, and less sensational ; but I may mention one 
 or two cases which did not run so smoothly. The Thugs 
 had never been known to attack a European. I had, how- 
 ever, a very curious case in which they positively asserted 
 that they had killed a European, and buried him near a 
 well in a certain village between Ferozepore and Lahore. 
 The bones were found, and certainly were large heavy bones, 
 which might have been those of a European. The villagers 
 too, to a certain extent, corroborated the story they were 
 sure that no body could have been buried where this one 
 was found for any honest purpose, and they did distinctly 
 remember a wandering European passing through the village 
 about the time mentioned, and knew not what became of 
 him. Yet, after the most persevering efforts, we entirely 
 failed to find any clue to a European who had been missed 
 at the time indicated. The Thugs from the first said that 
 they had got no property worth mentioning, and my 
 impression was that their story was really true, and that 
 the victim was one of those wandering loafers who are 
 occasionally found in India, to the great discredit of the 
 British name. In another case some men taken up as Thugs 
 volunteered to confess a very frightful crime, and related it 
 with every circumstance in great detail without any pro- 
 mise of pardon whatever. Yet when we inquired into it,
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 123 
 
 not only was their story not corroborated, but it was dis- 
 tinctly and clearly contradicted in most essential particulars. 
 It was, I think, most clearly shown that such a crime could 
 not have been committed in the place and manner related 
 by them, or anything like it. I again and again invited 
 them to retract and explain, but they stuck doggedly to 
 their story after being thoroughly warned that they were 
 not to expect to be made approvers, or to obtain any indul- 
 gence whatever. At last in despair I committed them, 
 hoping that some light would appear before or during the 
 trial. Again they stuck to their story, and the judge who 
 tried them convicted them, and according to the Indian rule 
 in capital cases referred the sentence for the orders of the 
 Board of Administration. The Board, rather to my surprise, 
 ordered them to be hanged. 
 
 Not only do natives often make true confessions in a 
 very surprising way when they might never have been con- 
 victed if they had not confessed, but also false confessions 
 are not at all uncommon under influences which we should 
 think hardly sufficient. Still, in such cases there is gene- 
 rally some possible motive or influence. I am very much 
 convinced that in any case of what I call organised 
 crime, that is, crime, the result of a wide conspiracy in 
 which many persons are concerned, the system of working 
 by means of confessions and approvers is almost certain to 
 be effectual, sooner or later, in uprooting the whole con- 
 spiracy. It may be a very long time before you can make 
 a beginning ; I have known organised gangs carry on 
 systematic crime for years without one getting a trace, and 
 drive one almost mad with despair ; but when at length, 
 either by accident or treachery, or in any other way, you 
 detect a single case, or catch a single man with proof against 
 him, the whole thing generally comes out. Human nature 
 is human nature all over the world ; a man clings to life, 
 and when he finds that it is all up with him he will betray 
 his confederates rather than be hanged, whether he be an 
 Indian or an Englishman or anything else. Perhaps Nihilists 
 may be different, but I have had nothing to do with them.
 
 124 
 
 The system of dealing with Thuggee was so successful 
 that it was extended also to Dacoity, that curse of India ; 
 though, after all, it is not confined to India, but under the 
 name of brigandage has been pretty well known in Europe : 
 so the Thuggee department became the Thuggee and Dacoity 
 department. In respect of Dacoity, however, they have 
 been by no means so successful. The fact is that Dacoity 
 is generally not a regularly organised system to the same 
 extent that Thuggee was. There are or were Dacoits of a 
 partly professional character and with a good many of 
 them the department has dealt ; but most Dacoities are 
 much more local in their inception and management, and 
 not part of any widely extended professional scheme ; hence 
 it is that in that case the Thuggee system cannot be 
 depended upon. In fact, although Dacoity of a large and 
 highly organised character may be rarer than it was, I 
 grieve to see that to this day the crime is very far from 
 having been extirpated in many parts of India. On the 
 contrary, Dacoity of sorts is extremely prevalent, and 
 would even seem to be rather increasing than otherwise. 
 It is a very great blot on our administration. The truth 
 will have to be faced ; in spite of all our talk about a new 
 and improved police system, the modern police is not at all 
 efficient in dealing with crime scarcely more so than the 
 Irish police, upon which it was to some extent founded. 
 However, when I had charge of the Thuggee department at 
 Loodiana, I was not much troubled with Dacoity ; indeed, I 
 may say that throughout my executive service among the 
 more robust races I have not experienced very much of 
 that sort of thing. . Yet a few years later, when I was no 
 longer in charge of the special Thuggee and Dacoity depart- 
 ment, but a much greater man Commissioner of the whole 
 Cis-Sutlej states there did occur at this very place, 
 Loodiana, one of the most audacious and cleverly planned 
 Dacoities that I have ever known, under circumstances 
 that very much vexed me. There was at Loodiana a 
 " Chowk," or small square, where many of the leading 
 merchants and bankers had their places of business ; it was
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 125 
 
 walled and gated like a close market-place, and on one side 
 abutted on the high bank under which the Sutlej once 
 flowed, but where there was then a dry bed. It was evening, 
 an hour or two after dark, in the cold season when the 
 nights are long ; the Dacoits generally choose that time, 
 because it gives them all the night before them to escape. 
 The business of the day was done ; the merchants had 
 retired to their ease and their families ; but few people 
 were left in the square, like care-takers in city offices. 
 Suddenly ten or twelve armed men took possession of the 
 square, closed and barred the gates from the inside, stopped 
 all communication, and warned the few people inside that 
 they would be forthwith shot through the head if they 
 uttered a cry. Then, quick as lightning, they set to work 
 to rifle the shops of all the most valuable bullion they could 
 find. There was some delay before any one in the town 
 understood what had happened, and when at last the police 
 appeared in considerable force they found the " Chowk " a 
 fort in possession of the enemy. The defenders then fired 
 a few shots, but, as it turned out, they really fired in the 
 air and hit nobody. The police, however, seemed to have 
 quite enough to do to marshal their forces, and try to effect 
 an entrance without attempting to surround and capture 
 such formidable opponents. At last, thinking themselves 
 very heroic, they managed to get it, and found no opposition. 
 It turned out that under cover of the sham fire the Dacoits 
 had escaped into the old river-bed with the most portable 
 property, leaving behind only two or three of their party 
 quite unencumbered to keep up the fire, and cover their 
 retreat. These last then ran for their lives, and escaped 
 too, while the police were making cautious approaches. We 
 afterwards found that they had swift camels ready a little 
 way outside, and while the police and the citizens were 
 taking possession of the " Chowk," and searching there in 
 every corner for the robbers, the robbers themselves were 
 off and away upon their camels under cover of the night. 
 I was myself in camp only two or three marches off, and old 
 thief-taker and present very great man as I thought myself,
 
 126 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 I felt like a large lion outrageously bearded in his den, and 
 swore by all my gods that I would bring them to justice. 
 But after all I never did. Our trackers carefully followed 
 the tracks of the camel-party for an immense distance right 
 through the Sikh states, but they did so slowly and 
 laboriously when the Dacoits were hundreds of miles away. 
 Neither my efforts, nor those of the Thuggee and Dacoity 
 department, succeeded in bringing the case home. It certainly 
 was not a local Dacoity, and we had pretty good information 
 that it was the work of Meenas, a predatory tribe in 
 Eajpootana, who have often committed offences of that kind 
 at Agra and elsewhere. But we never got hold of the 
 particular men who committed this one, and I must say I 
 never felt more thoroughly beat. 
 
 Up to about the time when I first joined at Loodiana, 
 it had been a very healthy station ; but just then it began 
 to get somewhat unhealthy, and there gradually came upon it 
 a severe unhealthiness which lasted for some years. Some 
 people thought that the drying up of the bed of the Sutlej, 
 which used to run immediately under the town, had some- 
 thing to do with it, but that had taken place many years 
 before. They wander curiously, those great Indian rivers, 
 and the Sutlej, which used to be close to Loodiana, was now 
 five or six miles off. Looking about in an unscientific 
 way, I fancied that an existing channel might without very 
 great difficulty be connected with the running stream. 
 The Engineers rather laughed at the idea of my diverting 
 such a great river without their aid. The doctors did not 
 know whether it could be done, but were sure that if a 
 running stream could be brought to Loodiana it would be a 
 very good thing. I sent out a gang of prisoners and set to 
 work. After a time a communication was effected and a 
 little water came through ; then that stream began rapidly 
 to enlarge its own channel, and next morning, to the sur- 
 prise of every one, a fine broad river was flowing under 
 Loodiana. Boats were soon procured, and numbers of large 
 fish were caught. However, the unhealthiness of Loodiana
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 127 
 
 was not cured ; it seemed to have depended on deeper 
 causes. Indeed, for a considerable period it became worse 
 and worse, and caused the almost total abandonment of 
 the military station. I have several times had occasion to 
 note a very severe and distressing form of unhealthiness to 
 which I have never seen that medical attention has been 
 sufficiently directed. It is neither a permanent endemic 
 disease, nor a mere epidemic in the ordinary sense, but a 
 slow wave of malignant fever which comes without intelli- 
 gible cause, remains a few years, and then goes away again. 
 That was what took place at Khytul, that was what took 
 place at Loodiana, and that was what, in later years, took 
 place on a larger scale in Bengal, when a wave of very 
 serious fever advanced over great districts like a slow tide, 
 and after afflicting them for some years, left them as it 
 passed farther on. It might possibly have been that the 
 coming and going of the river affected Loodiana, though 
 I am satisfied that was not the real cause. But there was 
 not a trace of such a change in Khytul. And in Bengal, 
 where it was attempted to attribute the disease to the 
 stoppage of the drainage by the railway embankments, that 
 could have but a very partial and local effect ; there must 
 have been some much more widely acting cause. We 
 made all sorts of inquiry without result ; the world still 
 knows very little of the causes of disease ; but I do think 
 that this particular form of it deserves very sustained 
 attention. I was myself a victim to this Loodiana fever ; 
 before I had been very long there I had a pretty serious 
 illness, and though I recovered and got to my work 
 again I was not at all what I had been before the 
 attack. 
 
 What with this illness, and the additional duty thrown 
 upon me by the Thuggee department, I should not have got 
 through my work if I had not had much excellent assistance. 
 Brandreth for a time remained to assist me, and I had a 
 very excellent assistant in R. H. Davies, afterwards Sir 
 Henry Davies, Lieu tenant -Governor of the Punjaub, and 
 now a member of the Council of India. I long maintained
 
 128 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 a correspondence with him, and much valued his friendship. 
 In the spring of 1850 the Government, seeing how much I 
 had suffered, and having occasion to make an arrangement 
 to help the new Commissioner, Edmonstone, to get rid of the 
 immense arrears which he had found on taking charge, 
 proposed that I should go up for the hot months to assist 
 him in disposing of them at the hill station of Kussowlee, 
 on the outer range between Simla and the plains ; so that 
 arrangement was carried out, and I left Loodiana and went up 
 to Kussowlee. On getting to work I was horrified at the 
 number of reports, on which I had prided myself, which I 
 found hopelessly buried in Mackeson's arrears. It was 
 rather sad work digging up that charnel-house of my most 
 cherished bantlings. Kussowlee is a very good climate, and 
 not a bad place ; in and around it several European 
 regiments are quartered. And I used to go over to Simla 
 a good deal. Officially my position was rather indefinite ; I 
 had no distinct charge or responsibility of my own, but 
 I was on very friendly terms with Edmonstone, and I 
 obtained a good insight into the work of the office which 
 I myself filled later, after my return from England. My 
 health did not improve by the change to Kussowlee. I 
 always have hated the hills in the rainy season, and I had 
 reminders of my Loodiana fever. The upshot of it was 
 that the doctors recommended my going home on furlough ; 
 my thoughts had been already a good deal turned that way ; 
 and it was settled that I should go at the end of the hill 
 season. Before starting, I took part in a conference of civil 
 officers at Roopur on the Sutlej, at the foot of the hills, 
 where the Governor -General joined us, and the future 
 administration of the Punjaub was much discussed. There, 
 too, I met John Lawrence, the Rising Sun, and parted from 
 him on very friendly terms. Then I proceeded on my 
 journey homewards. I had already conceived a desire to 
 know and understand the system of administration in all 
 the different parts of India ; I visited as many places as 
 possible on my way down to Calcutta, and had a plan for a 
 little tour in Madras and Bombay before embarking, but it
 
 ii THE SIKH COUNTRY 129 
 
 turned out that I was scarcely well enough for this latter 
 plan, and I had to defer it till later. 
 
 At this time I first saw something of the working of 
 the districts under the Bengal Government, and had an 
 opportunity of comparing them with our up-country man- 
 agement, and I did compare them, very much to the 
 advantage of the latter. After a short stay at Patna I 
 penetrated into Bengal proper to visit my brother Charles, 
 then magistrate of the Moorshedabad district, and found 
 him in great force, and hardly conscious of his misfortune 
 in being a mere Bengal officer. We of the upper country 
 had a strong belief that nothing good could come out of 
 Bengal we believed the climate to be execrable, and the 
 official system as bad. I expressed then surprise to find my 
 brother and some others looking remarkably healthy and 
 well, and no doubt he was a zealous officer ; but after 
 looking into the matter I still pronounced the official 
 system to be very inferior, as in fact it was. The Bengal 
 administration had been started before we much understood 
 India, and had been managed very much on the laissez faire 
 system, while we had an active executive control. I con- 
 ceded so much to my brother that he was really very good 
 indeed for a Bengal magistrate, but still I added that 
 " things are not in the order here that they are in the upper 
 country, and the difference is greater than I siipposed, 
 especially in the Revenue Department. Thomason's hair 
 would stand on end to see a Bengal collector's office." 
 
 I was also a few days in Calcutta, whither my brother 
 accompanied me, and saw a good many people there. 
 Another Fife man, Drinkwater Bethune of Balfour, was 
 then legal Member of Council. He had been the Attorney- 
 General's devil, and was then sent to India. Among the 
 distinguished legal luminaries were a good many friends and 
 proteges of Lord Campbell's Sir Edward Eyan, Sir Erskine 
 Perry, and others whose friendship I have been very glad 
 to have had. From Calcutta I embarked for Europe in 
 January 1851, having completed eight years' residence in 
 India, and being then in the 27th year of my age. 
 
 VOL. I K
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 FURLOUGH 1851-1854 
 
 I RECOVERED my health on the voyage homewards, and 
 commenced my furlough, disembarking at Malta ; and from 
 thence passing over to do Italy before going on to England. 
 I there found a state of things which has long ago passed 
 away the kingdom of Naples still existed, and the temporal 
 power, still in name at any rate, remained at Eome under 
 the guardianship of foreign troops. It was not till nearly 
 ten years later, in 1860 I think, that on another voyage, 
 passing Marsala, a Neapolitan man-of-war bore down upon 
 the P. and 0. steamer with great demonstration of vigour to 
 prevent us from revolutionising Europe ; but within twenty- 
 four hours or less, Garibaldi quietly landed without moles- 
 tation at that very place, and upset the throne of Naples. 
 However, some few things, Vesuvius and Capri, etc., remain 
 intact. I did them all vigorously, thinking that I beat the 
 record in doing thoroughly all about Naples, with Vesuvius 
 and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and all the rest, in three 
 days, and Rome with equal thoroughness in another couple 
 of days. But I met Fife friends in Eome, then a greater 
 British resort than I think it now is, and was induced to stay 
 on a little time there in a dilettante way. So I had an 
 opportunity of seeing something of the Roman society of those 
 days. I remember the Cardinals playing whist in their 
 red stockings, and looking perfectly happy and content in 
 spite of the recent misfortunes of Eome. I then worked 
 north through Italy and up to Paris, where I had the
 
 CHAP, in FURLOUGH 1851-1854 131 
 
 satisfaction of seeing Louis Napoleon, then gradually 
 establishing his power. I had been working hard to get 
 up my French, and consulted the waiter as to what play 
 I should go and see ; he recommended the Dame aux 
 Gamaliels, then a new piece. I understood it very 
 imperfectly, but for all that was more touched than I 
 thought I could have been by the acting of Doche and 
 Techter, and almost felt for my pocket-handkerchief. But 
 when I went to see Eachel I did not think so much of 
 her. I reached England in March, and after a short visit 
 to my parents, they accompanied me back to London ; after 
 which I established myself there for the rest of the season. 
 There could hardly be a more complete change of life than 
 that which I now experienced, for through almost all the 
 years since my earliest youth, in spite of occasional episodes, 
 little breaks in the Governor-General's camp, and the like, 
 I had lived a jungly Indian life, far from the haunts of 
 society, and almost of white men. Now I was suddenly 
 thrown into the centre of the London world. My uncle 
 Lord Campbell, after a long official career, and several years 
 in the Cabinet, had then commenced that function of Chief 
 Justice of England, which, undertaken at the age of seventy, 
 he executed with such illustrious success. His house and 
 good offices were open to me, as they always had been to all 
 my father's children, and I owed to his wife, Lady Stratheden, 
 that unvarying kindness with which she always treated us. 
 My sisters were married, and the elder had a conspicuous 
 house in London, where I met many interesting people. My 
 father and mother still lived in Eife, and afforded me there 
 a home in the summer. For the next three years I had 
 great opportunities for seeing all that was best in British 
 society, law and politics. But others can relate these 
 things much better than I can, and I do not attempt to say 
 much of them here. I will confine myself to a few notes of 
 matters personal to myself. 
 
 Almost the first public spectacle that I saw was the 
 opening of the great Exhibition of 1851, where I was very 
 advantageously placed. Exhibitions being then not so
 
 132 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 common as in later days, I interested myself in this one a 
 good deal. 
 
 Looking back, and remembering how omnivorous in 
 respect of information I have always been, I am rather 
 surprised that I do not seem to have taken more to British 
 and European politics. But I do not think it was a 
 specially interesting time politically ; I remember nothing 
 more exciting than Lord John's chalking up " No Popery," 
 and the quarrel between Lord Palmerston and Lord John, 
 and matters of that kind ; and though in the latter part of 
 my time at home the Crimean war was brewing, I had not 
 then applied myself to Eastern-European affairs as I after- 
 wards did. In truth, throughout my time at home, my 
 heart was still very much in India. I expected to go back 
 there. One of the periodical revisions of the Company's 
 Charter was about to take place, and I interested myself 
 more in Indian than in European politics. I conceived the 
 idea of supplying a want which then seemed to exist of a 
 sort of handbook to the Government of India, in the shape 
 of a summarised description of the way in which that great 
 dependency was managed, and of getting it out in anticipa- 
 tion of the Parliamentary Inquiry. I am dreadfully wanting 
 in the faculty of idleness, and very soon, amid the distrac- 
 tions of society, I began to collect materials in view to my 
 project, and to piece them together. I think that in those 
 days the India Office was managed in a more paternal way 
 than it now is. The Directors at Leadenhall Street looked 
 more upon their servants as their own special belongings 
 and as forming a great official family ; and men returning 
 home were always welcome at the India Office. I obtained 
 there the utmost facility for learning all those things that 
 I wanted to learn about parts of India with which I was 
 not personally acquainted. 
 
 After spending the summer with my family in Scotland, 
 and renewing my acquaintance with many Scotch people 
 and things, I returned to London, and set myself seriously 
 to work on my projected volume on Modern India. I lived 
 close to and very much in the Oriental Club, where I came
 
 in FURLOUGH 1851-1854 133 
 
 into contact with several historical Anglo-Indians. In 
 particular I remember Holt Mackenzie, a great authority, to 
 whom has always been deservedly given the credit of having 
 devised the system under which the North-West Provinces 
 were settled ; a settlement which has been the model of 
 subsequent Indian settlements, and may be said to have 
 been the foundation of our present Indian system. Regula- 
 tion VII. of 1822, the Charter of Indian landed rights, was 
 his work. But it was not completely effective till, a few 
 years later, the Settlement Procedure was simplified, and 
 the machinery was provided by admitting natives to higher 
 office as Deputy Collectors. There was a curious gap in 
 the employment of natives in recognised high office between 
 the days when they held the highest offices and rank and 
 we merely dry-nursed them, and the days when we pro- 
 moted them to considerable office in our service. Between 
 these two epochs a generation passed in which we attempted 
 to do the whole work with an absurdly inadequate staff of 
 recognised officials all Europeans. It was in Lord W. 
 Bentinck's time (1830 to 1835) that there was commenced 
 on a large scale the system of employing natives in re- 
 sponsible British offices, which has since been largely 
 extended, and will, I hope, continue to extend. 
 
 But soon I had another function, that of Associate of 
 the Court of Queen's Bench, to which I was appointed by 
 Lord Campbell, without, I believe, any jobbery or nepotism 
 whatever. The Associateship was a very ancient office, and 
 indeed much more dignified in law than it was in practice. 
 An old statute of one of the early Edwards required the Judges 
 to " associate with themselves a discreet knight " in each 
 county a lay assessor, in fact. I was that " discreet knight," 
 and consequently there was required only a certain lay 
 discretion, not legal qualifications. I flattered myself that 
 my official practice had made me at least good enough to 
 pass for a discreet knight. I had some qualms of conscience 
 as to whether, even when on furlough, I was not bound to 
 reserve all my energies of mind and body for the Company 
 to whom I had covenanted myself away. I applied
 
 134 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 officially to know whether I could accept a temporary office 
 for the office was then temporary, held at the pleasure of 
 the Chief Justice for the time being and I was told that 
 the Company did not interfere with the employment of 
 their servants when on furlough. 
 
 Though I was, as I have said, in law a dignified asses- 
 sor, and the decrees of the Court ran in my name, coupled 
 with that of the Chief Justice (or Judge trying the case), I 
 was in practice a sort of clerk of the Court, and personal 
 assistant to the Chief Justice. I had only to do with nisi 
 prius sittings ; that is, the trial of original cases by a judge 
 and jury. I had nothing to do with the sittings in banco, 
 and consequently no concern with the trial of questions of 
 law ; I only saw that so far as was incidental to the plead- 
 ings on the questions of fact. I was Associate only for 
 London and Middlesex ; there were no Associates in other 
 counties. I do not know how the statute was got over 
 there. Besides the trial of the ordinary cases I often had 
 the very important cases brought to the Court of Queen's 
 Bench by the writ of certiorari. I had an office where 
 cases were entered for trial, and where the cause lists and 
 lists for the day were made out, and documents received. 
 And I generally sat in Court and did the formal part of the 
 business down to the taking the verdict of the jury. But I 
 am bound to say that though " associated with the Judge 
 according to the form of the statute," nobody consulted me 
 or had the smallest regard to my opinion in the matter. 
 Consequently I had a good deal of time on my hands during 
 a long trial, and having a considerable power of abstracting 
 myself I was able to do a good deal of my own work. I 
 wrote a good deal of Modern India in Court. I had to 
 make an abstract of the pleadings for the use of the Judge, 
 and thus came to know a good deal of the way in which 
 cases were conducted. I had during two years the advan- 
 tage of sitting at the feet of the Chief Justice of England, 
 in at any rate a legal atmosphere. I saw a good deal of the 
 other Judges too, and considered myself a sort of keeper of 
 the Judges. There was that very popular man and Judge,
 
 in FURLOUGH 1851-1854 135 
 
 Erie, afterwards Chief Justice, and Pattison, of well-known 
 fame, and Crompton, a very pleasant and friendly man. I 
 set aside my own work to listen to many interesting cases, 
 and there was always enough to do to keep me more or less 
 on the alert. I heard, too, all the most eminent counsel of 
 the day Sir Alexander Cockburn, the most eloquent of his 
 generation ; Thesiger, solid, but not so eloquent ; Kelly ; the 
 " blushing " Bramwell, whom I much preferred as a counsel 
 to his present role of a polemical writer ; Edwin James, who 
 has disappeared from the scene ; Serjeant Shee; Hawkins, the 
 most employed of juniors ; Wills, and many others. I was 
 paid by fees, the right to which I believe was regulated by 
 nothing but custom, and I suspect that they were originally 
 something very like the gratifications taken by native em- 
 ployes in India, and which (when we find them out) we call 
 bribery and corruption, and deal very severely with. How- 
 ever, in my case the fees were moderate, and regulated by 
 the Judges, and my emoluments were not excessive. Soon 
 after the office was put on a permanent footing and paid by 
 salary, all fees being accounted for to the Treasury. And 
 in quite modern days it has been abolished altogether, the 
 Associates being absorbed among the Masters of the Court 
 by a statute containing an extraordinary provision, inserted 
 in the House of Lords, that while they were to have the 
 increased pay and other advantages of Masters, they were 
 not to be required to do any work beyond what they had 
 been accustomed to do without their own consent. Verily 
 in England there are still strange ideas about vested rights 
 and betterments. However, I think that the last of the 
 privileged Associates have now disappeared, and it has been 
 discovered that so many Masters were totally unnecessary. 
 The ancient office of Associate has gone, but for all that 
 some one must still do the substantial work which I used to 
 do. Besides the work of Associate in London and Middle- 
 sex, I used to go circuit with the Lord Chief Justice as 
 Marshal, but that is quite a separate office appointed for 
 each circuit pro hoc vice. The Marshal is only an aide-de- 
 camp to the Judge, takes care of him, looks up his lodgings,
 
 136 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 makes the tea, and carves the joint. I used to feel on circuit 
 that I was rather out of it, having nothing whatever to do 
 with the judicial proceedings, instead of being the " boss " 
 of the show, and very civilly addressed by attorneys as I 
 was in London and Middlesex. But on the other hand, as 
 Lord Campbell's aide-de-camp, I saw a good deal of the best 
 houses and best county society in England on these occa- 
 sions. During my English judicial career I did make myself 
 a sort of sham lawyer by eating my dinners for the Bar, but 
 I have always been very much opposed to introducing any 
 of the peculiarities and technicalities of English law into 
 India or any other country. I studied no law whatever, 
 and was called solely on the strength of eating my dinners 
 there was no examination then. At the same time I do 
 believe that the English nisi prius trial is really the best 
 part of the system, and that I was fortunate in seeing a 
 good deal of that practice. My impression is that in that 
 matter the English system has some advantages over the 
 Scotch, though in other matters, and especially in criminal 
 inquiries and trials, I fancy that we are much superior in 
 Scotland. Although I believe that the jury is an immensely 
 overrated institution, and now getting somewhat out of date, 
 especially the unanimous jury, I must say that in London 
 and Middlesex juries seemed to have a knack of hitting it off 
 remarkably well. They used to agree together upon an equit- 
 able settlement with wonderful facility, and in a way which 
 I believe is not possible either in Scotland, France, or India. 
 I thought that even if the English common law plead- 
 ings were too curt, and showed too little of the hand and 
 real case of the party, they were at any rate very clear and 
 incisive, and opened one's mind a good deal to the logic of 
 pleading. A new Procedure Act was passed in my time, 
 and the giving effect to the changes was an interesting exer- 
 cise. I think the old pleadings illustrated by the kettle 
 with the hole in it l were then rendered impossible. 
 
 1 Pleas first, that he never borrowed the kettle ; second, that the hole 
 was there when he borrowed it ; third, that there was no hole when he re- 
 turned it.
 
 in FURLOUGH 1851-1854 137 
 
 After I returned to India I made a good deal of use, in 
 my judicial functions, of the elementary knowledge which I 
 "obtained at this time. And when the tide turned against 
 me, and, being in political disgrace, that was done which 
 was not unfrequently done in India, and sometimes in this 
 country too under such circumstances that is, I was made a 
 Judge of I furbished up my Queen's Bench experience, 
 posed as a rather experienced legal hand, and largely in- 
 structed my subordinates in the principles of jurisprudence, 
 although at the same time I was very careful entirely to 
 repudiate English law. 
 
 When my sketch of Modern India was approaching com- 
 pletion my uncle introduced me to Mr. Murray, who con- 
 sented to publish it. It came out in the spring of 1852, 
 just in the nick of time when Indian affairs were coming to 
 the front, and people wanted something of the kind. So it 
 was a success, was reviewed well, sold well, and very greatly 
 improved my position in London. Many men whose good 
 opinion I greatly valued were very kind and complimentary 
 about it. It was much quoted, and took its place in a 
 great many libraries. To this day I am proud to know 
 that when people want something of the kind, and look up 
 old indexes, librarians are apt to produce Campbell's Modern 
 India, but of course it is now quite out of date. The mul- 
 titude of modern books about India is now very great, and 
 to learn all about it involves a great deal of desultory 
 reading. 
 
 Sir Charles Trevelyan, as an older man who had served 
 in India, gave me much encouragement when I was bringing 
 out my book. I came to know Sir Charles Wood well ; he 
 was then, and for long, the Whig head of Indian affairs, and 
 was always very kind to me. Though he had not the gift 
 of eloquence, I really do believe that he was an excellent 
 administrator, and he came to have a knowledge of Indian 
 affairs unrivalled among British statesmen. I saw a great 
 deal of many distinguished Anglo-Indians, Directors of the 
 East India Company, and others. At the India Office there 
 was Butterworth Bayley, who had been a great power in
 
 138 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 India in his day ; Eoss Mangles, who was also a member of 
 Parliament (as were one or two other Directors), and other 
 notables of those days. I think the position of an East 
 India Director, who had also a seat in Parliament, was a 
 peculiarly agreeable one, combining as it did practical Indian 
 work with the position of a legislator. The canvassing by 
 which a seat in the Direction was obtained was detestable ; 
 but once obtained the position was delightful. I speak 
 feelingly, for I was obliged to choose between the two, 
 and perhaps I chose the worse part. On public grounds 
 I really believe that it was an extremely good thing that 
 some of the Directors should sit in Parliament. They re- 
 presented a real experience of what was going on at the 
 moment, whereas now India is represented only by a party 
 man belonging to the Government of the day, and to a cer- 
 tain extent by old Indians who are out of the official groove, 
 and have not access to present official knowledge. I know 
 that to our party men the presence in Parliament of any 
 sort of independent official is not agreeable ; it is contrary 
 to English party traditions ; but as a matter of fact I do 
 not remember any case in which the presence of East India 
 Directors gave rise to undesirable clashing and difficulties. 
 The principal drawback to the position of a Director was, I 
 think, the patronage ; they were terribly pestered for appoint- 
 ments. People value much more what they get as a gift or 
 a job than what they obtain in an honest way., and it seems 
 very curious that although the present Indian Staff Corps 
 is an infinitely better thing than was the line of the Indian 
 army, it has been at times rather difficult to get the Staff 
 Corps filled, whereas the East India Directors were so beset 
 by applications for cadetships that it was found necessary 
 to prohibit the entrance of ladies into the India Office, espe- 
 cially widows. In one view the patronage was very con- 
 venient for a member, particularly for a Scotch constituency, 
 for when the electorate was in the hands of the upper and 
 middle classes, an East India Director was very welcome 
 there, and had a very secure seat. My maternal grand- 
 father was a good old Tory I hope not a jobber, as most
 
 in FURLOUGH 1851-1854 139 
 
 Tories are but he had a large hand in putting into Parlia- 
 ment, and keeping there, a Balcarres Lindsay, who was also an 
 East India Director, in the unregenerate days when Keform 
 Bills had not been heard of. He had nineteen children, 
 and by a coincidence most of them were provided for in the 
 service of the East India Company, where I am confident 
 that they did excellent service to their country. 
 
 Apart from the question of patronage, which might 
 have been settled, not only was the presence in Parliament 
 of individual Directors a good thing, but also I believe 
 that the old East India Office had great public advantages 
 as a buffer between Parliament and the people of India, 
 and I may also say between Ministers and India. In 
 the rare cases in which there was very serious disagree- 
 ment, it was probably good that an independent power 
 should have a certain authority. And even if in some 
 cases the Government had the power to obtain the enforce- 
 ment of their orders by a " mandamus," the necessity for 
 doing so acted as a deterrent, and they were apt to give in 
 if their position was not a very strong one. It would have 
 been much better for India if in some cases the Govern- 
 ment had not had the power to send out orders in the 
 Secret Department without the concurrence or even the 
 knowledge of the Court of Directors. As I have said, 
 the system under whicli Directors were elected was detest- 
 able, and it may be a question whether an improved 
 method could have been found ; but at any rate I am far 
 from admitting that the transfer of the Government of 
 India to the Crown, even when the Minister is assisted by 
 a consultative council, has been wholly and indisputably 
 a benefit. 
 
 After the first few months, during which I utilised the 
 Oriental Club, I moved down to apartments in Jermyn 
 Street, was elected a member of Brooks's, and lived a good 
 deal there. Perhaps it is youth that " lends enchantment 
 to the view," but I appreciated Brooks's more than in later 
 years. I used to see there a good deal of some of the men
 
 140 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 of the old school, who were very kind to me ; old Lord 
 Landsdowne used to talk to me a good deal, and has left 
 a lasting impression upon my mind. Then there was 
 Lord Glenelg, a monument of ancient Indian history ; and 
 Sir John Cam Hobhouse (Lord Broughton) used to ask me 
 to his house, and to talk freely. 
 
 Through Lord Campbell I used to see all the Liberal 
 celebrities at any rate, and was taken to the Albany to be 
 introduced to Macaulay ; but I had not very much to 
 say upon political matters. Lord Palmerston (whom 
 I never admired) was extremely civil ; I did not get 
 beyond that ; but I have a lively recollection of Lady 
 Palmerston ; she certainly was a princess among hostesses. 
 I visited Paris, and had an opportunity of seeing some 
 of the people and the principal institutions there. I 
 took some trouble to acquaint myself with the system 
 of the French Courts, and watched jury trials going 
 on. The French juries did not seem to turn round in 
 the box and agree as easily as English juries did ; they 
 had to retire and consult very seriously. I confess that 
 I have not since been able to follow and understand 
 French affairs. 
 
 Later I visited Ireland in company with Lord 
 Campbell, who had the misfortune, very much against his 
 will, to become an Irish landlord, having lent money upon 
 mortgage without anticipating such a result. I then saw, 
 for the first time I think, something of the Irish fanners, 
 and that in the very most Irish part of the country, the 
 north of Gal way ; and coming from the highly cultivated 
 farms of Eastern Scotland I was astonished to see a some- 
 what barbarous people and barbarous agriculture, and found 
 it difficult to imagine how they could make a subsistence 
 upon their miserable little fields among the Galway rocks. 
 Yet, in spite of all that has been said, the Irish must have 
 a great deal of industry in their own way, or they never 
 could live and pay some sort of rent, to say nothing of 
 saving money, and giving good portions to their daughters, 
 as they not unfrequently do. I remembered, however, that
 
 in FURLOUGH 1851-1854 141 
 
 in the Himalayas the people carved out little fields with 
 still greater difficulty from the mountain side, cultivated 
 them with extreme economy and neatness, and lived by 
 them ; but then those Hindoos have a much older and 
 more developed civilisation. The Galway tenants welcomed 
 their landlord with much effusion, but I fancy that their 
 demonstrations were a good deal prompted by that kind 
 of gratitude which consists in a lively hope that rent will 
 not be pressed for. 
 
 In England a house of which I have a very pleasant 
 recollection was that of Lord and Lady Ashburton the 
 Lady Ashburton whose name was lately recalled in the 
 Carlyle papers. Anything more unlike her than the picture 
 there drawn I can scarcely conceive ; I can imagine her 
 laughing very heartily if she had known what Mrs. Carlyle 
 thought of her. She was no doubt given to lion -taming, 
 and I daresay took great care of Carlyle, and he, as all 
 men do, liked to be petted, I suppose. It was a great 
 privilege to visit their house, especially in the country. 
 Lady Ashburton did not deal exclusively in lions, and had 
 a great many of the most agreeable possible people ; she 
 was very agreeable and pleasant herself. Monsieur Thiers 
 was a frequent visitor at her house, and I two or three 
 times came upon the polite little round man, but my 
 French and my position did not justify my intruding upon 
 him to any extent. For the consolation of ladies who are 
 very ambitious of social position, I will recall only one 
 saying of Lady Ashburton's. I happened to remark how 
 pleasant it must be to receive so many clever and dis- 
 tinguished people as visitors. " Yes," she said, " but it is 
 very hard work for the mistress of the house to arrange 
 and look after parties, and then sometimes it is awfully 
 dull between times." 
 
 In the first year I used to see the old Duke of Welling- 
 ton, who was often at my sister's house. I only remarked 
 that he was a most scrupulously polite old gentleman of
 
 H2 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 the old school. It quite distressed me to see him rise 
 ceremoniously at a time when he almost seemed to be 
 held together by the notable buckle at the back of his 
 neck. But he rode with his groom behind him to the last. 
 I also at the same house became acquainted with most of 
 the distinguished ornaments of the Horse Guards, includ- 
 ing those who were afterwards well known in the Crimea 
 General Airey, old General Brown, and others. I met 
 Lord Fitzroy Somerset at Lord Hardinge's, and sitting 
 next him was pleased to find that he seemed to know 
 all about me. He was a very charming man, and I believe 
 in his then position unrivalled. Whether it was good for 
 him to become Lord Eaglan I cannot judge. 
 
 When the general election took place, some of my 
 friends asked me whether I ought not to have a try, and 
 I believe the Associate might have sat in Parliament, but 
 I looked to India, and for that time did not give way to 
 any such temptation. 
 
 I applied myself with renewed interest to the Parlia- 
 mentary discussion regarding the renewal of the East 
 India Company's Charter and the questions connected with 
 it, and occupied myself with a new volume, which 
 I brought out in 1853, under the title of India as it May 
 be. It was quite as successful as I could have expected, 
 but was not of a lasting character like my previous 
 volume. It was, in fact, a very big pamphlet setting forth 
 my view of the reforms which might be effected in all 
 departments. I could not expect any one to read it after 
 years had passed ; but still, when I look over it I am 
 satisfied to find how many of my suggestions and pre- 
 dictions have been fulfilled. I also gave evidence before 
 the Committee of Inquiry. 
 
 Throughout the years that I was at home I maintained 
 my domicile in Scotland, and spent my summers and 
 occasional vacations there not only living with my 
 parents, but also keeping in touch with things Scotch.
 
 in FURLOUGH 1851-1854 143 
 
 I wish some handy name for a " United Kingdom " could be 
 invented ; it is always a difficulty, especially in more 
 recent days. Even now as I write I find myself obliged 
 to be careful to use the terms " British " or " European." 
 For myself, holding as 1 have before said that the Scotch 
 are the true English, and that the modern English are only 
 a somewhat secondary offshoot whom we have annexed, 
 I should not mind using the term English generically ; but 
 it is apt to be misunderstood and misapplied. By the 
 beginning of 1854 I was due to return to India, but 
 I delayed a little to complete my terms and be called to 
 the Bar. And there was another matter which I put off 
 to the last, namely, to provide myself with a wife. That, 
 too, I managed at that time, and was married in London to 
 the lady who is still the comfort of my mature years. It 
 only remained to pay a last visit with my bride to my 
 parents in Scotland, and then I was ready to start. But 
 my last days were saddened by the state of my father's 
 health ; he was then of a ripe age, and had a fall from 
 his horse which alarmed his family. He recovered and 
 received us in good heart, but I could not but feel sad at 
 parting, and in fact very soon after he had a relapse and 
 was lost to us. 
 
 The delays which I have mentioned made it impossible 
 to arrive in India before the hot season, and it was 
 a question whether I could then take out a young wife. 
 But after a great deal of consideration and experience of 
 these matters, and a good many voyages to and from India, 
 I have come to the conclusion that half of the warm season 
 is not nearly so trying as the whole. In fact most people 
 go out when the cold season is well advanced, and very 
 soon come face to face with the long hot season. My 
 experience is that if you time your arrival so as just to 
 come at the beginning of the rains, you may get through 
 very well indeed. And if the Eed Sea is a little warmer, 
 it is made up to you by the abundant room you have in 
 the steamer, instead of being horribly crowded as at the
 
 144 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP, in 
 
 popular season. I followed the plan I have suggested, 
 and we arrived, via Venice and Suez and thence by 
 sea to Calcutta, on 16th June 1854, quite successfully, 
 my wife being not at all the worse. We found the 
 rain beginning to fall, and had nothing to try us very 
 much.
 
 CHAPTEK IV 
 
 SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 
 
 IN those days no appointments were retained on furlough, 
 and on my return I had to find a new appointment in one 
 or other of the provinces. I found that there had been 
 question of Lord Dalhousie's giving me an appointment 
 in Calcutta in connection with the Legislative Council, 
 perhaps in the idea that I had learnt law in England ; but 
 it was found that I was a fraud in point of law, and that 
 civil servants were in demand for their ordinary work, so 
 an English lawyer was appointed, and I had to find some- 
 thing else, nothing more being then available in Lord 
 Dalhousie's gift. I was glad then to be welcomed back to 
 the North-West Provinces by Mr. John Colvin, then the 
 Lieutenant-Governor, and that was the commencement of 
 relations with him, which I found very pleasant. He was 
 undoubtedly a very superior man. In former days he had 
 been private secretary to Lord Auckland, and was said to 
 have been one of the chief promoters of the unfortunate 
 Afghan War, on which account a certain stigma had 
 attached to him. But perhaps that was before it was 
 known how much that war was the policy of the Home 
 Government. And at any rate, whoever were the authors 
 of it, comparatively at least, there is something to be said 
 for them ; for then we did not know the Afghans, and the 
 Afghans did not know us so well, and were not so jealous 
 of us. It is when we think of the second Afghan War, 
 entered into with the fullest knowledge, that we cannot be 
 
 VOL. I L
 
 146 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 so hard on the authors of the first. Mr. Colvin got over 
 the imputation, rose high in the service, and in the years 
 preceding the Mutiny very successfully administered the 
 North- West Provinces. For the time he could only make 
 me magistrate and collector of a district, though he designed 
 me for something higher before long, and I was very glad 
 to get that districts in the regulation provinces were very 
 much better paid than in the new countries where I had 
 been before. I was posted to Azimghur in the Benares 
 province, a country new to me. North of the Ganges there 
 is a zone of country including a part of Oude, several 
 Benares districts, and a great part of Behar, which is the 
 most densely populated and perhaps the most completely 
 cultivated in all India. The lower classes are a very 
 decent set of people, who go out for service all over the 
 country, from Calcutta to Peshawar. It is wonderful how 
 they live on very small means. I remember inquiring into 
 the circumstances of a grass-cutter, who in his own country 
 had three rupees a month ; six shillings we would call it 
 then. I found that he was bringing up in decency and 
 respectability a fine family, who seemed quite well-fed. 
 Even if he had some small pickings at my expense it was 
 wonderful management. Their wants are very few, and as 
 long as famine does not come upon them they do not com- 
 plain. The soil of all that country is fertile, and besides 
 the ordinary crops a great deal of valuable opium and sugar 
 is produced. Azimghur was not a very large district, but 
 still there were considerably over a million and a half of 
 inhabitants without a single large town. There was no 
 military station, and only the usual complement of civilians 
 a judge, a magistrate, and two or three assistants. It was 
 rather quiet for a young wife, but we were then scarcely 
 out of our honeymoon. We had got some nice horses, and 
 she learnt to drive me. In one way and another we got 
 on very well for the few months that I was at Azimghur. 
 Then I was promoted to superior appointments, and she 
 never again was at small stations. I think too much of 
 solitary life is bad for a young woman in India ; a moderate
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 147 
 
 amount of it is all very well, but it is better that it should 
 not be too much prolonged. A woman has not the occu- 
 pations of a man. A man may want a wife to take care 
 of him in his early service, but if he can do without it is 
 better for the lady that he should wait. From that point 
 of view my advice would be : " Don't marry too soon." 
 
