The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
at leaving their fat appointments.
Embarks for Sind.
On New Year's Day of 1844, the corps embarked on board the H.E.I. Company's steamship Semiramis, generally known as the "Merry Miss." She was commanded by Captain Ethersey, who ended badly. His "'aughtiness," as the crew called it, won him very few friends. And now I come to the time when I began to describe my experiences in print. The first chapter of "Scinde; or the Unhappy Valley" gives a facetious account of this voyage.
On board the Semiramis I made a good friend in Captain Walter Scott, of the Bombay Engineers, who had been transferred from Kandesh, to take charge of the Survey in Lower Sind, by general order of November 23rd, 1843. He was a handsome man in the prime of life, with soft blue eyes, straight features, yellow hair, and golden-coloured beard. Withal he not a little resembled his uncle, "The Magician of the North," of whom he retained the fondest remembrance. He preserved also the trick, wholly unintentional, of the burr and the lisp, the former in the humorous parts, and the latter in the tenderer part of his stories. He was an admirable conversationist, and his anecdotes were full of a dry and pawky humour, which comes from north of the Tweed. Yet, curious to say, when he took pen in hand his thoughts seemed to fly abroad. His lines were crooked, and his sentences were hardly intelligible. Something of this was doubtless owing to his confirmed habit of cheroot smoking, whilst he was writing, but it was eminently characteristic of the man.
Walter Scott was a truly fine character. His manners were those of a gentleman of the Old School, and he never said a disagreeable word or did an ungraceful deed. A confirmed bachelor, he was not at all averse to women's society; indeed, rather the contrary. He was generous, even lavish to the extreme, and he was quite as ready to befriend an Englishman, as a "brither Scot." These two latter qualities seemed to distinguish a high-bred Scotchman, whilst the English and Irish gentleman preserved the characteristics of his nationality, of course refining it and raising it to the highest standard. The Scottish gentleman seems to differ not only in degree, but in kind, and to retain only the finer qualities of his race. This is not speaking of the aristocracy, but of the finer nature, which is the nature of a true gentleman. Whereas the common herd errs in excess of canniness and cautiousness, keeps a keen eye upon the main chance, and distrusts everything and everybody. The select few are rather rash than otherwise, think less of gain than of a point of honour, and seem to believe all other men as true-hearted and high-spirited as themselves, as well as utterly destitute of religious fanaticism.
Walter Scott's favourite reading was old history and romance. He was delighted to meet with a man who was acquainted with Hollingshed and Froissart. Moreover, he had sent to Italy for a series of books upon the canalization of the valley of the Po, and was right glad to find a man who had been in that part of the world, and could assist him by his knowledge of Italian. And I capped the good effect I had upon him, by quoting some of the finest of his uncle's lines, which end with—
"I bless thee, and thou shalt be blessed."
The little voyage, beautiful outside the ship, and stiff and prim within, ended on the fourth day. The Semiramis ran past Manora Head and anchored near the Bar, which in those days was as bad as bad could be. My first impressions of the country, a marvellous contrast to Gujarat and Bombay, were as follows:—
Karáchi, Sind.
"In those days Sind was in the most primitive state. The town, or rather village, of Karáchi was surrounded by a tall wall of guy swish, topped with fancy crenelles, and perpendicularly striped with what the Persians call Da mágheh, or nostril holes, down which the besieged could pour hot oil, or boiling water. Streets there were none; every house looked like a small fort, and they almost met over the narrow lanes that formed the only thoroughfares. The bazar, a long line of miserable shops, covered over with rude matting of date leaves, was the only place comparatively open. Nothing could exceed the filthiness of the town; sewers there were none. And the deodorization was effected by the dust. The harbour, when the tide was out, was a system of mud-flats, like the lagoons of Venice, when you approach them by the Murazzi. A mere sketch of a road, which in these days would be called a Frere highway, led from the nearest mud-bank to the Cantonment. The latter was in its earliest infancy. The ground of hard clay was still covered with milk-bush and desert vegetation, and only here and there a humble bungalow was beginning to be built. There was no sign of barracks, and two race-courses were laid out before any one thought of church or chapel.
"Yet Karáchi showed abundant sign of life. Sir Charles Napier thoroughly believed in its future, and loudly proclaimed that in a few years it would take the wind out of Bombay sails. The old Conqueror himself was temporarily staying there. He had his wife and two handsome daughters. His personal staff was composed of his two nephews, Captain William Napier and Lieutenant Byng. In his general Staff he had Major Edward Green, Assistant Adjutant-General, for Quarter-Master-General; Captain MacMurdo, who afterwards married his daughter; a civilian named Brown, alias 'Beer' Brown; Captain Young, of the Bengal army, as his Judge Advocate-General; and Captain Preedy for his Commissary-General. The latter was the son of a violent old officer in the Bombay army, and of whom many a queer story was told. One of them is as follows:—He was dining at a Dragoon mess at Poonah, when they began to sing a song which had been written by an officer of the regiment, and which had for refrain—
'Here's death to those
Who dare oppose
Her Majesty's Dragoons.'
Old Preedy well knew that in the affair alluded to, the Dragoons, having ventured into a native village, had been soundly thrashed by the villagers. After patiently hearing the song out, he proposed to give the villagers a turn, but he had hardly finished his first verses—
'Success to who
Dare to bamboo
Her Majesty's Dragoons.'
before he was duly kicked out of the Mess.
"Karáchi was then swarming with troops. The 78th Highlanders were cantoned there, and were presently joined by the 86th, or 'County Down Boys.' Both consumed a vast quantity of liquor, but in diametrically different ways. The kilts, when they felt fou, toddled quietly to bed, and slept off the debauch; the brogues quarrelled and fought, and made themselves generally disagreeable, and passed the night in the guard-house. There was horse artillery and foot artillery, and the former, when in uniform, turned out in such gorgeous gingerbread-gold coats, that gave a new point to the old sneer of 'buying a man at your own price, and selling him at his own,' and there were native regiments enough to justify brigade parades on the very largest scale."
The 18th was presently ordered off to Gharra, a desolate bit of rock and clay, which I described as follows:—
"Look at that unhappy hole—it is Gharra.
"The dirty heap of mud-and-mat hovels that forms the native village is built upon a mound, the débris of former Gharras, close to a creek which may or may not have been the 'western outlet of the Indus in Alexander's time.' All round it lies a—
'windy sea of land:'—
salt, flat, barren rock and sandy plain, where eternal sea-gales blow up and blow down a succession of hillocks—warts upon the foul face of the landscape—stretching far, far away, in all the regular irregularity of desolation.
"You see the cantonment with its falling brick lines outside, and its tattered thatched roofs peeping from the inside of a tall dense hedge of bright green milk-bush."
We were obliged to pitch tents, for there was no chance of lodging in the foul little village, at the head of the Gharra creek. Under the circumstances, of course, the work was very hard.
A sandstorm astonished an English visitor considerably.
"When we arose in the morning the sky was lowering, the air dark; the wind blew in puffs, and—unusual enough at the time of the year—it felt raw and searching. If you took the trouble to look towards the hills about eight a.m. you might have seen a towering column of sand from the rocky hills, mixed with powdered silt from the arid plains, flying away as fast as it could from the angry puffing Boreas.
"The