The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
was little regarded; they were stabbed in their tents, or cut down by dacoits, even when travelling on the highways of Gujarat. Long and loudly the survivors hoped that some fine day a bishop or a Director's son would come to grief, and when this happened at last the process was summarily stopped. Indeed, nothing was easier to find than a remedy. A heavy fine was imposed upon the district in which the outrage was committed. By such means, Mohammed Ali of Egypt made the Suez Desert safer than a London street, and Sir Charles Napier pacified Sind, and made deeds of violence unknown—by means not such as Earl Russell virtually encouraged the robber-shepherds of Greece to plunder and murder English travellers.
The monsoon,2 as it is most incorrectly termed, completely changes the tenor of Anglo-Indian life. It is ushered in by a display of "insect youth" which would have astonished Egypt in the age of the plagues, "flying bugs," and so forth. At Mess every tumbler was protected by a silver lid. And when the downfall begins it suggests that the "fountains of the great deep" have been opened up. I have seen tropical rains in many a region near the Line, but never anything that rivals Gujarati. Without exaggeration, the steady discharge of water buckets lasted literally, on one occasion, through seven days and nights without intermission, and to reach Mess we had to send our clothes on, and to wear a single waterproof, and to gallop through water above, around, and below at full speed. This third of the year was a terribly dull suicidal time, worse even than the gloomy month of November. It amply accounted for the card-table surface and the glorious tree-clump of the Gujarat—
"The mighty growth of sun and torrent-rains."
Working some twelve hours a day, and doing nothing but work, I found myself ready in later August for a second trip to the Presidency, and obtained leave from September 10th to October 30th (afterwards made to include November 10th) for proceeding to Bombay, and being examined in the Guzerattee language.3
This time I resolved to try another route, and, despite the warning of abominable roads, to ride down coast viâ Baroch and Surat. I had not been deceived; the deep and rich black soil, which is so good for the growth of cotton, makes a mud truly terrible to travellers. Baroch, the Hindú Brighu-Khatia, or Field of Brighú, son of Brahma, is generally made the modern successor of Ptolemy and Arrian's "Barygaza," but there are no classic remains to support the identification of the spot, nor indeed did any one in the place seem to care a fig about the matter. A truly Hindú town of some twelve thousand souls on the banks of the Nerbudda, it boasted of only one sight, the Kabir-bar, which the English translated "Big Banyan," and which meant, "Banyan-tree of (the famous ascetic and poet) Das Kabir." I remember only two of his lines—
"Máyá mare na man mare, mar mar gaya sarir"
("Illusion dies; dies not the mind, though body die and die")—
Máyá (illusion) being sensuous matter, and old Fakirs express the idea of the modern Hylozoist,4 "All things are thinks." The old tree is hardly worth a visit, although it may have sheltered five thousand horsemen and inspired Milton, for which see the guide-books.
Surat (Surashtra = good region), long time the "Gate of Meccah," where pilgrims embarked instead of at Bombay, shows nothing of its olden splendour.
This was the nucleus of British power on the western coast of India in the seventeenth century, and as early as May, 1609, Captain Hawkins, of the Hector, obtained permission at Agra here to found a factory for his half-piratical countrymen, who are briefly described as "Molossis suis ferociores." They soon managed to turn out the Portuguese, and they left a Graveyard which is not devoid of some barbaric interest—Tom Croyate of the Crudities, however, is absent from it. At Surat I met Lieutenant Manson, R.A. He was going down to "go up" in Maharátta, and we agreed to take a pattymar together. We cruised down the foul Tapti river—all Indian, like West African, streams seem to be made of dirty water—and were shown the abandoned sites of the Dutch garden and French factory, Vaux's Tomb, and Dormus Island. We escaped an Elephanta storm, one of those pleasant September visitations which denote the break up of the "monsoon," and which not unfrequently bestrews the whole coast of Western India with wreckage. This time I found lodging in the Town Barracks, Bombay, and passed an examination in the Town Hall before General Vans-Kennedy, with the normal success, being placed first. The process consisted of reading from print (two books), and handwriting, generally some "native letter," and of conversing and of writing an "address" or some paper of the kind.
Returning Baroda-wards, whence my regiment was transferred to our immense satisfaction to Sind, I assisted in the farewell revelries, dinners and Naches, or native dances—the most melancholy form in which Terpsichore ever manifested herself.
By far the most agreeable and wholesome part of regimental life in India is the march; the hours are reasonable, the work not too severe, and the results, in appetite and sleep, admirable. At Bombay we encamped on the Esplanade, and on January 1st, 1844, we embarked for Karáchi on board the H.E.I.C.'s steamer Semiramis, whose uneventful cruise is told in "Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," chap. I, "The Shippe of Helle." Yet not wholly uneventual to me.
On board of the Semiramis was Captain Walter Scott, Bombay Engineers, who had lately been transferred from commanding in Candeish to the superintendence of the Sind Canals, a department newly organized by the old Conqueror of "Young Egypt," and our chance meeting influenced my life for the next six years. I have before described him. With short intervals I was one of his assistants till 1849. We never had a diverging thought, much less an unpleasant word; and when he died, at Berlin, in 1875, I felt his loss as that of a near relation.
Karáchi, which I have twice described, was in 1844 a mere stretch of a Cantonment, and nothing if not military; the garrison consisting of some five thousand men of all arms, European and native. The discomfort of camp life in this Sahara,5 which represented the Libyan Desert, after Gujarat, the Nile Valley, was excessive, the dust-storms were atrocious,6 and the brackish water produced the most unpleasant symptoms. Parades of all kinds, regimental and brigade, were the rule, and Sir Charles Napier was rarely absent from anything on a large scale.
The Conqueror of Scinde was a noted and remarkable figure at that time, and there is still a semi-heroic ring about the name. In appearance he was ultra-Jewish, a wondrous contrast to his grand brother, Sir William; his countrymen called him Fagan, after Dickens, and his subjects, Shaytan-á-Bhái, Satan's brother, from his masterful spirit and reckless energy. There is an idealized portrait of him in Mr. W. H. Bruce's "Life" (London, Murray, 1885), but I much prefer the caricature by Lieutenant Beresford, printed in my wife's volume, "A.E.I." Yet there was nothing mean in the Conqueror's diminutive form; the hawk's eye, and eagle's beak, and powerful chin would redeem any face from vulgarity.
Sir Charles, during his long years of Peninsular and European service, cultivated the habit of jotting down all events in his diary, with a naïveté, a vivacity, and a fulness which echoed his spirit, and which, with advancing years, degenerated into intemperance of language and extravagance of statement. He was hard, as were most men in those days, upon the great Company he termed the "Twenty-four Kings of Leadenhall Street"—"ephemeral sovereigns;" he quoted Lord Wellesley about the "ignominious tyrants of the East."
In his sixtieth year he was appointed to the command of Poonah (December 28th, 1841), and he was so lacking in the goods of this world that a Bombay house refused to advance him £500. He began at once to study Hindostani, but it was too late; the lesson induced irresistible drowsiness, and the munshi was too polite to awaken the aged scholar, who always said he would give Rs. 10,000 to be able to address the Sepoys. On September 3rd, 1842, he set off to assume his new command in Upper and Lower Sind, and he at once saw his opportunity. Major Outram had blackened the faces of the Amirs, but he wanted to keep the work of conquest for himself, and he did not relish its being done by another. He, however, assisted Sir Charles Napier, and it was not till his return to