 We had a great misfortune at the commencement of 
 our career. We had got a large outfit in England, and all 
 the heavy portion of it was sent round the Cape, including 
 my wife's presents and treasures. The voyage was suc- 
 cessfully made ; the ship arrived near the Hooghly sand- 
 heads the tail of the bank. There were two vessels, and 
 they saw one pilot brig. They raced to get the pilot ; the 
 pilot from a distance saw that they were running into 
 imminent danger, and tried to signal them ; but they did 
 not understand. The ship that bore our fortunes just 
 caught the bank, tilted over, and went down in deep water 
 on the other side. The crew barely saved their lives, 
 and we were left to begin the world again. However, 
 people get on very well in a light unencumbered way in 
 India ; the bazaars are prolific ; iny wife behaved like a 
 heroine, and we managed to get on pretty well after all. 
 By a curious coincidence, on the overland route too, one 
 box that had been sent to meet us at Alexandria, containing 
 papers of mine, was also lost, so between the two mis- 
 fortunes I lost every shred of my papers and all my 
 books. My consolation was that I had put most of all 
 that I had gathered into the books that I had published. 
 Perhaps some people would be all the better if they lost all 
 their papers every now and then. 
 
 I was rather apprehensive of getting into too law-ridden 
 a district, and of becoming liable to actions against me in 
 the Supreme Court, the terror of energetic magistrates in 
 Bengal ; but I was agreeably surprised to find that there 
 was still a good deal of room for patriarchal rule in 
 Azimghur, and that I had considerable powers. Part 
 of the district was permanently settled after Benares was 
 acquired by the Company, and part, which had come from
 
 148 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 Oude in the beginning of the century, was under the North- 
 West Thirty Years' Settlement. I am always interested 
 in the tenure of land, and took a good deal of trouble to 
 examine that of Azimghur. The North-West system of 
 survey and record of rights had been introduced throughout 
 the district, whether permanently or temporarily settled. 
 A permanent settlement is no reason why rights and village 
 constitutions should not be recorded, and accordingly we 
 had these things in the Benares province just as much as 
 in other portions of the North- West, to the great peace and 
 quietude of the district, and facility of administration. It 
 is the absence of anything of the kind which has caused all 
 the confusion and difficulty in Bengal and Behar. I was 
 greatly interested in the work of the Patwarees, or village 
 registrars, in those comparatively old districts. They had 
 already learned to use maps and keep up the record of 
 holdings and liabilities. Afterwards, when I administered 
 Bengal, I made a beginning of something of the kind there ; 
 but the resistance was great, and no doubt to do it fully 
 would involve very large expense. In the sequence of the 
 reforms I commenced, an experimental survey and record of 
 certain districts was sanctioned, and was progressing very 
 satisfactorily ; but an old and able Bengal officer, a 
 " laudator temporis acti," or rather " non-acti," got into the 
 Council of India at home, and succeeded in knocking the 
 whole thing on the head ; so Bengal still remains in that 
 respect in its original primitive state. In the other pro- 
 vinces of India the system of survey and record has been 
 more and more perfected, till I believe that it is now the 
 most perfect that exists in the world. 
 
 I found that the Zemindars, recognised owners of the 
 soil, were in Azimghur much more numerous than I ex- 
 pected, and often much more nearly of the character of 
 peasant proprietors. It is one of the many instances 
 showing how much facts are made to conform to the 
 notions of individual administrators, that while the people, 
 the country, and the tenures were as nearly as possible 
 identical with those of Oude on one side and Behar on the
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 149 
 
 other, both Oude and Behar have been put under great 
 landlords, while Azimghur was mainly a country of small 
 holders. Though numerous they were not so much so, 
 nor organised in such complete democratic communities, 
 as in the Punjaub countries ; they were rather like the 
 communes described in a recent work on the Swiss Con- 
 federation, where there is within the commune a smaller 
 body, the " bourg," and the burghers are the owners and 
 managers of the communal property, while the commune 
 at large bears the more general public burdens. The old 
 hereditary ryots were exactly in the position of modern 
 Irish tenants, and, as in Ireland, there were demesne 
 lands where rights of cultivators did not accrue. There 
 was apt to be a great deal of difference on account of pro- 
 prietors trying to stretch the demesne lands, and so exclude 
 any record of rights of cultivators. There had grown up 
 too a good deal of the detestable Indian habit of holding 
 what is called " benamee "; that is, in another than the real 
 name. Men put their property in the names of their wives 
 or their children, or anybody else in whom they trust, in 
 order to avoid the effect of legal process. It is, I think, 
 a great misfortune under our regulation system that too 
 excessive power is given to the civil courts, and even when 
 the best settlement and record has been made it is not 
 final and conclusive litigious people are allowed to liti- 
 gate in the civil courts to set it aside, a never-ending 
 process. 
 
 It was very much with reference to what I had re- 
 marked in Azimghur that a few months later, when I was 
 acting as a sort of adviser to Mr. Colvin, I made a note 
 upon the subject of the compulsory transfer of rights in the 
 land by process to satisfy debts, a subject which the Mutiny 
 soon afterwards brought into painful prominence. I have 
 always taken a strong view of the need of protecting what I 
 may call old " status " rights from too rapid and summary 
 alienation under a system which the people have not come 
 to understand. It is attended with very great evils, both 
 social and political. But also, as I pointed out, when in
 
 150 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 course of time voluntary sales have become common, and 
 much land is held by modern purchase-owners, the time 
 comes when in regard to them the object rather is to intro- 
 duce cheap, free and easy sale. What a man has bought it 
 is better that he should be able to sell sale, I said, begets 
 sale, and referring to the state of things in France it may be 
 that the excessive subdivision by inheritance is only counter- 
 acted by a system of free sale, under which sharers who 
 desire to cultivate the soil may buy out those who desire to 
 follow other occupations. 
 
 My great achievement at Azimghur was the discovery 
 of a great system of cattle-poisoning carried on to an im- 
 mense and hitherto unsuspected extent in my own and the 
 neighbouring districts. It is very astonishing, under what 
 I may call the horizontal arrangement of society in India 
 that is, the system under which, in the same area, different 
 castes live one over the other without understanding one 
 another how it could be possible that an immense system 
 of crime, almost universally known to the members of one 
 class, could have been carried on at the expense of another, 
 and that the superior class, without the latter having the 
 least idea what was going on. There were vague suspicions, 
 but nothing more the death of the cattle was generally 
 set down to sickness and epidemic. The most numerous 
 lower class are the people called Chamars, technically 
 leather-workers, but really the main labouring class of the 
 country. They are scarcely Hindoos ; are almost beyond 
 the pale, and are very omnivorous and little particular ; will 
 eat dead animals and vermin ; and they make the best of 
 the skins, which they roughly prepare, and send in to the 
 leather-merchants. They have regular established village 
 perquisites, and one of the perquisites is the bodies and 
 skins of dead cattle. 
 
 The suspicion in regard to the large mortality among 
 the cattle was just so much as to put me on the watch. One 
 day the police caught a boy administering a ball to a 
 bullock. He was seized and frightened, and at last con-
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 151 
 
 fessed that it was poison. On analysis it turned out to be 
 arsenic mixed with flour. The boy being further questioned, 
 excused himself by telling us who the people were who had 
 put him up to the job. We got hold of several of them ; 
 some of them were induced to confess, and told us of 
 cases which were recognised as having actually occurred. 
 Then I at once brought into play my Thuggee experience. 
 To some of the most likely free pardons were offered on 
 condition of making full disclosures. The whole thing 
 came out a regularly organised system, ramified far and 
 wide. Confronted with those who had confessed, most of 
 the others confessed too in a marvellous way. " Yes," they 
 said, " everybody did it, and we did it too." One disclosure 
 led to a great many others, and so we traced the thing very 
 widely all over the country. As in the Thuggee cases, we 
 examined all the facts that the prisoners stated, ascertained 
 that cattle had really died under the circumstances they 
 described, and made sure that there was no unfair influence 
 to induce false confessions. The inquiry commenced in 
 October, and by the end of the calendar year 619 prisoners 
 had been convicted in my district alone, besides many after- 
 wards tried, and very many in neighbouring districts. The 
 astounding thing was that it should have gone on without 
 the injured people discovering it. They had exorcised evil 
 spirits, and resorted to all sorts of methods to stop the 
 mortality without avail, and thought it an inevitable fatality. 
 From what the prisoners told us we traced up the supply 
 of the poison, and found that it had been dealt in whole- 
 sale. There were two kinds of arsenic in the market 
 yellow arsenic, a compound of arsenic and sulphur, I believe, 
 used for many legitimate purposes painting, preserving, 
 and the like ; and the purer white arsenic, which seemed 
 to be used for little else than poison. The trade in this 
 latter had very largely increased in the past two or three 
 years. The Calcutta Custom-house returns showed a great 
 increase, and a very large proportion of it was sent to the 
 up-country marts in our neighbourhood. One rural dealer 
 alone admitted that his books showed the sale of over a
 
 152 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 hundred maunds, nearly four tons, in the course of a year. 
 I could not believe that the dealers could have sold such 
 large quantities without some knowledge that it was being 
 used for illegitimate purposes, especially as a good many of 
 them were also engaged in the leather trade, and collected 
 large numbers of skins, the result of the system which 
 was being carried on. I would have liked to have had 
 them punished too, but the judicial authorities did not see 
 it, and I did not succeed in obtaining any convictions 
 against the dealers. However, the affair made a great deal 
 of noise at the time, and I think the effect in putting down 
 the system was very great. Nearly twenty years later, I 
 was rather gratified when, in reply to inquiries made by the 
 Government of Bengal, the Bengal magistrates reported 
 that they gathered that in former days there had been a 
 large trade in arsenic, but that somewhere up-country in the 
 Benares province strong measures had been taken, and it 
 was now very greatly decreased. 
 
 These arsenic cases were a very plain and simple mode 
 of poisoning, common to a great part of the world. But 
 many of the natives are undoubtedly capable of a much 
 more refined and high -art style of poisoning. They use 
 vegetable poisons, which we can hardly trace by analysis, 
 with great effect. At one place a considerable system of 
 killing camels by poisoning was discovered, in which the 
 poisoners all said that they did it by a mere puncture with 
 a poisoned weapon in a delicate part of the body, and 
 they were corroborated in all their assertions that were 
 capable of being tested the camels certainly died without 
 any other ascertainable cause. Undoubtedly the natives 
 killed tigers with poisoned arrows set in a trap. 
 
 My fear was and is that what was so easily done to 
 animals may be done to human beings too, although the 
 circumstances are such that it is comparatively rarely that 
 these cases are found out. Both at the time of which I am 
 speaking, and for some years afterwards (and I rather think 
 it still goes on), the crime that we had most difficulty in 
 dealing with was robbery by drugging and poisoning. They
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 153 
 
 operated very much like the Thugs, ingratiating themselves 
 with travellers, and then drugging them and carrying off 
 their goods ; but they were not so diabolical, and generally 
 used a concoction in such a way that many of the travellers 
 after a time recovered when their friends were well away 
 with the property. Yet there did not seem to be the same 
 organisation the cases did not hang together so much as 
 those I have described. When we found out one or two 
 cases we never seemed to get any farther. For a good 
 many years, drugging cases were a terrible trouble to my 
 mind. 
 
 In the cattle inquiry, one of the prisoners admitted that 
 he had put poison into the food of a family, but nobody 
 died ; and when we went into the matter, it curiously 
 turned out that that food had been presented to a neighbour- 
 ing spirit. The owners of the spirit had some other offerings 
 besides ; they were all mixed together, and though the 
 spirit owners and their party were taken excessively ill, no 
 one died. 
 
 As regards domestic poisoning, the difficulty is that, in 
 consequence of our inability to interfere in the privacy of 
 families, the extreme rapidity with which bodies are disposed 
 of in that climate, the religious character of the rites, and above 
 all the practice of cremation, it is almost impossible to 
 discover anything of the kind. I think I have mentioned 
 the very advantageous position occupied by a widow without 
 sons ; and even if the wives do not avail themselves of the 
 maxim " Nothing venture nothing win," there are always 
 many people about them who profit immensely by a widow 
 holding. The number of estates held by widows certainly 
 seems extraordinarily large. In Bengal, too, it does seem 
 that a very large proportion of the properties are in the 
 hands of widows ; and some people think that, if careful 
 statistics were taken, they would point to an abnormal 
 mortality of husbands, just as a deficiency of girls in a 
 census points to female infanticide. 
 
 At the time of the Azimghur cases I pressed very much 
 for a law regulating the sale of poisons in India, but the
 
 154 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 Government of India would not have it ; and though in after 
 years in various capacities I returned again and again to 
 the charge, the Secretaries always turned up the previous 
 correspondence, and the Governor - General in Council 
 always saw no reason to depart from the decision of his 
 predecessors. When I came to have a legislature of my 
 own in Bengal, I would have done it there fast enough, 
 but then the Penal Code was in force throughout India, and 
 I had no power to alter its provisions. So to this day the 
 sale of poisons in a great part of India remains, I believe, 
 entirely uncontrolled. 
 
 In my annual report of the criminal administration of 
 Azimghur, I claimed for it very creditable police results. 
 In that country, long in our possession, without any formal 
 disarming, the use of arms had almost entirely gone out. I 
 reported that there had hardly been a single breach of the 
 peace in which guns or swords had been used. The people 
 are pretty pugnacious, and no doubt the long iron-bound 
 sticks which they use called " lathees " are pretty formidable 
 weapons. There had been some half a dozen cases in which 
 by the use of them in affrays deaths had occurred. But 
 the clear ascertainment of boundaries and rights, the record 
 of them and their protection by the law, rendered the 
 occasion for affrays extremely rare ; it is the absence of any 
 record of rights which makes quarrels so much more frequent 
 in a Bengal district. Some murders about women and for 
 such like causes will occur in the best regulated districts, 
 and I am rather puzzled to see how extraordinarily rare they 
 were in Azimghur in that year I hope people did not take 
 it out in poison. As respects crimes against property, there 
 was not a single Dacoity ; and of six highway robberies 
 (apart from three or four drugging cases) five were brought 
 to justice. Altogether, as I was not in charge the whole 
 year, and cannot suppose that in a few months I made any 
 great change, I may say that I think the police of the 
 district was then really very fairly efficient. It is true that 
 it was out of the main routes of traffic, and so rather a
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 155 
 
 more favourable specimen than the average ; but altogether 
 throughout Northern India in those pre-mutiny days I do 
 not think that serious crime was at all excessive. I rather 
 think that a comparison with more modern times may be 
 decidedly in favour of that ancient era. No doubt we have 
 never very efficiently dealt with ordinary thefts and the 
 simple burglaries so common in India ; the digging through 
 a mud wall, or making a hole in a thatch and abstracting 
 the property of simple people, I am afraid there will always 
 be a good deal of that till our whole system is very much 
 improved. In some of my former districts the thieves had 
 been very expert. Eound the cantonment of Kurnal, which 
 closely adjoined the intermixed Sikh jurisdictions, a highly 
 qualified guild of professional thieves had grown up ; and 
 when the troops moved forward to Umballa, the thieves 
 moved on with them too ; we had great difficulty in putting 
 them down. The magistrate himself could not rest in camp 
 without putting his valuables and horses in immediate charge 
 of a sentry. Stories are told of high -placed officers who got 
 up in the morning (their heavy goods having gone on over- 
 night) and found that they had no clothes to march in. 
 They took mine out of my tent one night, and I did not 
 know whether to be pleased or mortified when I found that 
 they had turned them over, and finding them not worth 
 stealing, had left them under a tree close by. I believe that 
 the old story of stealing the sheets from under a man while 
 he was asleep has actually been verified for a bet. They 
 tickle the sleeper with a feather and make him turn over. 
 There is one maxim with regard to Indian thieves which 
 prudent people generally follow, and that is, cough and give 
 the alarm, and get somebody to catch him if you can, but 
 be careful not to seize him yourself, even if you have the 
 chance, or possibly you may have a knife into you. They 
 oil their bodies and are as slippery as eels. 
 
 In all parts of the world the police are apt to be abused ; 
 they have a very difficult game to play, between the pressure 
 upon them to catch criminals, and the severity against them 
 if they show over-zeal or a vigour beyond the law. There
 
 156 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 was afterwards a disposition to condemn our pre-mutiny 
 police as terribly bad and corrupt, but I do not think it was 
 at all justified. Immaculate they were not, but on the 
 whole the system was tolerably good. I don't think they 
 were in any way materially worse than their successors, and 
 my impression is that they dealt with crime a good deal 
 better. One want there was there was no special head of the 
 police of each district ; the magistrate of the district usually 
 kept that principally in his own hands. But he had so 
 many other things to attend to that he could hardly do it 
 all quite efficiently. There was a want of a special police 
 assistant, European or native, to the magistrate so much 
 would certainly have been beneficial. But after the Mutiny 
 there was a cry against natives and native police ; a good 
 many young Europeans of sorts had done more or less good 
 service with volunteers and in irregular ways, they were a 
 good deal connected with the press, and the cry all was 
 " Get rid of the corrupt natives and put in these fine 
 deserving honest young European gentlemen." There were, 
 too, a great many unemployed military officers of the native 
 army which had mutinied, and many advocated a military 
 police on the Irish model. In fact, for some purposes, a 
 military police was exceedingly handy and convenient to 
 those local governments which had no native armies of their 
 own. We greatly disliked applying to the Commander-in- 
 Chief for small jobs, even when we had not to deal with 
 such firebrands as Sir Charles Napier, or honest military 
 enthusiasts as Sir Colin Campbell at best the headquarters 
 people always will bring in the art of war and the rules of 
 strategy, and insist upon a much larger and more completely 
 equipped force than we think necessary. If we ever had 
 little wars upon our hands, we very much preferred to be 
 able to manage them ourselves in our own rough-and-ready 
 way. And for the guarding of treasure, preventing out- 
 breaks in gaols and the like, a drilled police took the place 
 of the native army. But for real civil police work, military 
 equipment and the military spirit is nothing but a hindrance 
 and an encumbrance. A policeman's work is entirely different
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 157 
 
 from a soldier's ; military stiffness and honour stand very 
 much in the way of coping with thieves on their own 
 ground a good soldier often makes an extremely bad 
 policeman. Ordinarily in India there is not the smallest 
 need of a quasi-military force to keep down the population 
 as there is in Ireland. However, after the Mutiny, new 
 police forces were established all over India under European 
 officers, some more, some less military, and it was supposed 
 we were to come to a kind of millennium in regard to crime. 
 Then it was said we must make the police independent of 
 those charged with judicial functions, upon the clap-trap 
 maxim that the same man must not be thief-taker and judge, 
 which is not really carried out in full in any country, not 
 even in England. It was sought to make the superintendent 
 of police as independent of the magistrate of the district as 
 the Commander-in-Chief is of the Civil Governor in regard to 
 military affairs, and there was danger of the real control of 
 the district drifting away from the experienced magistrate 
 to a police officer who might or might not be qualified for 
 such a task. 
 
 There was also an important change in the police 
 procedure. Hitherto our magistrates had been what the 
 French would call a sort of juges d' instruction, and the 
 police a police judiciale. They used to do very much 
 what is done by a procurator-fiscal under the direction of 
 the Sheriff in Scotland. Their duty was not only to catch 
 criminals, but to sift the case and protect the innocent. 
 They recorded the statements made in the first instance, 
 and sent those in at once to the magistrate. In the decision 
 of a case, nothing was more important and useful than to 
 compare the first statements to which the parties had com- 
 mitted themselves with those that they afterwards made 
 after several rehearsals. For instance, when people swore, 
 as they so often did, that they recognised criminals, it was 
 very important to see what their first statements were. 
 Under the new system the police had their functions apart 
 from the magistrate ; their credit or discredit depended on 
 convictions ; they kept such correspondence as they might
 
 158 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 have to themselves, and sent up the case cut and dried. 
 The magistrate was permitted to know nothing but what he 
 could obtain by oral examination of the police, brought away 
 from their duty for the purpose, and examined under Angli- 
 fied conditions of evidence. Under those circumstances, the 
 police being mere interested prosecutors, many safeguards 
 were, I think, taken away, and there were great facilities of 
 furbishing up evidence in the absence of sufficient proof. It 
 used to be a frequent complaint that the higher appellate 
 courts let off criminals whom admirable police officers had 
 secured with great credit to themselves, blazoned in the 
 newspapers. But it was a curious thing that under the 
 Indian system, on several occasions, provincial commissioners 
 of police having, at a subsequent period of their service, 
 become judges of the highest courts, they were notorious for 
 being the most prone to reverse convictions on the ground 
 of doubts about the evidence they knew the tricks of the 
 trade. 
 
 Whenever anything goes wrong it is always attributed 
 to the innate depravity of the natives of course Europeans 
 are never in fault ; yet some glimpses we have had of the 
 proceedings of English police make one think that they too 
 are not always faultless, and when I had lately occasion to 
 look into a recent case I doubted whether I had ever known 
 quite such a scandal in India. That was what was known 
 as the Edlingham burglary case, a burglary of peculiar 
 atrocity, where an old clergyman and his plucky daughter 
 were shot and severely wounded. A great fuss was made 
 about it, and the police produced what seemed overwhelming 
 evidence against two burglars ; they were brought up at 
 the Assizes ; there was such strong evidence that at last 
 the judge thought it unnecessary to go into a very critical 
 point ; the jury very promptly convicted the accused, and 
 they were sentenced to penal servitude for life. Everybody 
 was satisfied but the prisoners, who loudly protested their 
 innocence and made repeated appeals for mercy, but nobody 
 listened to them. There were, however, some people who 
 always believed them innocent, and ten years after, partly
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 159 
 
 through clerical influences, two other notorious bad 
 characters were induced to confess that they were the men, 
 and that the others were innocent. The Home Secretary 
 made a private inquiry and satisfied himself that the second 
 story was true. The original burglars were released, with 
 a very large compensation, 800 each, while the other men, 
 after having been paraded with much sympathy from the 
 local public as Christian martyrs who had confessed, solely 
 for conscience' sake, were brought up at the next Assizes, 
 pleaded guilty, and in accordance with the English practice 
 were upon their own plea convicted without the slightest 
 inquiry of any kind, and sentenced to very much mitigated 
 penalties in consideration of their confession. Again the 
 matter was considered as ended, but to me and others 
 that seemed a most unsatisfactory conclusion. There was 
 only one thing quite certain about the case, and that was, 
 that if the confession of the last men was true, and the first 
 men were really innocent, the police must have been guilty 
 of the most diabolical concoction of evidence, conspiracy, and 
 perjury on the first trial ; must have taken a very peculiar 
 pair of boots, and carefully impressed a series of suspiciously 
 clear footprints on the soft soil outside the rectory ; hung 
 a piece of one of the men's trousers on a nail of the rectory 
 window, where it was supposed to have been torn out in 
 escaping, and left a torn piece of newspaper in the rectory 
 where the shots were fired, while the corresponding piece of 
 the newspaper was carefully folded in the coat pocket of 
 one of the accused. We strongly urged that in some shape 
 a thorough public inquiry should be made, to ascertain the 
 real truth. The Home Secretary at length did that, in the 
 shape of a prosecution of the police who had been concerned 
 in the first trial. Knowing well the difficulty of sustaining 
 the onus probandi, especially after the lapse of years, I 
 should not have been at all surprised that they should have 
 got off in a " not proyen " kind of way, but much more than 
 that happened ; they were very triumphantly acquitted as 
 wholly innocent. The second set of burglars stuck to their 
 story in all essentials, but contradicted one another a good
 
 160 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 deal, and ungratefully turning upon the clergyman who had 
 been instrumental in their confession asserted that they 
 had been promised that they would be pardoned if they 
 confessed, and one of them added that the clergyman had 
 threatened him that if he did not confess the other would 
 peach upon him about a notorious murder of a policeman 
 of which these two had been suspected. The clergyman 
 indignantly denies anything of the kind I believe with 
 perfect truth ; there seems nothing whatever to detract from 
 his high character. But though he had been subpoenaed, 
 and was present in court, it suited neither the prosecution 
 nor the defence to call him ; an English judge does not 
 interfere ; the mode of obtaining the second confession was 
 not considered material to the trial of the policemen, and 
 so he was not examined. The judge's charge was very 
 much in favour of the accused policemen, and he observed 
 what a dreadful thing it would be if any one in good 
 position could have sought to condone a murder in order to 
 obtain confession of a burglary (as the burglar had asserted). 
 The jury acquitted the accused policemen ; and their 
 immediate superiors, the magistrates of Northumberland, so 
 much sympathised with them as to present them with an 
 address engrossed upon vellum in testimony of the noble 
 way in which they had done their duty ! So the matter 
 rests. The first men are declared innocent and very largely 
 compensated, while at the same time the police are petted 
 and favoured on the ground that the case against them 
 was perfectly true. Public opinion is divided, and the 
 principal sufferer is the poor clergyman who smarts very 
 much under the imputation which the judge's observa- 
 tion seemed to convey, only partially removed by the 
 judge's subsequent assurance that his observations were 
 purely hypothetical. There was a great deal of evidence 
 in support of the story of the second set of burglars, 
 but the real truth will never be certainly known. I do 
 not think such a scandal could have occurred in India ; 
 we should have gone into the case much more thoroughly 
 at an earlier period. At the same time, though we probed
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 161 
 
 things pretty thoroughly in India, it must be confessed 
 that in the olden time in the trial of cases the procedure 
 before the magistrate left much to be desired. In the 
 absence of any proper law of procedure things were done in 
 a somewhat slipshod fashion. Cases were not brought to 
 trial as well as they might have been ; the mode of taking 
 evidence was not always very good. There was too much 
 of depositions in writing, sometimes two or three witnesses 
 were taken at the same time and afterwards cross-examined. 
 When the superior authorities insisted that witnesses should 
 not be detained, evidence was sometimes taken in a piece- 
 meal kind of way, and then the whole was taken ad 
 amzandum, as we say in Scotland. One of my assistants 
 at Azimghur, a clever and energetic but somewhat eccentric 
 man, got credit at first for the prompt disposal of his 
 witnesses, but then it turned out that he was in the habit 
 of letting them go without coming to a decision, and 
 making up his mind upon the papers afterwards, not a 
 satisfactory system at all. A good criminal procedure was 
 very much required. 
 
 The least creditable part of our Indian pre-mutiny 
 administration was the substantive Criminal Law. It was 
 very strange that nearly a hundred years after we had 
 established our dominion in great parts of India, and a 
 quarter of a century after Macaulay had been sent out as 
 legislator with a strong law commission to assist him, we 
 were still administering what was supposed to be the 
 Mahomedan criminal law. There were a few fragmentary 
 enactments regarding special offences, and the powers of the 
 various classes of magistrates and judges were defined by a 
 limitation of their powers of punishment. But the sub- 
 stantive law was still in name founded on that of the 
 Mahomedan doctors. Though I have so long administered 
 it, I confess that I have never studied the Mahomedan 
 criminal law, nor even know whether there is any complete 
 law of the kind. Civil law there certainly is in abundance, 
 not only well defined in regard to ordinary matters, but also 
 in regard to more recondite subjects. A Mahomedan 
 VOL. i M
 
 162 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 lawyer will tell you with the utmost exactness the law 
 regarding hermaphrodites, and other things that nobody 
 wants to know. But if there ever was a complete criminal 
 law, most of it had become quite inapplicable to modern 
 times. There was a general direction that we were not to 
 administer any part of that law which seemed inapplicable 
 and contrary to justice. Though Mahomedan law officers 
 were still kept up, we never consulted them unless we were 
 in a difficulty, and wanted to justify something which it 
 was hard otherwise to justify. In truth, those officers were 
 very accommodating, and they had a very convenient 
 " Futwa " applicable to cases not specially provided for, 
 namely, that the act was liable to " discretionary punish- 
 ment." For very long in native times punishments had 
 been quite arbitrary ; but under our rule there had grown 
 up a pretty extensive judge-made law, sanctified by the 
 decisions of the " Sudder Court," l and collected in the private 
 compilations of some industrious officers which made a kind 
 of rough codes of reference ; so we got on pretty well in a 
 way, with occasional ebullitions on the part of individual 
 magistrates who invented some strange crimes. 
 
 I have never made a study of the successive phases of 
 the Penal Code drawn up by Macaulay and his coadjutors, 
 and afterwards amended and re-amended and bandied about 
 between law commissions in India and in England till it was 
 passed in 1860, so T cannot express an opinion whether the 
 delay in giving effect to it was due to original defects or to 
 over-scruples of lawyers ; but I cannot help thinking that 
 we ought at a much earlier time to have had some kind 
 of a law which would have been better than no law. 
 Macaulay had the advantage of not being really an English 
 lawyer, but perhaps he was a little too original in this 
 matter. Of course the work of the code was not solely his, 
 but I have no doubt he worked well upon it, and had a 
 great deal to do with the drawing of it. The illustrations 
 were, I think, an excellent feature. Notwithstanding this 
 work I confess I have always had a certain grudge against 
 
 1 The Sudder Court was chief court of appeal in the province.
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 163 
 
 Macaulay, when I see how, going out with 10,000 a year 
 to make his fortune in India, on the voyage and in all his 
 spare time in India he kept reading and re-reading his old 
 friends the classical authors, and a good many others in 
 languages other than Oriental, and after he had exhausted 
 the good classics took to those that he avows to be very 
 second-rate and inferior, while we hear nothing of Oriental 
 literature. With his immense capacity and memory he 
 might have been a second Sir William Jones. No doubt 
 Greek plays were to him what French novels are to other 
 people, and it cannot be all work and no play. In the list 
 of books for the voyage, after enumerating Greek, Latin, and 
 Italian authors, he says, " I must also get some books on 
 jurisprudence, and something to make a beginning of Persian 
 and Hindoostanee " ; but I don't think we hear that very 
 much came of this last. I have already said that I think 
 Macaulay was probably right in bringing his great influence 
 to bear in favour of a decision for English rather than 
 Oriental education. But perhaps his opinion would have 
 borne still more weight if it had been known that he could 
 himself compare the European literature of which he was so 
 fond with the Persian and other literature of the East. If 
 he had studied India more he might also have avoided the 
 mistakes in his essay on Warren Hastings and other writings 
 on Indian subjects. The code of criminal procedure and other 
 codes were not undertaken till long after Macaulay's time, 
 but we got them about the same time as the Penal Code. 
 
 Although I had nothing to do with civil justice at 
 Azimghur, still, as the civil procedure also was much 
 changed a few years later, I will say a word of the state of 
 things then prevailing. The early Regulations laid down 
 something much more like a code of procedure in regard to 
 civil justice than in any other department. It in no degree 
 resembled that of the English common law ; it was much 
 more like the Scotch procedure. Elaborate written state- 
 ments were put in on either side, and were replied to by 
 the other party in rejoinder and sur-rejoinder ; and when
 
 164 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 all that was exhausted the issues were settled and the trial 
 proceeded. Civil justice was, as regards original trials, 
 almost entirely in the hands of native judges ; civil servants 
 came in as superior and appellate judges with almost no 
 knowledge of civil law. But then we professed to admin- 
 ister to every one his own law Hindoo law to the Hindoos, 
 Mahomedan law to the Mahomedan, and every sort of 
 foreign law to every sort of foreigner, so the judges had to 
 be guided by experts. In regard to mercantile transactions, 
 contracts, and the like, there was a certain mercantile cus- 
 tomary law which might be more or less ascertained ; and 
 for the rest the rule of " equity and good conscience " was 
 prescribed. The Hindoo and Mahomedan laws are both 
 very elaborate, and one way and another there was great 
 scope for litigation, of which the natives very readily availed 
 themselves it suited their genius. The greatest evil was 
 the interference of the Civil Courts in regard to rights in 
 the land which really were a new creation, for which the 
 law did not provide, and which would have been much 
 better dealt with in the special courts of the Collector, 
 the administrator of the land. Particularly the forcible 
 seizure and sale of land was very injurious in many ways. 
 
 Where the Azimghur district bordered upon Oude there 
 was a great deal of friction on the frontier, owing to the 
 disturbed state of the latter country and the difference of 
 jurisdiction. The advantage was not wholly on our side. 
 If our people feared the lawlessness of Oude, the Oude 
 people feared the procedure of our Courts ; and some of our 
 people, litigated out as it were, used to go over to Oude, 
 while many of the Oude people, in trouble in their own 
 country, used to come and establish themselves in our bor- 
 ders, without giving up their claims in Oude, and sometimes 
 sought from that basis to carry on their domestic wars in 
 Oude. In my time our frontier was lined with these people, 
 and, on the other hand, the Oude frontier was lined with 
 illicit drink-shops established for the purpose of smuggling 
 liquor into our territories, as well as some earth, salt, and 
 opium. I was very anxious to put a stop to this sort of
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 165 
 
 thing, and established good relations with the Nazim l of the 
 neighbouring part of Oude. But my zeal received rather a 
 sickener. The Oude authorities represented that an atrocious 
 Dacoit of many crimes had taken refuge with his followers 
 in my district, and begged of me to hunt him out. He was 
 represented as a very notorious criminal. Strong remon- 
 strances came from Lucknow, and I think even the British 
 Eesident was induced to back them up. I thought I was 
 bound to do my very utmost in such a case. I zealously 
 made preparations for capturing the Dacoit and his fol- 
 lowers, and had actually commenced the campaign with 
 some bloodshed when a message came across the frontier to 
 say that they had made terms with the Dacoit, and it was all 
 settled. It turned out that it was a mere political quarrel 
 after the fashion of Oude. In most estates there, there 
 were the ins and the outs, just as there are in our political 
 parties : a party in power and an orthodox opposition, who did 
 everything they could to harass the Government in power, 
 usually taking to the jungles and carrying on their opposi- 
 tion from thence. The Dacoit I was so anxious to seize 
 had been a leader of opposition. But a political crisis had 
 occurred ; he was taken into favour again and installed as 
 Talookdar, so all my trouble and energy were thrown away. 
 
 That season at Azimghur I had an attack of bad eyes 
 which gave me trouble for some years. At first I submitted 
 to have them doctored, with the result that they became a 
 great deal worse, but afterwards I discovered that the best 
 way was to leave them alone ; and a remedy, which seemed 
 strange, was to expose them very much to the sun. I 
 found that when I spent long days tiger-shooting upon an 
 elephant in most glary weather they were not worse, but 
 better. Later an oculist, whom I scarcely expected to 
 believe this, quite accepted it as likely and natural. He 
 said I suffered from congestion ; the sun acted as a stimu- 
 lant to dispel the congestion, and had the same effect as the 
 well-known golden ointment, the only medicine I supposed 
 
 1 Nazim = local governor.
 
 i66 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 to be somewhat beneficial. To this day light and air seem 
 to make my eyes all right for the time. It is only at night, 
 and when I get sleepy, that they feel congested. 
 
 I did not stay long at Azimghur. Early in 1855 I was 
 appointed by Mr. Colvin to be Commissioner of Customs for 
 Northern India. I say for Northern India, because although 
 the main work was in the North-West Provinces, and the 
 whole was under that Government, our establishments ex- 
 tended much farther along the Punjaub frontier, and away 
 along the Indus down to Scinde on one side, and far away 
 around the native states on the other side down to the 
 Bombay frontier. In fact we made an immense circuit 
 completely round the great mass of native states, and 
 extending in its whole circumference almost thousands of 
 miles. The appointment was a very pleasant and much 
 envied one, of a very independent character, with much free 
 scope for seeing very many parts of the country in the cold 
 season, and a residence in the hills in the hot weather. 
 The Commissioner was in fact the Commander-in-Chief of 
 a large army of a great many thousand highly disciplined 
 men, with many European as well as native officers, and a 
 large patronage, if that be an advantage. I did not think 
 it so. In former days many articles had been subject to 
 Customs duty, but for some years these had been reduced 
 to two salt crossing the line into our territory, and sugar 
 crossing the other way, from our territory into native states. 
 Very much of the country from the Jumna to the Indus is 
 saline, and salt-producing tracts were scattered here and 
 there all through that country, the salt sources taking the 
 form either of saline wells or of salt lakes supplied by 
 a natural infiltration, and evaporation in the dry season. 
 In those days, when communications were difficult, the main 
 sources of supply to the North-West Provinces were saline 
 wells very near the frontier of the Agra and Delhi districts, 
 from which salt w r as made very cheaply by solar evaporation, 
 but not of first-rate quality. The cheapness of the salt on 
 the free side of the line, and the excessive amount of the
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 167 
 
 duty, from 2000 to 2500 per cent, afforded an immense 
 temptation to smuggling. Salt worth 3d. per Indian maund 
 was worth three rupees, or six shillings or more, the moment 
 it had crossed the line ; so that it may be said that one suc- 
 cessful venture out of twenty would pay, and it was extremely 
 difficult to maintain the preventive service. There was some 
 very difficult raviney country on that Agra frontier, and on 
 dark nights men with headloads of salt used to dash down 
 into those ravines. If they were lucky they got through ; 
 if the pursuit was too hot they threw down their loads and 
 escaped. Over a great part of the line we were obliged to 
 maintain strong posts every few hundred yards, with con- 
 stant patrolling, and much supervision and discipline, and 
 throughout the whole line great vigilance was required. 
 The duty on sugar was much more moderate, and gave 
 little trouble ; people did not seriously attempt to smuggle 
 that. The inhabitants of the native states beyond our 
 Customs line were free from our heavy salt duty ; but that 
 country produced little or no sugar ; it was supplied from 
 our territory, and only from our territory, being entirely 
 surrounded by our Customs lines, so we were able to charge 
 a moderate duty upon the sugar exported in the same carts 
 and by the same merchants who imported the salt. To aid 
 in the prevention of salt-smuggling a great hedge had been 
 established connecting all the Customs posts, and no traffic 
 of any kind, whether liable to duty or not, was allowed to 
 cross the line except at the openings called open posts. 
 Still, as there were many of these posts, and the supervision 
 was very complete, the inconvenience was not greater than 
 that which necessarily exists on every Customs line where 
 high duties are levied. A much more disagreeable task was 
 that connected with what was called the " Internal Cus- 
 toms" establishment, to prevent the domestic manufacture 
 of salt within our own territories. There were no consider- 
 able sources of salt supply there, but in many parts there 
 was a certain amount of salt in the earth, by washing 
 which and drying the liquor in earthen pans on the house- 
 tops a very inferior, but still more or less edible, salt was
 
 i68 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 obtained. It has always seemed a cruel thing by severe 
 measures to prevent poor people from getting a little cheap 
 salt in this way ; but really, so long as we levy the heavy 
 salt duty, it is not so cruel as it seems, for it is only that 
 salt duty that makes the use of the inferior and hardly- 
 obtained salt possible. If there were no duty no one would 
 attempt to make and use earth-salt, so it would have been 
 stultifying ourselves to impose the duty and allow people to 
 evade it altogether by making the inferior stuff. The diffi- 
 culty was that the stopping it involved much domiciliary 
 inquisition, and the letting loose of the Customs establish- 
 ment over the country at large, where it was very difficult 
 sufficiently to control them. Upon the Customs line we 
 could maintain an exact patrol and discipline, but away 
 from that limit we could not be sure what might not be 
 done. However, we did our very best, and employed our 
 most trustworthy officers in the supervision of that duty. 
 
 The headquarters of the Customs establishments were at 
 Agra, and on my appointment I went there and occupied 
 myself in mastering the subject, and getting my hand into 
 the work, besides visiting some other parts of the line. 
 Then the hot weather coming on, I went up to Nynee Tal 
 with Mr. Colvin, where I had the double function of carry- 
 ing on the Customs work and acting as one of a sort of 
 informal Council who assisted Mr. Colvin in regard to the 
 general administration of the country. I found Mr. Colvin 
 a very large-minded man, and it was a great pleasure to 
 work with him. Nynee Tal is a very charming place just 
 before and just after the rains, but I never liked the rainy 
 season, either at Nynee Tal or at any other hill station. Jt 
 was, however, a great advantage to be able to place my 
 young wife in a temperate climate. While there I saw 
 something of the province of Kumaon and the people of 
 that country. They are a very interesting people a sort 
 of original Hindoo society, unmixed with Mahomedans ; 
 and sheltered in their hills they are very quiet and simple 
 in their ways. A very large proportion of them could read 
 and write in their own Hindoo characters. They have always
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 169 
 
 been governed in a very patriarchal kind of way. I liked 
 them. But some people do not they think that they have 
 been too much petted and spoilt ; and no doubt they are 
 shrewd enough to be able to take advantage of what fortune 
 offers. To those, at any rate, who have official assistance 
 they are very pleasant to deal with. There was something 
 very nice in the way in which, when marching in the hills, 
 they used at each march to extemporise, out of branches of 
 trees, little houses with beds and tables and all complete. 
 Though the pay of offices in the hills was very inferior, still 
 the attractions of the climate and the people were such that 
 officers who once got there were apt never to go away again 
 if they could help it. The oldest of them is Henry Ramsay, 
 now General the Honourable Sir H. Ramsay, brother to one 
 of the successors to the title of Lord Dalhousie. He was 
 there from remote ages, as long as I can remember, and is 
 still there ; and though he is now pensioned, his personal 
 authority among the people is so great that I believe they 
 still voluntarily refer their serious disputes to him, and he 
 is quite a power for good. I have not always very great 
 sympathy with people who have made bargains in rupees, 
 and then want to be paid in gold, worth half as many rupees 
 again, but it does seem an extraordinary anomaly that under 
 the military regulations an officer who chooses to reside in 
 Europe is paid in gold at 10 rupees per pound, while if he 
 resides in India he can only be paid in rupees ; consequently 
 if Henry Ramsay were wasting his life at a European 
 watering-place he would get 50 per cent more than he is 
 allowed to get when he has elected to live as a patriarch 
 and tower of strength to British rule among the Kumaonees. 
 I have represented that as much as I could, but can get no 
 redress ; I am only told " that is the rule." 
 
