Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India. W. S. R. Hodson
thinking of the sun; whilst at Calcutta they are running into their houses at nine o'clock to avoid the heat of the day! I imagine two years in Calcutta would be more wearing than ten up here; by the same token, I have achieved the respectable weight of eleven stone ten pounds, being an increase of seventeen pounds since July. May my shadow never be less!
I live from the arrival of one mail in expectation of the next. I had meant to have written a long series of despatches for this opportunity, and have asked you to do some commissions for me, but I must postpone it now to another time, as Major Napier has lots of work for me. I want a pair of thick blankets; mine were plundered at Ferozeshah, and I have always mourned over them since, when cold nights and long marches come together. In these far countries it is next to impossible to get anything decent.
Camp, Raja Ke Bágh, Jan. 29th, 1848.
For some days I was staying in, and intend returning again to, a fine picturesque old castle or fort built by the Emperor Shahjehan. Its lofty walls, with their turrets and battlements, inclose a quadrangle of the size of the great court of Trinity, while from the centre rises a dark mass of buildings three stories high, forming the keep; presenting externally four blank walls pierced with loopholes, but within, arches and pillars and galleries, with an open space in the centre, in which they all face. The summit rises sixty-four feet, which, in addition to the great elevation of the mound on which the castle stands, gives a noble view of mountain, river, and plain, covered with the finest timber and green with young corn; the whole backed by range on range, peak after peak, of dazzling snow. Another, nearly similar, lies about ten miles to the north, and I am now "pitched" at the foot of a third to the west; all monuments of the taste and grandeur of the Mogul Emperors. That Goth, Runjeet Singh, and his followers have as much to answer for in their way, as Cromwell and his crop-eared scoundrels in England and Ireland. They seem only to have conquered to destroy—every public work, every castle, road, serai, or avenue, has been destroyed; the finest mosques turned into powder magazines and stables, the gardens into cantonments, and the fields into deserts. I had a pretty specimen the other day of the way in which things have been managed here. I was desired to examine into, and report on, the accounts of revenue collected hitherto in 180 villages along the "Shah Nahr," or Royal Canal. By a convenient mixture of coaxing and threats, compliment and invective, a return was at last effected, by which it appeared that in ordinary cases about one half the revenue reached the treasury, in some one third, and in one district nothing! To my great amusement, when I came to this point, the gallant collector (a long-bearded old Sikh) quietly remarked—"Yes, Sahib, this was indeed a great place for us entirely." I said, "Yes, you villain, you gentry grew fat on robbing your master." "Don't call it robbing," he said; "I assure you I wouldn't be dishonest for the world. I never took more than my predecessors did before me." About the most naïve definition of honesty I have had the luck to meet with. I fancy our visit to these nooks and corners of the Punjaub has added some 50,000l. a year to the revenue. My present rôle is to survey a part of the country lying along the left bank of the Ravee and below the hills, and I am daily and all day at work with compasses and chain, pen and pencil, following streams, diving into valleys, burrowing into hills, to complete my work. I need hardly remark, that having never attempted anything of the kind hitherto, it is bothering at first. But one is compelled to be patient under this sort of insult, and I should not be surprised any day to be told to build a ship, compose a code of laws, or hold assizes;—in fact, 'tis the way in India; every one has to teach himself his work, and do it at the same time; if I go on learning new trades as fast during the remainder of my career as I have done at its commencement, I shall have to retire as a Jacksonian professor at least, when "my dog has had his day." Well! I have fairly beaten the cold this time—I turned back one side of the tent, and had a big fire lighted outside, protected from draughts by a canvas screen, and the whole tent is now in a jolly glow; a gypsy light reflected on the trees around, and on the two tall picturesque Affghans who, seated cross-legged on each side of the fire, either replenish it with sticks, fan it into a flame, or watch my pen with the large, black, inquisitive eye of a dog looking out for a crust.
They make much better servants for wandering folks like myself than the Hindostanee servant-tribe, have fewer or no prejudices, (save against clean water,) and trudge along the livelong day as merrily as if life was a joke to them, instead of the dull heavy reality it is.[6]
Feb. 27th, 1848.
I really have very little to tell you of my new Guide Corps duties from the somewhat strange fact that I have never yet actually entered upon them; this will soon come to an end, however, as I have directions to proceed to Peshawur as soon as the survey I have been at work on is completed. The grand object of the corps is to train a body of men in peace to be efficient in war; to be not only acquainted with localities, roads, rivers, hills, ferries, and passes, but have a good idea of the produce and supplies available in any part of the country; to give accurate information, not running open-mouthed to say that 10,000 horsemen and a thousand guns are coming, (in true native style,) but to stop to see whether it may not be really only a common cart and a few wild horsemen who are kicking up all the dust; to call twenty-five by its right name, and not say fifty for short, as most natives do. This of course wants a great deal of careful instruction and attention. Beyond this, the officers should give a tolerably correct sketch and report of any country through which they may pass, be au fait at routes and means of feeding troops, and above all (and here you come close upon practical duties) keep an eye on the doings "of the neighbors" and the state of the country, so as to be able to give such information as may lead to any outbreak being nipped in the bud. This is the theory, what the practice may be I'll tell you some day or other when I know. Hitherto I have been making myself generally useful under the chief engineer, and learning to survey. One has to turn one's hand to everything if one wishes to get on.
Meanwhile, I am busily collecting every species of information about the people and the land they live in. Hard work and fatigue, of course, but a splendid opening and opportunity for making one's self known and necessary.
Deenanuggur, March 14th, 1848.
The night your letter reached me, Napier (our chief engineer) and I were encamped on a spur of grass land separating two streams of the river "Chukkir," and had been so for some days. That evening it began to rain, (if a sluice of water, apparently struck down from the heavens by a flood of the fiercest lightning, can be called so,) and for thirty-six hours the torrent descended without intermission, as only Asiatic storms can descend. At length a pause ensued, and the sky was visible, and we emerged from our sodden tents only to be threatened with water in a worse form. The hills, valleys, and mountains began to send down to us what they had so plentifully received from above, and the hitherto quiet stream, whose wide stony channel surrounded us, was in a single hour a powerful torrent, tearing over the country as if to prove what it could do. By one of the singular freaks common to all tropical rivers, it dammed up one of its own widest outlets by the quantity of stones which it brought along with it, and came tearing down the one nearest to us. Across this, not a hundred yards from our tents, we had just built a powerful breakwater some sixteen feet wide, but the water quietly walked over, under, and round it; roared, groaned, stormed, and swelled angrily for two hours, and our breakwater was a "thing of history;" meantime, we were gradually getting more and more surrounded with water, it rose and rose until only four inches were wanting to set us well afloat. The pegs of my tent-ropes were undermined, and a notice to quit was as plainly written on the face of the water as ever on a legal process. There was but one way of escape, so mustering the whole of a neighboring village, we loaded all our valuables and movables on their backs, and made a dash at the hamlet. Once having succeeded in turning us out, the valiant Chukkir was content, and we slept in our tents as usual, but not without, as it turned out, considerable risk of finding ourselves landed in some unknown field on waking.
When this flood subsided, it appeared that the scene of our unfortunate dam had become the deepest part of the channel, and the old course choked with stones and boulders which you and I couldn't lift in a week of Sundays. Is not this an incident?
Since I wrote last, in consequence of representations I sent to head-quarters as to the amount of plundering going on, a large party of horse, with one of the principal chiefs, was sent out here,