 For a long period our policy has been to draw in and 
 concentrate the Inland Customs line, so as to shorten it as 
 much as possible and to bring as much territory as possible 
 under our salt duty. Of course the shorter and closer we 
 could make it, the easier it was to maintain it, and the more
 
 170 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 profitable the result. Consequent upon some of Lord 
 Dalhousie's recent annexations, soon after I took charge we 
 found it possible to make a great contraction of this kind. 
 The British occupation of Jhansi, the Nagpore country, and 
 the Berars gave us a line of British territory from Agra 
 south to and over the Nerbudda, and thence down the line 
 of the Taptee to Bombay, and we took advantage of that to 
 withdraw the line which had hitherto gone many hundreds 
 of miles round by Allahabad and Mirzapore, and to place it 
 upon the direct line. When we determined to do this, it was 
 necessary to carry out the arrangements before the approach of 
 the dry season, when the active traffic commences ; so I had to 
 go down and carry out the work. After making the arrange- 
 ments at Agra, I went south by Gwalior, Jhansi, and 
 Saugor. At Gwalior I had an opportunity of making the 
 acquaintance, through the Resident, of that not very amiable 
 person, Scindiah, and learnt a good deal about him. He 
 had no civil aptitudes, but, they said, was really a very 
 smart military man, and could handle a brigade as well as 
 any officer in our service. Soon after, in the Mutiny, he 
 had a grand opportunity of playing a great part there is 
 no saying what might have happened if with all his resources 
 he had put himself at the head of the Sepoys. It was from 
 no love for us that he abstained, but it is generally believed 
 that courage failed him he hesitated and temporised the 
 opportunity passed it was not till it was too late that 
 his troops took the matter into their own hands, and came 
 down upon Wyndham at Cawnpore. However, as it was, 
 he served our purpose ; it was not for us to be hypercritical 
 as to his motives, and it was all very right that he should 
 be reinstated by our troops. But he growled terribly about 
 the conditions, and never bore us any goodwill. 
 
 Beyond Gwalior the high plateau land about Saugor 
 (not Saugor Island at the mouth of the Hooghly) is a plea- 
 sant country about 2000 feet above the sea, and which runs 
 along about the same height to Bhopal and Mhow. Beyond 
 that there is a dip into the valley of the Nerbudda, but some 
 parts of the Nerbudda valley are very pretty, especially
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 171 
 
 about Jubbulpore. Beyond that again there is more high 
 land with hills rising to several thousand feet in places 
 but no very good sanatorium. In the course of this tour I 
 successfully laid down the new Customs line, where it 
 remained for the better part of a generation, till abolished in 
 modern times. I always throw myself heartily into what I 
 undertake, and for some months salt occupied the larger por- 
 tion of my thoughts by day, and sometimes my dreams by 
 night. I got up the subject, turned it all over, and worked 
 out statistics. According to my calculation, under the high 
 duty, Northern India was very insufficiently supplied with 
 salt only about 6 Ibs. per annum per head of the popula- 
 tion including the consumption of cattle ; while in Lower 
 Bengal the consumption was nearly double, and in Madras 
 quite three times as much the duty in Southern India 
 being very much lower. Subsequent statistics showed, I 
 think, very much the same result. 1 In Madras, so long as 
 the duty was tolerably low, the consumption was fully 18 
 Ibs. per head. Comparing Northern India with Bengal, I 
 was at one time inclined to think that rice-consumers might 
 require more salt in proportion than the consumers of the 
 drier grains, but that seems to be negatived by the statistics 
 of Southern India, where there is probably a majority who 
 do not live by rice. Emigration agents and others find 
 the coolies they get from Southern India more vigorous and 
 better able to stand sea voyages than the Hindoostanees, not- 
 withstanding the supposed physical superiority of the latter ; 
 and I have had misgivings whether that might be in any 
 degree attributable to the deficient supply of salt in Hindoo- 
 stan. It gave me a pang, too, when I thought that it 
 might be possible that in the Punjaub countries the substitu- 
 tion of our dear salt and scant supply for the abundant and 
 cheap salt of native times might degrade and de-invigorate 
 that fine race of people. 
 
 In later days, when the policy was to get rid of the 
 
 1 The latest available returns show the salt consumption to be nearly 16 
 Ibs. per head in Madras, nearly 11 Ibs. per head in Bengal, and nearly 8 Ibs. 
 in the North-West Provinces.
 
 i?2 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 Customs line, it was denounced in very strong terms as 
 barbarous and injurious in the extreme, not so much on 
 account of the high rate of salt duty levied, as on account 
 of the commercial and Asocial evils, and the flagrant opposi- 
 tion to modern free trade principles. My friend Sir John 
 Strachey, the Indian apostle of Free Trade, used very strong 
 language about it ; but I confess that I do not wholly agree 
 with him, any more than I did about the necessity for 
 abolishing the whole of our Indian import duties. As 
 regards the Customs line, in early days I pointed out that 
 if it were possible to arrange with the native states to get 
 possession of all the salt sources and substitute a salt duty 
 in those states for all transit duties, that would be very 
 desirable indeed. But that certainly was not possible in 
 my time we had not then a sufficient control over the 
 native states. For the rest, the Customs line was certainly 
 expensive, but the pay of natives is small, and after all, the 
 expense was not very excessive compared to the revenue 
 received. I think I have already said that where our line 
 was thoroughly maintained with a large staff, the mercantile 
 hindrance was not great nor abuses considerable. On the 
 other hand, there were considerable incidental advantages 
 from a political, police, and revenue point of view. Under 
 our system there is an almost excessive personal freedom in 
 India sometimes a hardly sufficient control over people 
 who need to be controlled. I have known semi-predatory 
 hordes from Central Asia march through the length and 
 breadth of the land doing a great deal of damage before 
 we had any proper knowledge about them or information 
 whence they came and where they went. In the then 
 existing state of things, a single line between the British 
 territory and the native states, by which the traffic could 
 be put under a certain surveillance, was not without its ad- 
 vantages. By means of the Customs line we were able to 
 check the illicit importation of opium from native states, and 
 also the traffic in arms. And for police purposes we did 
 much to check the free passages to and fro of Dacoits ; the 
 line was certainly in this respect very useful in my day.
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 173 
 
 We could not altogether prevent the ingress of Dacoits from 
 Bajpootana, but such cases were then really very rare ; and 
 that it was so was, I think, very greatly due to the surveillance 
 of the Customs establishments. As I write I see in the 
 Indian news that the mail from Delhi for the north was 
 stopped and plundered by a band of twenty men, and that this 
 is only one of a series of daring robberies carried out in that 
 neighbourhood so far with entire impunity. In that country 
 of much traffic and intermixed jurisdictions, we were always 
 a good deal troubled with highway robberies ; but when I 
 presided over the Cis-Sutlej states, I was able to report that 
 the mails had never been touched. 
 
 The first step taken by Sir John Strachey in the govern- 
 ment of India was to abolish the sugar duty, on the ground 
 that such an export duty was utterly barbarous. Yet we 
 maintain the export duty upon rice to this day ; and I still 
 think that, under the circumstances, that sugar duty was 
 a fair contribution from these states which still exacted 
 dues upon our traffic, and the levy of which, so long as the 
 Customs line was maintained, really cost us nothing at all. 
 The really serious evil I think was, neither the mode of 
 levying the salt duty nor the sugar duty, but the excessive 
 amount of the salt duty. I was quoted as having been 
 the first to denounce the evils of the Customs line but 
 what I denounced when I was Chief Commissioner of the 
 Central Provinces was not the regular well-appointed line, 
 but a loose, ill-supervised, and ill-regulated supplemental 
 line that was run through our own territories on account 
 of the inequality of duty in different parts of India, and 
 which was attended with great abuses. To complete the 
 subject, I will here briefly allude to the subsequent 
 changes in the salt system. Immediately after the 
 Mutiny, I had again the disagreeable duty of suppressing 
 the manufacture of earth-salt in Oude. Under native rule 
 we could not interfere with that, and it was carried on to a 
 considerable extent, the more so that in the then imperfect 
 state of communications, Oude being far removed from the 
 regular salt sources, our duty-paid salt was dearer in parts
 
 174 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 of Oude than in almost any other parts of India. It was 
 necessary, when Oude became British, to suppress the 
 domestic manufacture in the same way as in the North- 
 West Provinces, and the people being so long accustomed 
 to it, an even more severe domiciliary supervision was neces- 
 sary. They thought it very hard, and nothing connected 
 with our rule was so impopular ; but it had to be done. I 
 am glad to know that now, with railways running through 
 Oude, the duty-paid salt is brought there a good deal cheaper 
 than in former days. 
 
 It was some years later that in the Central Provinces 
 I commenced that discussion with a view to get rid of 
 Customs lines in our own territories, which afterwards bore 
 fruit ; and some years later, when I was in Bengal, I had 
 the satisfaction of making with the Government of India 
 an arrangement by which all that was obviated. The duty 
 in the different parts of India was not equalised, but ap- 
 proximated and graduated by steps, so that the lower-priced 
 salt should not be taken round the line to compete with 
 the higher - priced. The very low duty in Madras and 
 Bombay being considerably raised, the Bengal duty was 
 gradually lowered along the Orissa Coast till it was joined 
 on by the last step to the Madras duty. That system, as 
 we then arranged it, worked quite successfully for some 
 years. I see no reason why it should not have been main- 
 tained, the Northern India duty being reduced to the 
 Madras-Bombay rate. But there arose a view in favour of 
 equality, carried, I think, to a somewhat pedantic point, 
 which really was a practical inequality. The Government 
 of India insisted that the duty should be made equal all 
 round. At first it was levelled up so as to be really 
 higher on the average than it had ever been ; then it was 
 considerably lowered to 2 rupees per maund. Now it has 
 been raised again to 2^ rupees per maund, which makes 
 it on the average about what it was before these changes. 
 I say that this equality is a practical inequality for this 
 reason that the large consumption induced by a low duty
 
 iv SERVICE AFTER FURLOUGH 175 
 
 iii Southern India caused the salt revenue paid by the 
 people there to be really larger in proportion than in other 
 provinces ; and since the duty has been equalised the pay- 
 ments are much larger. In Northern India, again, the 
 conditions are such that the high duty checks consumption 
 to an injurious extent. On the other hand, in Bengal the 
 high duty of 3^ rupees had been levied since the year 1817 
 the people have been thoroughly accustomed to it. And 
 the conditions of soil and climate there are such that the 
 consumption has not been reduced below 11 or 12 Ibs. 
 per head. Under the permanent settlement Bengal con- 
 tributes less to the revenue than other provinces the 
 difference was in some degree made up by the higher salt 
 duty. And if at an intermediate point the Northern India 
 salt would have had some advantage in competition with 
 Bengal on account of the lower duty, that was counter- 
 balanced by the fact that, while the Northern salt is a 
 coarse cheap salt, the salt used in Bengal is refined salt 
 imported from Liverpool, and worth in bond three or four 
 times as much as the other. The higher duty was lower in 
 proportion to quality and value. But that was unfortu- 
 nately the very reason why it was difficult to maintain the 
 differentiated duty. British merchants were interested in 
 the Liverpool salt imported into Bengal ; they could make 
 their voice heard in Parliament, and any arrangement which 
 told against the advantage they had hitherto had was a 
 sure prelude to their making it very hot for the Indian 
 Government. So the duty is now equal on all salt fine 
 and coarse, and whether the consumption be large or small. 
 I greatly fear that under Crown Government mercantile 
 interests are apt sometimes unduly to prevail. 
 
 A few years ago it was found possible, by arrangement 
 with the native states, to get possession of all the salt 
 sources, abolish the Northern Customs line, and levy the 
 duty at the salt sources, paying the native states for the 
 surrender of their privileges, and rendering to them their 
 share of the duty in proportion to consumption by their 
 subjects. I have not been able to find any detailed account
 
 176 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP, iv 
 
 of the administration of this system, but the salt revenue 
 seems to be well maintained ; it is said, in general terms, 
 to be successful, and no doubt is so. It must, of course, 
 involve a much more considerable control over and super- 
 vision of the many native states in which salt is found than 
 was attempted in former days. But this seems to be 
 accepted. And, provided the duty does not lead to the 
 development of new sources and smuggling, and serious 
 trouble does not arise in regard to police control, and 
 opium, and other things which I have mentioned, the change 
 will have been wholly beneficial. I have, however, always 
 maintained in and out of office, in Parliament and every- 
 where else, that our heavy salt-tax, if a necessary evil, is in 
 truth a very great evil a hard poll-tax on the poorest of 
 the people, injurious to the cattle on which the people so 
 much depend, and which in that climate much require salt, 
 and fatal to the fish-salting industry, the people being driven 
 to dry the fish in the sun without salt, with very stinking 
 results. 
 
 When the duty was 3 rupees per maund of 82 Ibs., 
 taking the average consumption per head of the population 
 at a little over 1 2 Ibs. per head and five persons to a family, 
 I calculated the duty to be 2^ rupees per family. With 
 a 2^ rupee per maund duty the incidence is a little less ; 
 but then the duty advanced by the dealer always even- 
 tuates in a larger charge upon the retail sale. Taking 
 the earnings of a labouring man at 5 rupees per month, or 
 60 rupees per annum, the duty would fall on him as an 
 income-tax of quite 3 per cent.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 
 
 BEFORE I had completed the new Customs line which I 
 undertook in the summer of 1855, I was offered by Lord 
 Dalhousie the Commissionership of the Cis-Sutlej states, the 
 appointment of all others which I most coveted, that being 
 my second native country. George Barnes, a man whose 
 distinguished career was cut short by his premature death, 
 had been obliged by ill health to go to England, and I was 
 to take his place. I gladly accepted the offer, and as soon 
 as the Customs work which I had immediately in hand was 
 completed, I ran up to Umballa and took charge, my wife 
 following as soon as the season permitted. It was then a 
 very large charge ; there were four British districts in the 
 plains my old districts of Khytul and Ladwa (then called 
 Thanesur), Umballa, Loodiana, and Ferozepore ; besides the 
 hill district of Simla, and all the larger native states which 
 had not been mediatised. It used to be said that when 
 the Cis-Sutlej Commissioner with all his following and the 
 Vakeels or representatives of the native states met the 
 Governor-General, his camp was the larger of the two : and 
 though many of the smaller states had now disappeared, 
 his following when he marched was still very large. 
 
 The Cis-Sutlej was now subordinate to the Chief Com- 
 missioner of the Punjaub, Sir John Lawrence, under whom 
 I had not previously served. He frankly told me that I 
 did not owe the appointment to him ; that if it had been 
 left to him he would have put in one of his own men 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 i;8 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 the Governor-General himself had done it but he kindly 
 added that after his own man he could not have wished a 
 better choice, and quite accepted me in that light. In 
 truth, too, I was in very hearty sympathy with his methods 
 of administration, and entirely pleased to serve under him. 
 He had the reputation of being somewhat hard and strict ; 
 but the Cis-Sutlej was then more than a mere division of 
 the Punjaub it was a kind of outlying province attached 
 to it and as John Lawrence did .not know it very well, 
 and was otherwise very fully occupied, I still enjoyed much 
 freedom of administration. The cold season headquarters 
 was at Umballa ; the hot weather official residence at 
 Kussowlee in the hills. But in the rainy season I myself 
 preferred Umballa. That was, I think, a very delightful 
 place in those days. The local civil station was not very 
 conveniently situated, and the Commissioner lived in the 
 Cantonment a model cantonment laid out by Napier, after- 
 wards Lord Napier of Magdala. Like everything he did, it 
 was magnificently done. I forget how many villages had to 
 be removed to make room for it a very great many, twenty- 
 seven, I think, but that was past a good many years before ; 
 the villagers had been compensated and absorbed ; and though 
 after the war the space proved too large and had to be con- 
 tracted, we could enjoy the fine cantonment with large broad 
 roads, open parade grounds, many trees, good gardens, and a 
 near view of the hills. The military force was large several 
 European regiments, and a good many native regiments, a 
 General and large staff, and a pleasant society. We were 
 on excellent terms with the military authorities all that 
 went very smoothly. My next neighbour was a Scotchman 
 from near my part of Scotland, Hope Grant, the much- 
 respected Colonel of the 9th Lancers, and afterwards the 
 distinguished General, Sir Hope Grant. I was quite sym- 
 pathetic with him except in the matter of music. At first 
 I thought it very kind of him to enliven our conversation 
 with the fiddle, but I found that he stopped, and it was 
 explained to me that what I took for the fiddling of my 
 youth was violin music of the very highest class.
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 179 
 
 I have so fully described the country and the people 
 that I need not here repeat what I have already said. I 
 found the people very prosperous except in one serious 
 particular, viz. the very low price of grain, which came hard 
 upon the agriculturists. There had been a sort of glut of 
 grain, especially about Loodiana. It has been noticed that 
 that is very often apt to happen when we have a reaction, 
 as it were, after the conclusion of wars, especially when the 
 people take to agriculture with great heartiness. The 
 means of communication, too, were then veiy indifferent. 
 There were not the facilities for the export of grain which 
 now exist, and which have rendered the Punjaub countries 
 a great source of wheat for export. In spite of it all, the 
 Loodiana people struggled manfully on and paid their 
 revenue. I had the satisfaction of finding that my summary 
 settlements had turned out well, and more regular proceed- 
 ings did not discover great inequalities to redress. I had 
 not professed to make the settlements very low. Low 
 settlements like low rents sometimes lead to lax farming. 
 It is better that, when people show energy and make im 
 provements, they should be allowed the benefit of those 
 improvements, than that they should be let down too sud- 
 denly at first. Some of the people on our eastern border, 
 who are not so energetic, had more difficulty in making the 
 two ends meet with low prices. It was rather sad to me 
 to see the very reduced position of my old friends the minor 
 Sikh chiefs, who had been deprived of their authority ; but 
 they behaved wonderfully well and good-naturedly about it. 
 I suppose it was bound to be done, and I hope that now a 
 generation has grown up which never knew mastership, and 
 think themselves fortunate in the enjoyment of the revenue, 
 and have fields enough for their own cultivation. 
 
 The administration had suffered somewhat from the over- 
 frequent change of European officers, partly on account of 
 the necessities of the Punjaub, and partly because of the 
 increasing facilities for furlough to Europe. That frequent 
 change of officers is a very great evil of our modern admin- 
 istration. Men do not settle down among the natives as
 
 i8o MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 did the Indian officials of ancient times ; the more facilities 
 there are for officers resorting to Europe and for bringing 
 wives from Europe, the more difficult it is to keep them fixed. 
 What between the many gradations of the service and 
 frequent promotions, frequent furloughs and pathetic appeals 
 on account of health and the necessities of families, it is 
 immensely difficult for any head of an administration to 
 prevent frequent changes, and to refuse men at out-of-the- 
 way unpopular stations their turn of something better. The 
 modern rules allowing men on furlough to retain their 
 appointments rather aggravate the evil ; men very often 
 take furlough when they are at a station they do not like, 
 and calculate the time of going so that they may have a 
 claim to promotion on their return. However, I say this 
 merely to explain difficulties. I was well served by many 
 excellent officers in the Cis-Sutlej. 
 
 With respect to the native states, my system still was 
 to let them alone as much as possible, and not too much to 
 press upon them European innovations, if they were at all 
 decently managed. The Sikh rulers were really indigenous, 
 not foreign conquerors. At the same time, like most native 
 rulers, they were not exclusive and unduly prejudiced in 
 favour of their own people, but employed capable Mahomedans 
 and others almost as freely as Sikhs. 
 
 I have had no personal experience of the administration 
 of the larger native states, the rulers of which are almost 
 all foreign to the countries which they rule ; but as regards 
 all the smaller and more indigenous states in the Sikh 
 country, the Central Provinces, and Bengal, I think I have 
 had to do with as many as anybody. Only the Bombay 
 native states I have not had to do with ; and everywhere I 
 have always thought that so long as no great trouble turns 
 up it is best to leave them alone, and only hold them 
 responsible that nothing forces them upon our attention. I 
 would say, " Happy is the native state that has no history." 
 During my tenure of the Commissionership nothing did much 
 force itself upon my attention in the native states, and I
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 181 
 
 interfered very little with them, rather devoting myself to 
 the administration of the British districts. By far the 
 largest state, Puttiala, was managed in a very native kind 
 of way, but I think not badly ; I heard few complaints. 
 The Jheend Eajah was more familiar with our ways, and 
 more imitated our system, but he did so quite voluntarily, 
 without any instigation from me. Altogether I had the 
 satisfaction of knowing that when I handed the Sikh states 
 over just before the Mutiny, they were very well affected 
 to us, and did extremely good service during the Mutiny. 
 The worst of it is, that with our system of supporting 
 legitimate succession it is very difficult to get rid of an 
 incapable, and almost impossible to set aside a minor. Upon 
 the whole, however, the Sikh states have gone on well. I 
 am afraid there have been one or two deaths of men of 
 much promise from drink that is very sad. The question 
 is, Are such things promoted by our patronage of drink ? 
 
 The only occasion on which I had to take action of a 
 penal character against a ruling Chief was none of my seek- 
 ing. There was a Mahomedan state called Mumdote, away 
 down the Sutlej beyond Ferozepore, which was one of those 
 exempted from the mediatising order. The Chief was the 
 representative of an old Pathan family. I had no personal 
 knowledge of it, as I never had charge of the Ferozepore 
 district, and it was much nearer to Lahore than to my 
 headquarters. But very serious charges of tyranny and 
 misconduct, almost approaching to murder, which had 
 occurred before my time, were brought against the Chief, 
 and I was directed by the Chief Commissioner to go down 
 and make a regular investigation of a judicial character. 
 After a careful inquiry I was constrained to find the main 
 charges proved. I think the man was a little out of his 
 mind. The result was that he was degraded from his 
 functions, and though a few years later a brother was put in 
 possession, it was in a lower position, with much diminished 
 powers. During both the cold seasons that I held this 
 appointment I marched a great deal in camp, visiting both
 
 i8a MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER 
 
 the British districts and the native states. And when I 
 went to the farthest part of my jurisdiction, to Ferozepore 
 and beyond, I took occasion to come back by way of Lahore 
 and visit those most important Punjaub districts Lahore 
 and Amritsir and the Jullundur Doab which I had known 
 when I was at Loodiana. My wife, too, enjoyed this life, 
 and used to ride a great deal. She was sometimes amused 
 at the herds of antelopes, which seemed to understand that 
 we did not want to shoot them, and allowed her to chase 
 them upon her pony. I never could understand why the 
 natives tolerated those antelopes ; they must have done a 
 great deal of damage. The large deer called " Xilgai " or 
 " blue cows " are supposed to be a kind of cattle, and are 
 more or less sacred not so antelopes, which chiefly affect 
 the cultivated country. Many native chiefs had large game- 
 preserves like our game-preserves nearer home. But why 
 in the open country, amid the highly-cultivated fields, the 
 antelopes were permitted to survive, was what I could not 
 make out. Even in our long-settled districts of the North- 
 West Provinces, e.g. about Alighur, down to comparatively 
 recent times, one could see from the railway train antelopes 
 among the crops just as one sees pheasants and partridges 
 from a train in this country they learnt not to mind trains 
 though there were no game-laws. Recently there has 
 been question of setting up some sort of game-laws in India. 
 I trust that will not be permitted ; it would be altogether 
 an eviL Only one species of animals we preserve that is 
 elephants, for they rarely breed in captivity, and if we are to 
 have them at all we cannot allow them to be killed for the 
 mere sake of killing. They are only found in very large 
 numbers in remote jungly districts ; the herds in more 
 civilised parts (where they often do much damage) are being 
 rapidly captured, and are coming to an end. We had no 
 wild elephants in the Cis-Sutlej. But elsewhere I have been 
 rather put in a dilemma by a report coming in that an 
 elephant had been captured in a man's garden ; the ques- 
 tion was what to do with it. Quite apart from the 
 regular operations for capturing herds, the natives have a
 
 THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 183 
 
 wonderful way of creeping up and noosing the legs of single 
 elephants. 
 
 To have done with the subject of sport, I may add that 
 we had not many tigers in the Cis-Sutlej, only a few in the 
 valleys under the hills. On one occasion I had a consider- 
 able party out shooting there. We tried very hard for a 
 tiger, but failed to get one, and in the evening had retired 
 to our tents, when some of our native attendants came rush- 
 ing in, crying, " There's a tiger come." That seemed very 
 strange, but we had not time to think rushed to our guns, 
 and rushed out excitedly, to find that the tiger was a dead 
 tiger which the natives had killed in their own way for the 
 sake of the reward for killing wild animals, which they 
 claimed. It was one of the finest tigers I ever saw ; but 
 I confess I did then rather wish that they had been a little 
 less precipitate. However, next day I distinguished myself 
 upon other game in a way which I hardly expected. I 
 happened by a long snap-shot to knock over a hog -deer 
 which got up before the elephant, much as a rabbit gets up 
 before a sportsman, and took a good deal of credit for that. 
 Not very long after, a very large and fine spotted deer 
 appeared in the distance looking at us. I got up my 
 gun, but my companions said, " Don't fire, it's too far off." 
 After my first triumph I was keen, and persevered, saying, 
 " I'll take my chance." The deer leapt into the air and 
 then disappeared, and my companions laughed. But I would 
 take a turn to look, and when I came to the spot there 
 was the deer lying dead, shot through the heart ! then / 
 laughed. Some way farther on a very large hyena got up, 
 was turned out of the jungle, and rather disturbed our line. 
 I fired again just as he disappeared in the jungle beyond, 
 but I did not seriously think I could have hit him, and we 
 marched on ; but we had not gone far when one of the 
 elephants gave a start and a squeak, and kicked something 
 in some reedy water ; it turned out to be the hyena, lying 
 stark dead in the water, a brute with about the most for- 
 midable-looking teeth I ever saw. After that I was not 
 going to risk the great reputation I had gained. I speedily
 
 184 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 had a despatch requiring my presence in camp on important 
 business, and did not risk any more shots. I rather think 
 there are people alive to the present day who, on the 
 strength of that achievement, believe me to have been one 
 of the best shots in India. 
 
 In truth, however, I. did a great deal more work than 
 play. The appointment was really a very heavy one, since 
 there was not only the administrative and political work, 
 but, owing to the absence of any separate judicial establish- 
 ment, we had the whole of the judicial work, civil as well 
 as criminal, upon our hands. It was not till much later 
 that separate judicial establishments were provided for the 
 Punjaub territories. The judicial work was no light task ; 
 for when we had established the British peace, the people 
 carried their energies into the courts as thoroughly as any 
 Scotchman of the last century anxious to " ding " his neigh- 
 bours by process of law. In fact, they indulged in a great 
 deal of litigation ; and though in those days we suppressed 
 lawyers, and would have none of them, they managed to 
 carry it on without lawyers to such an extent that our 
 judicial statistics showed a number of cases in proportion to 
 population double that of the older provinces. We insisted 
 on disposing of land cases in a summary way in the land- 
 revenue department without regular civil court process, but 
 the cases had to be decided all the same. And then there 
 were a great many other cases : every man had a kind of 
 running account with his banker ; and there were a great 
 many cases originating in that root of all evil woman. 
 There were always a great many breach of promise cases, in 
 which the man is always the suitor ; it is not the fashion 
 for women to sue on that subject. The woman is a valuable 
 possession for whom the man makes a bargain, and if he is 
 jilted he sues. 
 
 Under a non-regulation system there was a great absence 
 of technical law, and I was able to give a great deal of 
 scope to my legislative proclivities, and to air the experience 
 which I had acquired in the Court of Queen's Bench, laying
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 185 
 
 down rules for my subordinates. In this way I anticipated 
 a great deal that was afterwards done by the codes of pro- 
 cedure, especially in the way of insisting on regular cause 
 lists, and the appointment of cases for trial at a fixed time 
 and place, and especially the mode of taking and recording 
 evidence. Beyond this I do not think there was much to 
 be learnt from English criminal procedure. God forbid that 
 I should ever have consented to introduce any of the clap- 
 traps of English criminal law inducing any one to refrain 
 from fully and exhaustively examining the prisoner, or any- 
 thing of that kind. Our own procedure, regularised and 
 improved, was, I believe, very much better than that. 
 
 Owing to the newness of the territory and the frequent 
 change of officers, the police establishments were not at all 
 so good as I could have wished, and I set myself very much 
 to promote the improvement of the district police forces, 
 and the maintenance of a regular system of promotion by 
 merit. A subject very long debated in India is the improve- 
 ment of the village watchmen the chokidars. There is 
 a strong school which has always striven to turn them into 
 regularly paid and efficient policemen. I have been rather 
 adverse to that ; I think it is too enormously expensive, 
 and makes the country too police-ridden. The question is, 
 whether the responsibility is to rest with the zemindars or 
 with the chokidars. If the chokidar is the servant of 
 the zemindars, appointed by them, and paid in the native 
 way, we can hold the zemindars responsible ; otherwise we 
 cannot. So that where the zemindars are a popular institu- 
 tion, representing the body of the people, I prefer to put it 
 upon them. It is where there are large zemindars removed 
 from the people that it is dangerous to trust them with the 
 village police, for then there is danger that they will use 
 the police to oppress the people, and for revenue purposes. 
 In early days in Bengal the zemindars had the whole police 
 jurisdiction in their hands, and had lands and allowances 
 to maintain the police. Then, when it was found they 
 abused those powers, a regular police was appointed and 
 paid by Government ; the zemindars were relieved of their
 
 1 86 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 police powers, but they retained their police allowances, and 
 let the village police fall into a very degraded position : it 
 has been a never-ending source of trouble. 
 
 A great difficulty in Northern India is the dealing with 
 the tribes known as criminal tribes the members of which 
 are to a great degree professional criminals. They are worse 
 than mere pilfering gipsies, have seldom any ostensible 
 honest occupation, or at most profess to catch vermin and 
 the like, but they really have mainly lived by crime. Such 
 are " Bowreahs " and other well-known tribes. I was much 
 occupied in trying to get them settled down a task which 
 has also been undertaken by many others, and I think with 
 partial success. 
 
 Upon the whole, we were very successful in dealing with 
 crime throughout the territory. In the first year of my 
 incumbency there were three Dacoities, one or two of them 
 attended with circumstances of considerable aggravation, but 
 we succeeded in ferreting them out thirty-five Dacoits were 
 convicted ; and the second year there was only one Dacoity 
 the bad one at Loodiana to which I have previously 
 referred. We were also much troubled with highway 
 robbery upon the Grand Trunk and other roads, but with 
 them also we dealt successfully. There were twenty-seven 
 cases in the first half of 1856 forty- three robbers were 
 convicted ; and in the second half of the same year there 
 were only four cases. 
 
 In regard to civil justice, on looking up some old papers 
 I find that I availed myself of my experience of English 
 common law procedure more than I had thought, and that 
 I circulated to my subordinates rules and regulations much 
 founded on my recollections of Queen's Bench practice to a 
 very considerable extent. I do believe that real good was 
 done in the way of insisting on regularity in dealing with 
 cases the stating of clear issues, and obtaining prompt 
 decisions. Going beyond the English practice, I instituted 
 a system of issuing, in the first instance, in suitable cases, a
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 187 
 
 preliminary summons for the purpose of conciliation ; that 
 was often very successful. Where we could not bring the 
 parties to agreement, I much encouraged reference to arbi- 
 tration of clear and distinct issues ; but, on the other hand, 
 rather discouraged the too prevalent practice of throwing 
 over cases in a crude and wholesale way to a set of semi- 
 professional arbitrators whose honesty was not always quite 
 above suspicion. With a view of ascertaining, as far as 
 possible, the customary law, I asked the officers who decided 
 cases to note in a special book points of particular interest 
 which were decided. 
 
 In regard to the procedure I thus explained my 
 position : 
 
 " I have tried to introduce a good many improvements 
 on the previous practice. In some instances I have merely 
 put in force rules already existing, but which had never 
 been acted up to ; in some others I have introduced what I 
 thought improvements within the legitimate range of a 
 Commissioner's discretion; and in a few instances I have 
 tried experiments beyond the range of existing rules, sug- 
 gested by the experience of an important English Court, 
 where I had put in practice many recent reforms of the law." 
 
 As respects the result I said : 
 
 " On the whole I think favourably of our civil courts, 
 and believe that in them, more than in any other depart- 
 ment, our administration may compare to advantage with 
 that of other parts of the country. If laws are wanting, 
 that is not our fault ; and if the result of appeals indicates 
 a want of certainty in the decisions, that is an evil common 
 to us with the rest of India, and inevitable in a new country, 
 in new courts, and under a new system. At any rate, the 
 justice which we administer, such as it is, is, I believe, 
 given with a very small amount of delay, harassment, and 
 expense ; and that is even more important than the quality 
 of the justice." 
 
 If the people were, as I have said, pretty litigious, it was 
 a healthy, sturdy kind of litigiousness. They were sometimes 
 very determined in fighting out their cases to the end. A
 
 188 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 defeated suitor would say, " I will go to Nondon " (their 
 way of pronouncing London). I remember rather a fine- 
 looking man who thought he had a grievance, and followed 
 the Governor-General's camp down to Mooltan, and succeeded 
 in attracting his Lordship's personal attention. But being 
 told that nothing could be done for him, and that his Lord- 
 ship had embarked in a steamer to go to Bombay and 
 Calcutta, he turned round, marched all the way to Calcutta, 
 and there turned up again before the Governor -General. 
 However, they gradually learnt that that kind of thing was 
 of no use, and became more reasonable. An ultimate appeal 
 lay from my judicial decisions to the chief Punjaub authori- 
 ties at Lahore, but I had the satisfaction of finding that 
 none of my decisions had been reversed. The Chief Com- 
 missioner was good enough to give me credit for having 
 given tone and character to the administration, and added 
 an encomium, which pleased me, and which was very con- 
 sonant with his own views, namely, that I had "taught the 
 officers under him that vigour is not inconsistent with law 
 and rule." 
 
 We took much care to preserve the rights of the people 
 in the land from a rash and premature alienation, such as 
 has occurred in other provinces. I have noticed in con- 
 nection with Azimghur the great difficulty of this subject, 
 and the great evils which have attended wholesale aliena- 
 tions contrary to the habits and public opinion of the 
 country. It is, however, very difficult to make precise 
 rules on the subject, and the only rule which at that time 
 we were able to lay down, and which has long prevailed 
 throughout the Punjaub territories, is that no compulsory 
 alienation of landed property is permitted without the 
 special sanction of the highest authority a sanction which 
 cannot be claimed by any creditor as a matter of right, but 
 only when a sale in execution seems to be really for the 
 benefit of both parties, and not inconsistent with the rights 
 of third parties. If I think a man can pay, I prefer a 
 certain amount of personal coercion rather than sell a
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 189 
 
 hereditary property which has not been practically saleable 
 in native times. Still, the discretion of the higher authority 
 is a very vague rule, and I am afraid that to this day nothing 
 better has been substituted. 
 
 Voluntary sale was permitted, subject to the rights of 
 co-sharers in the village. The custom of the country gives 
 a right of pre-emption to the other sharers ; and even if 
 they cannot or will not buy, they are entitled to a reasonable 
 veto upon an objectionable new-comer, just as the members 
 of a club may fairly object to receive a disagreeable new 
 member. If it were otherwise, as these communities are 
 constituted, a discordant or designing purchaser, getting hold 
 of a small share and a few fields, might disturb and endanger 
 the peace of the whole community. However, in well-to-do 
 parts of the country with a good population, such as that 
 about Loodiana, there was very rarely any inclination to 
 alienate land ; on the contrary, they clung to it tenaciously, 
 and if ever there was a chance, there were always people 
 within the village most ready to add to their fields. I only 
 hope that in modern days the influx of lawyers and action 
 of the courts may not have undermined this happy state of 
 things. So far as I can gather, in the Jat districts of the 
 Eastern Punjaub the people are still holding their own ; but 
 in the Western Mahomedan districts there is said to be 
 great indebtedness, carried indeed to a dangerous extent. 
 An officer who has much experience of those districts has 
 drawn a picture of the state of things, which is very alarm- 
 ing. A large proportion of those people, too, are Jats, or 
 Yats, as they are there called ; but the change of religion 
 seems to have been accompanied with a good deal of inter- 
 mixture of blood, and they are less provident and reliable 
 than their Hindoo or quasi-Hindoo congeners. I continued 
 to do all I could to maintain and foster the village constitu- 
 tions, always believing that they are the true foundation of 
 local self-government the basis from which we may work 
 upwards. As those village constitutions then existed they 
 certainly worked admirably well; and I think that, more 
 fortunate than other parts of India, the Punjaub still retains
 
 190 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 these corporations in good vitality. As respects the limited 
 common interest in property, the common rights in grazing, 
 etc., and the common liability for the revenue, the people 
 showed no desire whatever to dissolve that community of 
 interest. If any man ever did from any cause fail to make 
 up his quota of the revenue, the others were always very 
 ready to take over his holding. 
 
 I have before alluded to the position of non-proprietary 
 cultivators. In these days of which I am now writing, 
 there was still little or no contention about their position. 
 The members of the proper proprietary community were 
 still quite willing to recognise their claims to fixity of 
 tenure on payment of the customary revenue. It was not 
 till much later that a serious contention on that subject 
 arose, and my belief is that it never would have arisen if it 
 had not been started by European officers, keen for landlord 
 rights. One officer in particular, who unfortunately came 
 to hold very high office in the Settlement Department, was 
 quite fanatic on the subject, and raised contentious questions 
 which even Lord Lawrence had some trouble in allaying. 
 
 In my time there was a good deal of question upon the 
 subject of the direct taxation of the non-agricultural classes. 
 In native times there was very generally a tax of this kind 
 called the " Atrafee " tax, which was the predecessor of our 
 income and license taxes. It could not be called an income- 
 tax, for it did not seriously touch the highest and richest 
 people, but it was quite of the nature of a graduated license 
 tax. I did not see the need for giving it up, and I think 
 that our subsequent policy in this respect has justified that 
 view. In districts where we rushed to surrender the native 
 taxes, and a long interval elapsed before we put on similar 
 taxes on our own account, they were much more keenly felt, 
 and were imposed with much greater difficulty than where 
 the people had been accustomed to the native tax with 
 irregularities and abuses which we have sought to correct. 
 
 I had a good deal of anxiety about the Public Works
 
 THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 191 
 
 Department. Xapier had already constructed fine barracks, 
 much in advance of those which had preceded them, and 
 probably more suitable for their purpose than many of those 
 which came after them so we had not much trouble on 
 that subject. But the Grand Trunk Eoad to unite Hindoo- 
 stan with the Punjaub ran through a very difficult country 
 between Kurnal and Umballa, crossing a very heavy drain- 
 age and the work had proceeded with extreme slowness. 
 The communication between Umballa and the hills was 
 very indifferent, being liable to be interrupted by a great 
 stream from the outer Himalayas, which, usually almost 
 dry, came down as a mighty torrent after heavy rain in the 
 hills. When very heavy it could not be crossed at all 
 there was nothing for it but to wait on the bank till it ran 
 itself out and went down. To obviate the risk of moderate 
 floods, an elephant used to be stationed at the crossing 
 during the rainy season, to try to pick out travellers who 
 might happen to be drowning not very encouraging for 
 them ! 
 
 The head of the Public Works Department was a re- 
 spectable enough man, but very slow, somewhat perverse, 
 and not very effective ; and his deficiencies were not wholly 
 counteracted by the superabundant energy of one of his 
 subordinates, late the distinguished military member of 
 Council, Sir George Chesuey. The new hill road, from the 
 foot of the hills to Simla, was then being constructed by a 
 very old friend and countryman of mine, Captain Briggs, 
 now General David Briggs of Strathairlie, and I think 
 he made a good job of it. There was not much going 
 on in the way of construction for irrigation purposes ; 
 I have already mentioned the Western Jumna Canal, the 
 need for the remodelling of which was a perennial source 
 of complaint at which we hammered away continually with- 
 out success. Personally I was very much interested in the 
 idea of getting a canal from the upper Sutlej to the part 
 of the country where rain was so scant, although the soil 
 was very good. I repeatedly visited the point where the 
 Sutlej issues from the hills about Roopur, in the hope of
 
 192 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER . CHAP. 
 
 seeing my way to a project of this kind; but the physical 
 difficulties were very great; for the first thirty or forty 
 miles the country was considerably above the level of the 
 Sutlej, and very heavy cuttings would be required. It was 
 many years before the work was undertaken, but I am 
 happy to say that it has now been carried out, with the 
 aid of the native states, in the shape of the present Sirhind 
 Canal a very expensive work, but one which, I greatly 
 trust, may prove extremely beneficial. The worst of the 
 enthusiasm which was got up in favour of irrigation was that 
 when public opinion was turned on in that direction, and 
 Sir Arthur Cotton for a time had his way, it seemed to be 
 imagined that irrigation works were equally good every- 
 where, a mistake which has now been found out. The 
 Puujaub I believe to be a part of India eminently suited 
 for irrigation, having a fine soil but very scanty rainfall, 
 while a series of great rivers bring immense floods from the 
 Himalayas. The only question is that of health. There is 
 no doubt that in this respect great harm has been done by 
 irrigation works, and the subject has never, I believe, been 
 sufficiently probed. It would be very sad if the fine popu- 
 lation of the Punjaub suffered physical deterioration. And 
 no doubt there are some further questions to settle in con- 
 nection with irrigation. 
 
 To conclude the subject of our public works, I may say 
 that the Grand Trunk Road was finished just about the time 
 when the construction of the railway from the side of 
 Seharunpore had made it of comparatively little use. Be- 
 tween Umballa and. the hills the crossing of the Guggur 
 remains, I believe, as great a difficulty as ever. I was 
 myself convinced that if I had remained a year or two longer 
 we could have circumvented that stream, and made a secure 
 road. But there was always an uncertainty about the 
 future of Simla ; and it was not done. Only now it is 
 understood that a railway is being constructed from Delhi 
 through the Cis-Sutlej territory to Umballa and thence to 
 the foot of the hills at Kalka. From thence Briggs's hill 
 road has Ion" been fit for carts and light carriage traffic.
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 193 
 
 But if Simla is to maintain its present position there must 
 be a light railway right up to that place ; since one has been 
 made to Darjeeling, it can very well be done to Simla too. 
 
 All that I have hitherto said refers to the plain country 
 between the Jumna and the Sutlej and the people of that 
 country. The hill territory between the same rivers is also 
 very interesting, and the people are entirely different in 
 their character, their castes, their agriculture, and other 
 things. In fact there is little social intercourse between 
 the people of the plains and those of the Himalayan country, 
 except that in a few cases, among the upper classes, good- 
 looking hill-women, of families claiming to be Eajpoot, 
 come down to be wives of rich Eajpoots of the plains, 
 who pay pretty heavily for these young ladies. I have 
 heard it said that this practice in some degree accounts for 
 the polyandry which exists in some parts of the Himalayas, 
 but I have never sufficiently inquired into the matter. 
 
 The Mahomedans never penetrated into the hills about 
 Simla ; and when the Goorkhas brought the line of the 
 Himalayas under their dominion, they got as far as Kangra 
 (where they came in contact with the Sikhs) without at all 
 mixing themselves up in the affairs of the plains. When 
 we took the Simla country from the Goorkhas in 1816, it 
 was beyond our regular borders, and we so little appreciated 
 it that we only sought to get rid of it somehow or other. 
 We found hill Eajahs whom we set up in most of the 
 country, and what we could not thus dispose of we made 
 over to the Eajah of Puttiala, though he was quite out of 
 place there. The Sikhs or Jats have never had anything 
 to do with those hills, and are quite strangers there. When 
 a little later we discovered the value of the hills we had to 
 buy back lands for our stations and cantonments, and to 
 this day the proper British territory there consists only of 
 those stations and a few petty territories which have lapsed 
 from want of heirs. But the Deputy-Commissioner of 
 Simla has very complete control over the petty hill Eajahs 
 indeed in the matter of supplies and porters for travellers 
 
 VOL. I
 
 194 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 he has more complete control than in a British district 
 with British laws. I previously made mention of the 
 people of Kimiaon, and the remarks I then made apply to 
 the people of the Simla country but still the latter are a 
 different people in many respects. 
 
 The whole of the southern slopes of the Himalayas, all the 
 way from the Indus to the present boundary of the Nepaul 
 country, are inhabited by very interesting and pleasant 
 Hindoo races. I leave aside for the present the Cashmerees 
 and their congeners, who were conquered by the Mahom- 
 edans and are very much Mahomedanised, but all the 
 rest of the country I have mentioned is held by good-look- 
 ing races, who may be taken as a favourable type of early 
 Hindoos. They have no predatory instincts like so many 
 hill-men, but are easily governed and easily managed, 
 though they are quite civilised and well educated. There 
 are no aboriginal races in the Himalayas, unless the Hindoos 
 be the aborigines I mean none of the black races found in 
 the interior of India. The hill Hindoos are very Aryan ; 
 there is, I think, among them no trace of intermixture with 
 Turanians or Tartars. Unmixed races of the latter no doubt 
 border them on the north among the snowy passes of the 
 Himalayas, where they carry on the Trans-Himalayan traffic, 
 and some of these latter people may be seen working at 
 Simla ; but they are entirely different from the natives. The 
 Tartar or Bhootea women especially are very strong, fine, 
 powerful, ruddy-looking women, capable of bearing great 
 burdens. Among the Hindoos the only Turanian trace, I 
 think, is in the architecture there is something very Chinese- 
 looking about their temples and better houses and a remark- 
 ably pretty architecture it is. I know nothing prettier than 
 a hill-temple among deodar trees. Simla has, of course, 
 become a very big place now, and between Simla and the 
 plains there is quite a group of hill stations for European 
 troops within sight of one another Kussowlee, Sabathu, 
 and Dugshai. Though the hills north of Simla are delight- 
 ful, it is unfortunately the case that the country between 
 Simla and the plains is the worst, barest, and ugliest in the
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 195 
 
 whole range of the Himalayas. I cannot but think that it 
 was a very unfortunate selection to mass our European 
 troops there. The old direct road from the foot of the hills 
 to Simla upwards of forty miles was about the most 
 detestable I have known in any part of the world. I have 
 a very painful recollection of frequently grinding up and 
 down it. The new road is much easier and somewhat 
 pleasanter, but is very much longer and does not pass 
 through at all a nice country. I did not dislike Kussowlee, 
 which is high and cool, and well-wooded so far as fir-trees 
 go ; but the water disagrees with a great many people, so 
 much so that it was not found possible to keep whole 
 regiments there, and it was reduced to a depot for those 
 soldiers with whom the water does not disagree. Sabathu 
 is much lower, and a hot disagreeable place. Dugshai was 
 invented later, and is better, but I do not think it first-rate. 
 Simla is, no doubt, a nice place once you get there indeed, 
 for a moderate-sized station, barring the climate of the 
 rains, a very nice place ; the vegetation is beautiful, 
 deodars, tree-rhododendrons, and oaks ; but it has, I think, 
 quite outgrown its capabilities ; it is not fitted for a very large 
 population. There is no space, not a yard'of flat ground. 
 The Europeans are too scattered, and the natives in the 
 bazaars inconveniently crowded. The water-supply is most 
 deficient ; the place is situated just on the dividing ridge 
 between the waters flowing into the Bay of Bengal, and 
 those flowing into the Indian Ocean ; there is very little 
 water in the station ; and though of late years a certain 
 supply has been brought from a distance, I believe it is still 
 scarcely enough for the most necessary requirements of the 
 place certainly there is nothing to spare to give anything 
 like running water, or to flush the places where rubbish is 
 collected. The rains are sufficient to moisten and fester 
 the debris of the bazaars not really to clean the hill-side ; 
 consequently, in spite of all that is done, Simla does not 
 seem to be a very healthy place ; it does not agree with 
 every one, and some dislike it in spite of the pleasant 
 society. While the rainy season lasts there is perpetual
 
 196 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 rain and cloud ; the clouds are always passing through 
 your drawing-room. The cold season is very cold far too 
 cold for such a confined situation, and no one stays there 
 then who can help it ; so the good seasons before and after the 
 rains are really very limited. No doubt for a few weeks 
 after the rains the hill climate is most charming, and so it 
 is sometimes in April, but the distance from the plains is a 
 very great disadvantage. It is very troublesome for natives 
 to get at, and many of the native dignitaries who are 
 brought there dislike it. 
 
 I had occasion to mark the course of the cholera one 
 season when it was very bad. Nothing can be more strange 
 than the devious courses which it follows. There does 
 seem some evidence of its taking the course of human traffic 
 along the lines of great roads ; but sometimes it jumps over 
 a hundred miles, and appears at a distance. Sometimes it 
 attacks white people and leaves the natives alone ; some- 
 times the natives and leaves the whites alone ; sometimes 
 the prisoners in jail and no one else ; sometimes the free 
 people and not the prisoners ; sometimes one side of a 
 barrack-room and not the other. There was a curious 
 instance of this last in Umballa ; but it turned out that all 
 the men attacked on one side of the room had fished in the 
 same tank within a day or two. Only one thing seemed 
 up to that time to be very well established namely, that 
 cholera did not go much uphill : we marked it round the 
 foot of the hills and up the lower valleys, but it never came 
 high ; and that seemed to tally with the theory of its pro- 
 pagation by running water, since that does not run uphill. 
 However, no sooner does a theory on the subject seem 
 established than the next outbreak dissipates it. I believe 
 the very next year there was a bad outbreak of cholera at 
 the hill station of Murree ; not. many years after it reached 
 Simla, and I think has since been there two or three times. 
 
 Simla, in common with other hill stations, has the 
 advantage of being placed among very quiet hill people.
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 197 
 
 The stations themselves get flooded with a good many scamps 
 from the plains, but the moment you get into the villages 
 beyond you seem to come into a kind of primitive paradise, 
 where all is peace, and there is no fear of robbery or turmoil 
 or political trouble of any kind. The women are particularly 
 nice-looking, simple in their ways, and with none of the 
 false shame of the Mahomedan purda-nisheen 1 women. 
 The population is, after all, small, for the country will not 
 support considerable numbers. There are no real valleys, 
 only clefts in the mountains ; the bits of cultivation by 
 the streams are very small, and the upper fields are very 
 laboriously terraced out of the steep mountain sides. They 
 cultivate these little fields with much industry, bringing 
 water to them in petty conduits, sometimes from long dis- 
 tances. There is a very picturesque-looking bright-red crop 
 which is conspicuous on the hill-sides. The hill-men have 
 taken to cultivate potatoes largely, and very first-class 
 potatoes they are. In the neighbourhood of Simla straw- 
 berries too are, I believe, now much cultivated for the 
 Europeans. The hill people keep bees largely in their 
 houses, the hives being let into the walls in a curious way, 
 with an exit on the outside. There seems to be a curious 
 property in the hill air of carrying the voice to an enormous 
 distance. I have seen a hill-man shout across to another 
 village on a neighbouring mountain in a wonderful way, 
 and get from thence the supplies that we wanted. 
 
 I wonder not to have seen more notice of the curious 
 practice of the hill-women of putting their babies' heads 
 under a spout of water to send them to sleep and keep 
 them quiet. When the new cart-road was first made, there 
 was a village at a halting-place about half-way up, where 
 rows of such children might be seen in a grove close to the 
 road. The water of a hill spring was so adjusted as to 
 furnish a series of little spouts each about the thickness of 
 one's little finger ; opposite each spout was a kind of earth- 
 pillow, and a little trough to carry away the water. Each 
 
 1 Purda-nisheen = sitting behind the curtain, i.e. secluded in the women's 
 apartments.
 
 198 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 child was so laid that one of the water-spouts played on 
 the top of its head, and the water then ran off into the 
 trough. I can testify that the process was most successful ; 
 there never were such quiet and untroublesome babies as 
 those under the spouts. The people were unanimous in 
 asserting that the process did the children no harm, but, on 
 the contrary, benefited and invigorated them ; in fact, they 
 seemed to think that a child not subjected to this process 
 must grow up soft-brained and good for nothing. Certainly 
 their appearance showed no signs that this singular method 
 of bracing the intellectual portion of their bodies had done 
 them any harm. I think people in this country afflicted 
 with babies might with great advantage try the plan ; an 
 apparatus could easily be fitted up in a nursery, and I do 
 not think the Acts of the Water Companies contain any 
 provision for an extra charge for babies. 
 
 The greatest evil under which the hill people suffered 
 was the forced labour. I do not think they altogether dis- 
 liked regular jobs with travellers going into the interior, 
 when care was taken that they were regularly paid. But 
 the hardest thing of all was the migration of the Governor- 
 General's camp. The number of porters required was so 
 large, and many of the people in the camp, especially the 
 native servants, were so exacting, that people had to be 
 brought from very great distances, so that they were often 
 absent from their home for weeks, yet only got from the 
 Commissariat two or three days' pay for the actual job that 
 they did. I hope the cart-road has remedied the greater 
 part of this evil ; but when there is much work to be done, 
 the demand is always a great strain on the sparse hill 
 population. 
 
 As I have said, the country up to Simla is very poor, 
 and the principal vegetation consists of horrid cactuses. 
 But beyond Simla there is really much very nice country, 
 with beautiful vegetation. The great drawback is the ex- 
 cessive steepness of the hills, which prevents roaming about ; 
 but many roads have been made, and I suppose it is much 
 more accessible than it was in my time. There is a moun-
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 199 
 
 tain between Simla and Mussooree called the " Chor," about 
 12,000 feet high, and at the back of that is a charming 
 country among a charming people. 
 
 The only difference I ever had with Sir John Lawrence 
 was one connected with this hill country, and it was some- 
 what characteristic. In the autumn, about the beginning 
 of October, I had arranged to make a little trip into the 
 interior of the hills, marching up towards the snow, and 
 taking en route a petty hill territory which had lapsed to us. 
 But somehow, either by accident or by a paragraph in the 
 newspapers, this came to the knowledge of Sir John 
 Lawrence, and before I had gone many marches I received 
 a somewhat curt and imperative message to say that bad 
 examples must not be set ; that the indulgence of living in 
 the hills must not be overstrained ; that the time was come 
 when all officers must descend to the plains, and down I 
 ought to go. He did not know, or did not remember, that 
 I was far from being one of the men who are too fond of 
 the hills, and that in fact, instead of staying beyond the 
 allotted term, I had from choice passed most of the rainy 
 season in the plains. I was then rather hurt, and set out 
 my view also in decided terms. Sir John was most reason- 
 able, and admitted my version of the case. But in the 
 meanwhile time had passed ; I did not care to press the 
 matter, and my trip to the snow was lost. 
 
 The " native " officers of the Cis-Sutlej and the Punjaub 
 were perhaps not quite so good as those of the more settled 
 provinces. There is always a certain disadvantage in the 
 employment of strangers from a distance so far as we were 
 obliged to do so the indigenous men were yet not very 
 perfectly educated in our ways. Still we had some good 
 men ; I have a great belief in the capacity of the " Kha- 
 trees," the most educated class of the Sikh country. They 
 are not only first-rate merchants and traders, but also good 
 civil officials, and can turn soldiers too when need be. 
 Several of Runjeet's principal governors were Khatrees. 
 They turn their hand to anything more than other Hindoo
 
 200 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 castes, and find their way into important posts in various 
 parts of India. I believe that the Emperor Akbar's great 
 financier " Todar Mull " was a Khatree. The largest zemin- 
 dar in Bengal, the Maharajah of Burdwan, is a Khatree. I 
 had a head of my office of this class a very competent 
 man, of whom I was very fond. But, as I think I have 
 said, we are very hard on natives when they get into any 
 scrape infinitely harder than upon our own countrymen in 
 this country. A few years later Sir Herbert Edwardes held 
 the post which I had at the time of which I am writing ; 
 and coming up on a visit in those later days it almost 
 broke my heart to find my native friend undergoing a fright- 
 ful sentence on a conviction by Edwardes for taking a grati- 
 fication a great many years' penal servitude, as a common 
 malefactor. The man may have been guilty, but if he was 
 the sentence was, I must think, terribly severe. I confess too 
 that in those days I had not great confidence in Edwardes's 
 judgment. In his younger days he was undoubtedly a 
 man of brilliant ability and a very clever writer, and he 
 did much excellent service ; but he rose in rather too sud- 
 den and irregular a way, and was tempted into performances 
 which brought Lord Dalhousie down upon him. And in 
 later years he took very strong views which I may not call 
 fanatical, but which were tinctured with severity towards 
 those who were not of his persuasion. He was the leading 
 spirit in the prosecution, or persecution, of the Mahomedans 
 stigmatised as " Wahabees " a course which Lord Dalhousie 
 deprecated very early in the day, but which was followed to 
 a greater degree in days subsequent to the Mutiny. No 
 doubt some of them were convicted of disloyal practices 
 after full consideration by judges of the Bengal High Court, 
 so we may assume that they were not free from guilt. But 
 in Edwardes's hands they fared still more badly, or it would 
 have been so if the higher judicial authorities at Lahore had 
 not mitigated the sentences. 1 One case I remember seemed 
 
 1 I had written as I have of Edwardes from memory, and looking it over 
 thought it well to refer to the account of his Cis-Sutlej career in the Life 
 published by his wife. It is hard to judge a man who has gone to his rest by
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 201 
 
 a hard one that of a Mahomedan chief butcher and com- 
 missariat contractor at Lahore. There seemed no doubt that 
 he was of the Wahabee persuasion, and had subscribed for 
 the support of the zealot colony at Sitana at a time when it 
 was far from our frontier and had only to do with the Sikhs. 
 I daresay, too, that when the Punjaub became ours he had not 
 withdrawn his subscriptions. But when we went to war 
 with the Sitana people and engaged in the Black Mountain 
 campaign, the correspondence showed that he had written 
 " ab wakt munasib naheen " " now is not a fitting time to 
 assist," and then he buckled to his duty as a layman, and 
 supplied the British troops in a very effective way ! But 
 that was not thought enough to condone his heretical treason. 
 
 It was during my incumbency in the Cis-Sutlej states 
 that Lord Dalhousie retired from India. During his last 
 year he had gone to the Nilgherry Hills instead of to Simla, 
 and so I did not then see so much of him as I otherwise 
 should. And in truth, though I always was in a special 
 degree an adherent of his, and he treated me with great 
 kindness and consideration, his health had not been good ; 
 he did not lead the open, easy, military kind of life in camp 
 that Lord Hardinge did, and I really had not so much per- 
 sonal familiarity with him that I have had with other 
 Governors-General with whom my official relations were not 
 so close. I had been absent from India, too, during a great 
 
 what a loving wife puts in print ; but one cannot read it without see- 
 ing that neither in health nor in other ways was he fitted for the regular and 
 serious work he then had to do. She describes it as "putting a highly-bred 
 racer in a plough " contrasts the people with his frontier Mooltanees en- 
 larges on the crimes of the Wahabees and of his regular work tells us little 
 more than that he occupied himself in "effecting changes in the Omlah or 
 native clerks (whom Sir Herbert says I never saw the like of in the Pun- 
 jaub). " Evidently he means the like of for badness and that was no doubt the 
 occasion on which my poor friend came to grief. As it was upwards of six 
 years after I had left I could not be responsible for the Omlah ; but weak 
 favouritism is the last thing of which any one has accused me, and as, apart 
 from myself, I may say that the Cis-Sutlej had been administered by some 
 of the most efficient and distinguished men in the service, I should be slow to 
 believe in the phenomenal badness of the establishment on the authority of 
 the high-bred racer from the Trans-Indus Frontier.
 
 202 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 part of his reign. While there I saw him often, and was 
 very intimate with his staff and surroundings. I speak of 
 him rather in his official than in his personal character. 
 
 No one will dispute that Lord Dalhousie was a man of 
 very great ability and energy ; and we owe it to him that 
 British India was completed and rounded off with the natural 
 boundaries that nature has set to it, that the various pro- 
 vinces were united by a continuous British territory, that 
 the system of trunk railways was initiated by which our 
 communications have been put on a thoroughly good foot- 
 ing, and that the great dominion has been settled in a form 
 which it still retains and may long retain. 
 
 Lord Dalhousie, whether from temperament or from 
 policy, was pretty imperious in his style. Only a very 
 strong man, determined to hold his own, could have tackled 
 that very rampant person, Sir Charles Napier; and there 
 were others too who required keeping in order. On some 
 of the civilians, too, he came down with a hard hand. He 
 astonished the Bengal Board of Eevenue on one occasion ; 
 his Lordship had appointed a member of the Civil Service 
 who came from East Lothian, but who was rather one of the 
 Company's hard bargains, to an office to which his standing 
 in the service made him eligible. The Board of Eevenue 
 remonstrated regarding his fitness, and were rebuked by the 
 Governor-General in an order in which he styled their con- 
 duct " unparalleled presumption." I do not know how far 
 the Board had or had not kept their remonstrance within 
 the limits of respect, and perhaps a certain amount of truth 
 gave a sting to it, but I do think the language of the 
 Governor-General was rather strong. Much, too, as I admired 
 his policy in the Punjaub, I thought his pronouncements 
 a little excessive in that he seemed to speak of the conduct 
 of the Sikhs in having one more blow for independence as a 
 sort of crime ; but after all he treated them quite liberally. 
 
 When the political tide turned, it was long the fashion 
 for many writers and speakers to cast stones at Lord Dal- 
 housie on account of the annexations by which he completed 
 the Indian Empire; but I still believe that those annexa-
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 203 
 
 tions were quite justifiable, and in the highest degree expe- 
 dient. A long battle raged upon the question of the right 
 of adoption, but it seemed to be quite forgotten that the 
 practice which he followed in that respect had been estab- 
 lished long before his time, namely, that an adoption of an 
 heir to a ruler required the sanction of the suzerain power. 
 Adoption is, in fact, the Hindoo form of a will, but both in 
 native times and in our own feudal chiefs could not transmit 
 the chiefship in that way without approval, having regard to 
 the rights of the collaterals as well as to those of the sovereign 
 power. In many cases this rule had been applied. In the 
 Sikh states I never heard of any claim to succeed by adop- 
 tion. In regard to ancient dynasties such as the Rajpoot 
 states, where the chiefship was rather the expression of the 
 rights of the clan than of the individual, neither Lord Dal- 
 housie nor any one else claimed to appropriate a feudal state 
 as a lapse. There the Government only decided between 
 the conflicting claims of an adopted child and a collateral 
 according to the custom of the clan. Even in the usual 
 case of new states founded by recent adventurers, the denial 
 of an indefeasible claim to perpetuate by adoption did not 
 imply that permission should be refused in all cases, it 
 was never deemed desirable to wipe out native states under 
 all circumstances. But the decision was regulated by views 
 of large political expediency, the interest both of the Em- 
 pire and of the people, not by a mere narrow technicality 
 which might give us territories we did not want and deprive 
 us of those which it was highly desirable that we should have. 
 In this view I think Lord Dalhousie was entirely right in con- 
 sidering that, within the limits of the more accessible parts of 
 India, the sovereign power which bears the whole burden of 
 defence and administration should not neglect a favourable 
 opportunity of acquiring the revenue also, in cases in which 
 it could be done with entire regard to justice and good faith. 
 The concession of a universal right of adoption a few 
 years later, subsequent to the Mutiny, was the mere result 
 of a change in the political tide the swinging of the pen- 
 dulum of public opinion to the opposite extreme from its
 
 20 4 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 previous position. Circumstances had occasioned a good 
 many annexations, and it was perhaps well that there should 
 be a rest for a time ; but in the end I believe it is quite 
 injurious that successions should be entirely regulated by 
 the narrow technical legality now established rather than by 
 broader considerations. To come to the particular annexa- 
 tions of Lord Dalhousie as a matter of fact this right of 
 adoption came into question only in one or two minor cases 
 the greater annexations depended upon totally different 
 considerations. I have already dealt with the annexation 
 of the Punjaub, and I think no one is now found to deny 
 that that annexation has been a great success. In the 
 case of the large Mahratta state of Nagpore, the Maharajah 
 not only did not adopt, but positively refused to adopt 
 when invited to do so. The province of Berar was an 
 old possession of the Nagpore Rajahs, which had been 
 conquered by us and given to the Nizam on account 
 of proximity and the assistance he rendered us in quite 
 recent times after the last of the Mahratta wars. The 
 arrangement made for taking the administration of it 
 into our hands, while we account to him for the revenue, 
 was the result of pecuniary obligations into which the Nizam 
 had entered long before Lord Dalhousie's time, and which 
 he had hopelessly failed to fulfil. The annexation of Nag- 
 pore and administration of Berar have united Northern and 
 Central with Western and Southern India a union which 
 never could have taken place if we had not become pos- 
 sessed of those territories. By far the most difficult annexa- 
 tion to justify from a strict treaty point of view was that of 
 Oude. It has always been acknowledged that whatever the 
 faults and the incapacity of the King of Oude, the family 
 had always been most entirely loyal to us. In latter days 
 the King had quite failed to keep order in his territory 
 the excesses and misconduct of the great land-holders had 
 been vividly depicted by British political officers, of all men 
 least inclined to view native rule with disfavour. The 
 occupation of the country could only be justified by a kind 
 of su2Jrema lex. But the treaty of 1837, which had been
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 205 
 
 formally made in India, and the disallowance of which by 
 the Court of Directors had never been communicated to the 
 King, stood in the way. It curiously enough happened that 
 Lord Dalhousie, who has been branded as the great advocate 
 of annexation, was the one man whose scruples could not be 
 overcome ; he declined to annex, and would much have 
 preferred an administrative compromise to get over the im- 
 mediate difficulty. It was not by him but by positive 
 orders from the Home Government that Oude was annexed. 
 And it was after he had left that the Eoyal Family was I 
 think, in regard to details, treated with somewhat scant con- 
 sideration ; but I shall have more to say of Oude later when 
 I come to my service there. 
 
 I think I have already said that I was opposed to the 
 annexation of Lower Burmah or Pegu as being beyond the 
 natural limits of India. But on other grounds there is this 
 to be said, that Pegu was not a native Burman possession, 
 but a conquest by the Burmese which we wrested from them, 
 and that it has turned out an extraordinarily productive 
 country the rice granary of the world. Whether its having 
 led to the annexation of Upper Burmah be a good or an 
 evil, that is another affair. 
 
 For more than fifty years the Governor-General in- 
 dividually has been more and more dissevered from the 
 details of the administration, which are mainly left to the 
 provincial governments ; he only interferes with the aid of his 
 Council under special circumstances. Up to Lord William 
 Bentinck's time the Governor-General was himself Governor 
 of the whole of the great Northern Provinces. In Lord 
 Auckland's time the North-West Provinces were committed 
 to a Lieutenant-Governor, and though Lower Bengal nomin- 
 ally still remained an appanage of the Governor-General, 
 his constant absence made it impossible for him to ad- 
 minister it, and it was generally left to a member of Council 
 as temporary Deputy-Governor. Before the end of Lord 
 Dalhousie's time Bengal also was made over to a permanent 
 Lieutenant-Governor, and the Governor-General wholly ceased 
 to have any local governorship. Lord Dalhousie's previous
 
 206 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 experience had not been in the departments of civil adminis- 
 tration, but rather in that of public works, where he had had 
 a very large share in regulating the English railway system. 
 In India he had in many ways most ample occupation in 
 the proper functions of Governor-General, and his hand was 
 perhaps less visible in matters of purely civil administration 
 than in other departments. The Punjaub was not erected 
 into a governorship in Lord Dalhousie's time. Sir John 
 Lawrence was still Chief Commissioner, and under that 
 arrangement the Governor-General might interfere as much 
 or as little as he thought fit. But he did not invent the 
 non-regulation system ; and though he carefully tended the 
 Punjaub, and took very great interest in it, his merit was 
 not so much the actual administration as the choosing so fit 
 a man as John Lawrence and thoroughly supporting him. 
 To those two men jointly the great success of that adminis- 
 tration must be attributed. 
 
 As respects the administration of India generally, the 
 Governor-General, as head of all, undertook many important 
 improvements. The machinery of the Civil Services was 
 much reformed and regulated ; new rules and arrangements 
 were made regarding pay, promotion, furlough, and other 
 matters ; and care was taken to prevent injury to the 
 service from public servants involving themselves with 
 trading companies, or losing their independence through 
 indebtedness. In the department of Public Works especially 
 very much was done by Lord Dalhousie ; he may be said 
 indeed to have laid wide and deep the foundations of the 
 material prosperity which the country now enjoys. He 
 began by establishing a systematic and efficient Public 
 Works Department in lieu of the mongrel machinery by 
 which such affairs had hitherto been managed. To him 
 personally is entirely due that great trunk railway system 
 which has been so very remarkable a success, probably 
 more so than in any other country in the world. Eoads 
 and other means of communication were largely developed 
 by him, and much attention was paid to ports and harbours. 
 The great subject of irrigation also largely engaged his
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 207 
 
 attention. He established the present postal system and 
 the telegraphic system. He took large measures for the 
 development of the resources of the country, agricultural 
 and mineral, for promoting the cultivation of tea, the work- 
 ing of coal and iron, and other things of that kind. It has 
 been remarked that in the final minute in which he sum- 
 marises his administration, comparatively few paragraphs 
 were given to his annexations and other political achieve- 
 ments, and a very great many to the various departments of 
 public works. 
 
 To the army he devoted a full share of attention. He 
 did not by any means overrate the merits of the native 
 army, nor did he trust them too much ; but he adjusted their 
 claims in such a way that he thought they had no proper 
 ground of complaint. At the same time he decidedly 
 expressed his opinion that the European army needed 
 strengthening, and he gave very much care to ameliorating 
 the condition of the European troops. Read by the light of 
 subsequent events, there is no reason whatever for attribut- 
 ing blindness to him in regard to military matters, but quite 
 the contrary. 
 
 Take him all in all, Lord Dalhousie was a Governor- 
 General the like of whom I doubt if we shall ever see 
 again. 
 
 I had charge of the Cis-Sutlej states till immediately 
 before the outbreak of the Mutiny. But by this time the 
 new rules had come in, under which officers on sick-leave 
 had a lien upon their appointments when they returned, 
 and in the beginning of 1857 we learned that George 
 Barnes intended to come back. In view of that contingency 
 Mr. Colvin proposed to me the appointment of Secretary to 
 the Government of the North- West Provinces. It was not 
 altogether an advancement, but looking to the whole situa- 
 tion, and my relations with Mr. Colvin, I decided to accept 
 it, and looked to pleasant and important work in aiding 
 him in the administration of that Government. Sir John 
 Lawrence offered me the Lahore Division of the Punjaub
 
 208 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 the heart of that country aiid a very important charge ; but 
 thanking him, I said that I was pledged to Mr. Colvin, who 
 had already obtained the consent of the Governor-General 
 to my transfer. A few weeks later, before I left, Sir John 
 was good enough further to offer me the Rawal-Pindee 
 Division, with the advantage of a residence in the hills. 
 I did not quite know whether to be flattered by a more 
 advantageous offer, or rather hurt by the doubt implied of 
 the sincerity of what I had said before ; but I really was 
 quite pledged and had no desire to change, so with very 
 many thanks I declined the further offer. In the event, 
 however, that proved a turning-point in my career. If I 
 had remained in the Punjaub I should have held one of the 
 most important posts there during the Mutiny, and continu- 
 ing in that province should have worked in a sympathetic 
 atmosphere, and among a sympathetic people, in the later 
 days when the Indian political tide had turned, and the 
 Punjaub alone remained the country of popular institutions 
 after an aristocratic reaction had flowed over most of the 
 other provinces. As it was, I drifted into countries where, 
 maintaining my principles when others had changed theirs, 
 I was out of touch with the policy of the day, and, as it 
 were, wandered for several years in the wilderness. 
 
 Barnes returned in the end of March, and I made over 
 to him the charge of the Cis-Sutlej states, just before the 
 early symptoms of the Mutiny developed themselves at 
 Umballa. It was arranged that I should take a short 
 holiday after the work I had gone through, and then 
 marching through the hills should meet Mr. Colvin in the 
 Mussooree country on the other side. I went off on a little 
 visit to my brother, who had just brought a newly-married 
 wife to Moradabad. We had a little tiger and other 
 shooting in the Eohilcund Terai, and then I spent a few 
 days at Moradabad, where all was then quiet, and the 
 young wife was enjoying her first experience of Indian life. 
 It was but a few weeks afterwards that they had a much 
 sadder and rougher time of it. On my way back, near 
 Seharuupore, a horse of mine was stolen, the only one I
 
 v THE CIS-SUTLEJ STATES 209 
 
 ever lost that way in India. It was of no great value, but 
 we look at things from our own point of view, and I was 
 afterwards inclined to look upon the stealing of my horse 
 as the first overt act of the Mutiny, and to expect to see a 
 bold mutineer careering upon him. When I got back to 
 Umballa many incendiary fires had taken place there, and 
 things were looking very serious indeed. Forsyth, the 
 Deputy- Commissioner of Umballa, took a very alarming 
 view of the situation. But though we might speak in 
 ominous terms, we could not realise what was really coming. 
 I was out of office then and glad to get my wife away, so 
 we leisurely marched up towards Simla, and there, after 
 interviewing the Commander-in-Chief on the subject, I cast 
 away all disagreeable thoughts, and went on with my wife and 
 a lady friend into the peaceful and pleasant interior of the 
 hills, where we enjoyed ourselves without serious thought of 
 coming ills. We were in that delightful country at the 
 back of the Chor. In that first half of May there was still 
 a good deal of snow on the mountain, where we went up 
 for the purpose of tobogganing down again. Lower down 
 there was all the freshness of spring; the leaves were out, 
 the flowers blooming, the hill bees collecting honey, and 
 those nice hill people gave us all we wanted. I never felt 
 more free from care in my life, and never enjoyed a quieter 
 and pleasanter scene, taking it easy in every way, when a 
 messenger arrived with the news that the storm had burst, 
 and India was in a blaze. 
 
 VOL. I
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SEPOY MUTINY 
 
 WE have been rather unlucky in regard to a history of the 
 Sepoy Mutiny. There is a large history by Kaye and 
 Malleson, which I confess I had not till lately read. I 
 thought I knew as much about the Mutiny as most people, 
 and hardly relied very much upon these gentlemen. But 
 to assist my recollection I have been lately glancing through 
 their volumes. Sir John Kaye's account of the Mutiny, in 
 three large volumes, goes up to the capture of Delhi, when 
 the back of the movement was really broken, and our 
 supremacy assured. He was not in India at the time, and 
 his history is a compilation ; but in that view I am bound 
 to say that so far as regards the facts he seems to have 
 conscientiously brought them together to the best of his 
 lights. So far his only fault seems to be the usual fault of 
 professional historians, that he overpaints his colours, makes 
 his heroes too heroic, his panics and his atrocities possibly 
 somewhat over-sensational. And as regards his political 
 views, I do not think him at all reliable. He does not 
 deduce his opinions from facts, but seeks to make his facts 
 fit his opinions. I should like entirely to cut off the first 
 volume, in which he constructs out of his inner conscious- 
 ness an elaborate political foundation for the Mutiny. On 
 the other hand, Colonel Malleson, whose facts I think much 
 less reliable, professing to write a continuation of Kaye's 
 history, thinks it necessary to re-write, as he says, the third 
 volume ; but in reality he re-writes both the second and
 
 CHAP, vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 211 
 
 third, mainly, it appears, for the purpose of contradicting 
 Kaye and reversing his judgments setting up as heroes 
 those whom Kaye has condemned, and pulling down those 
 whom Kaye has praised. 
 
 As regards Kaye's political theories of the cause of the 
 Mutiny, I will only say that there is not one tittle of 
 evidence in support of them ; they are only opinions 
 what one may call " pious opinions." And what is more 
 important is that none of the results which legitimately 
 ought to have followed the political circumstances which he 
 depicts did follow. The ill-used native princes, who ought 
 to have lost all faith in us, remained in the main faithful, or 
 at worst temporised, and so played our game. In our own 
 territories, Oude excepted, there was no considerable civil 
 rebellion at all. When our power was swept away for a 
 time, a few isolated people set up on their own account, 
 but there was nowhere anything like general or popular 
 rebellion at most there was only anarchy, some plunder by 
 predatory tribes and individuals, and a good many cases of 
 land-holders, who had been expropriated by the civil courts, 
 taking their own again. As the first civil officer who re- 
 turned to the territories which we had lost, I am in the 
 best position to say that we then encountered no opposition 
 whatever, and going back among the people resumed our 
 intercourse with them exactly as if nothing had happened. 
 
 Even in Oude, which had scarcely been a year in our 
 possession, and where the causes of civil rebellion were 
 obvious, the people certainly did not behave worse than 
 might have been expected. Oude was the home of a very 
 large proportion of the mutinous Sepoys. And the great 
 landlords, the Talookdars, to curb whose misdeeds the 
 country had been annexed, had not yet been disarmed 
 their teeth, as it were, had not been drawn. Even under 
 those circumstances, general rebellion was not so immediate 
 as it might have been ; the aggrieved Talookdars did not 
 behave so very badly at first, but rather temporised, and 
 sometimes behaved pretty well, protecting our fugitives. It 
 was not till after the failure of the first relief of Lucknow
 
 212 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 under Havelock and Outram had become apparent, and still 
 more after Sir Colin Campbell's first capture of the city and 
 subsequent retreat and abandonment, that the Talookdars as 
 a body went into full rebellion. 
 
 As respects the effect of Lord Dalhousie's annexations, 
 I do not think any one will now doubt that the Punjaub as 
 a British possession saved India ; that without the Punjaub 
 and the Punjaubees we must inevitably have failed before 
 Delhi, and lost all Northern and Central India and then 
 who knows what would have happened ? The possession of 
 Nagpore and Berar were useful to us, not detrimental they 
 made a line of British possession which prevented the fire 
 spreading south. There is then only Oude to set against 
 the advantage we derived from the Punjaub. And even as 
 regards Oude, it may be a question whether holding a 
 position in Lucknow, and keeping from Delhi the horde of 
 Sepoys who surrounded the Eesidency, we were not better 
 off than if the miserably weak native government of Oude 
 had been upset by the Sepoy contingent and Lucknow had 
 been wholly in the hands of the Sepoys, or the king of 
 Oude had become a puppet in their hands like the king of 
 Delhi he certainly was not in a position to have held his 
 own like the more independent princes. 
 
 Certainly the great Mutiny was a simple military mutiny, 
 and a mutiny only of the Bengal army, so called, though 
 there was not a single Bengalee in it really the Hindoostanee 
 army, including the contingents of native states, under 
 British officers, which were practically part of that army, 
 but excluding the Punjaubees and Nepaulese. The num- 
 ber of people who claim to have saved India because their 
 troops did not mutiny was large, and some of them really 
 did excellent service in troublous times ; but the fact is 
 that the Madras army was entirely distinct in every way, 
 and was not infected by the madness, while the Bombay 
 army was only partially affected, in so far as it had Hindoo- 
 stances in its ranks. As to the Bengal army, the whole of 
 it went, with very little exception indeed.
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 213 
 
 Further, the Mutiny was not in its inception altogether 
 a swift or sudden event in some sense it had been long 
 preparing. I do not claim to be wiser than other people, 
 but as I am writing of my own recollections I may quote 
 what I said in my volume, India as it may lie, pub- 
 lished in 1853, page 349. "It is impossible to attach 
 too great importance to the subject of Sepoy mutinies. 
 Shall I venture to say that the great combinations which 
 occurred a few years ago were compromised rather than 
 quelled ? The system and discipline under which such 
 things may any day occur must be anxiously looked to. 
 Most serious mutinies have occurred in the early days of 
 our army, but they were open and local outbreaks, and were 
 quelled with a strong hand. General, silent, deep combina- 
 tions, involving concession and compromise, are much more 
 serious." " Something then," I said, " must be wanting in 
 our system." And after discussing the causes of the want 
 of discipline among the Sepoys, I dwelt on the deficiency of 
 European troops, insisting that it was much better economy 
 to increase them and diminish the regular native troops 
 especially that very expensive force, the native regular 
 cavalry. I proposed a plan for rearranging the army, by 
 an increase of Europeans and native irregulars, and a 
 diminution of the number of native regulars. 
 
 The combinations to which I have alluded were in fact a 
 kind of military trades-unionism always a very dangerous 
 thing. The annexations which had taken place, both before 
 and during Lord Dalhousie's time, did lead to trouble with 
 respect to the pay of the native troops. The Sepoys were 
 very willing to serve in the new countries, so long as they 
 received the large extra pay allowed to them for service 
 beyond the British dominion ; but when, the places where 
 they were quartered having become British, the extra 
 allowances were reduced, they very much resented that. 
 "When Sir Charles Napier had annexed Scinde, the troops 
 sent for service there mutinied in a very serious way, 
 and that mutiny was by no means successfully dealt with
 
 214 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 practically I think the Sepoys for the most part gained 
 their point. But to cover the retreat of the Government, 
 and to provide an equitable adjustment for the future, a 
 rule was laid down under which an extra allowance was 
 made to the Sepoys when the price of their provisions 
 exceeded a certain point. That was a very equitable rule, 
 but in the working of it difficulties were apt to arise in 
 regard to the calculations on which the compensation was 
 based. I remember some years later, when we had Madras 
 Sepoys in the Central Provinces, they were quartered in the 
 Nerbudda valley where wheat was exceedingly cheap, but 
 rice was very dear. Somehow the Madras Sepoys had 
 been classed as rice-eaters, but in fact they lived luxuriously 
 on the best wheaten flour, while at the same time they claimed 
 compensation on a rice-scale and pocketed the difference : 
 that was an abuse. 
 
 When the Punjaub was annexed there could be no pre- 
 text of dearness of provisions there : it was a very cheap 
 country. But when the war-service allowances ceased, 
 several regiments mutinied. Sir Charles Napier was then 
 the Commander-in-Chief, and it was on that subject that he 
 quarrelled with Lord Dalhousie. Fire-eater as he was, he 
 did nothing very heroic, but on the contrary sought to get 
 over the difficulty by concession. The Government might 
 or might not have yielded to his representations, but it is 
 undoubted that a financial question rested with the Govern- 
 ment, and not with the Commander-in-Chief. Notwith- 
 standing, Sir Charles took upon himself to alter the mode 
 of calculating compensation for dearness to the advantage 
 of the Sepoys, without consulting the Government, and 
 refused to submit to their authority. One regiment was 
 disbanded, but the others gained something by mutiny. It 
 was on that occasion, too, that Sir Charles Napier took 
 upon himself to transfer to the Nusseeree battalion, a local 
 Goorkha regiment stationed at Simla, the line title and line 
 allowances of the disbanded regiment, a matter about which 
 I shall have a story to tell presently. 
 
 After all these things it is hardly to be wondered that
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 215 
 
 the Sepoys, long petted and praised, waxed fat and were 
 inclined to kick. Their trades-unionism became very pro- 
 nounced. And then on the top of that came, in 1857, one 
 of those panics to which Hindoostanees are subject ^-a real 
 panic that their caste and religion were to be interfered 
 with, which took shape in connection with the greased 
 cartridges so stupidly served out in the first instance. It 
 may be said that the insubordinate trades-unionism alone 
 could not have led to such a violent outbreak, and that the 
 panic alone would not have made the outbreak so general 
 and widespread; but combined, the trades -unionism and 
 the panic together brought about the great revolt. 
 
 I had considerable opportunities for watching the incep- 
 tion of the Mutiny. When it broke out my position was 
 peculiar. As I had made over charge of one office, and had 
 not assumed another (which, in fact, I never did succeed in 
 assuming), I was left for a considerable time out of office ; 
 and yet I had almost greater opportunities for watching 
 events than if I had been in any particular office. Almost 
 immediately on receiving intelligence of the outbreak I 
 went down to the plains, and in the hope of being able to 
 join Mr. Colvin at Agra, and was for some days with the 
 troops marching towards Delhi in the end of May. Unable 
 to get down country I returned to Umballa, and was for 
 some weeks there at the centre of intelligence, Umballa 
 being practically the base of the operations against Delhi, 
 and the point of connection between Delhi and the Punjaub, 
 whence troops came continually marching down. While at 
 Umballa I occupied a good deal of my time in collecting 
 information about the events which were going on, and 
 reducing it all to a narrative, 1 which was published in two 
 successive numbers of the Times. In the beginning of 
 August I got down to Meerut, and though it was impossible 
 to get on to Agra, I was then in frequent communication 
 with Mr. Colvin by means of the small letters and quills, 
 and the like, sent through native messengers. I saw a good 
 
 1 Extracts from this narrative are printed in the Appendix at the end of 
 Volume II.
 
 216 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 deal, too, of the attempts which were made to recover some 
 of the district about Meerut, and between Meerut and Delhi ; 
 and I was within hearing of the guns of Delhi throughout the 
 most critical part of the siege and assault. And when the 
 place was taken, and the mutineers between Meerut and 
 Delhi fled, I was the first outsider to enter Delhi after the 
 capture. I then became Special Commissioner with the 
 first column which proceeded to recover the North -West 
 Provinces, was the first to enter the fort at Agra, and one 
 of the first when we marched down to join hands with those 
 holding Cawnpore. Between the second relief of Lucknow 
 and its ultimate capture, after a little time spent in assisting 
 Sir John Grant, who had been deputed to Benares, I was 
 summoned to Calcutta, and was for a time employed as 
 a sort of mutiny assistant to the Governor -General, and 
 charged with the function of compiling an official narrative 
 of events to be sent home by each mail for the information 
 of the Government at home. As soon as Lucknow was 
 captured, I was sent to Oude as second in command to Sir 
 James Outram, the Chief Commissioner ; and though my 
 functions were civil, while the Chief Commissioner (after- 
 wards Sir E. Montgomery) managed the political and mili- 
 tary affairs, I had necessarily the opportunity of seeing and 
 hearing a great deal of the events of 1858. Thus it is 
 that I have said that I had opportunity of knowing as much 
 about the Mutiny as most people. For all that, I do not 
 propose to write a history of it. But I may say something 
 of my personal experiences, and repeat some of the state- 
 ments which I made at the time. It will be seen that I 
 escaped the worst horrors. I had no occasion to be over- 
 excited or lose my head, and trust that I did not. 
 
 One thing is certain, that however widespread the Sepoy 
 combination may have been, the outbreak was not matured 
 silently and secretly; on the contrary, the Sepoys took a 
 very great deal of trouble to make known their discontent 
 by many manifest signs, rather, I think, implying that they 
 did not so much want to revolt as to have their own way. 
 For some mouths warnings of this kind were frequent and
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 217 
 
 acute. The first conspicuous outbreaks took place not far 
 from Calcutta, and a good deal occupied the attention of 
 the Government. Simla had not then been established as 
 the regular summer quarters, and in the absence of any 
 special necessity on the frontier, the Governor - General 
 remained at Calcutta. Not so the Commander -in -Chief. 
 General Anson, then Commander -in -Chief, was in some 
 respects a good man, but he had no knowledge of India; 
 he was rather a court soldier and home politician ; he saw 
 well enough the faults of the Sepoys, but he did not 
 realise the importance of the crisis. He went off rather 
 early in the season of 1857 to Simla, where he was both 
 away from the native army and away from the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 We now see what extreme madness it was that, while 
 affairs were in a very threatening condition, the great mili- 
 tary magazine in the fortified city of Delhi was allowed to 
 remain guarded only by Sepoys Sepoys inside the city, and 
 Sepoys outside in cantonments. One cannot fairly judge 
 after the event. I have admitted that, after unburdening 
 my mind, I myself cast off care and went off into the hills ; 
 but then I was not responsible for army matters, nor even 
 in office at all. I cannot help thinking that if Lord 
 Dalhousie had still been Governor-General, and had been 
 working with an experienced Commander -in -Chief, things 
 would not have been allowed to drift so much, and a 
 European regiment, or the wing of a regiment, would have 
 been sent down from the hill stations above Umballa to 
 look after the Delhi magazine when the alarm became 
 serious. 
 
 It was as nearly as possible about the 1st of May that 
 I had an interview with General Anson at Simla. I had 
 no personal intimacy with him, but I had promised at 
 Umballa that I would see him and speak seriously to him ; 
 and, as having been so lately in charge of the division which 
 contained more troops than any other in India, I wrote and 
 formally appointed the interview. I found General Anson 
 a perfect gentleman, as he was ; and, in truth, he very much
 
 218 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 disarmed me by at once accepting all I said, when I assured 
 him of the seriousness of the matter ; impressed upon him 
 that the fires at Umballa were undoubtedly the work of the 
 Sepoys ; told him of the communications which we had 
 ascertained to be certainly going on between the men at 
 Umballa and those at other cantonments; and dwelt on 
 our apprehensions and the necessity of facing the questions 
 involved. Finally, I mentioned the subject of Meerut 
 told him that through native officers at Umballa we had 
 reason to believe that the state of things there was very 
 threatening indeed, and that the conduct of the cavalry was 
 mutinous in the extreme. " Yes," he said, " I entirely agree 
 with you ; nothing can be worse. I have ordered them to 
 be tried (or I am going to order them to be tried) by court- 
 martial." He seemed to think that that clinched the matter. 
 I did not feel so satisfied of the virtue of a formal court- 
 martial, but I could say no more, and I went off on my 
 holiday. That was the court-martial which brought on the 
 great Mutiny. 
 
 As regards the suggestion of conspiracy beyond what 
 I have called military trades-unionism, the only question in 
 my mind has been, whether there was any preconcerted 
 conspiracy for the seizure and occupation of Delhi. Cer- 
 tainly, if there had been, the thing could not have been 
 better done. The Sepoys revolting at Meerut made just 
 enough of disturbance during one evening and night to 
 confuse and distract the large European force there, and 
 then they went off to Delhi, marching as Sepoys can march, 
 and finding no one to oppose them, raised the Delhi regi- 
 ments, took possession of the magazine, and established 
 themselves in the fortified town. But watching events 
 carefully as I did, my final impression is, that the Sepoys 
 never showed so much organisation and design as to make 
 a plan of this kind at all probable. If their plan had been 
 to occupy Delhi, they were much more likely to have 
 mutinied in the first instance there, where they would have 
 had it all their own way, rather than in the presence of the 
 strongest European force in India. It seems more likely
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 219 
 
 that the local events at Meerut led to an outbreak there 
 and a flight to Delhi, and that the occupation of Delhi 
 by the combined Meerut and Delhi forces was a sort of 
 unprepared accident. 
 
 The news of the outbreak was sent to me by Lord 
 William Hay (now Marquis of Tweeddale), who had been 
 during my incumbency, and still was, Deputy-Commissioner 
 of Simla, and it had found me, as I have already mentioned, 
 in the quiet recesses of the hills. I did not like to break 
 it all at once to the ladies of my party, but made some 
 pretext for returning towards Simla, and marched in that 
 direction. A day or two later, when we got nearer to Simla, 
 we met Europeans flying from thence, and the gravity of 
 the matter could no longer be concealed. In fact, the fire 
 had already come a good deal nearer than we at all expected. 
 I received another letter from Hay to tell me that the 
 Goorkha regiment quartered close to Simla had mutinied, 
 and advising me not to come in there. He still hoped to get 
 them round, but suggested that if the worst came to the 
 worst, I should try to raise the hill chiefs against the 
 Sepoys ; he was confident that they would be faithful, and 
 might be more than a match for a single regiment. Another 
 march brought me to the place where a large number of 
 the Simla ladies and other residents were assembled under 
 the protection of a hill Rajah, and I then learnt particulars 
 of an affair of which much was made, and in connection 
 with which there was a good deal that was ludicrous, and 
 something that was discreditable, but which really was 
 pretty serious. Panic there certainly was, but not at all so 
 groundless a panic as some panics at Calcutta and other 
 places, which took place under the protection of our soldiers 
 and forts and ships. The Nusseeree battalion had very long 
 been stationed at Simla. After they mutinied, it was the 
 fashion to say that they were not Goorkhas at all, but only 
 Simla " Jhampanees," that is, the hill-men who carry ladies 
 about. But that was not really so ; if they had been only 
 local hill-men they would have behaved better. But they 
 were a very mixed lot. Among them were some of those
 
 220 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 whom we call " real Goorkhas," though in truth they are 
 not Goorkhas, but men of the Turanian hill tribes of Western 
 Nepaul, who have come under the dominion of the Goorkhas. 
 Then there were a number of a kind of half-bred Goorkhas, 
 the descendants of people who were left behind when the 
 Goorkhas were compelled to evacuate those hills in 1816 
 people who had formed local connections and preferred to 
 stay behind. Altogether I believe the regiment was com- 
 posed of hill-men of one kind and another, and not at all 
 of Hindoostanees. They were just as prone as the others to 
 trades-unionism for their own advantage ; but, as it turned 
 out in the end, did not participate in the wild panic which 
 led to massacre. This was the local regiment which Sir 
 Charles Napier had transformed into a line regiment. The 
 men liked the line pay ; but when in the capacity of a line 
 regiment they were ordered down on the outbreak of the 
 Mutiny, they did not like that at all, and refused to go. 
 The commanding officer, with charming social qualities, was 
 not quite the man to manage a regiment under difficult cir- 
 cumstances : they got quite out of hand, into a state of 
 undeniable mutiny ; went so far as to put their commanding 
 officer into the quarter-guard, and altogether were in a very 
 bad state. A couple of companies of the regiment, who 
 were on duty at Kussowlee and the neighbouring stations, 
 hearing that their regiment had mutinied, thought it best to 
 lose no time, so they plundered the treasury which they 
 were guarding, and with double charges in their guns, and 
 a good deal of liquor to fortify themselves, they marched off 
 with the treasure under the very noses of the Europeans 
 in the barracks above, and proceeded towards Simla in a very 
 excited state, singing some Goorkha Marseillaise. Things 
 looked very black indeed. 
 
 The European regiments from Kussowlee and the other 
 stations had gone down towards Delhi, leaving only small 
 depots ; there were no men available to come after the 
 Goorkhas. From Simla, too, all the combatant officers had 
 gone down. The place was full of women and children, 
 with many non-combatant clerks, etc., and a few invalid
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 221 
 
 officers. They had just heard of the horrors of Meerut and 
 Delhi ; and as yet no one could tell that the hill regiment 
 would behave differently from the others. The bazaars, too, 
 were full of a very indifferent class of people from the 
 plains, and the Simla treasury and bank were very tempt- 
 ing. In fact, the place was very much at the mercy of the 
 native regiment if they had gone to extremities ; it is hardly 
 wonderful that there was a panic at Simla. When things 
 were at their worst the European residents gathered together 
 at the bank-house. All who were capable of bearing arms 
 resolved, if need be, to fight, and if they could do no better, 
 at least to die in defence of their wives and families. Some 
 one was stationed as a look-out, and was to fire a gun if he 
 saw the Goorkhas approaching. After prolonged anxiety a 
 shot was heard, and then came an unexpected catastrophe : 
 the brave defenders melted away each separately had 
 pressing business which required his presence for a little 
 time elsewhere ; in fact, the defence broke down altogether. 
 However, it fortunately turned out that the supposed signal 
 shot was a mistake, and the Goorkhas were not coming on. 
 Many of the inferior Europeans then fled on their own 
 account ; and the Deputy-Commissioner, quite judiciously, 
 I think, bundled off all the rest over whom he had influence 
 to the place where I found them, while he stuck to his post 
 and still tried to manage the regiment. Kaye speaks of 
 this panic as very excessive, and says it is no wonder that 
 the ladies became quite uncontrollable. I must say that I 
 did not find any very excessive panic. I do think that 
 when there is real cause for alarm ladies very often behave 
 exceedingly well. The gathering at the Eajah of Keonthal's 
 place was a kind of cross between a panic and a picnic. 
 The worst alarm was at Umballa. An officer of high 
 character and position, and perfectly in his right mind, 
 fancied that he saw Simla in flames from the Kussowlee 
 ridges. It was no mere report. He came down to Um- 
 balla with the news that he had actually seen it with his 
 own eyes, just when there was a large gathering there of 
 the officers about to start for Delhi. As they had all left
 
 222 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 their wives and families at Simla, it may be supposed that 
 this intelligence greatly disturbed them. But that, too, was 
 happily a mistake, whether caused by a brilliant sunset or, 
 more probably, by grass fires on the intervening ridges, we 
 never knew. At any rate, the officers at Umballa were 
 soon relieved, and they were enabled to do their duty with- 
 out misgiving; for the Simla Goorkhas got frightened at 
 what they had done ; the counsels of the better men among 
 them prevailed, and they were persuaded to return to their 
 allegiance. The Kussowlee detachment was met by delegates 
 from the regiment, who rated them in very strong language 
 for having committed the regiment prematurely. They 
 returned to Kussowlee with the treasure; only, I think, a 
 couple of men deserted, carrying two or three thousand 
 rupees with them the rest was duly deposited in the 
 Kussowlee treasury, and under the circumstances we were 
 glad to overlook this little incident as a misapprehension. 
 Soon after the whole regiment was got down to the plains ; 
 they were not trusted before Delhi, but they were sent to 
 Seharunpore, and were made useful there, so that ended well 
 after all. And when the regiment was gone, the hills 
 remained quite quiet and undisturbed. 
 
 Just at the moment, however, I thought it better to 
 deposit my wife at my old station at Kussowlee ; and having 
 put her in safety there, I went down to Umballa, meaning 
 to get to Agra and Mr. Colvin if possible. 
 
 From the moment when we knew what had happened 
 at Delhi, I think no responsible person in our part of India 
 had the least doubt of the extreme gravity of the crisis, or 
 was at all inclined to take any sort of unduly sanguine 
 view. General Anson, in a most difficult position, behaved 
 like a man and a gentleman, and did his best. I do not 
 think that there was any unnecessary delay in getting off 
 towards Delhi with all the force that could be made available 
 at the moment. 
 
 From Umballa I went on to Kurnal, where I was in the 
 end of May. The aspect of affairs there was not very 
 encouraging. Poor General Anson was just dead of cholera
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 223 
 
 there. Brigadier- General Halifax, who had commanded the 
 station at Umballa, was dying before our eyes. Another 
 friend of mine, Colonel Mowatt, the commandant of the 
 artillery, was dying a little way off. A fatality seemed to 
 attach to all the superior officers who had been at Umballa 
 when the march to Delhi commenced. I did not know 
 General Barnard, who had only just joined, but he too soon 
 after died. Throughout the siege cholera hung about the 
 camp, but, curiously enough, never became very severe 
 among the men, while it was very fatal to the highest 
 officers. I rather think anxiety and heavy responsibility 
 predispose to this disease more than anything else. 
 
 AVhile I was at Kurnal the so-called siege train arrived 
 on the way to Delhi. I did not know much of these things, 
 but I could not help thinking that it looked a very trumpery 
 affair to bombard and take a great fortified city some half- 
 dozen old-fashioned 18-pounders, and some howitzers and 
 mortars. I have no doubt that I echoed the opinion of 
 those who understood the matter better than I did when 
 I wrote, as I find I did at that time, expressing a strong 
 belief that Delhi would never be taken with that battery. 
 One thing did impress me very much at that time, and that 
 was the pluck, courage, and zeal shown by all our people 
 on the way to Delhi in the frightful heat of that country in 
 the last days of May and first days of June. In the excite- 
 ment of the time heat, that would be intolerable at any 
 other time, was not felt. Young men who had been on 
 leave at Simla, and were away from their regiments, were 
 delighted to be sent down to Delhi in charge of bullock 
 carts, or in any other subordinate capacity. I have not 
 always thought my countrymen perfect in all situations, but 
 I do doubt whether any other people could have equalled 
 them in such a crisis as that. 
 
 As I had no military function with bullocks or otherwise, 
 and found the road to Meerut and Agra completely stopped, 
 I did not get more than a march or two beyond 
 Kurnal, and presently returned to Umballa. There I found 
 Barnes working excellently. And the Sikh Cis-Sutlej chiefs
 
 224 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 behaved admirably, giving us every possible assistance. 
 We had, however, rather a bad time in that first half of 
 June ; all India seemed to be falling away from us. One 
 day I think it was the 8th or 9th of June the telegraph 
 seemed to repeat the experience of Job. First we heard 
 that the whole Jullunder brigade had mutinied and were in 
 full march in our direction on the way to Delhi. While 
 that message was still being spoken came another message 
 to tell us that the troops in Eajpootana had mutinied, and 
 that that country was lost to us. Then there came yet 
 another to say that the Bareilly brigade had mutinied, and 
 that Bohilcund was lost, following which I heard that the 
 Moradabad regiment had gone, and that my brother and his 
 young wife had been obliged to fly ; but happily they 
 escaped to Meerut with their lives. We made up our 
 minds that things could hardly be worse than that, and 
 were consoled to know that our troops, after having beaten 
 the mutineers who met them before they got to Delhi, had 
 sat down before that place, plucky and confident. In the 
 latter part of June and beginning of July there was a good 
 deal of talk of an attempt to take Delhi not by artillery, 
 but by a coup de main. Some young officers were keen to 
 emulate the fame of those who had taken Ghuznee by 
 blowing in the gates with bags of gunpowder, and then 
 rushing in. But more prudent counsels prevailed ; the 
 Generals considered that even if we had succeeded in blow- 
 ing in the gates we could hardly have taken that great 
 town with our small force. It became manifest that there 
 was nothing for it but to settle down to a siege, and get up 
 all the reinforcements and all the artillery that was to be 
 had. I occupied myself for a while assisting Barnes, and 
 doing his work for him when he had to go away for a day 
 or two. We had a good deal of trouble about the Jullunder 
 mutineers. The first telegram (received during the night) 
 said : " The whole of the Sepoy regiments have mutinied 
 and are marching on Phillor, but we cannot wake the 
 Phillor signaller our line is sure to be cut ; signal back 
 to Phillor." Phillor was the magazine on which we de-
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 225 
 
 pended for the Delhi force, and into which a small detach- 
 ment of Europeans had been thrown. Towards morning 
 we succeeded in getting an answer from Phillor to say that 
 all was quiet, and no signs of any mutineers at all. A 
 little later they telegraphed : " Yes, we see a dust, like troops 
 coming on." Soon after, their line was cut, but they were 
 warned ; the mutineers were more anxious to get to Delhi 
 than to risk an assault, and after being joined by the native 
 regiment at Phillor they passed by. After the well-known 
 episode of the encounter with these men near Loodiana, we 
 looked out for them passing Umballa, and having heard 
 that they were taking the line between Umballa and the 
 hills, a party was sent out to try to intercept them, which 
 I volunteered to accompany. They were, however, mostly 
 infantry, and I rode a long way ahead hoping to get news, 
 of the mutineers. It was in the dead of the night when 
 I passed the village of a small Sikh chief, and came to a 
 traveller's bungalow by the roadside, where I found some 
 people, and eagerly asked of them if they had any news of 
 the mutineers. " Oh yes," they said, " they are passing 
 now ; you can hear them ; they are going through the 
 jungle, just beyond the village." And sure enough I did 
 hear sounds like the traffic of a street a little way off, 
 and one or two - stray shots fired by their undisciplined 
 followers. It was certainly a very unpleasant situation, 
 for I had no troops with me ; but the truth was that the 
 mutineers had then no desire to attack any one, but were 
 only anxious to get down to Delhi as fast as their legs 
 could carry them. I sent off to hurry on our own troops, 
 but did not like to retreat myself when the natives seemed 
 to take it all so coolly. Still, I did feel very uncomfortable, 
 and being pretty tired lay down just to think over the 
 matter. Sleep was the last idea that entered into my 
 mind. However, the mutineers marched on and I dropped 
 off to sleep. The next thing I knew was the noise of our 
 officers rushing in to demand where the rebels were. It 
 was by that time broad daylight, and the rebels were a long 
 way off. Our men were very tired, but we gave them some 
 
 VOL. I Q
 
 226 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 hurried breakfast, mounted as many as we could upon 
 elephants, and set off in pursuit of the Sepoys. We never 
 caught them it is not easy to catch a Sepoy when he is 
 bent on getting over the ground. We saw no more of 
 them, and they got off to Delhi, that great centre of at- 
 traction to all revolted Sepoys. After that adventure I 
 thought I could understand Clive going to sleep during the 
 somewhat languid battle of Plassey. 
 
 It was an instance of the curious capriciousness, with 
 which the Sepoys revolted or did not revolt, that several 
 days after this a detachment of the regiment which had 
 mutinied at Phillor came quietly marching into Umballa by 
 the regular road, with a convoy of ammunition with which 
 it had been started for the use of our Delhi force just before 
 the regiment mutinied. All through there were many in- 
 stances of this unaccountable uncertainty on the part of the 
 Sepoys. One still more curious I afterwards learnt .at 
 Lucknow. When Sir Henry Lawrence was defeated at 
 Chinhut, and there was a rush for the Residency, all the 
 Sepoys who were outside joined the mutineers as a matter 
 of course, but a smaller number who happened to be inside the 
 Residency detachments from various regiments and who 
 were shut up with our troops, remained faithful to us through- 
 out, and fought their comrades with the utmost fidelity 
 and vigour, although they might have easily got over the 
 slight barrier and joined the enemy at any time. Much was 
 no doubt due to good management especially to my relative 
 Jack Aitken, so well known for holding the Baillie Guard 
 with his Sepoys. Even when things looked so bad that the 
 more prudent and unbiassed Sikhs thought it expedient to 
 desert, these Sepoys, who by the merest accident had found 
 themselves within the Residency, remained entirely staunch. 
 
 In the end of June I went up and settled my wife 
 in a house at Simla, where she quietly remained until 
 the worst of the Mutiny was over, and where she 
 was able to receive her sister-in-law as soon as there 
 was any communication with Meerut. Both Simla and the 
 barracks at Kussowlee vacated by the European regiment
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 227 
 
 were full of ladies who had taken refuge in the hills. I 
 saw a good deal of them, both at the first outbreak and 
 on this second occasion, and never observed among them 
 anything like unreasonable panic. I remember some charm- 
 ing women who at the first were rather in a kind of 
 mutiny dishabille, but they always seemed to keep up their 
 spirits. In fact they rather erred on the side of excessive 
 confidence. Indian husbands were generally good husbands 
 and correspondents, and one nowhere heard such abundant 
 camp news as from the ladies whose husbands were before 
 Delhi ; they were full of military information of all kinds. 
 When a false report came up that the Sepoys had evacuated 
 Delhi and escaped on the other side, the ladies were not so 
 mucl^ thankful as indignant that the mutineers had not all 
 been captured or killed I did not find it at all necessary to 
 encourage them ; they rather needed taking down a little. 
 Once I told a party of them that they must be patient, and 
 not in too great a hurry, and one reflective lady then said : 
 " But what if we don't take Delhi ; do you think we shall 
 then all be massacred ? " I could not help rather malici- 
 ously saying : " Oh no, I daresay we might survive in the 
 hills, even if we are cut off from Europe perhaps in future 
 days a white race will be discovered in the interior of the 
 Himalayas, and will be traced to the survivors of the 
 Mutiny." I administered that to them by way of consola- 
 tion, but they did not seem to see it. 
 
 Early in July I returned to Umballa after having invested 
 in some native gold coins gold mohurs and divided them 
 with my wife. We sewed them up in our clothes, and kept 
 them there in case of accident. On my way down the hill 
 I met a chaplain returning invalided from Delhi, and he in- 
 sisted upon presenting me with a sword, which he girt about 
 me. A terrible trouble that sword was it was always 
 getting between my legs and otherwise annoying me and 
 when I tried to use it I was not covered with glory. At 
 Umballa, however, by paying an excessive price I obtained a 
 very fine revolver, a much more useful weapon, which was 
 my constant companion for a long time to come.
 
 228 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 Umballa was then pretty secure, and troops often 
 passed through from the Punjaub. The garrison of the 
 place was rather meagre, and a somewhat incompetent 
 general officer, who was not wanted at Delhi, had been sent 
 there ; but Barnes continued to manage exceedingly well 
 with the assistance of the Sikh chiefs. Most of the Sepoys 
 had been got rid of some disarmed, and some sent down 
 to Delhi, where they deserted. There was little severity 
 except towards some Sepoys duly convicted of treasonable 
 practices. The only execution I think that I witnessed 
 throughout the whole of the Mutiny was one that happened 
 to be going on while I was passing. It was an old native 
 officer, a subahdar, who had been convicted by the military 
 authorities, and whom they proceeded to hang. He was 
 very cool and quiet, and submitted to be executed without 
 remonstrance. But the rope broke, and he came down to 
 the ground. He picked himself up, and it was rather a 
 painful scene for the spectators. But he seemed to feel for 
 their embarrassment, and thought it well to break the awk- 
 wardness of the situation by conversation, remarking that it 
 was a very bad rope, and talking of little matters of that 
 kind till another rope was procured, which made an end of 
 him. There were not then many other cases of punish- 
 ment. 
 
 I was still very anxious to get to Agra if by any chance 
 any route to that place should be opened. Stories kept 
 coming in about Mr. Colvin ; some said that he was incom- 
 petent some that he had gone mad. I had very good 
 reason for believing that these stories were not true, and 
 the more felt it my duty to join him if possible ; but for the 
 time that was quite hopeless. 
 
 I think it is the case in regard to most exciting events 
 that when we look back at the actual records of the time 
 we find that people soon get accustomed to circumstances, 
 and do not think nearly so much of them as those who see 
 them from a greater distance. And so it is, that when I 
 look over my letters to my wife through the most exciting 
 periods of the Mutiny, I find very little that is heroic in
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 229 
 
 them, and a great deal of the humdrum details of ordinary 
 domestic life ; the pony that had gone lame, the new cow 
 that had been bought, and something that I had purchased 
 at poor Brigadier Halifax's sale, and sent up as a present to 
 her. I find that on llth July we all abandoned the cares 
 of empire and the terrors of the Mutiny to attend that 
 auction ; perhaps we were something like the Eomans who 
 bargained and sold while the Carthaginians were at the gate. 
 Yet we did not take an over-sanguine view in my letters 
 home I strongly urged the need for sending out to India 
 every available British soldier with the utmost possible 
 expedition. I said that we might, under the circumstances, 
 well denude all our garrisons except Ireland. Ireland is 
 the incumbrance that is always with us ; we have not got 
 rid of that yet, and I do not know when we shall. 
 
 It was at this time that I occupied myself with the 
 narrative l of the Mutiny, which I despatched in the begin- 
 ning of August, and which was published in the Times. 
 Early in August I found that there was a probability of my 
 being able to get at least as far as Meerut, and I determined 
 to start for that place as being nearer to and more in com- 
 munication with Agra, and a place where I should be more 
 ready for a further advance. 
 
 I have now come to the point after which matters began 
 
 to turn a little in our favour, and the hope revived that we 
 
 might soon see a prospect of taking Delhi and suppressing 
 
 the Mutiny. The fire had as it were reached its highest 
 
 and so here I may pause to look back a little. 
 
 Of the men at the head of affairs I have already referred 
 to poor General Anson, the Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 Of Lord Canning we at a distance did not then know 
 very much nor feel his hand our ideas of him were rather 
 negative, in regard to what he did not do, than positive. 
 What I here say to connect him with the story of those 
 times is then a good deal founded on what I afterwards saw 
 and learned. 
 
 1 Extracts from this narrative are reprinted in an Appendix at the end of 
 Volume II.
 
 230 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 Lord Canning certainly had some excellent qualities 
 which endeared him to his personal friends and to many of 
 those who were in immediate personal contact with him. 
 He had a calm and just mind and a very remarkable 
 passive courage which kept him undisturbed in most 
 trying circumstances. But neither to those who had 
 known him as a public man at home nor to those in India 
 who judged him as a public man, apart from personal 
 feeling, did he seem a man of very exalted genius, nor such 
 a hero as Sir John Kaye makes him out to be. He was 
 morbidly (one may almost say) slow and dilatory in his 
 work, and very far indeed from an efficient administrator 
 quite the contrary. In dealing with the Mutiny his prin- 
 ciples were right but his practice very imperfect ; and he 
 owes his reputation more to sympathy with the noble 
 stand he made against the Calcutta disposition to excess, 
 and the sobriquet of Clemency Canning, than to his 
 success in controlling his subordinates. Certainly for a 
 long time Lord Canning did not at all realise the serious- 
 ness of the Mutiny. His refusal to allow Lord Elphin- 
 stone to send off a special steamer to procure assistance 
 from England, when the news was received from Meerut 
 and Delhi in the middle of May, may be excused on the 
 ground of the suddenness and novelty of the crisis ; and 
 his refusal in the first instance to accept the services 
 of volunteers may be honourably justified on account of 
 unwillingness to precipitate a war of races. Though the 
 volunteers proved extremely useful and we could hardly 
 have done without them, they did many things greatly to 
 be regretted. But the well-known telegram to the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of 31st May, full three weeks after the 
 crisis, shows a lamentable want of appreciation of the 
 situation. "Your force of artillery will enable you to 
 dispose of Delhi with certainty. I therefore beg that you 
 will detach one European infantry regiment and a small 
 force of European cavalry to the south of Delhi, without 
 keeping them for operations there, so that Alighur may be 
 recovered and Cawnpore relieved immediately." There were
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 231 
 
 plenty of military advisers in Calcutta who must have 
 well known what Delhi was and what artillery was avail- 
 able, and there was still roundabout telegraphic com- 
 munication. "When I compare that telegram with what I 
 myself, as a mere amateur, picking up scraps of informa- 
 tion, wrote on that very date regarding the artillery and 
 the improbability of taking Delhi with that arm, I feel 
 that the Governor-General must to an extraordinary degree 
 have been slow to take in the facts. I confess to much 
 sympathy with Lord Canning in the gagging of the press, 
 for which he was so much abused ; and the Act passed on 
 30th May giving the Supreme and Local Governments 
 power to proclaim rebellious districts, and in such districts 
 to appoint a Special Commission for the trial of offences 
 against the State, with summary powers, was entirely right 
 and suitable. ' But a curious change seems to have come 
 over Lord Canning and his advisers in the course of the 
 next few days, for it was only one week later that on 
 6th June the first Act was superseded by another of much 
 more extreme and, I think, quite unnecessary severity, 
 under which most unjustifiable things were done on a 
 very large scale. Court-martials were authorised sum- 
 marily to try and execute for civil as well as military 
 offences, and not only the Government but any person 
 authorised by the Government (and a good many persons 
 were so authorised, some of them not at all reliable) might 
 appoint any number of single Special Commissioners with 
 unlimited powers of life and death. It w r as under that 
 last Act that such powers were given wholesale to all and 
 sundry, and barbarities were committed with a flimsy 
 pretext of legality, but without any semblance of decent 
 judicial procedure or of the most elementary justice. The 
 provinces of Allahabad and Benares were then cut off 
 from all communication with the Government of the North- 
 West Province, and were taken in charge by the Govern- 
 ment of India, who on the 9th of June proclaimed 
 " Martial Law " throughout those provinces. I have often 
 heard of " martial law," and have known a good many
 
 232 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 occasions on which energetic people demanded " martial 
 law," but to this day I have never been able to make out 
 what it means, unless it be a general leave to any military 
 person to kill any one, take any property, or do anything 
 else he pleases. That is, I think, what is generally under- 
 stood, though not exactly expressed. Possibly on this 
 occasion the Government may have meant only to 
 authorise court-martials to try civil offences under the 
 Act, but the proclamation seems to have been understood 
 in a much wider sense there was very little of the for- 
 malities of military law in what was done. 
 
 Of this I feel sure that when Lord Canning's Government 
 passed that Act of 6th June 1857, and proclaimed Martial 
 Law in certain provinces, they were bound to exercise the 
 strictest executive control over the manner in which such 
 terrible engines were used. And while giving Lord Can- 
 ning every honour for the principles of clemency which he 
 inculcated, I cannot forgive him the extreme administrative 
 inefficiency which allowed those principles to be set at 
 naught in practice, and blood to be shed in a most reckless 
 manner. When Sir John Kaye, who so much extols Lord 
 Canning, depicts in such strong language the atrocity of the 
 deeds committed by our side in the Benares and Allahabad 
 provinces, be forgets that the executive Government of 
 that country was then Lord Canning's, that there was full 
 uninterrupted communication with Calcutta, and therefore 
 (negatively at least) his hero is mainly responsible for not 
 preventing such things. Even if Kaye has a good deal 
 exaggerated our atrocities (I think they ore exaggerated in 
 his pages), I would say that if a half or a quarter of what 
 he alleges was really done, Lord Canning and his Govern- 
 ment were very 'greatly responsible. It was not till 
 nearly two months later that, on 31st July, an order 
 was issued intended to check the exuberant severity of the 
 Court-martials and Special Commissioners, and even then 
 precise rules of a merciful kind were laid down only for 
 Sepoys ; for civil offenders there was only a general exhort- 
 ation to avoid unnecessary severity, which practically had
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 233 
 
 no effect at all. Lord Canning's mercy was always chiefly 
 in favour of Sepoys; he judged much more harshly those of the 
 civil population who had been led into acts of rebellion. I 
 have always taken the other view, that though the Sepoys 
 were possessed by a kind of madness, still they were men 
 who, having eaten our salt, had turned on us in the most 
 savage manner ; whereas, when our power was completely 
 swept away and there was nothing but anarchy, we could 
 hardly expect all our native subjects to remain devoted to 
 us as if they had been our own countrymen, or attribute 
 much moral guilt to those who thought our day was past 
 and set up for themselves. The wonder, I think, is that so 
 few did so. Wherever the Sepoys broke out, as a rule they 
 murdered all the Europeans they came across. It was the 
 exception when they did not do so. On the other hand, 
 among the civil population our fugitives were generally 
 spared and often assisted ; it was quite the exception when 
 they were murdered. I confess then I was not much in- 
 clined to be lenient to Sepoys, and would rather have 
 spared any others. 
 
 Although Lord Canning did nothing effective to stop 
 the shedding of blood in the districts under his control 
 through all June and July, he afterwards, in the course of 
 August, took a step much more effective than apy proclama- 
 tion that is, he sent up Sir J. P. Grant to Benares with 
 the powers of Lieutenant-Governor ; and as I afterwards 
 saw something of Grant's government, I can never believe 
 Kaye's assertion that the wholesale execution of natives 
 continued unchecked at Allahabad for months longer. But 
 I myself know that very much later, when I was at Allaha- 
 bad, and Lord Canning had personally assumed charge of the 
 North-West Provinces, some Special Commissioners were hang- 
 ing natives in a very reckless way under Lord Canning's very 
 nose. It was then stories went about of people who had 
 sent trusted servants out in the morning on an errand and 
 in the evening recognised them on the gallows, hanged for 
 rebellion. Even as regards the Sepoys there was a strange 
 want of proper control, and in the later days, when they
 
 234 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 were coining in freely, it used to be said that it was a 
 mere accident what became of a man. Two tribunals were 
 sitting ; if he chanced to turn to the right and came be- 
 fore one he was sure to be hanged ; if he turned to the left 
 and came before the other, he was sure to be patted on the 
 back and to get his pay and pension. 
 
 Probably, as it turned out, it was fortunate, but I know 
 that at the time Sir John Lawrence felt much the want of 
 personal support on account of Lord Canning's excessive 
 dilatoriuess and bad business habits. He told me himself 
 that for, I am afraid to say how long all the worst months 
 of the Mutiny, I think he never had a single letter from 
 Lord Canning himself, except one, and then he was wigged 
 for irregularly promoting a native officer. In fact, Sir John 
 Lawrence had no proper authority in military matters 
 at all, and no large powers were given to him in any 
 other matters, as he begged they might be. He simply 
 acted on his own responsibility in an irregular way, and 
 if anything had gone wrong he must have borne the 
 blame. 
 
 In the Punjaub an almost opposite view of guilt was 
 taken to that which was preached from Calcutta. There 
 the Sepoys were treated with great in some cases with 
 extreme severity ; but the general population was trusted in 
 a way which seems marvellous, remembering what very recent 
 subjects they were, but which was justified by the result. 
 The question of confidence or no confidence in the natives 
 was one which much distracted many counsels during the 
 Mutiny. In the Lower Provinces there was a school who 
 saw nothing but treason and conspiracy among the leading 
 natives of Behar, while others successfully trusted them. 
 In the North-West Provinces there were violent differ- 
 ences of opinion. At Allahabad, and afterwards to some 
 extent at Agra, the mistrusters had their own way. Only 
 in the Punjaub was there a general adoption of the system 
 of confidence with most successful results. 
 
 John Lawrence's great services in the Mutiny have 
 been thoroughly appreciated by the public. Yet in some
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 235 
 
 matters there have been detractors, both at the time and 
 since, among his own men who were not satisfied with his 
 cautious and careful proceedings. Nicholson and some of 
 the more violent men went about calling him an old woman. 
 Edwardes, whom he consulted about the abandonment of 
 Peshawar, and others whom he had trusted, took credit for 
 saving him from this or that weakness. But I believe 
 that they were entirely wrong, and that to Lawrence it is 
 due that the Punjaub was made the means of taking Delhi 
 and saving India. Though personally a very strong and 
 courageous man, it is quite a mistake to represent him as 
 in any degree affecting a military character, and I am sorry 
 to see him handed down in bronze girt with a great sword 
 and got up in a quasi-military costume. I doubt if he 
 often wore a sword, and his dress always was most unmilitary 
 and informal. He was the Carnot of the campaign, not 
 the Napoleon. Also, he was not one of the sanguine men 
 who hazard rash things in a magnificent way, and become 
 heroes if they succeed. In fact he was rather of the oppo- 
 site and anxious turn of mind. He saw fully all the 
 difficulties and risks. His real merit was that, bearing it 
 all in mind, he made his arrangements with a view to 
 ultimate success. In trusting the Punjaubees, and putting 
 himself so much as he did in the hands of the men who 
 had been in arms against us only eight years before, he 
 acted from no over-confidence, but rather from feeling that 
 it was our only chance. The policy of enlisting them 
 wholesale in our service was not only designed to give us 
 the means of controlling the Sepoy regiments, but also by 
 sending the Punjaubees to fight at Delhi to relieve the 
 Punjaub of the risk from them there in case of any reverse. 
 He rather under-estimated than over-estimated our hold in 
 the Punjaub. In July, when the idea of blowing in the 
 gates and taking Delhi by a rush was pretty well aban- 
 doned, I wrote to him to say that, so far as I could gather, 
 there was not the least chance of taking Delhi then, but 
 our troops seemed to be pretty comfortable on the ridge, 
 the rains had come well on, the heat was no longer so
 
 236 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 excessive, and I did not see why they should not hold on 
 where they were for a long time to come, till they got 
 reinforcements and might take the place in the end. His 
 reply was that I might be right, but that within a month 
 Delhi must be taken or we should all be dead men. It 
 was not taken for a much longer time than that, and we 
 survived very well. In truth, the means by which John 
 Lawrence saved India in the Mutiny were more remote 
 than the mere arrangements of the day ; it was the system 
 of administration that had satisfied the people of the Punjaub. 
 The Sikh Government, though indigenous, was not national. 
 Eunjeet Sing had destroyed the independent Sikhs, and he 
 governed through mercenaries of all sorts ; and although 
 latterly, for a short time, there was a sort of pretorian rule 
 which gave the soldiers a good time, the people never liked 
 that. The patriotism of a native of India is rather for his 
 village than for his country. When, then, under Lawrence's 
 regime, they found that their institutions were respected, 
 the land revenue demand was moderated, and they were 
 allowed to manage their own affairs without too much 
 interference, while those who liked to go for soldiers could 
 have good service with us, they were quite content and 
 gladly assisted us to get rid of the hated Sepoys. 
 
 In carrying out that latter measure and ridding our- 
 selves of the Sepoys still in the Punjaub, even Lawrence, 
 with all his authority, could not wholly restrain the more 
 violent men ; but things would have been much worse if he 
 had not used his authority on the side of moderation. 
 
 As respects the question of holding or abandoning 
 Peshawar I may be somewhat prejudiced, as having always 
 maintained the Trans-Indus Afghan territory to be a weak- 
 ness to us and not a strength. But now, trying to look at 
 the matter quite dispassionately, in view of the ultimate 
 very great difficulty we had in taking Delhi, I cannot think 
 it possible to say that Lawrence was wrong in considering 
 and advising about the expediency of making over Peshawar 
 to Dost Mahomed and marching to Delhi the large force
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 237 
 
 locked up there. On the contrary, knowing as we do the 
 extreme risks that were incurred before Delhi was really in 
 our possession, it seems that nothing could be more reason- 
 able and prudent under the circumstances than to think of 
 abandoning our un-Iudian possession, of at best very 
 doubtful advantage to us, in order to secure Delhi and 
 India. In the Mutiny the man who deserved most credit 
 was he who was willing to spare troops to help where they 
 were most needed, not he who insisted on keeping them in 
 his own district as Edwardes did. And the attempt to 
 give Edwardes credit in this matter at the expense of 
 Lawrence seems to me much out of place. Even Lord 
 Canning's admirers are scarcely justified for the credit they 
 claim, because, after keeping Lawrence in suspense for six 
 weeks, at the end of that time the telegram was sent, 
 " Hold on to the last." Circumstances had then a good 
 deal changed, but I still think that even in August the 
 Peshawar force might with great advantage have been sent 
 to Delhi to assist in the assault in September. 
 
 So again, when it was telegraphed up from Delhi that 
 a message, purporting to be from the king, had come in 
 offering to give up the place if he could get a promise that 
 he would be spared, Lawrence very sensibly replied : " I 
 don't believe he can do it, but if he ever has a chance by 
 all means give him that promise." A cry was raised that 
 he was condoning atrocities. I think he was most entirely 
 right. I rather think he made some reservation about 
 murder ; but at anyrate no one seriously suspected the 
 wretched old king of having anything to do personally with 
 the atrocities of the first outbreak. 
 
 I have not looked at the account of the Mutiny which 
 I sent home in the early part of August 1857 for upwards 
 of thirty-two years. Many of the details are now out of 
 date, but I here reproduce the parts of a more general 
 character as showing the view then taken from the stand- 
 point where I was behind Delhi a better standpoint I 
 think than that of the Presidency towns. We did not
 
 238 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 then know much of what was going on in the Lower Pro- 
 vinces, and thought more of the greater events before our 
 eyes. I prepared myself for a start down country with a 
 light marching equipment the sword and revolver, and 
 especially an unusually large and powerful but somewhat 
 impetuous gray Arab horse that I then had. I had a 
 couple of large holsters in my saddle; and I soon after 
 learned a mode of using them which I much recommend to 
 all who may be similarly situated. The revolver naturally 
 had its place in one holster, but in the other I used always 
 to carry what is called in India a " damper," on account of 
 its damping the appetite ; that is, a large thick cake or 
 scone of unleavened bread, which I rolled up and stowed 
 away in that unsuspected holster. I never ate it when I 
 could get anything else, but it always gave me confidence 
 that I could not starve. I hope the story that we have 
 lately been told is not true that so lately as 1882 the 
 British soldier, marching on the torrid sands of Egypt, was 
 supported with repeated tots of rum. I am sure nothing 
 could be worse ; whereas, if he carried some light concen- 
 trated food as the Germans do, it would be a real susten- 
 ance. Starting on 1 2th August I travelled by way of Seharun- 
 pore, accompanied to that place by a young civilian, W. 
 Plowden, now Sir William Plowden, M.P., who was sent to 
 open and keep open the road. At Seharunpore we found 
 a somewhat vigorous administration, which meant a good 
 deal of hanging. One junior civilian distinguished himself 
 in that way, and has written a book about it which I have 
 not seen, so I will only say that there really had been a 
 good deal of disorder and plundering, and that our officers 
 had successfully held their own in Seharunpore, with the 
 assistance of the Goorkhas from Simla, and had recovered 
 the neighbouring station of Mozuffernugger between 
 Seharunpore and Meerut. On the way to Mozuffernugger 
 I found a quite young civilian a young man from my 
 county of Fife, who had gone out to hold the place, Mal- 
 colm Low, now M.P. At Mozuffernugger we met a party 
 of the Carabineers, who had come out from Meerut as an
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 239 
 
 escort to establish communications, so I had no difficulty in 
 getting on to Meerut, where I arrived in the middle of 
 August, and put up with my friend E. H. Wallace Dunlop, 
 the magistrate of Meerut, a very good and discreet man. 
 Although I had got to Meerut, it was quite impossible to 
 get any farther, and I was delayed there a considerable 
 time. It was a thoroughly Mutiny kind of life at Meerut ; 
 the place was surrounded by hostile forces, and the only 
 communication with the outer world was the precarious 
 route by which I had come. We were within hearing of 
 the guns at Delhi, yet we had no direct communication 
 with that place, and it was rather tantalising to follow by 
 the sound something of what was going on and yet to have 
 no immediate reliable news. The mutineer army had 
 possession of the side of Delhi next to us, of the ferries 
 over the Jumna, the Hindun bridge a few miles nearer to 
 iis, and the country thereabouts. Our information was 
 principally derived from the camp of the mutineers through 
 their friends in the city of Meerut. On the other side, in 
 Eohilcund the nearest approach to a regular rebel govern- 
 ment had been set up, while the districts to the south were 
 in possession of mutineers and rebels of various kinds. 
 Immediately around, especially between Meerut and Delhi, 
 the country was full of marauding Goojurs and Mewattees 
 that was largely a Goqjur country. All the efficient 
 troops had gone to Delhi only remnants and deposits 
 remained, and also some European cavalry, part of Her 
 Majesty's Carabineers. Many European refugees from all the 
 neighbouring districts had come into Meerut, and the able- 
 bodied men were enrolled in a volunteer corps which was 
 very active they had learned the use of arms and become 
 rather plucky and aggressive. A sort of entrenched camp 
 had been formed, known by the native name of a " Dum- 
 dama," within which people were lodged. They seemed 
 quite cheerful, and many ladies were still there. Writing 
 on the 18th of August, I said: "There are many ladies 
 here, far too many, I think ; they should be sent away, but 
 they have the upper hand." In fact they did not want to
 
 240 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 go. As it happened, nobody attacked Meerut ; I rather 
 think that if the Delhi mutineers, instead of attacking our 
 camp outside of Delhi, had sent some regiments across to 
 Meerut, it might have gone hard with us ; but they did 
 not venture so far. In Kohilcund the Hindoo Zemindars 
 stoutly resisted the pretended Pathan Government, and 
 there was so much fighting among the different classes of 
 natives that they did not trouble us. It was much the 
 same in the districts about Meerut. For the possession of 
 the country round the cantonment our volunteers, occasion- 
 ally assisted by the few regular troops available, carried on 
 a sort of guerilla war, especially against a certain Waleedad 
 Khan, who had set up in a fort in the neighbouring dis- 
 trict. Between Meerut and Delhi a Mahomedan Tehseel- 
 dar on our side, an old friend of mine, had established a 
 kind of fort, and I think he was the inventor of what were 
 called the telegraph guns, which made a great show in 
 those days. A large number of great iron screw sockets 
 had been imported to sink in the ground for the reception 
 of the telegraph poles, and to protect them from the white 
 ants, etc. These were lying about as yet unused, and my 
 friend had the brilliant idea of turning them into artillery 
 by drilling a touch-hole in them, mounting them as guns, 
 and loading them with the wire chopped into pieces. He 
 had a formidable battery of this kind facing the Delhi road, 
 and the moral effect was so great that he held his own 
 throughout the siege, and no one ever ventured to attack 
 him. The worst of it was that some of the enemy found 
 out the trick and mounted batteries of the same kind, with 
 which they frightened our people. 
 
 I was threatened with want of occupation at Meerut, 
 and needed exercise, so I took to going out with the volun- 
 teers. They were a good specimen of the kind of volunteer 
 corps that were formed during the Mutiny, both in regard 
 to their good and their bad points. They did very good 
 service, but were difficult to keep in order, even under such 
 a good man as Dunlop of Meerut, and I can easily imagine 
 that under a less capable and moderate man they might
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 241 
 
 have been very unrestrained indeed. I find in a letter to 
 my wife of 22nd August an account of an expedition in 
 which I took part. 
 
 " I went off at 1.30 this morning with the volunteers 
 on an expedition to surprise two villages ten or twelve miles 
 off, supposed to contain arms and plunder. We did not 
 find much, in fact hardly any arms, but a few spoons and 
 forks and billiard cues. We had some fifty volunteer horse, 
 some volunteer foot, and a small party of Carabineers. 
 There was no real resistance, and it was particularly en- 
 joined that there was to be ' no killing'; but the volunteers 
 could not be restrained from firing at natives who broke 
 cover, and they shot at least one man dead, besides wound- 
 ing some others. Volunteer expeditions must be bloody 
 work for boys with arms in their hands which they want to 
 use on every occasion ; they cannot draw fine distinctions. 
 The regulars are much better. To-day I took one village 
 with the dragoons. They behaved very well and were 
 quite in order. I was very well got up with the Arab 
 (who is in great force and much admired, but too obstreper- 
 ous), the revolver, and a sword, which, after many failures, 
 I have at last learnt to wear ; but I did not use the weapon 
 upon any one. I am a vast deal better for the trip. I 
 was suffering from inaction, but have come back quite 
 recovered." 
 
 We maintained communication with Mr. Colvin by 
 native messengers. For some time past I had the ambition 
 of recasting the form of our administration where the 
 cataclysm of the Mutiny had swept away everything and 
 left a clear field ; and Mr. Colvin gave me an official com- 
 mission to draw up a scheme of the kind, on which I 
 occupied myself. He told me that his health was not good, 
 but did not give me the idea that he was in any way 
 incapacitated ; on the contrary, his letters were calm and 
 clear, and his instructions were drawn in a way that showed 
 no decadence of power. 
 
 I varied projects for a new administration with more 
 guerilla expeditions. On 9th September I find an account of 
 VOL. i K
 
 242 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 one on a somewhat larger scale. Here is what I say : 
 " We had a grand expedition yesterday. An express was 
 sent in to say that something considerable was to be done, 
 so I thought I would like to join, and having, I believe, the 
 best horse and the best revolver in Meerut, I flatter myself 
 I don't turn out so badly. Two of our men sent for revenue 
 to a town in the Delhi direction were killed. The villagers 
 were said to be supported by troops from Delhi, and our old 
 enemy Waleedad was supposed to be ready to take us in 
 the rear. Our picket was fired upon, and they killed five 
 of our men. So having got together a considerable force 
 we marched against Pilkowa in regular array at 2 A.M. 
 When the head of the column with which I was got near 
 Pilkowa, before daylight, some shots were fired at us from 
 the jungle. At daybreak we invested the place, after driving 
 away a party of irregular cavalry whom we had found on 
 the road. No serious opposition, however, was attempted. 
 In fact, I believe that our men were killed by the sowars 
 from Delhi, and the guilty parties were able to make their 
 escape, as we found afterwards. I kept at the head of the 
 volunteers, and we surrounded the village. When we 
 got round to the other side we came on numbers of 
 people flying. The orders were to kill only armed 
 men, but there is no holding the volunteers, and I 
 am afraid they attacked people with very little dis- 
 crimination. I was first, and tried to enforce order ; the 
 first few natives we came across I took prisoners, and made 
 them sit down on the grass ; but as soon as I went on I 
 found the others going at them. With intense difficulty 
 and much vociferation and strong language I saved most of 
 them, but one man was run through and badly wounded. 
 Meantime the other volunteers broke away and killed a 
 good many. On returning we found that the regular troops 
 had not been at all so bloody, but the whole place was 
 plundered and gutted by the soldiers and camp-followers. 
 I should have been very glad to have tried my revolver on 
 a real rebel, but as it was I took no part in the killing, and 
 only saved lives. I am rather discontented to have had no
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 243 
 
 use of the revolver which cost me so much. Certainly the 
 excitement and rushing about does one good, and in these 
 days one can stand a good deal of blood. I have just 
 received a letter from Agra. Mr. Colvin is certainly the 
 kindest and most considerate of men. We were within 
 twenty miles of Delhi, and the great guns were going 
 famously, so we trust the assault is going on in earnest." 
 The letter from Mr. Colvin here alluded to was dated 4th 
 Sept., five days before his death, and was the last I received 
 from him. After matters personal to me, he says, " I 
 thought you would be glad of the commission which I 
 have officially given you to prepare the outline of a scheme 
 for recasting the administration of the country in all 
 branches. This will be a fair field for maturing the results 
 of your North-West Provinces and Punjaub experiences. 
 Whether I can co-operate with you as I would heartily 
 desire in the great work is more than I can say. My 
 health is very seriously shaken, and we may still have much 
 to go through." 
 
 It was after the assault on Delhi had commenced that 
 we heard the end had come ; Mr. Colvin had breathed his 
 last. It was in those days that I first made the acquaint- 
 ance of one of the most distinguished of his successors, 
 Alfred Lyall, then a very young civilian. He shared my 
 tent, and very early I learnt to appreciate him. He was 
 then, as he is now, a most accomplished and agreeable man. 
 
 It was at Meerut that I first realised the strong feeling 
 against the Mahomedans which had grown up in the North- 
 West Provinces. We thought that the Mahornedans had 
 no excuse from the caste grievance, which was the imme- 
 diate occasion of the Mutiny, and were disappointed when 
 the Mahomedan Sepoys in the regular regiments went 
 with the rest. Then we thought that the irregular cavalry, 
 a superior class, and largely Mahomedan, would have stood 
 by us, and when a good many of them went too we felt 
 very much aggrieved. When our power was completely upset 
 in the North-West Provinces and all signs of our rule had 
 disappeared, it was not unnatural that in some places the
 
 244 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 Mahomedans whom we had succeeded within the memory 
 of man should try to set up in our stead, the more as the 
 Sepoy rule was nominally that of the old Emperor whom 
 they had in Delhi. We were very bitter against those 
 Mahomedan pretenders. Some people thought that a 
 good many had been driven into rebellion by the distrust 
 and suspicion with which they were treated, as in the case 
 of my poor friend Wazeer Khan, of Christie's Horse, of 
 whom I have previously made mention. Many Mahomedans 
 were still doing us very good service, but it was difficult to 
 keep down a certain distrust of them. When the final 
 assault upon Delhi commenced we only knew it by the 
 increased firing of the artillery. On 16th September I say 
 to my wife, " We are becoming more and more intensely 
 anxious to know what is going on in Delhi. We have not 
 a word of authentic intelligence since the 12th, though all 
 the native accounts agree that there was desperate fighting 
 on the 14th, and that we were in Delhi, but by no means 
 in complete possession, the Sepoys fighting desperately." 
 The next day I say, " We still know nothing of what is going 
 on. I cantered out this morning in the Delhi direction 
 and heard the great guns still going, so I conclude that the 
 Palace is not yet taken, as we fervently hope it soon will 
 be. On the 19th I again rode out, but could learn nothing 
 except that fighting was still going on. Even on the 20th 
 I say, " Still no news of Delhi being really taken, and we 
 begin to wonder whether it ever will be. I can't think 
 what is going on. Meantime I have been progressing much 
 with my scheme for the future administration, and hope it 
 will be a good one. I am, however, rather anxious to be 
 after flying rebels, and disgusted at the delay." 
 
 That same day, however, we made out that the rebels 
 were really evacuating Delhi, and the next day I was with 
 my friend the Tehseeldar, who had the battery of telegraph 
 guns half-way along the road. We ascertained that the 
 mutineers were pouring over the Hindun bridge in full 
 retreat, and that Delhi was really taken. We also learned 
 that poor Greathed, the Commissioner of Meerut, who had
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 245 
 
 been sent to Delhi to look after political affairs there, had 
 died of cholera during the assault. As soon as the last of 
 the rebels seemed to have passed the Hindun bridge, a 
 party of us from Meerut advanced to take possession of it, 
 and, rather to our surprise, found that they had not broken 
 it down behind them it was in fact very little damaged 
 so crossing it I rode straight on to the Jumna and got 
 over into Delhi, the first man to arrive, I think, after it 
 was taken. Soon afterwards my brother (who had escaped 
 from Moradabad, and who had taken his wife to Simla) 
 also arrived from the other, the Umballa side. 
 
 As I said at the time, I went into Delhi with the 
 vultures, and the sights on the outskirts were indeed very 
 sickening so many dead bodies were still lying about, but 
 they had been cleared away from the Cashmere gate and 
 the breach close by, and I was able to see the point where 
 the actual successful assault took place without being 
 disturbed by the most horrible sights. I was surprised at 
 the smallness of the breach which had been made after the 
 vast amount of artillery firing which we had heard ; but it 
 was enough to get in by, that was the great thing. I found 
 the headquarter staff comfortably established in the Palace, 
 and during the next two or three days I had abundant 
 opportunities of seeing Delhi and hearing all that had been 
 going on. 
 
 The Delhi force was so much cut off from direct com- 
 munication with the outer world, and comparatively small 
 affairs nearer to Calcutta and Bombay bulked so much 
 larger than the reality in the public perspective, that I 
 think it was hardly realised at the time, and is perhaps 
 hardly realised yet, how much the battle of India was 
 fought and won in that siege of Delhi, where the Sepoy 
 force was so much concentrated, and was attacked by the 
 forces of the Punjaub without any external assistance what- 
 ever. The whole question whether we were to keep or 
 lose India depended on that siege. I think, too, that 
 sufficient justice has never been done to General Archdale
 
 246 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 Wilson, who took Delhi. I do believe that to him 
 individually the success was in a very great measure due. 
 He was not a showy or a very brilliant man, but he was a 
 good, cool, solid man, a good whist -player and a good 
 organiser. To him it was due that order was introduced 
 into the camp, that the whole force was not disturbed by 
 every alarm, and that by methodical arrangements we were 
 enabled to meet the constant Sepoy attacks without exhaus- 
 tion of our own forces, and so to hold on till the Sepoys 
 had very much exhausted themselves and we were able to 
 attack them. If General Wilson was somewhat slow in 
 making the attack, and somewhat anxious before he 
 resolved to do so, he had very good reason. The result 
 showed that the capture of Delhi was all we could do ; it 
 was rather touch and go, we had no force to spare. And 
 that being so, it is rather hard that the man upon whom 
 all the responsibility rested should have been somewhat 
 depreciated by the younger men around him, whom he 
 properly consulted, discussing the probabilities and the 
 risks. Several of them seem to have believed that Delhi 
 was only taken because General Wilson was prompted and 
 almost coerced by them ; but, after all, he bided his time 
 and did take it at the right time. 
 
 When I went in immediately after the capture, the city 
 was very much turned inside out, the shops gutted, and the 
 people fugitive. But there did not seem to me to be any 
 great thirst for blood ; our soldiers seemed to have had 
 about enough of that. There were no executions going on 
 to my knowledge. The poor old king was confined, with 
 his old wife, in a small house within a railing where people 
 went to look at him like a beast in a cage ; but no one 
 then seemed to have the least desire to do him any harm. 
 Wilson was a moderate man, and the disposition entirely 
 was to encourage the people to return and protect them. 
 The only visible piece of vengeance was Hodson's work ; 
 the bodies of the princes whom he had killed were 
 brought in and laid out in triumph in the Kotwalee, a 
 spectacle which all were invited to see. I do not think the
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 247 
 
 circumstances of their death were quite generally known, 
 but it had leaked out a good deal. I knew Hodson rather 
 well. After he first came to grief in the Punjaub, he came 
 and lived at Kussowlee when I was the Commissioner there ; 
 and, as he had been rather removed under a cloud than 
 actually convicted of an offence, there was nothing to 
 prevent my acquaintance with him. He was very clever 
 and agreeable, and when I came to know him well he tried 
 hard to show me that he was entirely without fault ; a 
 subject on which I maintained a prudent reserve. When 
 I heard stories about the way the princes were killed, I 
 asked him about it and had a very long conversation with 
 him on the subject. If he had told me any secrets it 
 would perhaps not be fair to divulge them, but in truth he 
 gave me much the same story that first appeared as the 
 authentic account, without the subsequent embellishments 
 about a desperate attack upon him and the rest. I could 
 not but look very grave about it, but the deed could not be 
 recalled, and I only strongly advised him to say as little as 
 possible, and not to make a farther parade of the matter, 
 but to get the bodies decently buried out of the way as soon 
 as possible. There is no doubt that Hodson was a man of 
 great energy and talent, and the way in which, when he 
 had a chance on the outbreak of the Mutiny, he got 
 together a wonderfully effective 1 regiment out of the most 
 unpromising materials, and used them in our service, was a 
 great achievement, even if they were a good deal bribed by 
 plunder. Whatever his faults, we should probably have 
 looked leniently upon them after he was dead, if indiscreet 
 friends had not tried to prove a great deal too much. His 
 brother, I think, made him out to be rather a saint than 
 otherwise ; a character which he certainly never claimed. 
 My impression is, from papers I afterwards saw, that if he 
 had lived he must have been the subject of a formal 
 inquiry or trial, not on account of the people he killed, that 
 was passed and gone, but on account of others to whom he 
 gave guarantees in a very unaccountable manner. 
 
 It was not till later that the very regrettable severities
 
 248 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 took place at Delhi. When I was there I did not appre- 
 hend that, and I do not think it was the work of the military 
 authorities it was after some of the expelled civilians 
 returned. I was then far away and do not know par- 
 ticulars, but my impression is that many of the executions 
 were unjustifiable. I do not think it was the doing of 
 Charles Saunders, who became Commissioner of Delhi, 
 though he failed to control his subordinates. I rather 
 think it resulted from the want of any sufficient controlling 
 authority, the usual delay having occurred in the arrange- 
 ments of the Government of India. 
 
 I was not able to write many private letters when I was 
 in Delhi. My wife at Simla had much better and fuller 
 news all through, and it now reads odd in the midst of these 
 scenes, that one letter to my mother at home was filled 
 partly with an account of Delhi, and partly with details 
 about the letting of a farm in Scotland. But I was able to 
 despatch a letter to the Times, some passages of which I 
 append. 1 
 
 When I went into Delhi, Nicholson was dying or 
 dead ; the sympathy and regret on his account were great, 
 and I with others heartily praised his great energy, and 
 lamented the loss of the man best fitted to command and 
 control the Punjaub regiments. But military opinion was 
 not altogether unanimous some of the regular officers 
 thought that in his famous action outside Delhi he had 
 over-marched and altogether used up one of the best of Her 
 Majesty's European regiments. I scarcely knew him per- 
 sonally, but always understood that he was not only 
 vigorous but even violent in some of his actions and a 
 great deal of his language. And now that we see the 
 things that are told of him by those who most praise 
 him, one cannot but feel that he was a very violent 
 man. I have seen mention of alleged utterances of 
 Nicholson about a desire for power to flay alive the most 
 guilty rebels. It would hardly be fair to judge him 
 very seriously by that ; but while Bosworth Smith, in his 
 
 1 Extracts will be found in the Appendix at the end of Volume II.
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 249 
 
 Life of Lord Lawrence, glorifies Nicholson to an excessive 
 degree, some of the facts he relates tell the other way, and 
 it is at any rate clear that he was very insubordinate, and 
 behaved very badly to Lawrence himself, because Lawrence 
 restrained the men of excessive action. Nothing I think 
 more redounds to Lawrence's credit than the way in which 
 he kept his temper with Nicholson and others, and while 
 restraining Nicholson, utilised him to the utmost, for I do 
 believe that at Delhi Nicholson really was a right man in 
 the right place. Wilson was very cautious, and Nicholson's 
 excessive vigour may have supplemented what might pos- 
 sibly have been wanting. I only tremble to think of the 
 difficulties I should have had if, when I went with the 
 first column with somewhat imperfect and undefined 
 powers, Nicholson had commanded the troops as was 
 originally intended. As it turned out, he died a soldier's 
 death after having rendered great services, which are very 
 deservedly praised. I only dislike the disposition to a 
 sort of deification of him as the incarnation of vigour. 
 It is perhaps a pity to spoil the stories about the natives 
 worshipping him, which are about as authentic as Highland 
 Jessie, whose best friends now show her, if she ever existed, 
 to have been a Glasgow slavey, and to have derived the 
 divine afflatus from the street music of her native Gallow- 
 gate. At all events these pretty stories are decently 
 contemporaneous, and far more justifiable than the romantic 
 songs invented generations later about that contemptible 
 and drunken young man, Charles Stuart, whom his fol- 
 lowers at the time did not treat with civility, to say 
 nothing of deference. 
 
 I was rather flattered by the consideration with which 
 I was treated in the camp, but I presently found that it 
 was partly due to an idea which had gone abroad that I 
 was about to take the civil command. And I might have 
 been ready enough to do so for the time at least, if any 
 one had had authority to appoint me, though I had no 
 personal knowledge of the Delhi districts. But Delhi 
 then belonged to the North-West Provinces Mr. Colvin was
 
 250 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAI-. 
 
 dead, we did not know who was to succeed him, and had 
 no means of speedy communication. We held, too, at 
 that time nothing but the town of Delhi, and it had been 
 arranged to instal a military Governor of the town. I 
 could hardly have done much good without very full 
 powers. My friend Charles Saunders, who had been 
 Greathed's second, was in charge of his office ; and so 
 when it was suggested that I should go with the column 
 about to follow the rebels and recover the country, and 
 Sir John Lawrence telegraphed a provisional approval till 
 the orders of Government could be obtained, I very 
 readily accepted that arrangement, and tents and equip- 
 ments were speedily provided for me. The force to move 
 out of Delhi was arranged with considerable promptitude. 
 The European infantry were really entirely exhausted by 
 the siege some 450 wearied men represented two regi- 
 ments, but the Punjaubees were fresh and strong, two good 
 and full regiments formed part of the column. The 
 cavalry, both European and native, was fresh and in good 
 condition, and there were plenty of field-guns quite efficient 
 though not manned according to the orthodox strength. 
 The difficulty was to find the right commanding officer 
 all the best men were wounded, or in one way or another 
 incapacitated. Hope Grant, whose regiment, the 9th 
 Lancers, was going, afterwards so much distinguished him- 
 self, that one may without detriment say that at that time 
 he was not fully appreciated. He was supposed to be 
 rather slow, and it was said that, when his cavalry were 
 under a heavy fire and doing no good whatever, he would 
 not take the responsibility of moving them back without 
 orders so he was left behind, and the command fell some- 
 what accidentally to Colonel Greathed of Her Majesty's 
 8th Foot as senior officer. The column moved out on 
 24th September, but I was not to take charge as Civil 
 Commissioner till we reached the next district, which was 
 in possession of the enemy. I forget why, perhaps because 
 the regular civil authorities were in possession of the 
 Meerut district. At any rate, it was not till the 26th that
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 251 
 
 I went out and overtook the column. There had been 
 some plundering at Ghazeeoodeennugger, and a European 
 sentry had shot a Sikh who tried to pass with plunder, 
 which so incensed the Sikhs that to pacify them the 
 soldier was put under arrest for a time. Beyond that, the 
 large Goojur village of Dadree was found empty, and was 
 burned. The Goojurs richly deserved any punishment ; 
 they had devastated the country wherever they could, but 
 to burn their houses was hardly the way to quiet them 
 down. After I joined, I tried to prevent that sort of 
 thing as much as possible. At the next encampment we 
 found the people quietly returning to their villages and 
 encouraged them to do so. Colonel Greathed I am bound 
 to say was quite well inclined to moderate measures, but 
 he had not a very good control over his officers. 
 
 On the 28th we got into the enemy's country, occupied 
 by our old friend Waleedad with the aid of a good many 
 Sepoys from Delhi, and we had to fight for it, the first 
 battle that I saw. We marched as usual through the 
 night, starting in the very small hours of the morning, and 
 cqming to a cross - road some time before daylight were 
 warned that the enemy was at hand, and so the troops were 
 halted. The few of us who were with the advanced party 
 dismounted for a little rest, and lying under a tree I had 
 just dosed off when I was rudely startled up by a clattering 
 and shouting. I never passed more unpleasant moments 
 than when I realised the clattering of horses coming down 
 the metalled roads and some Persian-speaking irregulars with 
 us crying out, " They are on us," " They are on us." And 
 I never was more grateful to any man in my life than I 
 was to my native syce (horse-keeper) when I heard him 
 running up with my horse and calling, " Here he is, Sahib." 
 I scrambled up with extreme expedition, and then Eichard 
 was himself again. However, it turned out that the 
 enemy, finding that they had come upon a considerable 
 party, thought discretion the better part, and after two or 
 three vague shots we heard them clattering back again. 
 
 After this small victory I became proud and would not
 
 252 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 rest till I went on with a small escort to try and get some 
 information. We met some natives on the road, and they 
 told us we had better not go on as the rebel battery was a 
 little way ahead. I thought it might be a mile or two. 
 Then one or two early husbandmen came along going to 
 their fields, and we chatted with them in an easy way and 
 learned all we could about the doings of the rebels. Mean- 
 time day was beginning to dawn, and at last we made out 
 to our surprise an obstruction on the road within two or 
 three hundred yards, which turned out, when we saw it a 
 little better, to be the rebel battery with the guns pointed 
 straight on us. It was now our turn to make a hasty 
 retreat, but the rebels had also made us out, and sent a few 
 shots after us. That white-gray horse of mine was a very 
 conspicuous object in those days, and people said he made 
 a capital mark for the enemy. Later in the day he was 
 hit, but it was only by a very spent ball, which did not do 
 him much harm, and the only effect was to make me a 
 little more careful. Soon a regular action commenced, and 
 the troops advanced in orthodox fashion. I followed the 
 lancers into a native serai, and hardly realised that the 
 thing was getting pretty hot till one or two of the officers 
 were brought back wounded. However, the result was 
 that we beat them completely and occupied Bulandshuhur. 
 The people of the town soon returned and sold us supplies 
 in a friendly way ; but some Sepoys were found in the 
 houses, and that led to a good deal of plundering. That 
 same day Waleedad abandoned his Fort of Malaghur, and 
 joined a brigade of mutineers retreating from Delhi. A 
 larger Sepoy force had also crossed the Jumna a little lower 
 down, and the general feeling in camp was that by a rapid 
 advance we might have made an example of them. 
 Military difficulties, however, were found, and we halted for 
 the next three or four days. On 3rd October we marched 
 to a place called Khoorjah, a considerable Mahomedan 
 town, full of people who were or had been in our service, 
 both civil and military. Though some of them had no 
 doubt been in Delhi, and they had for a time received a
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 253 
 
 rebel Tehseeldar, they had upon the whole not behaved 
 badly, and now received our Tehseeldar and gave us a 
 friendly reception, so I was anxious to treat them leniently. 
 But then came an incident of which a good deal was heard. 
 Some one found a skeleton by the roadside, not a very 
 uncommon thing in those days, and it was said to be the 
 skeleton of a woman. I believe some kind of medical 
 committee was held upon it. I was not present, and 
 cannot vouch for the story that went about the camp that 
 of three medical officers one was very decided that it was a 
 woman, another rather inclined to think it was a man, and 
 the third very sagely pronounced that he could not exactly 
 say, but of one thing he was quite sure, that it was either a 
 woman or a man. However, the general verdict settled 
 that it was a w r oman, and then it was evident that if it 
 was a woman it must have been a large and large -boned 
 woman. From that the whole camp jumped to the positive 
 conclusion that it must be a European woman. There was 
 no pretext of any known case of any European woman who 
 had been murdered in those parts, but people were not very 
 logical in those days, and it went about that we had found 
 the x skeleton of a murdered European lady. A great cry 
 for vengeance arose. My authority was very imperfect, 
 indeed ; I had really received no regular commission at all, 
 and when I did receive it I had no absolute control over 
 the military. But the magistrate of Boolandshuhur, who 
 was also present, agreed with me that it was most undesir- 
 able to drive the Khoorjah people to extremities ; we 
 deprecated hostilities. The commanding officer wavered 
 and hesitated ; but, towards evening, he marched out the 
 troops towards the town in order to disarm it. A collision 
 seemed very imminent, and with darkness coming on and 
 the Punjaubees keen for plunder, the result might have 
 been disastrous. I rode out with the troops, and when we 
 came near the town, simply said to the commanding officer, 
 " I have no authority to stop you, but I tell you that I 
 think it most undesirable and inexpedient that there should 
 be any collision here ; to my knowledge a very large
 
 254 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 number of the Khoorjah people are serving in a regiment 
 of irregular cavalry which is down in Scinde and still faith- 
 ful to us, and many others are in our service. And now 
 that we hope to restore peace we want to be friendly with 
 these people ; if you do anything you do it entirely on your 
 own responsibility." That responsibility was a great sedative, 
 and the upshot of it was that the troops were marched 
 back again, much to the disgust of many among them. My 
 friend, Sir George Bouchier, who then commanded a battery, 
 says in his book that the Civil Commissioner insisted on 
 sparing the town because it paid a large revenue ; but the 
 reasons really were much more important than that. After 
 this incident I found it very much easier to control 
 military ebullitions. My experience very strongly is that 
 the European soldiers are perfectly amenable when their 
 officers are moderate and firm in the desire to keep them in. 
 I never had any occasion whatever to complain of undiscip- 
 lined excesses on their part throughout the march. They 
 vised occasionally to bring in a fat trader and say he looked 
 very like a " Saypoy," but when they were told he was 
 nothing of the kind they were quite good-natured about it. 
 At the next place we found a friendly Zemindar, and every- 
 thing was quiet ; but we had more and more news of 
 mutineers from Delhi marching down country. One used 
 to think stories of husbandmen ploughing their fields in the 
 presence of contending armies rather a myth, but in this 
 part of the country it literally was the case. I confess I 
 thought them rather imprudent to be ploughing as we were 
 passing, seeing the risk of having their bullocks seized ; but 
 most of them seemed to go about their cultivation as usual, 
 and I came along and talked to them just as if nothing had 
 happened. 
 
 We used to march at night, starting about 2 or 3 A.M., so 
 as to get the cool hours. My recollection of the life is 
 quite a pleasant one. The siege of Delhi had not exhausted 
 the supplies or even the luxuries of Upper India, and our 
 force came away exceedingly well supplied, the only diffi- 
 culty being the amount of impedimenta, for we had not
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 255 
 
 only good supplies for men and officers, but a large amount 
 of plunder, which it was difficult sufficiently to reduce. 
 The country through which we marched furnished native 
 supplies and abundant forage. The officers of Her 
 Majesty's 8th Eegiment were good enough to make me an 
 honorary member of their mess, which saved me a great 
 deal of trouble, and I could not have fared better in the 
 quietest of times. Partly, however, owing to our encum- 
 brances, and partly to what we thought a want of go in the 
 Commanding Officer, our progress was not very rapid. We 
 were expected to follow and attack the retreating mutineers ; 
 but they completely outmarched us, and though various 
 bodies of them crossing from Muttra and elsewhere came 
 across our path, they were always just a little way ahead. 
 I used to go to a man ploughing his fields and say : " Where 
 are the rebels ? " " Oh," he would say, " three regiments of 
 them passed down this morning, but they are a long way 
 off by this time." As we approached Alighur we had news 
 that a detachment of mutineers from Delhi had arrived to 
 reinforce the Mahomedan rebels in that place. Alighur 
 had changed hands two or three times during the Mutiny, 
 but the people had not behaved very badly. It so happened 
 that in order to give me pay till I could join at Agra, I 
 had been appointed as a mere paper arrangement magistrate 
 and collector of Alighur, and I unexpectedly found myself 
 in my own dominions. I hardly thought that the rebels 
 would stand against us, and was anxious to save the town 
 if possible, so I rode ahead with a small escort. I found 
 the people in the suburbs quite friendly, though not very 
 clear whether the Delhi mutineers were within the walls or 
 not. When we came near the main gate we found a crowd 
 of people in front of it, and I beckoned to them to parley. 
 Thereupon a smart-looking man upon an active pony trotted 
 out towards us, and I thought it was all right ; but just as 
 he was getting near us, for some reason quite unexplained, 
 he suddenly turned round and galloped back. As soon as 
 he got to his friends the crowd separated and disclosed two 
 guns in position, which forthwith opened fire upon us a
 
 256 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 most unpleasant reception on my entry into my capital I 
 Naturally we made ourselves scarce as quickly as possible. 
 We got into a grove alongside the road, and sent in hot 
 haste for assistance. I never was more relieved than when 
 two or three of our guns came up at a gallop, and unlimber- 
 ing, opened their fire. From what I have seen in the 
 Mutiny I did not much believe in the effectiveness of the 
 old-fashioned artillery to kill very many people, but there 
 is no doubt whatever of the moral effect of the noise. Bag- 
 pipes are all very well, but when your heart is sinking 
 there is nothing to bring it up again like the bang bang 
 bang of the guns on your own side. On that occasion, from 
 considerable depression we became very elevated indeed, 
 and before long, our troops coining up, the enemy dis- 
 appeared and shut the gate. Soon after, some of the 
 natives brought me news that many rebels were flying from 
 the other side of the town, where the cavalry went after 
 them and cut them up. The town itself, however, still 
 seemed formidable, and there was talk of delaying the 
 attack. However, news was brought to me that the gate 
 on the other side was open, and then I got a Punjaub 
 regiment from the commanding officer, and marching in, 
 took quiet possession. We found the guns that had given 
 us so much trouble, but on the principle of letting bygones 
 be bygones, I thought it better not to inquire who had fired 
 them and who had not and our administration was soon 
 established just as usual. I am afraid, however, that dur- 
 ing the ensuing night some plundering took place. 
 
 The next day I conducted an expedition to surprise two 
 rebel Thakoors of a considerable place called "Akrabad." 
 These people had behaved exceptionally ill, having gone 
 into open rebellion without any excuse whatever very early 
 in the day, and committed acts which had caused a reward 
 of 2000 rupees to be set upon their heads. Major Ouvry 
 of the 9th Lancers, a very active officer, commanded the 
 cavalry of the expedition, and we arrived at the place just 
 at dawn. It turned out that the Thakoors, hearing of our 
 approach, were afraid to make a stand, and attempted to
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 257 
 
 retreat, but we overtook them, and they were killed. 
 Malleson states that they were summarily tried and 
 executed, but that is not the case ; they were simply killed 
 in the pursuit. I did not see them killed, but I saw their 
 bodies directly afterwards ; exceedingly fine men they were. 
 I confess that on this occasion only, believing that these 
 people had behaved exceptionally ill, I allowed a vindictive 
 spirit to get possession of me, and took part in a rather 
 bloody pursuit. But there were no cold-blooded executions 
 of any kind. The Thakoors' women were captured in large 
 native carriages and brought safely back. All the other 
 villages seemed quite friendly, and if any of them had mis- 
 givings, the example of Akrabad brought them round, so 
 the country was quite quieted that day. The crops were 
 particularly good, cultivation was going on, and all was 
 peaceful. 
 
 But urgent news now came from Agra that they were 
 again threatened there by a combination of the Mhow and 
 oSTeemuch brigades of mutineers, one of which had come 
 from Delhi, and the other had never reached that place. 
 The Agra authorities pressed much that we should come to 
 their assistance. On 8th October we were at Bijeghur, 
 only six miles from Alighur and forty-two miles from Agra. 
 The Ranee of that place had behaved particularly well, and 
 I especially desired that she should be well treated ; but 
 we had hardly got into the place when a large house was 
 set on fire, and the Eanee's property was plundered. It 
 turned out that this was not an unauthorised act of the 
 soldiers, but that the officer commanding Her Majesty's 75th 
 Eegiment, having found some powder and arms, which the 
 Ranee's people had reasonably got together for their own 
 defence, had taken upon himself to condemn her, and let 
 loose his men. As usually happens in these cases, it was 
 the fault of the superior officer rather than of the men. 
 And in this column in particular it was not so much that 
 the officer commanding the column was disinclined to 
 moderate measures, but that he had not sufficient control 
 over those under him. As I reported at the time, he was 
 VOL. I s
 
 258 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 very angry at what had been done, and promised redress 
 and compensation. " But," I said, " the carriages, bullocks, 
 horses, etc., of the Eanee were recognised in different parts 
 of the camp, and I attempted to obtain for her actual 
 restitution. I regret, however, to find that red tape is so 
 little peculiar to peace and civilians, that though the 
 plundered property was there, visible to our eyes, the 
 whole afternoon was spent bandying the matter about from 
 one officer to the other before the officer commanding each 
 offender could be reached in the regular routine way and 
 the case be taken up by him. The consequence was that 
 night closed in and no restitution was made." I have 
 already, I think, said that till we got to Agra my own 
 position was a very undefined and uncertain one, as I had 
 only a sort of provisional authority of an imperfect char- 
 acter, depending upon subsequent confirmation. Meantime, 
 still more urgent demands for assistance came from Agra. 
 The rebels were said to be on the very point of attacking 
 that place. "We were still forty-two miles distant, but the 
 column started in the early hours of the morning of the 
 9th, and marched towards Agra. At the end of the march 
 we were still thirty miles distant, but I thought it well to 
 get on in advance, and so I went straight on with Major Ouvry 
 and a couple of men, and did not stop till we reached the 
 Jumna and got over into Agra. I was not at all molested 
 on the way, and treated the villagers as I passed as if I 
 was there as a matter of course. But that I was able to 
 do so under the circumstances, when one body of mutineers 
 had just crossed the road I took, and another was threaten- 
 ing Agra on the other side, is the best proof how little of 
 civil rebellion there was in the country, and how easily we 
 resumed possession the moment the mutineers went away. 
 Some of the accounts represent the relief of Agra on the 
 1 Oth of October as if it had been almost a second relief of 
 Lucknow, but the fact that I myself came quietly in on the 
 9th shows that on one side at any rate it was not very 
 closely beleaguered. However, the people shut up in the 
 fort at Agra had long been cut off from the outer world
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 259 
 
 (except so far as they maintained communications by native 
 messengers, who concealed small notes about their persons), 
 and I was welcomed as a sort of dove coming into the ark. 
 I was hospitably entertained by the Muirs (now Sir W. 
 and Lady Muir) in their quarters in the fort. There was a 
 very large assemblage of Europeans there. Agra was then 
 the headquarters of the Government of the North-West 
 Provinces all the higher civilians were there, as well as 
 all the district officials and the refugees from the neigh- 
 bouring districts, with the whole of the staff of their officers 
 and a great many others besides. There was a European 
 regiment and some European artillery. Altogether there 
 was quite a European town within that old Mogul fort, 
 besides the native servants and followers. It was quite 
 unlike anything one sees in India. But upon the whole 
 they had settled themselves and shaken down better than 
 might have been expected, and seemed not so very uncom- 
 fortable in their physical condition. Morally, however, 
 they had been exceedingly uncomfortable. The social 
 atmosphere had been stormy in a high degree. 
 
 In the early part of the Mutiny the question of confidence 
 or no-confidence in the natives had become a very raging one. 
 
 At Agra the magistrate, the immediate executive officer 
 in charge of the place, was the Hon. Eobert Drummond, 
 a brother of Lord Strathallan's, and one of a family of 
 distinguished brothers. He was a man of energy and of 
 much experience among the natives, in whom he had come 
 to have much confidence. He had served in districts of 
 Kohilcund where a superior Mahomedan element was 
 predominant, and was rather partial to the Mahomedans. 
 He stoutly maintained that in this Mutiny of the Sepoys 
 there was no reason to distrust the tried native officials in 
 whom we had hitherto trusted that it was not becoming 
 in us to show any undue panic, and that we should rather 
 exhibit a bold and confident front. He pledged himself to 
 maintain order through the men in whom he confided, 
 till at least we were overcome by actual military force. 
 Others again maintained that the country was permeated
 
 2<So MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 with treachery, and our best native officials could not be 
 trusted at all ; that the Mahomedans in whom Drummond 
 put his faith were especially to be distrusted ; and that we 
 should at once put ourselves as far as possible beyond the 
 power of them all. Mr. Colvin, not in good health, was 
 sorely pressed by the opposite parties, but his view was in 
 favour of a confident attitude. The opposition faction 
 declared that Mr. Colvin was weakened and unable to hold 
 his own, and that, as they expressed it, the "bourgeois 
 Scotch governor was overridden by the aristocratic Scotch 
 magistrate. The practical result of it all had been that 
 those who liked to take refuge in the fort were not pre- 
 vented from doing so, but they were not permitted to 
 encumber it with the whole of their goods and property, 
 and horses, and cattle, and all the rest of it. Those who 
 were willing to live outside the fort did so. Many of the 
 Government officers and Government records still remained 
 outside, and as far as possible the ordinary business was 
 carried on, and the appearance of British administration 
 was maintained, even when the districts around were fall- 
 ing away from us. So things went on till the beginning 
 of July. At that time Mr. Colvin had a threatening of 
 serious illness, which made it necessary for him to delegate 
 for a day or two the conduct of affairs to two or three 
 of the senior civilians. And though he recovered and 
 resumed his functions, he was no doubt somewhat shaken 
 for the time. Then came the attack of the mutineers upon 
 Agra. The British military force went out to meet them 
 on the 8th July. The affair from a military point of view 
 was badly managed we were defeated, and our beaten 
 forces came back to the shelter of the fort. Then there 
 was a dreadful stampede of all who had remained outside 
 very much property was lost and many of the Govern- 
 ment records. And though the civilians got into the fort, 
 and the enemy had no immediate chance of taking that, 
 the feelings of those who had lost their property were 
 very bitter. The European community, crowded together 
 in the fort after a great disaster, were in a very unamiable
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 261 
 
 mood discord and recriminations much prevailed. The 
 Brigadier - General, whose strategy had been so unfortu- 
 nate, was perhaps not unreasonably deposed. But there 
 was also a violent cry against Eobert Drummond, the 
 magistrate, who could hardly be responsible for an unex- 
 pected military defeat. Mr. Colvin was pressed so hard 
 that he consented to suspend Drummond from his 
 functions. Shut up as our people then were in the fort, 
 there was not much scope for any function beyond the 
 organising of the garrison, and though there was much 
 ill-feeling, things went on without any additional misfortune 
 so long as Mr. Colvin lived. There were some excellent 
 men in the fort Reade of the Board of Revenue, the 
 senior civilian ; Harrington of the Sudder Court ; Muir, and 
 others. Colonel Cotton, the new military head, was an 
 energetic man, and the arrangements for defence were well 
 managed by Colonel Fraser, the chief engineer. The 
 mutineers, finding themselves unable to take the fort, went 
 off towards Delhi, and the garrison were considerably 
 relieved. So things went on till poor Mr. Colvin died in 
 the first half of September. The garrison were able to 
 communicate with Calcutta by means of native messengers 
 to the nearest telegraph stations, and the news of Mr. 
 Colvin's death brought from Calcutta a very extraordinary 
 decision of Lord Canning's Colonel Fraser, the engineer, 
 was appointed the temporary successor of Mr. Colvin, with 
 the title of Chief Commissioner of the North-West Pro- 
 vinces. If he had been made mere commandant of the 
 besieged garrison, there could have been no objection to the 
 appointment ; but just at the time when we were about to 
 assault Delhi, and might reasonably hope to recover our 
 districts, it was a very strange appointment. Fraser was 
 an elderly Scotchman a sensible man as it turned out, and 
 quite good in his own profession ; but there never was a 
 man more free from any knowledge of civil affairs or 
 ambition that way. Feeling ran so strong that there was 
 always danger that, at the moment of our recovery of power, 
 a military man might be carried away by the military
 
 262 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 proclivities for vengeance. Fortunately Fraser behaved 
 very well, indeed ; and so did the senior civilians, Eeade 
 especially a man of very high position and character, who 
 might reasonably have expected to be put in the chief com- 
 mand almost as a matter of course. He gave Fraser every 
 possible assistance, and during the few months that Fraser 
 nominally held power things went on quite as w r ell as could 
 have been expected. But it was generally believed that 
 the anxiety of the position killed Fraser in the end. 
 
 For a little time before our arrival, a great new anxiety 
 had come upon the occupants of the fort the threatened 
 attack of another body of the mutineers. That absorbed all 
 their thoughts, and led to the urgent demands for assistance 
 which had reached us. Up to the day when I arrived, the 
 enemy had been advancing, and were believed to be within 
 a short march of Agra ; but that day a favourable turn had 
 occurred. News came that they had halted, perhaps 
 hearing of our victorious column, and that they were 
 inclined to retreat. That evening came news that they 
 actually had retreated, and what between the imminent 
 arrival of friends on one side and the retreat of the enemy 
 on the other, there was much rejoicing. Before I went 
 to bed that night, I was officially informed in the most 
 positive manner that the enemy had retreated without 
 doubt. This was more than confirmed when we got up in 
 the morning of the 10th ; the whole force of the enemy was, 
 we were told, clear away beyond the Kharee Nuddee, a 
 small stream on the Gwalior road, and were now fully 
 sixteen miles distant. The stream, it was added, was 
 unfordable for guns. The best proof of the confidence 
 of the Agra authorities in the news is that on that morning 
 Mrs. Muir actually drove out for an airing on the very 
 ground which the enemy occupied in the battle that day. 
 
 The relief was so complete that everybody was able to 
 turn their attention to the pleasant spectacle of the arrival 
 of our troops, which, having made a long-forced march in 
 the night, marched into Agra in good time in the morning 
 of 10th October. There were great congratulations and
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 263 
 
 great shakings of hands all round. It was arranged that 
 the troops should encamp on the Agra parade, a very fine 
 open ground, and the Agra volunteers undertook to do 
 the scouting for them, though, according to the political 
 information, much scouting did not seem to be required. 
 
 The tents and baggage had not arrived, and as they 
 marched in, the tired troops lay down in rough bivouac 
 upon the parade. Meantime, the grateful members of the 
 relieved garrison proceeded to entertain their deliverers 
 with all the hospitality in their power. I myself went off 
 to breakfast with a friend who had reoccupied his house 
 outside, between the fort and the parade, where we had a 
 very sociable and pleasant party, and made an excellent 
 breakfast in the best of spirits. I had just about finished 
 my breakfast when we heard the sound of some big guns in 
 the distance, but we were so much accustomed to that sort 
 of thing that we did not disturb ourselves. However, a 
 good many guns boomed in at the open windows, and some 
 one said, " What's that ? " " Oh," the reply was, " I 
 suppose they are firing some kind of salute," " But," 
 I said, " it seems rather an irregular kind of salute," and as 
 the firing went on, at last I got up and went outside to see 
 what I could learn. All still seemed quiet on the high 
 road, but, immediately after, a couple of natives came 
 running down the road, and when they got near they 
 shouted, " Mokabilah ho raha," which means, " A battle is 
 going on." They could not explain very clearly what it 
 all meant, but they were very clear that there was active 
 fighting. I immediately got my horse, and having (in full 
 security) left my revolver in the fort, I managed to borrow 
 another from an Agra volunteer, and rode up in hot haste 
 to the parade to see what was the matter. There I found 
 a heavy cannonade going on without any mistake at all, and 
 round shot hopping about the parade like so many cricket 
 balls. 
 
 It turned out that the enemy had completely surprised 
 us. Instead of retreating they had that morning marched 
 straight down the metalled high-road not a mere surprise
 
 264 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 party, but the whole force, bag and baggage, with all their 
 material and many guns, including some exceedingly large 
 ones ; but no one took the least notice of them. There was 
 a highly -organised intelligence department at Agra, who 
 got unlimited news, true and false, but on this occasion no 
 one brought any news at all. The only circumstance to 
 favour the advance was that the high millet crops were on the 
 ground, some of them 1 or 12 feet high, and so the free 
 marching down the road was not so visible as it would have 
 been at another time. They reached the point where the 
 road crossed the parade ground quite unobserved. They 
 probably had some scouts, and discovering our troops there, 
 arranged themselves and got their guns in position before 
 they announced themselves to us. The first attack was 
 made by a few fanatics who rushed in and cut down two or 
 three of our men, but were not numerous enough to do 
 material harm. If the enemy's real forces had made a rush 
 in the same way, when no one expected them, there is no 
 saying what might have happened ; but fortunately, as 
 natives generally do, they believed in and stuck to their 
 great guns, and instead of charging in, they opened that 
 heavy fire which had disturbed us at breakfast. Very much 
 surprised our people certainly were, but it was lucky that 
 the camp had not come up, and, quite unencumbered, our men 
 were very speedily ready for action. When I arrived I found 
 a considerable body of them in the middle of the parade 
 ground, while the camp followers and residents were rushing 
 about in panic. I thought the best thing I could do was to 
 join the troops, and did so. There were there, the 9th 
 Lancers, a field battery, and a strong regiment of Sikhs, and 
 they were in good order. The enemy's guns were a little 
 way off, and their fire seemed rather vague, but we had lost 
 a few men, and one or two officers of the 9th Lancers fell 
 either then or very soon afterwards. It did not seem clear 
 whether any one in particular was in command of our 
 troops. Very soon after we suddenly saw a large body 
 of cavalry coming at a gallop towards us through the crops. 
 They were rather mixed, in many uniforms, but were a large
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 265 
 
 and compact body, coining on very rapidly and vigorously. 
 Very shortly they were upon the open parade, galloping 
 right upon us, and the whole affair took place exactly as if 
 it had been a parade manoeuvre. We were ready for them, 
 the lancers in order, the Sikhs rapidly formed into square, 
 and the guns ready ; but just as they got near us some 
 one raised the cry ; " Don't fire ! don't fire ! they are our 
 own irregulars running away." The artillery hesitated, and 
 before we knew where we were, they had got possession of 
 one or two of our guns and sabred the gunners. However, 
 the Sikhs received them excellently, and the lancers went 
 for them. It was hardly my business to charge, but when 
 I looked round it was too late to retreat, so I made the best 
 of it, and joined in the charge of the lancers. I had been 
 one of those who had rather jeered at regular cavalry as 
 hardly suited for Indian work, but certainly on this occasion 
 they did excellent service, and I very much admired them. 
 To get properly at the enemy they had to wheel half-round, 
 and I noticed the exceeding steadiness with which they per- 
 formed that manoeuvre, and the solid way in which they 
 charged. They scattered the irregulars opposed to them 
 like chaff before the wind, and there was soon no doubt that 
 we had won that encounter. Still the hostile cavalry, 
 though utterly broken, were scampering all over the place, 
 and caused an immense amount of confusion and panic. 
 They were galloping about the parade, and our men firing 
 at them as if it were a kind of big battue. I was rather 
 sorry for one man who nobly attempted to save a discom- 
 fited comrade mounted behind him, the two were brought 
 down, and rolled over just in front of me. I had come up 
 before the panic had fully begun in the lines at Agra, but it 
 soon set in very badly, and a good many of the fugitive 
 rebel troopers wildly galloping up and down the place 
 raised the panic to an excessive pitch. They say there 
 never was such a scene of confusion ; everybody was riding 
 over everybody else. 
 
 However, on the parade the cavalry incident blew over, 
 and our forces began to get more completely into order.
 
 266 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 The parts of our column that were behind arrived on the 
 ground, some field-guns soon came out from the fort to rein- 
 force us, and told us that the European infantry were coming 
 shortly after. The commanding officer was on the ground, 
 and our artillery effectively returned the enemy's fire, though 
 they had not such heavy guns. So it went on for some 
 time ; but then one of the enemy's tumbrels blew up, and 
 that was a kind of turning point. After that it became 
 pretty evident that they felt they too had had a surprise 
 in finding our column upon the ground. They began to 
 slacken, while we waxed more confident, and in fact they 
 soon began to execute a strategic movement to the rear, 
 while we pressed them hard. They left one very big gun 
 upon the parade, and not long after abandoned two more 
 of the same kind. For a time they kept good order, and 
 made a stand in places where bullets flew most uncom- 
 fortably thick, but gradually they got more and more into 
 full retreat, and by the time we had covered something like 
 a couple of miles of ground they were thoroughly repulsed 
 and beaten. We made some halt then, but it turned out 
 that Colonel Cotton of Agra (Gun Cotton he was called), 
 who was by this time on the ground, was the senior officer 
 and in command. He was not the man to lose a chance of 
 crushing an enemy. The infantry of our column were 
 pretty well done, and the Europeans just arriving from the 
 fort were not quick enough to follow a fugitive native force ; 
 but the mounted troops, cavalry, and some artillery were 
 still pretty fit, and they continued the pursuit. The 
 retreat became a rout, large quantities of baggage and 
 accumulated plunder were abandoned all along the road, 
 and many of the enemy were killed. My horse and 
 I had rested and breakfasted, so we were fresh enough and 
 'I was easily able to keep in the front ranks of the pursuit 
 till the enemy had lost all order, and were utterly dissipated, 
 flying into the shelter of the crops on either side of the road. 
 Our pursuing force became smaller and smaller, but we kept 
 it up till we approached the neighbourhood of the Kharee 
 Nuddee, ten miles from Agra.
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 267 
 
 It was at this point that there occurred a crisis in my 
 military career. I fancied that I saw among the crops, 
 away at one side of the road, something like the gleam of 
 large wheels, and thought that it might, perhaps, be the 
 enemy's guns trying to escape by a bye-road. I could not 
 at the moment get any one to attend to my view, and 
 having no force of my own, I thought it best to gallop 
 along in that direction and see for myself. I was mounted 
 on that fine but rather impetuous gray Arab whom I have 
 mentioned before. Approaching the spot where I suspected 
 the enemy's guns to be retreating, I had to go through a 
 high field of standing millet; and when I came out on the 
 other side I saw right before me, only a little way off, a 
 crowd of rebels with a train of guns which they were urging 
 along in hasty retreat. Naturally, being quite alone, I 
 tried to pull up my horse, but he was greatly excited and 
 I could not manage it. He carried me straight on towards 
 the enemy. The situation was desperate. I could do 
 nothing but wave my sword and shout out loudly, partly in 
 the hope of bringing assistance on my side, and partly to 
 frighten the enemy. I never was more relieved in my life 
 when I saw that the people with the rearmost of the enemy's 
 guns, evidently taking me for an officer leading the pursuit, 
 and believing that my force was behind me, fled at once and 
 disappeared in the crops beyond. The splendid bullocks 
 with which the guns were " horsed " came to a standstill, 
 and I found myself in possession of the guns. Three guns, 
 with all their equipments, were left on my hands only the 
 leading guns, which were a little way ahead, went on. That 
 was a proud moment of my life. But with victory came 
 embarrassment. I looked round and found that I was 
 entirely cut off by the high crops from all sight of, and 
 communication with, our own people. I had only seen the 
 enemy disappear on the edge of the fields on the other side, 
 and for aught I knew they might be prospecting me there. 
 I did not like to shout very much, for fear of showing them 
 my embarrassment, and I could hardly simulate many 
 voices. An idea occurred to me. I would shoot one of
 
 268 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 the leading bullocks in each gun, and, leaving him entangled 
 in the harness, would go to fetch assistance. There was no 
 time to be lost. I proceeded to the execution of the plan, 
 and put my pistol to the ear of the first bullock. To this 
 day I remember the look of that very fine quadruped as he 
 turned his mild eye upon me, unsuspicious of my murderous 
 intent. My heart rather sank within me, but I had become 
 habituated to deeds of blood, and persevered. I pulled the 
 trigger : the pistol snapped. I pulled another, and another 
 barrel : the wretched borrowed pistol snapped all round, and 
 I was helpless. It was a painful situation, but there was 
 nothing for it. I galloped wildly back to ask for assistance. 
 I encountered Major Turner of the Artillery (now Sir Frank 
 Turner, K.C.B.), and though he had few men to spare, he 
 kindly gave me a corporal and five men of the lancers whom 
 he had as an escort to his battery. I returned with them 
 as quickly as possible, found that the enemy had not come 
 back, and finally secured the guns. We then continued the 
 pursuit of those which had gone on. But by this time they 
 were approaching a ford where their people were crossing, 
 and on a small rising ground they unlimbered the two guns 
 they still had, and turned them upon us, flourishing their 
 sponges, and pretty plainly intimating that if we came on 
 they were ready for us. Under those circumstances we 
 thought it prudent not to attack with so small a party, 
 and some little time passed, each side waiting for the 
 other to begin, like the historical British noblemen. In 
 this situation we at last descried two small bodies of 
 cavalry in the distance, and hoped that we were about to 
 receive reinforcements, but remembering the mistake of the 
 forenoon, one or two of my men suggested that they rather 
 thought these were not our people but the enemy ; it 
 seemed very doubtful indeed. We thought it well then 
 as a precautionary measure to retire into the high crops, 
 till we saw how it turned out. When they got near 
 we were satisfied from our place of observation that they 
 were our friends, and sallying out, met Watson of the 
 irregular cavalry (who still survives as Sir John Watson),
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 269 
 
 and who was soon afterwards joined by Probyn, now Sir 
 Dighton Probyn. The enemy, seeing our reinforcements, 
 and perhaps having effected their object of covering the 
 retreat over the ford, stood out no longer, and abandoning 
 their guns fled before us, while we took triumphant possession 
 of the guns two of our own British nine-pounders. The 
 best proof of the reality of their defence and defiance was, 
 that these guns were fully equipped with their tumbrels 
 and ammunition all complete. Some of Watson's troopers, 
 who were old Sikh artillerymen, dismounted, turned the 
 guns upon the still retreating enemy, and fired upon them 
 with some effect. 
 
 One more adventure I had, which somewhat detracted 
 from my triumph with the guns. I overtook an armed 
 rebel, not a Sepoy, but a native matchlockman ; he threw 
 away his gun, but I saw that he had still a large powder- 
 horn and an old-fashioned pistol in his belt ; my blood was 
 up, and I dealt him a mighty stroke with my sword, 
 expecting to cut him almost in two, but my swordsmanship 
 was not perfect ; he did not fall dead as I expected ; on the 
 contrary, he took off his turban, and presenting his bare 
 head to me, pointed to a small scratch and said, " There, 
 Sahib, evidently God did not intend you to kill me, so you 
 may as well let me off now." I felt very small ; evidently 
 he had the best of the argument. But he was of a forgiv- 
 ing disposition, and relieved my embarrassment by cheerful 
 conversation, while he professed, as natives do, that he 
 would serve me for the rest of his life. I made him throw 
 away any arms he still had, safe-conducted him to the 
 nearest field, and we parted excellent friends ; but I did 
 not feel that I had come very gloriously out of it. I have 
 never since attempted to use a sword as an offensive 
 weapon, nor, I think I may say, attempted to take the life 
 of any fellow creature. After my experiences with pistol 
 and sword, I have been for the most part satisfied with the 
 weapons of a civilian. 
 
 Our pursuit was now ended, and it was getting towards 
 evening we collected our scattered forces, and made the
 
 270 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 journey back to Agra, where we arrived at twilight, after 
 a long and exciting day, and were received with grate- 
 ful enthusiasm by our twice -delivered compatriots there. 
 It was, I believe, a very hot day, and there was not a 
 cloud in the sky, but I never felt or was conscious of 
 the heat, and came back quite fresh. I attributed this 
 not only to the excitement, but also to the circumstance 
 that I had happily just completed my breakfast when 
 the surprise took place. After long experience I am 
 very much convinced that there is no better protec- 
 tion against the sun than a good meal, the man who 
 suffers from the sun is the man who goes out on an 
 empty or insufficiently provisioned stomach. A mere 
 morning ride under such circumstances often causes head- 
 aches and disturbance when there is but a very moderate 
 sun. 
 
 I never could get full credit to that story of my capture 
 of the guns in that romantic way. The essence of the 
 adventure was that I was alone and had no witness, and I 
 omitted to take the names and addresses of those lancers 
 who might have given strong corroborative testimony. 
 Even my own wife is not a firm believer husbands are 
 seldom prophets to their wives. My friends accepted my 
 story with a certain faint smile. But it is certainly no 
 story which has grown upon me ; I wrote the account at 
 the time to my wife precisely as I have now given it, and 
 reported it officially soon after. The accounts written to 
 my wife were published in a local newspaper at Simla, 
 under the title of " How I took five guns with a pistol that 
 wouldn't go off," and that threw a somewhat jocose air over 
 the narrative. Perhaps I was wrong to have claimed all 
 the five guns. Although I caused the last two to be taken, 
 and was actually the first to take them, it must be admitted 
 that those irregular cavalry allies filled something of the 
 part that the Prussians did at Waterloo. The circum- 
 stance, too, that I and my small party of lancers had for 
 a time hidden in a field, though fully justified by strategic 
 considerations, detracted from our heroic character in the
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 271 
 
 eyes of our allies they doubted if we had taken any guns 
 at all, and suggested that if we had, we only found them in 
 a field. Yet as regards the first three guns, I do assert 
 that I did take them literally in the way I describe, and 
 will continue to assert it to my dying day. I cannot say 
 that all the crowd of people with them were fighting 
 soldiers, there may have been a good many drivers and 
 people of that kind mixed up, but there certainly was a 
 large body of rebels of sorts in active retreat with the guns 
 when they fled at my approach. Those first three guns 
 were rather artistic articles of native manufacture, and I 
 had some hope that I might have got them to adorn my 
 home in Scotland ; but I had no means of removing them, 
 and they were swept into the general tale of trophies of 
 the victory. I have seen, however, in a traveller's book 
 that they are still preserved in the fort at Agra, and I 
 hope that possibly my son may some day be able to reclaim 
 them. 
 
 The day after the victory I had an agreeable surprise. 
 When I went up to the hills in April, anticipating my soon 
 coming to Agra, I had despatched all my heavy goods with 
 my tents, carriages, and some of my horses in charge of 
 some of my servants to wait my arrival there. When I 
 asked the friend to whom I had consigned them what had 
 become of them, " Oh," he said, " of course they are all 
 gone none of those things were allowed into the fort, and 
 when the enemy defeated our troops, they plundered every- 
 thing. You can't expect to see any of them again." But 
 presently I unexpectedly met one of my servants on the 
 road, and was welcomed by him. I inquired how they had 
 fared. He said they were all right, and so was all my 
 property. It seems that not being admitted into the fort, 
 they encamped for a time in the glacis outside, but when 
 things got too hot for them there, they took a native house 
 in the city, and deposited all my things in that. They had 
 no one to help them, and very little money, only something 
 for their road expenses down to Agra ; but they managed 
 it all, and when they were installed got some little assist-
 
 272 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 ance from a native banker with whom I had a slight 
 acquaintance. Apparently the rebels did not treat the 
 native city as altogether an enemy's city, and only plun- 
 dered it with a light hand, taking the most tempting and 
 valuable loot. There was evidence that they had visited 
 my property, for one of them had taken a fancy to the 
 cloth lining of one of my carriages, and very carefully cut 
 it out ; but otherwise no material damage was done ; even 
 my horses, being in a native stable, seem to have passed for 
 native horses, and were not touched. It is a very remark- 
 able instance of the way in which native servants often 
 stuck to their masters, and shows that even the rebels 
 were sometimes not so black as they were painted. Those 
 same horses a little later went through another catastrophe 
 and defeat, and were again saved by the servants in 
 charge. 
 
 We halted two or three days at Agra. The question of 
 my future employment had then to be settled. The Govern- 
 ment of the North-West Provinces had still very little to 
 govern. A friend of mine, who had his family in the fort, 
 was acting as Secretary to Government, and it was not 
 very convenient to him to be deprived of that employment. 
 I was not very ambitious of it, and was then a good deal 
 inflated with military ardour ; so it was arranged that I 
 should continue as Civil Commissioner with the force sent 
 to reoccupy our districts, and a formal commission was 
 made out to that effect, with retrospective effect from the 
 date of my joining the column, and giving me the necessary 
 powers. In consequence of communications which had 
 passed, Colonel Hope Grant was relieved from detention at 
 Delhi, and soon after we left Agra he joined the column, of 
 which he took the command as senior officer and Brigadier- 
 General. But meantime another turn of events had taken 
 place. News reached us that the first relief of Lucknow 
 under Havelock and Outram had proved a failure as to 
 anything beyond reinforcing the garrison, and that they 
 were besieged as closely as ever the original garrison had 
 been. We were instructed not to delay at all in order to
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 273 
 
 re-establish the local authorities, nor even to fight the rebels 
 who still held Furakhabad and some other places, but to 
 hurry down as quickly as possible to the assistance of 
 Cawnpore and Lucknow. 
 
 Having recovered my equipments at Agra, I now started 
 in full marching order and in very different style from that 
 in which I had left Umballa. Indeed I was rather embar- 
 rassed by excessive equipment, and left a good many things 
 at Agra ; but still I took a handsome camp, and it was as 
 well that it was so, as several of the civilians who had been 
 shut up in Agra took the opportunity of getting down with 
 the column, and I was able to accommodate and assist them. 
 I was provided with a civilian assistant. My old friend, 
 Robert Drummond, the same who had been deposed at 
 Agra, accompanied me with his wife, and H. Harrington, 
 who became a member of the Governor-General's Council, 
 besides one or two others. We had quite a party of 
 civilians. The first few marches we met with no opposition. 
 We found the crops flourishing, the people busy with their 
 agricultural operations, and quite friendly. We were 
 able to re-establish British authority even without leaving 
 troops. The Rajah of Mynpooree, a great Zemindar, had 
 behaved very badly, but he fled, and his uncle delivered 
 over to us the town and fort, and even his treasure. The 
 accounts from Lucknow became more and more alarming. 
 We were very circumstantially told that the garrison there 
 could not possibly hold out beyond the 10th of November, 
 and that it was necessary for us to join in the relief with 
 the utmost expedition. General Grant accordingly pushed 
 on by forced marches. Our great regret was that on this 
 account we were unable to deal with the rebel Nawab of 
 Futtehghur or Furakhabad, who had held a large part of 
 the Doab between Mynpooree and Cawnpore, and so effec- 
 tually clear that country. Futtehghur was a little off our 
 line of march, and we could not tackle the Nawab without 
 some detour and delay. Soon after passing Mynpooree, we 
 came across one of his outposts, and routed it with some 
 loss to them. I had a very strong feeling that it would 
 
 VOL. I T
 
 274 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 have been far the best policy to clear the Nawab out of 
 the Doab, which we could easily have done in a very short 
 time, and so re-establish British authority, and open com- 
 munications all the way from Delhi to Cawnpore ; and the 
 military authorities were of the same opinion. But the 
 orders were so imperative that we dared not do it. The 
 people of the country came in and gave us every informa- 
 tion, and the Nawab's people cleared out very completely 
 from our line of march. We heard, too, from every native 
 we met, that the mutineer regiments retreating before us 
 from Delhi had been utterly defeated and almost annihilated 
 in an action with the Cawnpore force at Sheorajpore, near 
 that place. These native accounts turned out to have been 
 very much exaggerated ; the victory of our troops was not 
 nearly so complete as they said ; but it shows how much 
 opinion was running in our favour. Being obliged to go 
 straight on, we made one or two very long marches so as to 
 leave Futtehghur in our rear. One considerable diversion 
 against the enemy I managed to obtain. I learned that 
 some of the Nawab's forces, joined by some Delhi rebels, 
 repulsed from Cawnpore, with three or four guns, were at 
 the famous old Hindoo city of Kanouj, only a little off our 
 line of march, and I persuaded General Grant to let me 
 have a detachment to clear them away without stopping 
 the march of the column. "We accordingly started with a 
 portion of the 9th Lancers, under Major Ouvry, and a few 
 light field-guns, and came upon the enemy on the banks of 
 a stream outside Kanouj. I saw our guns open upon them 
 where they were thickly massed on the other side of the 
 narrow stream. It seemed to be the occasion of all others 
 on which an artillery efficiently served, as ours seemed to 
 be, would take deadly effect. Certainly the shot went 
 smashing among them and sent them flying in complete 
 rout. I expected to see a ghastly scene of the dead and 
 the dying, but, strange to say, scarcely any one seemed to 
 be left behind. It made me think more than ever that the 
 effect of the artillery (of those days at any rate) was more 
 moral than anything else, and that the slaughter was not
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 275 
 
 at all in proportion to the noise. However, we soon forded 
 the stream, captured the enemy's guns, pursued them almost 
 up to the Ganges, and cut up very many of them. Our 
 information was that at this time the mutineer regiments 
 at Futtehghur were already crossing the Ganges in retreat, 
 and abandoning the Doab ; but we could not follow up our 
 victory ; we had to go on to Cawnpore. Consequently the 
 Xawab re-entered into possession of the country and the 
 road was closed behind us. There was no more communi- 
 cation with Agra till another column came down much 
 later on. The moral effect of thus abandoning the country 
 we had re-entered was certainly very bad. As we came 
 down public opinion was certainly entirely with us. The 
 natives thought that the contest had been decided in our 
 favour, and were all ready to side with us. But when our 
 column disappeared and rebel rule was re-established, they 
 did not know what to think. Victory seemed to be still 
 doubtful, and the end of the Mutiny was, I believe, very 
 greatly thrown back, especially when our infructuous 
 march was followed by the dilatory tactics of Sir Colin 
 Campbell. 
 
 One more small expedition beyond our immediate line 
 of march was undertaken. Very circumstantial and 
 authentic news was brought to us that a European lady 
 was a captive with the rebels in a village not far off. That 
 news created great excitement in camp, and an expedition 
 for the rescue of the lady was organised with great zeal and 
 enthusiasm. The force marched with much precaution in 
 the dead of the night. All the measures were excellently 
 taken ; each one vied with other to achieve the desired end, 
 and before day broke the village was successfully sur- 
 rounded. The British force gradually closed in upon it, 
 and by the time it was full daylight the guides brought 
 them to the very house where the lady was confined. It 
 was surrounded by men whose enthusiasm then reached the 
 highest point, as the surrender of the lady was triumphantly 
 demanded. Then a half-caste woman appeared on the roof 
 of the house, and addressing her deliverers in the choicest
 
 276 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 terms of Hindoostanee abuse, told them that she wanted none 
 of them, and bade them begone. That was the only 
 European lady to be found, and the expedition returned 
 somewhat crest-fallen. 
 
 We pushed on to Cawnpore by long double marches, 
 the country still flourishing and agricultural operations 
 going on as usual. In fact, splendid crops were upon the 
 ground. It shows how wonderfully self-governing the 
 people are, that in spite of the entire absence of control, 
 and anarchy so far as administration is concerned, things 
 seemed to go on so much as usual. On 24th October we 
 were at Bilhaur, a large Brahmin village in a country from 
 which the Sepoy army was very much recruited. In fact, 
 of these agricultural Brahmins half the adult males were 
 serving in the mutineer army, mostly in the cavalry. The 
 other half, their fathers and brothers, met us as cheerfully 
 as possible, called themselves Padres, and did not seem to 
 imagine that we could have the least fault to find with 
 them. They furnished supplies and did all we wanted 
 well enough. On the 25th we reached Choubeypore, where 
 we at last found a sort of British authority a kind of 
 police having been organised from among the villagers 
 and on the 26th we marched into Cawnpore and reunited 
 ourselves with our countrymen on the other side of the 
 fire, as it were, where we were among newly-arrived British 
 troops and in communication with Bengal and Calcutta, 
 from which we had been cut off ever since May. My 
 function was thus so far concluded. 
 
 In reporting upon that march from Delhi, I stated that 
 we had no doubt killed as many as we could of those who 
 opposed us in arms, but that there had been no civil execu- 
 tions ; and, in fact, no civil punishments of any kind. A 
 few captured Sepoys were made over to the military 
 authorities and tried by court-martial, but there was no 
 blood-thirstiness at that time, and I think most of them 
 were acquitted. I rather think a few of the fanatics, who 
 first got among our troops in the surprise at Agra, were 
 " sent to the rear," as it was called, a position from which
 
 THE SEPOY MUTINY 
 
 they never returned ; but treatment of that kind was very 
 rare. I do not think there was any unauthorised putting 
 to death at all. The European soldiers I can answer for 
 it were perfectly amenable as long as their officers did 
 their duty. The only trouble was plunder and some 
 burning where arms were found or there was supposed to 
 be special provocation, and that was only when there was 
 insufficient check. I am afraid there was a good deal of 
 petty plunder ; on several occasions I very much complained 
 of it. No doubt some of the native soldiers, Sikhs and 
 others, were inclined that way, but my worst complaint was 
 that the European officers sometimes set the example when 
 they had no excuse for doing so ; and that, when there was 
 plunder, the military red-tapeism to which I have before 
 alluded made it almost impossible to get redress. I have 
 said that Colonel Greathed did his best to stop it, but 
 ineffectively. General Hope Grant had a much better 
 control over the troops, but he had a feeling that some 
 of the people deserved to be punished. In all other 
 respects, however, I got on excellently well with General 
 Grant Sir Hope Grant, as he soon afterwards became 
 and I add my tribute to his high character. He and his 
 wife were old friends of ours at Umballa. Although he 
 had his regiment in admirable ordei 1 , and in that respect 
 was always a first-class officer, his military qualities were 
 not appreciated by general opinion in time of peace, nor 
 indeed till after the fall of Delhi. His health, too, was not 
 strong in those days, but he was one of the few who went 
 through the whole Mutiny without being sick or sorry 
 improved, indeed, immensely in health ; and from the time 
 that he got a command, on the column leaving Agra, to the 
 end of the Mutiny wars, he came more and more to the 
 front ; not perhaps a brilliant man, but a most conscientious, 
 unfailing soldier, very careful of his troops, always ready to 
 obey orders, and a great favourite of Sir Colin Campbell. 
 
 One thing I admitted, that during the march fodder for 
 the horses and bullocks was taken without paying for it. 
 We were always encamped in the very midst of the great
 
 278 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 rain crops, many of them grown expressly for fodder, 
 and it would have been almost impossible to have stopped 
 the camp - followers from cutting some of these, or to 
 measure and pay for them regularly in our very rapid 
 march. After all, the people owed us revenue, and 1 
 contented myself with giving general certificates, so that 
 those villages which behaved well should be allowed for what 
 was taken afterwards. On principle, I had neither 
 attempted to punish villages which had behaved badly 
 (short of armed resistance to the immediate march of our 
 force) nor too much to enter into friendly relations with 
 those which had behaved well, because, as we were not 
 allowed to occupy the country, it might put them in a false 
 position when we were gone. But, ardently desiring that 
 the British districts where there was no real civil rebellion 
 should be reoccupied as soon as possible, I made some 
 recommendations founded on my experience with this first 
 column, regarding the course to be followed when another 
 force was sent really to occupy the country. The chief 
 point was this, that definite instructions should be given for 
 the treatment of the people, and that a military force 
 effecting the reoccupation should be accompanied by a 
 camp -magistrate with the fullest powers, over soldiers and 
 camp-followers, which are exercised by cantonment magi- 
 strates, so that any breach of rules or of discipline should be 
 summarily dealt with. I suggested that the mere posses- 
 sion of arms and ammunition should not be treated as con- 
 clusive evidence of rebellious guilt, as it was by one or two 
 officers during our march ; for, I said, our protection being 
 wholly withdrawn, arms were as necessary to the loyal to 
 protect themselves as for the disloyal to attack others. 
 Where men have made a business of plundering their 
 neighbours, they should no doubt be punished ; but not so 
 where they have merely acquiesced in a de facto govern- 
 ment, or even where they have only resumed the control of 
 the lands of which our system had deprived them. On this 
 latter point I dwelt especially as one of wide application. 
 In a paper published at the time I said : " Whatever popular
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 279 
 
 opposition there is in our old districts, beyond the mere 
 freebooting of plundering tribes, may be traced almost 
 exclusively to one great source of hostility which has raised 
 many people against us I mean the very large transfer of 
 landed rights which has taken place under our system, 
 especially by the action of the civil courts. These transfers 
 are for the most part paper transfers ; the old proprietors 
 still reside on the spot, most frequently in the character of 
 tenants who retain the land, but by paper transfer their 
 rights and privileges are given to another. We suddenly 
 imposed without check a system to which the people were 
 altogether strangers, and the ousted proprietors remain 
 discontented, angry men, still looking on themselves and 
 looked on by others as the real proprietors. Our Govern- 
 ment being to all intents and purposes overthrown and 
 swept away, these old proprietors have as a matter of 
 course resumed their own again. The auction purchaser 
 disappears with our system just as much as our collectors 
 of revenue and police officers do, but the result is that 
 the old proprietors the popular men are committed to 
 hostility to us. I hope that, under the circumstances, the 
 past will be treated indulgently, and that, if what has been 
 done by us must be reasserted, we shall take warning for 
 the future. If the land of the Punjaub had been trans- 
 ferred as that of the North-West Provinces has been, it is 
 quite certain that we should not now be here ; that we 
 should neither have taken Delhi nor saved Allahabad. 
 The Sikhs would have been against us to a man, and 
 General Havelock would probably have been taking part in 
 the defence of Calcutta." 
 
 That campaigning life had agreed with me exceedingly, 
 and I arrived at Cawnpore as well as ever I was in all my 
 life. In truth, I had not gone through any great hardships, 
 and the march from Delhi was almost luxurious we were 
 so well found and had such abundant camp equipage and 
 carriage, which came very useful when we joined the troops 
 from below, who were very much wanting in these things.
 
 28o MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 I think we rather surprised the people at Cawnpore who 
 expected to see the battered remains of the heroes who had 
 gone through all the hardships of Delhi when we arrived in 
 all the panoply of glorious war, as it appears when people 
 put on their armour and before they have got hard knocks. 
 Indeed, the European infantry excepted, we were most of 
 us very fit, and presented quite a showy appearance as we 
 marched in triumphantly to secure Cawnpore and relieve 
 Lucknow, which we were very confident we should soon 
 do. 
 
 Upon the other hand, while the military equipments at 
 Cawnpore were very deficient, and the soldiers, carted out 
 there without carriage or knowledge of the country, seemed 
 very helpless, we were quite surprised after all the horrors 
 of the Cawnpore massacre to find trade and civil life going 
 on so well and cheerfully there. It was curious, after all 
 that had passed, and while the place was still so much 
 threatened by the enemy" (by whom it was reoccupied a few 
 weeks later after Windham's defeat), to see what a hive of 
 industry it still was, and how much that was useful to us 
 could be got there. The people had all kinds of articles for 
 European use on sale just as usual. The more violent spirits 
 had wanted to destroy Cawnpore utterly as a vengeance for 
 the terrible scenes enacted there, but Havelock knew better, 
 and would not permit that, and the result showed the 
 wisdom of the decision. Our unprovided troops piibhed 
 hastily up, got supplies and outfits of all kinds there, 
 excellent leather campaigning articles especially. It is 
 difficult to say anything in extenuation of the Cawnpore 
 massacre and the terrible scene at the well, and yet we must 
 remember two things : first, that it was done, not in cold 
 blood, but in the moment of rage and despair when Havelock 
 had beaten the rebels and was coming in ; and second, that 
 we had done much to provoke such things by the severities 
 of which our people were guilty as they advanced. At a 
 later time a careful investigation was made into the circum- 
 stances of the massacre, and we failed to discover that there 
 was any premeditation or direction in the matter. It was
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 281 
 
 doubtful whether, if the Nana had been captured, the guilt of 
 directing that massacre could have been brought home to him. 
 Even discounting, as has already been suggested, a good deal 
 of Kaye's general statements of wholesale atrocities on our 
 part, enough remains to make it difficult for us to talk as if 
 the natives only were guilty of deeds of blood. I do not 
 know precisely what happened at Benares, but I suppose the 
 particular things specifically related by Kaye did happen, 
 besides the bloodshed attending Neill's irruption, and I 
 know that at Allahabad there were far too wholesale 
 executions. Again, apart from Neill's doings, and certainly 
 when a Major was sent on by Neill towards Cawnpore, 
 there is no doubt that people were put to death in the 
 most reckless manner. And afterwards Neill did things 
 almost more than the massacre, putting to death with 
 deliberate torture in a way that has never been proved 
 against the natives. Havelock kept him under while 
 he himself was at Cawnpore, but as soon as Havelock's 
 back was turned Neill set to work. It is a pity that 
 his deeds could not have been forgotten, but some un- 
 kind friend published his own letters in an Ayrshire journal 
 whence Kaye has taken them and republished them. He 
 seems to have affected a religious call to blood, and almost 
 gloats over the way he ordered fat Subahdars and 
 Mahomedan civil officers to be lashed till yelling, they 
 licked the blood with their tongues, and were afterwards 
 hanged, in all which he sees the finger of God. If these 
 people had been really guilty of the massacre it would have 
 been disgusting enough, but Neill himself does not say that 
 they were found guilty of the murders. He executes 
 vengeance for the massacre on " all who had taken an active 
 part in the Mutiny," and when we know how these things 
 were done we may well doubt if there was any proof of 
 that. The really* guilty people were not likely to trust 
 themselves in Cawnpore at that time. 
 
 Neill is one of those people who have been elevated into 
 a hero on the strength of a feminine sort of violence, and 
 whose death much disarmed criticism at the time, but now
 
 282 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 that he has passed into old history, I may say that, so far as 
 I could learn from the most impartial sources, there was not 
 much more in him. An officer of the Company's Madras 
 Europeans, he had not much sympathy with natives of any 
 kind, and coming to Bengal he could see no difference 
 between a " Pandy " and a Sikh. He commenced his heroic 
 career by a petty squabble with a station-master near Calcutta 
 about the starting of a train, which the newspapers magnified 
 into a historical event, and he came up country with a great 
 belief in himself. He and his Europeans were no doubt 
 much wanted at a critical time at Benares, though if the 
 Sikhs had been well handled they would probably have done 
 what was necessary. I can never forgive Neill for his very 
 bloody work, and especially for his share in the mismanage- 
 ment which caused the loss of the regiment of Loodiana. 
 At Allahabad, by violence and mistrustful usage, he all but 
 turned against us the Ferozepore regiment (only second to 
 the men of Loodiana in my affection) which afterwards did 
 such splendid service. They were only saved by the 
 influence of Brasyer, not only over his men, but perhaps 
 to some extent over Neill, for he was an old European 
 soldier of the Company's Army. Happily, Neill was then 
 superseded by Havelock. 
 
 Havelock was undoubtedly a most excellent man in all 
 the relations of life, and there is no character so much 
 admired by the modern Britisher as the religious soldier 
 the man with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the 
 other. But one hardly understands Havelock's very great 
 popularity. He was hardly bloody enough for the Old 
 Testament Christians (falsely called Christians), and he was 
 unpopular with his soldiers to an extraordinary degree. 
 He was a martinet very formal and precise, and seems to 
 have maintained a rigid and perhaps somewhat sour 
 discipline which they could not bear. Outram, on the 
 other hand, was the most popular of men the soldiers 
 adored him. And though on the advance to Lucknow he 
 gave over the command to Havelock, he really himself led 
 the van throughout, and in his buoyant way was the life
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 283 
 
 and soul of the advance, till, one of the first to arrive 
 at the Baillie Guard, he scrambled in somehow. However, 
 this is a digression, and only what we learned from others. 
 Havelock and Outram had gone on to Lucknow some weeks 
 before our arrival, and were shut up there as much as the 
 original garrison. At the same time the party left in the 
 Alumbagh, immediately outside Lucknow, with the camp- 
 followers and others, remained there almost unmolested, and 
 small convoys from Cawnpore had been able to reach them, 
 which made us think that if once there was a force sufficient 
 to enter Lucknow there would not be much more difficulty. 
 Although before our arrival the tenure of Cawnpore had 
 been somewhat precarious, after our victorious entry we did 
 not doubt of its security. Certainly the last thing in the 
 world that any of us dreamed of was its recapture by the 
 enemy after several regiments had arrived from England. 
 
 It was a subject of complaint that up to the end of 
 October not a single regiment from England had reached us, 
 and most of the China regiments had gone on to Lucknow. 
 A very fine and full regiment, the 93rd, was at Cawnpore, 
 and some other detachments and odds and ends ; and from 
 the beginning of November the troops from England began 
 to arrive, and a new army was being formed. The 
 Commander-in- Chief, Sir Colin Campbell, was on his way up 
 from Calcutta, and great things were expected of him. We 
 thought that the neck of the rebellion had been broken in 
 Delhi, and that the rest would be comparatively swift and 
 easy. At Cawnpore. we entered as it were upon new 
 politics and new heroes. At and beyond Delhi we knew 
 little of the events about which people in Calcutta and 
 the Lower Provinces had chiefly excited themselves the 
 abandonment of the Behar districts, the defence of Arrah, 
 the controversy about Tayler of Patna, Koer Sing's re- 
 bellion, and all the rest of it ; and when we did hear of 
 these things, coming from the capture of Delhi, they did not 
 seem in our eyes so very large, nor did we then understand 
 the dilatory character of the Commander-in-Chief, who had 
 arrived in Calcutta in August but was only now about to
 
 284 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 take the field. On the other hand, we rather thought that 
 the people in those Lower Provinces, taken up with their own 
 affairs, did not quite realise what had been going on in the 
 North, and how the battle of India had been fought and won 
 there. I was very much struck by the difference in 
 practical efficiency for service between the old regiments 
 accustomed to India and those newly arrived. Hope Grant's 
 9th Lancers were a model in that way, they thoroughly under- 
 stood their business and the ways of the country ; but the 
 best troops who did not understand Indian ways were com- 
 paratively inefficient, and had to be taken care of like 
 exotics as they were. The Naval Brigade were coming up 
 at this time, and very much astonished the natives. They 
 had never seen anything like them before. In one of my 
 letters I find a native description of them as men four 
 feet high, four feet broad, and of enormous strength, who 
 carried 24-pounder guns on their shoulders. Their first 
 experience under "Windham, however, was not very 
 fortunate ; and when they lost some of their guns they 
 showed considerable activity in retreat. When the regi- 
 ments began to arrive from England, the Cawnpore troops 
 soon grew into a very considerable force ; but the truth was 
 that the so-called Crimean regiments were made up of very 
 poor recruits, and, generalship apart, that was the main 
 reason why Windham came to grief. 
 
 Our Delhi column was not to wait for the reinforce- 
 ments, but to push on for Lucknow after only two or three 
 days' halt. I was rather in a dilemma as to my own 
 position, for when we crossed the Ganges we should be out 
 of the jurisdiction of the North-West Provinces, and my 
 commission from Agra would in strictness have no longer 
 any validity. I was, however, still full of military ardour, and 
 in the absence of orders I thought I had better go on with 
 the column. I imagined I might be political adviser to 
 the Commander-in-Chief till at least he took Lucknow and 
 liberated Outram. I did not then know him so well as 1 
 did afterwards, or I would not have been so keen to act 
 with him in that capacity. My tents were struck to cross
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 285 
 
 the Ganges with the force in the early morning, when tele- 
 graphic orders came up from Calcutta that I was to join 
 J. P. Grant, then administering what were called for the 
 time the Central Provinces at Benares, and to give him 
 what assistance, information, and advice I could ; so my 
 military career came to an end, and instead of crossing into 
 Oude I made my arrangements the next day, left my horses 
 and heavy baggage at Cawnpore, and started for Benares by 
 the carriage-post which was running on the Grand Trunk 
 road. The country on either side of the road was really 
 not at all occupied we only held the road, and that very 
 imperfectly parties of the rebels often crossed it. On the 
 way down from Cawnpore I met some very rebel-looking 
 troopers, but they said nothing to me, nor I to them, and 
 we passed on our respective ways. At Futtehpore, between 
 Cawnpore and Allahabad, I found in a small tent George 
 Probyn and his wife, who had escaped with their lives after 
 very singular adventures in hiding with a native in Oude ; 
 they had indeed gone through terrible trials. At this time, 
 too, I learnt that there was no doubt that a brother of my 
 wife's, a cavalry officer who had been in garrison at 
 Futtehghur, had perished between that place and Cawnpore, 
 after doing all that man could do in defence of the fugitive 
 party. Another near relation of hers, also a cavalry officer, 
 perished with most of his family at Cawnpore. At 
 Allahabad I found a number of civilians, and heard a great 
 deal of what had been going on there, much of it not very 
 pleasant hearing. There were some excellent men ; Court 
 the magistrate had, I believe, done exceeding well. But his 
 superior, Chester the Commissioner, to whom very large 
 powers were delegated, though an amiable good man in 
 ordinary times, had got over-excited in the Mutiny by 
 private losses and otherwise, and had quite lost his head. 
 He had given the life and death powers of Special Com- 
 missioner to very unfit persons, and had altogether failed to 
 control them, and allowed much bloody and violent work 
 to go on. 
 
 Sir Colin Campbell arrived at Allahabad about the
 
 286 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 same time that I did, and I lost no time in interviewing 
 him to tell him all that was going on up country. I think 
 it was about November that I saw him, just six months to 
 a day after I had interviewed his predecessor at Simla to 
 warn him of the coming storm. Those six months were 
 the hot months, the worst for us, yet at the end of that 
 time I could tell Sir Colin that the neck of the revolt was 
 broken, and that I thought we could easily reoccupy our 
 districts if we only went about it quickly and without 
 too much formality. I found him in a very characteristic 
 position seated on a charpoy under a tree in his shirt- 
 sleeves. He received me in a very pleasant, good-natured 
 way, though I thought he did not listen so patiently 
 to all I had to say as he might have, being very much 
 inclined to talk himself. He took all that I had to tell 
 him in very good part, but then he insisted on going 
 over the eternal story, of which he was never tired, how 
 he had given up his command at Peshawar rather than 
 enter upon an expedition with what he considered an in- 
 sufficient force, and he drew the moral " Ah, but I can tell 
 you, I am not going to be controlled by you civilians ; I 
 will do what I think right, whatever anybody says." There 
 is many a true word spoken in jest I took that at the 
 time as a pleasant piece of badinage, and though I began 
 to have some doubts, I see by my letters that I still believed 
 in Sir Colin. Soon after, I came to realise that he very 
 much meant what he said. He delayed everything for 
 months, because he would do nothing till he chose, gave us 
 a great deal of trouble, and involved us in embarrassments 
 with political consequences of which we have not seen the 
 end yet. He went on to Cawnpore, and presently overtook 
 Grant's column. He did not excessively delay the relief 
 of Lucknow, but when he had relieved it, to our astonish- 
 ment he marched back again, abandoning Lucknow, and 
 only leaving Outram to hold the Alumbagh once more. 
 From all that I learnt later in Lucknow I believe there 
 is no doubt that the rebels were wholly evacuating the 
 place and that no one was more astonished than they
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY' 287 
 
 were by Sir Colin's retreat with the rescued garrison. If 
 we could have held the place for a little while, and offered 
 moderate and reasonable terms to the rebels at that time, 
 I believe that matters might have been much more easily 
 settled. As it was, things in Oude became worse than ever 
 the settlement was infinitely more difficult, was long 
 protracted, and then was only obtained on terms very 
 humiliating to us and unjust to the people. 
 
 As it happened, however, Windham's misadventure 
 afforded a sort of ex post facto justification to Sir Colin, and 
 shielded him from criticism. He had determined on 
 retreat, and had indeed commenced the march before that 
 occurred. Indeed Windham's defeat was a kind of unexpected 
 accident. The Gwalior contingent were a notable example 
 of the inconsequent behaviour of a good many Sepoy corps. 
 They wavered and abstained from action during the critical 
 period when they might perhaps have turned the scale 
 against us ; and when Delhi was taken and victory was 
 plainly ours, they braced themselves up to hostile move- 
 ments against us. But when the British reinforcements had 
 arrived no one supposed that they would have the audacity 
 to attack Cawnpore, or that if they did, Windham would 
 have any difficulty in defeating them. As it was, Sir Colin 
 arrived just in the nick of time, if he had then and there 
 attacked the enemy ; but he dawdled for a week before 
 doing so, and then contented himself with driving them 
 back. They remained at Calpee, a very important point 
 only forty miles from Cawnpore, for months, after that 
 threatening our communications, and a centre of rebel 
 gathering, till in the following May Calpee was taken by Sir 
 H. Rose coming up from Bombay, and then the rebels 
 doubling back upset the Gwalior Government and caused 
 us fresh troubles. When Windham was defeated and 
 driven in, his troops took refuge in the fortified camp which 
 we had made near the Ganges. It was limited in space 
 there was no room for the camp-followers and civil refugees, 
 but the fortification commanded the bridge of boats over 
 the Ganges which thus remained intact, and there was a
 
 288 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 terrible scrimmage to get over that. It was then that my 
 servants again saved my horses and property. They 
 managed to get over the bridge with the fugitives, and 
 saved all in their charge, so when I returned later on I 
 found everything intact. 
 
 The ways of natives are inscrutable. Nothing could 
 have been more admirable than the way my servants behaved 
 through the Mutiny especially the syces (grooms) in charge 
 of the horses. But a little later my most confidential 
 syce asked leave to go over to the country in Oude held 
 by the mutineers to look after his family. He did not 
 return. Some weeks later, when I was at Allahabad, a 
 veiled woman in the deepest grief and loudly lamenting 
 appeared at my door, and in woeful accents informed me of 
 her husband's (my servant's) death. I was much distressed, 
 and did my utmost to console her, but her grief was incon- 
 solable. At last I sent her away with a very handsome 
 present. Months after that I heard a rumour that my 
 dead syce had been seen in the bazaar at Lucknow, and 
 after some search we found him perfectly safe and well. 
 He admitted his fault, but pleaded that his family had put 
 pressure upon him on account of the mutineers, so I had 
 to forgive him, and he served me for many years after. 
 
 Along with my report of the march down country, I sent 
 to Government a memorandum strongly urging the re- 
 occupation of the North-West Provinces, and pointing out 
 how it could be done. I showed how easily a very moderate 
 force sent up from Cawnpore could clear out the rebel 
 Nawab of Futtehghur, which was all that was required to 
 ensure our possession of the Doab, and establish communi- 
 cation with Agra and Delhi. I went into details regarding 
 Eohilcund, which I knew very well, showing that the 
 Mahornedans who now ruled the country were but a 
 minority of the population, while the great majority were 
 Hindoos, including most of the land-holding classes, and 
 bitterly opposed to Pathan rule. I went over the districts 
 and principal places to show that this was so, adding that the 
 Pathans themselves were divided, the Pathan country being
 
 vi ' THE SEPOY MUTINY 289 
 
 bisected by the territory of the Nawab of Eampore, who 
 had remained faithful to us. I suggested that the troops 
 available in the Upper Doab might be moved over into 
 Rohilcund, and the Doab itself protected against any relapse 
 by inviting my old friends the Cis-Sutlej chiefs to send 
 their troops across the Jumna for a little tune. In this 
 way, I said, all our old districts might be safely re- 
 occupied, and people would then believe that we really had 
 taken Delhi and reestablished our authority. But it was 
 not to be for some time yet. After Sir Colin's first relief 
 of Lucknow he did nothing very material for months. 
 Some weeks later he got as far as Futtehghur ; but it was 
 by a second column from the Punjaub and Delhi, which 
 came down and met him there, that the Doab was at last 
 cleared and communication between the upper and lower 
 country finally established. All the rest, not only Rohil- 
 cund, Bundelcund, and Oude, but much of the Benares and 
 Behar divisions, remained in possession of the rebels till late 
 in the spring. 
 
 From Cawnpore and Allahabad I sent two letters to the 
 Times one in the character of " A Civilian," the other of 
 " A Soldier." In the first I brought the history of the 
 Mutiny up to date, especially our march from Agra, much 
 as I have already related it here. In the other I made 
 suggestions for military reform. That was perhaps rather 
 premature, but on looking over my suggestions I cannot 
 but think that they come very near the plans which were 
 eventually adopted. I said we must first take care that 
 the native army does not again obtain an overwhelming 
 proportion over the British troops ; we must as much as 
 possible divide the native troops, and guard against their 
 union for purposes of their own ; and we must make the 
 native army one which shall add to the general strength of 
 the Empire, and be efficient for general service whenever 
 required in or out of India. To attain these ends I pro- 
 posed, much as I did in 1853, that we should have a 
 greatly-increased European force, that the 40,000 European 
 soldiers hitherto maintained in India should be increased to 
 VOL. I U
 
 290 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 something between 70,000 and 80,000, and that the regular 
 native army should be reduced by 100,000 men. Further, 
 that we should as much as possible reduce the numbers of 
 the old class of Sepoys in our native armies, and enlist 
 Punjaubees of all kinds Trans-Indus Pathans, Goorkhas, 
 and as great a variety of races fit for soldiering and free 
 from prejudices as one could find. 
 
 The army thus constituted would be the General 
 Service army. But I also urged the need of local corps 
 in each province, constituted from local materials, and 
 designed for local needs or the duties of guarding treasure, 
 jails, offices, and the like hitherto performed partly by 
 detachments of native regiments and partly by the ordinary 
 police. This last arrangement was in a way very generally 
 carried out, but not in the way I wanted. I never contem- 
 plated that these local military corps should take the place 
 of the ordinary civil police. But that was what was too 
 often done. The police was turned into a military police, 
 under a quasi-military regime. In subsequent years it was 
 necessary to undo all that. In an administrative capacity 
 I myself took a large share in undoing it, and restoring to 
 the police a civil character under complete magisterial 
 control, while drilled . battalions were confined to quasi- 
 military duties. In the end I am afraid that some of the 
 provincial governments are not sufficiently equipped with a 
 local military force. Such a small local force, at the im- 
 mediate disposal of the local authorities, can often do things 
 in a rough and ready way, when large forces .and great 
 expenditure must result from setting the Commander-in- 
 Chief in motion. But the higher military authorities are 
 always trying to centralise and to get hold of all the local 
 troops. Already they have succeeded in appropriating the 
 fine Punjaub local force. Bengal and the North -West 
 Provinces have no adequate local force, and there is a con- 
 tinual attempt to bring the Madras and Bombay native 
 armies under the immediate control of the military 
 authorities at Simla. I think it would be much better to 
 reduce those native armies to small local forces, and add
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 291 
 
 the Europeans and any other specially fit men to the 
 General Service army. 
 
 Looking to the disastrous mutiny of the so-called " con- 
 tingents " attached to native states, I suggested that they 
 should be abolished that part of the cost should be con- 
 tributed towards the expense of the Indian army, and that 
 for the rest the native princes should be made directly 
 responsible for any forces they are permitted to retain. 
 That is, I think, very like what in substance is now being 
 done, except at Hyderabad. For native regiments I 
 advocated the existing irregular system that is, that the 
 company officers should be natives, and there should be but 
 three European combatant officers, who might be perhaps 
 temporarily supplemented by a few others when very severe 
 fighting work had to be done. I incline to think that 
 the European officers now allowed for native regiments are 
 too numerous and too expensive. 
 
 One suggestion I made of a more doubtful character. 
 Looking to the great advantage which we had in practice 
 obtained in the crisis of the Mutiny by collecting and 
 arming non-official Europeans, Eurasian clerks, Christian 
 drummer-boys and the like, all whose lot was wholly cast 
 in with us, I suggested the formation of a sort of Christian 
 militia wherever the materials for anything of the kind 
 existed. I was impressed with the feeling that we had no 
 substantial root in the country ; that such roots might some 
 day be formed, and that in some degree we might have the 
 stability which the Mahomedans had when a nucleus of 
 their own race and religion .was formed in the countries 
 they governed. At the same time no one would be more 
 opposed than I to raising religious questions or giving 
 privileges on the ground of religion, and I am not at all clear 
 about such proposals as I then made. I was a good deal 
 amused by some of the comments of the English newspapers 
 on these suggestions of a soldier. They gave him the 
 credit of being evidently a military man of considerable 
 experience, and upon the whole received them favourably. 
 But the Times, in a leading article on the letter, went
 
 292 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 further than I did, and wound up by saying, " We trust 
 that the institution of a native army may be never seen 
 again in Hindoostan. It should be merged in auxiliary 
 levies." 
 
 From Allahabad I went on to Benares, where I was 
 very kindly received and entertained by Mr. (now Sir) J. P. 
 Grant, a very remarkable man. And I deem it a great 
 privilege to have been then brought in contact with him, 
 and to have discussed matters freely with him. I had an 
 opportunity of communicating to him all that I knew of 
 what had been going on up country, while I learnt very 
 much from him : but as to rendering him any serious 
 assistance in his work, I found that there was not much to 
 be done. In truth he had very little country to rule over. 
 Most of the districts were still very much in the hands of 
 the rebels, including my old district of Azimghur. He had 
 a regularly -appointed secretary, a man of much talent, 
 though deficient in civil and local experience, but these 
 latter qualifications were very amply supplied by the large 
 staff of civil officers collected at Benares and Allahabad, 
 including Mr. H. C. Tucker, the very experienced Commis- 
 sioner of the Benares division. I had thought it not im- 
 probable that, under the circumstances, Mr. Grant (then 
 a member of the Governor-General's Council) might have 
 been sent to succeed Mr Colvin in the North-West Provinces, 
 but I found this was not contemplated. He became the 
 next Lieuteuant-Governor of Bengal. Altogether I let it 
 be understood that, after having interchanged views with 
 Mr. Grant, there was not much function for me at Benares, 
 and I was then directed to proceed to Calcutta and report 
 myself to the Government of India. I found my way there 
 accordingly in that month of November 1857. Lord 
 Canning received me very kindly, and I had much to say 
 to him and the members of the Government. I soon 
 realised what I had heard on all hands, how slow Lord 
 Canning was, almost to a morbid degree. My letters at 
 this time emphatically describe him as an able and upright 
 man, but slow beyond all measure. He was a great smoker
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 293 
 
 and very ruminating thinker. I was still without any 
 regular function : till the Commander-in-Chief advanced 
 nothing was open. My only apparent duty was my old 
 commission to make plans for reorganisation, and that 
 seemed rather distant. Lord Canning was to give me 
 some points to work up, but they were terribly long of 
 coming. 
 
 Meantime socially I had a very pleasant time in 
 Calcutta, then very full both of every one connected with 
 the Government and of large numbers of officers arriving 
 from furlough and troops arriving from England. Alto- 
 gether it was a very stirring place, full of Mutiny talk and 
 rumours true and false. I was almost the first arrival from 
 the up-country ark, and was welcomed accordingly. H. V. 
 Bayley, Judge of the Sudder Court, kindly put me up. My 
 brother Charles, of the Lower Bengal Civil Service, arrived 
 at that time, having been ordered back from furlough, and 
 we had a very pleasant reunion after a long separation. 
 He was rather astonished at my appearance in Khakee (dust- 
 coloured) dress with a revolver in my belt, while I had become 
 so accustomed to that sort of thing that I did not think any- 
 thing of it. I soon adapted myself to more civilised clothes 
 and habits, but for very long after that I always put a loaded 
 revolver under my pillow, with my pocket handkerchief, 
 when I went to bed. It seemed the most natural thing in the 
 world, and I had some difficulty in breaking myself of the 
 habit. My most intimate early friend, John Dalrymple, 
 was also in Calcutta. He, too, belonged to the Lower Bengal 
 Civil Service, and we had been separated for years, till on 
 this occasion we met again and foregathered as intimate as 
 ever. Another old friend, also of my term at Haileybury, 
 E. L. Brandreth, I found at Calcutta, and W. S. Seton Karr 
 and his wife were not far distant in a Bengal district where 
 I paid them a pleasant little visit. Among the most 
 cherished of my Calcutta friends were the Eicketts. 
 Henry Eicketts, one of the senior and most distinguished 
 of the Lower Bengal civilians, and soon a member of the 
 Governor- General's Council, and his daughters, very universal
 
 294 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 favourites, the eldest of whom had been one of my shipmates 
 when I first came out to India. 
 
 My brother Charles had to return to his district in 
 Eastern Bengal, but even there he had a brush with 
 mutineers, from which he emerged with credit. In December 
 the native regiments at Chittagong and Dacca, after having 
 so long remained quiet, at last revolted. But it turned out 
 that the people of Eastern Bengal, Bengalees and Mahome- 
 dans though they were, treated the Sepoys with just as much 
 hostility as the Punjaubees. They hated them as an alien 
 race, turned out to oppose them, and hunted them out with 
 much pluck. No better answer could be given to those 
 who supposed that the Mahomedans were all hostile to 
 us. The Sepoys found no friends in Bengal, and those who 
 escaped with their lives only found their way home as 
 fugitives. Both Bengal proper and all Southern India to 
 the Nerbudda remained in our undisputed possession. In 
 the North the Punjaub, Dehli, and the Upper Doab were 
 rescued from the fire. In the rest of India the fires con- 
 tinued to blaze while Sir Colin made his slow arrange- 
 ments. 
 
 In the absence of any regular occupation I had time to 
 write some more letters 1 to the Times, and so the time passed. 
 When we got towards the end of December, and there were 
 no signs of the Commander -in -Chief's doing anything 
 effectual, we began to get impatient. Lord Canning then 
 sent for me, and commissioned me to do in fact for the 
 Government what I had hitherto done for the public in the 
 Times, namely, to write a succinct account of the events of 
 the Mutiny, and the proceedings consequent upon it, to 
 send home to the India Office by each mail ; and for that 
 purpose all the public offices, and even the Governor- 
 General's Private Secretary's Office and his private letters, 
 were all thrown open to me. That, of course, stopped my 
 writing to newspapers, but I was rather glad that I had 
 already sent a summary of the causes that led to the 
 Mutiny, and the events that had occurred. I had no 
 1 Extracts from these letters are printed in the Appendix to Volume II.
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 295 
 
 arrangement or communication with the Times, but only 
 sent the letters on my own account, and they were published 
 as those of any other correspondent ; but I was honoured 
 with big type and a good many leading articles. The 
 letters were anonymous, and only signed " A Civilian," 
 " A Soldier," and latterly " Index," but I was nattered by 
 the notice that was taken of them. My uncle, Lord 
 Campbell, always a most kind uncle to me, expressed a very 
 favourable opinion of them, and sent me various letters in 
 commendation some from those who had learned who the 
 author was, and others recommending their perusal without 
 any such knowledge. I need not repeat what has become 
 ancient history, or that which has been already related, 
 but I must here insert a part of the last letter, that dealt 
 with the subject of the alleged atrocities committed on our 
 countrymen, and especially countrywomen, mutilation, and 
 dishonour, and the rest. That was a subject which had then 
 excited very much interest, and led to much controversy. 
 My letter was a sort of text-statement of the side of the case 
 which denied the genuineness of the alleged atrocities. It 
 was continually quoted, and led to very great discussion. 
 It may seem that I put my case very strongly, but people 
 would now hardly realise how much was then made of the 
 atrocities, and how much they were believed in. People 
 used to collect on the arrival of a steamer from India, to 
 see the ladies without noses and ears, but they never did 
 see them. It was also of vital importance to sift the truth 
 of the matter, because on that very greatly depended the 
 tone and temper of our behaviour when we came to recover 
 our districts, and deal with those who had offended against 
 us. Here is what I said : 
 
 " I think it was eventually admitted that no mutilated 
 person has ever been found, and most people will admit that 
 no case of the dishonour of a European woman has been 
 proved. The truth is, that in all civil commotions, when 
 there is a great deal of party and personal feeling and much 
 violence, the foremost allegation always made by one 
 party to excite hatred against the other is the dishonour of
 
 296 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 women. It was so in India ; it was and is so in Turkey ; it 
 is so in the United States, as regards the Southern blacks ; 
 if we may judge by the story of the lady of Carlisle in 
 the 1745, it was so in the last century; but I do believe 
 that ninety-nine hundredths of these stories are inven- 
 tions." 
 
 New work having been given to me, I sent in to 
 Government at this time some suggestions for reorganisation, 
 the fruits of what I had been doing in pursuit of Mr 
 Colvin's commission to me. The main purport of it was a 
 proposal to introduce into the North- West Provinces, on 
 their recovery, something of the Punjaub system. I dwelt 
 very much on the extreme evil of a highly technical system 
 of very undigested law abused by very inferior lawyers 
 and especially on the great political evils caused by the 
 transfer of old rights in the land under this system. I 
 admitted all the advantage of fixed law when contained in 
 good, clear, and simple codes ; biit till we could get that, I 
 was in favour of a rather despotic rule, with only simple 
 rules of procedure, but administered by selected men under 
 a centralised control. I dwelt particularly on the loose 
 mode of taking evidence in our courts, so much of the 
 evidence being rather affidavits than really sifted evidence, 
 and I insisted that judicial officers should make a note 
 of the evidence with their own hand. I submitted 
 a scheme for the rearrangement of the districts, and 
 suggested that the powers of life and death, so widely 
 committed to all sorts of people under the name of 
 Special Commissioners, should be withdrawn, and that, 
 where a special tribunal was necessary for the trial of life 
 and death cases, it should consist of not less than two 
 competent officers. 
 
 I again dwelt on the necessity of local battalions for 
 local purposes, but very particularly explained that they 
 should have none of the functions of the ordinary civil 
 police. For the management of that police I recommended 
 that a superintendent of police should be appointed in 
 each district, but entirely as the subordinate of the
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 297 
 
 magistrate of the district, and under his supervision and 
 control. 
 
 At this time I was rather uneasy to have heard nothing 
 from my wife since I left Delhi at the end of September. 
 Her letters had been accumulating and never got down 
 country, and I had only very occasionally heard from others 
 something of her. Ever since I left her at Simla things 
 had been quite quiet and undisturbed there, and she had 
 been living on in a house there accompanied by her sister- 
 in-law Henrietta Campbell, the same who escaped from 
 Moradabad after many trials. Henrietta was confined of a 
 son at Simla, but unhappily it died there, and though she 
 herself lived till 1859, and left a daughter behind her, we 
 always doubted whether she quite recovered the effects of 
 the Mutiny. We were all very fond of her, and her death 
 was a terrible blow to my brother. She was a daughter of 
 Mr. W. Butterworth Bayley, a very well-known old Indian, 
 and chairman of the Court of Directors. Early in January 
 I learned that my wife had got down to Umballa, where 
 she found her friends, Mrs. Eorsyth, Mrs. Hope Grant, and 
 others, and eventually she got on to Meerut, where she had 
 also friends, and when Seaton's column opened the road my 
 letters came down in abundance. My brother John was 
 meantime employed in charge of the Eohtuk district of the 
 Delhi division, and had much hard work in getting it into 
 order, as it had been one of those most disorganised by the 
 Mutiny. 
 
 I have said that to write the accounts to send home I 
 had the run of all the offices and private papers, and I was 
 very much interested in that ; but to tell the truth, I was 
 much disappointed to find so little that was new to me. 
 If I had thus learned any of Lord Canning's secrets, per- 
 haps I should not even now be free to divulge them, but 
 the fact is that I do not recollect anything to divulge. The 
 country was then rather under-governed than governed by 
 any wires behind the scenes. Even as regards the bare 
 facts of the administration very little information came to 
 Calcutta from the Upper Provinces and other parts of
 
 298 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 India. Exactly what was going on where there was 
 judicious lenity, and where severity, as at Delhi of all 
 that we knew very little indeed. Then my reports were 
 edited by the Governor -General before they went home. 
 I see that with the first I have kept a note of Lord Can- 
 ning's, in which he was good enough to say : " I have read 
 the narrative carefully, and think it excellent," but he adds 
 that he has withheld some small parts which put the hope 
 of early and complete peace and order too high. He knew 
 better than I did how little the Commander-iii-Chief intended 
 to hurry. I have kept the reports which I wrote in Cal- 
 cutta in January as they went home in print, but do not 
 find very much in them that is now of special interest. It 
 is clear that after the beginning of November things instead 
 of improving considerably retrograded. The Rajah of 
 Mynpooree, whom our column had expelled, returned and 
 displaced our nominee. The Futtehghur people not only 
 retook the districts from which we had driven them back, 
 but largely extended their possessions, and Waleedad of 
 Malaghur (who had given us so much trouble) joined them. 
 The whole of the Central Doab was entirely an enemy's 
 country. The rebels in liohilcund became stronger and 
 more defiant than ever. Bundelcund was entirely given up 
 to anarchy, and our only consolation was that the native 
 chiefs and chieftainesses fought desperately with one 
 another. The Eanees of Tehree and Jhansi made war on 
 one another as if no British Government had ever been 
 heard of. In Rajpootana the state of things was that in 
 the absence of the supreme power, the feudatories of the 
 great chiefs, the Thakoors as they were called, almost 
 universally rose against their liege lords, and the chiefs 
 relied on the hope of assistance from us. In Oude things 
 became very much worse ; all those who had been doubtful 
 or cautious took open part against us, and a regular hostile 
 native government was established. Outram, with a strong 
 force at the Alumbagh, was much more severely attacked, 
 and had much greater difficulty in holding the place than 
 the small scratch force which had held it from September
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 299 
 
 to November. But in the beginning of January Seaton's 
 column came down from Delhi to Futtehghur, and met the 
 Commander-in-Chief there. From that time a rough autho- 
 rity was established in the Doab, not without some hanging, 
 and the communication remained more or less open. One 
 unfortunate result, however, was that the troops in the further 
 provinces came under the more immediate control of the 
 Commander-in-Chief, and were hampered accordingly. Some 
 ISTepaulese troops had for some time kept on our account a 
 partial hold on some of the Benares districts, Aziinghur, 
 Jaunpore ; and now Jung Bahadur himself, with a consider- 
 able Nepaulese army, had come down as our ally and 
 occupied Goruckpore, and was ready to enter Oude in co- 
 operation with the Commander-in-Chief. The Nepaulese are 
 sensible, good sort of people ; their officers seem to be com- 
 paratively good, and the soldiers behaved well and did not 
 plunder. In fact the Nepaulese played their cards very 
 prudently ; they came down and occupied those districts as 
 a kind of assistants and possible successors to us, knowing 
 well that if we triumphed they would be rewarded, and 
 that if things went badly with us they would find them- 
 selves in possession of just the country they wanted. 
 
 I see a curious thing noted, that notwithstanding the 
 disturbed state of the country the Cabul fruit-vendors found 
 their way down even to Calcutta. While all other traffic 
 had been stopped, these sturdy Afghans, accustomed to law- 
 less places, brought their camels through the disturbed dis- 
 tricts with little injury. A feature of the military move- 
 ments of this time was the departure from Calcutta to join 
 the China expedition of one or two Sepoy regiments which 
 had not mutinied. 
 
 In the course of January the Government became very 
 seriously alarmed at the inaction of the Commander-in-Chief, 
 and it was at last determined that the Governor-General 
 should go up country to look after matters. I was in- 
 structed to accompany him, and went accordingly in the 
 latter part of January, the Governor-General's headquarters 
 being established at Allahabad. Many officers were col-
 
 300 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 lected there ; there was a large house which got the name 
 of the " Red Lion," which was a sort of centre of North- 
 West Province civilians, and where I stayed for some time. 
 We were always expecting something considerable to be 
 done, but were always disappointed ; and so it went on to 
 the end of February. It was at this time that a good 
 many executions, which I thought very inexpedient, went 
 on under the Governor-General's very nose, by the sentence 
 of uncontrolled Special Commissioners, and that the treat- 
 ment of the Sepoys was so uncertain and variable. Towards 
 the end of February I suddenly heard that my wife had 
 taken advantage of a military escort to come down with 
 them, and was on the point of arriving. I went up to 
 Cawnpore to meet her, and we were reunited on the 26th 
 of February. I was rather embarrassed to know where to 
 put her, the arrival was so sudden, and there was no accom- 
 modation at Cawnpore ; but I took her back to Allahabad, 
 and managed to get a house, where I established her. 
 
 In March at last the Commander -in -Chief got into 
 motion towards Lucknow. The Governor - General then 
 informed me, what had for some time seemed probable, that 
 I was to be employed in Oude ; and one day he produced 
 and showed me the famous proclamation confiscating the 
 lands of Oude, of which I had not had the least notice 
 or suspicion. However, I reserve all that for my next 
 chapter upon Oude. Here it is enough to say that the 
 Commander-in-Chief, having reached Lucknow, attacked the 
 place with, no doubt, very commendable strategical skill, and 
 duly captured it ; but was so slow about realising his 
 own victory that the rebels were able to retreat almost 
 unmolested, and after all we conquered very little more 
 than the city and a few miles round. While this was 
 going on, I went up again to Cawnpore, and as soon as 
 Lucknow was taken I went over there and joined Outram, 
 as his second in command in his civil character of Chief 
 Commissioner of Oude. My experience there will come 
 presently. But now to finish the general history of the 
 Mutiny campaign, Oude apart. Things went wrong again
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 301 
 
 in Behar, and General Lugard was despatched there with a 
 division in hot haste. In spite of some marching and 
 counter - marching, no serious attempt was made to occupy 
 the Oude country, and for another month the Chief halted 
 at Lucknow. 
 
 An unfortunate repulse from a Talookdar's mud-fort (a 
 piece of unlucky mismanagement), in which that favourite 
 officer, poor Adrian Hope, was killed, gave him an 
 exaggerated idea of the formidable character of those 
 Oude forts, even though the garrison (more suo) decamped 
 the next night. So far as I could see, if the Commander- 
 in - Chief had had his own way he would then have gone 
 into summer quarters and reserved the recovery of India 
 for a great campaign in the next cold season. I have 
 mentioned what we had done in the six hot months, under 
 every disadvantage, from May to October. Now the six 
 cool campaigning months, from November to April, had 
 past, and on the 1st of May 1858 we were very little more 
 advanced than on the 1st of November ; from the 
 Alumbagh outside Lucknow a couple of miles to the 
 Residency inside was about the only substantial advance. 
 Sir Colin Campbell had had no Dalhousie behind him, and 
 he had managed to fritter away the whole of that time. 
 
 The Nepaulese army took part in the attack upon 
 Lucknow in a creditable way ; but we had ample force to 
 have done that without them. And for the rest, the Com- 
 mander -in -Chief was prejudiced against native troops not 
 after his own pattern ; he never cared for them, and would 
 not use them further. Jung Bahadur, too, objected to 
 expose his men too long in the hottest weather ; so after a 
 little time they marched home again without incident, and 
 were eventually splendidly rewarded for their demonstration, 
 the whole of the Oude Terai (or submontane region) being 
 made over to them. I visited Jung Bahadur near Lucknow, 
 and was rather disappointed ; at least he did not show me 
 his intellectual side, and entertained me by sending for his 
 rifle and showing me his shooting.
 
 302 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 In April the Government became very seriously alarmed 
 about the indefinite prolongation of the war, and the fright- 
 ful drain upon our resources which accompanied it, and 
 they insisted that at least our older districts should be 
 reoccupied. What happened was that we were obliged to 
 do in May and June the two very hottest months with 
 much suffering and loss, what we might easily have done in 
 November and December. Under pressure from the Govern- 
 ment the Cominander-in-Chief at last started for Rohilcund. 
 Meantime another column from the Delhi side had been 
 ordered into that country. They successfully occupied the 
 Bijnoor and Moradabad districts, under General John Jones, 
 known as " Jones the Avenger." So far as I can make out 
 this title was not really due to any particularly bloodthirsty 
 work on his part, but was only one of those phrases which, 
 once used, are repeated in a jocular way. In May Jones 
 advanced upon Bareilly, and was even impertinent enough 
 to occupy great part of the town before the Commander-in- 
 Chief. Sir Colin, however, soon put a stop to any too rapid 
 action, and while he hesitated the enemy doubled back on 
 Shahjehanpore and gave much trouble. Then Sir Colin did 
 the best thing under the circumstances, retired from the 
 active campaign for the season, while General Jones and the 
 civilians settled Rohilcund. 
 
 Sir Hugh Rose with the Bombay column, and Whitlock 
 from Madras, had successfully performed the functions 
 allotted to them, and restored order in Eajpootana and 
 Central India, whence they advanced into Bundelcund. 
 Rose took Jhansi in April in spite of orders from the 
 Commander-in-Chief to delay and do something else. Then 
 the Government ordered him and Whitlock on to the 
 Jumna, and at last in May they took Calpee, Banda, and 
 Kirwee, the places within fifty miles of our headquarters 
 and main forces, where Sir Colin had allowed the rebels to 
 gather for the six previous months. 
 
 It was hoped then that that part of the country was 
 settled, and Sir Hugh Rose, who had suffered from sunstroke, 
 had actually surrendered his command to go and recruit.
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 303 
 
 But we were not done with those rebels yet. It turned out 
 that they had doubled back upon Gwalior, and the next 
 that was heard of them was that they had succeeded in 
 upsetting Scindia, and were in possession of Gwalior and all 
 its appliances. Sir Hugh Eose resumed his command (for 
 which he is said to have been wigged by his military 
 superior), and it was in the most frightful heats of June 
 that he and Napier succeeded in recovering Gwalior by a 
 dash which was possible in the absence of Sir Colin. Even 
 then the famous Tantia escaped with his followers, and kept 
 the native states of Central India disturbed for the better 
 part of another year. 
 
 In Benares and Behar, too, no effectual settlement had 
 been arrived at till the hot months of May and June, and 
 then the work was at last done with great suffering. 
 
 Thus it came about that, in spite of the Commander-in- 
 Chief, the British territory was pretty well settled by the 
 end of June and commencement of the rainy season of 
 1858. It was principally Oude that remained, and that was 
 not settled till the beginning of 1859. The histories tell 
 us of marching and counter-marching, and the surrender 
 of this and that fort to the Commander -in -Chief; but it 
 cannot be too plainly stated that Oude was settled not by 
 arms but chiefly by diplomacy. Things had come to that 
 pass that peace was obtained by yielding to rebels with 
 arms in their hands all they wanted. The Talookdars 
 were thus induced to come in ; very many of the Sepoys 
 also went home, and it only remained to drive over the 
 liaptee, the remains of the rebel troops, which was success- 
 fully done by the end of the year. 
 
 By the spring of 1859 the Mutiny was ended. I 
 have no hesitation in expressing the firm belief that it 
 might have been ended early in 1858 if it had not been for 
 Sir Colin Campbell, and if all had been left to him it 
 certainly would have gone on another year still if we had 
 succeeded in quenching it then. It may seem incredible 
 that he should have carried delays to such a point, but we 
 must understand the character of the man. There appeared
 
 304 MEMOIRS OF MY INDIAN CAREER CHAP. 
 
 in the Times a critique of his conduct up to May 1858, 
 which was dated from Dublin, and signed by " A disabled 
 Officer" who had just returned from the war. That so 
 exactly expresses my view of the matter that I reproduce 
 great part of it in an appendix. 1 
 
 There may not be many other cases so extreme as that 
 of Sir Colin Campbell, but I am inclined to suspect that 
 there are a good many other military commanders of whom 
 something more or less of the same kind might be said. In 
 these days it is almost more important to military fame to 
 retain high-faluting military correspondents than to beat 
 the enemy, and we are generally given to understand that 
 there are sacred military mysteries that no civilian eye can 
 penetrate. No doubt there are good generals and bad 
 generals, and certain things that depend upon technical 
 skill, but after watching a good many campaigns I am 
 inclined to think that energetic common sense is the great 
 thing, and that most of the strategical mysteries are the 
 greatest pedantry. 
 
 I suppose that a real history of the Mutiny as a whole 
 will never be written I doubt whether the materials exist. 
 I have expressed my great admiration for the things done 
 by our countrymen very many of their achievements were 
 above all praise. But the military writers overdo details ; 
 and what I .may call the civil history of the Mutiny has 
 never been fully brought together. With all the oppor- 
 tunities I have had, I do not now at all correctly know 
 what was done in different parts of the country. I have 
 heard, for instance, that great severities were practised with 
 Sir Hugh Rose's column, but I do not know how much is 
 true. Upon the whole, as we recovered our territories the 
 chief control generally fell into good hands, and I think 
 that things were managed well notwithstanding some excep- 
 tions. But still I fear that the events of the Mutiny long 
 left their mark in a certain alienation of feeling between 
 Her Majesty's European subjects in India and the natives. 
 Many changes resulted, some for better, some for worse, 
 1 See Appendix at the end of Volume II.
 
 vi THE SEPOY MUTINY 305 
 
 and I am not sure which preponderate. I doubt very 
 much whether the changes are all so greatly for the better 
 as many people think. 1 
 
 1 Extracts from letters and articles on the subject of the Mutiny, written 
 by the author of these Memoirs and published in the Times of 1857 and 1858, 
 will be found in the Appendix to Volume II. 
 
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