[Here we change from Central Europe to the massacre at Jeddah in 1858 (the source of the official wigging), and the cause of cholera.]
"In 1858 there was a cruel, cowardly massacre of the few Europeans and Christians, including the English and French Consuls, which was revenged by the French with two bombardments and a fine of 2,241,016 francs. It arose from our suppression of the slave-trade, and jealousy at finding that the Europeans, whose exports and imports are worth about £3,000,000, were absorbing the commerce; moreover, these two feelings still exist. Our present Vice-Consul, Mr. Wylde, is a man well fitted to the post, which is anything but a pleasant one. His open-hearted, straightforward, and fearless ways of dealing with the natives succeed perfectly. He knows what the native disposition is, and how to treat it, whilst he is of a joyous temperament and quite insensible to any danger. Still (as he laughingly remarked to me one day) it would doubtless be much more comfortable if the morning and evening shell (instead of gun) were fired into the town; and, joking apart, every passing Man-of-war ought to have orders to look in en passant, just to call on the authorities, and to see what the delightful natives have been up to since the last ship passed. Some day the Wali Pasha of the Hejaz may be a fanatical hater of Europeans, the Kaimmakám of Jeddah may be a weak-minded good-intentioned man who cannot keep things in order, or intestine troubles may draw away the troops; and these visits are more necessary in places where perpetual orders from home necessitate an interference with the slave-trade, which the Arabs are ever ready to resist. There ought to be cruisers perpetually visiting and reporting upon the condition of all the outlying little ports, where at present British subjects are unfairly left to take care of themselves.
"One must read 'Une Mission au Hedjaz Arabie,' par Dr. Buez (Paris: Masson, 1873, Académie de Médecine), which treats of the epidemics which the Hajj engenders,—the focus of infection for Egypt, the Mediterranean, and consequently for Europe. At any rate, one may note the nine conclusions.
"1. Arabia, and especially El Hejaz, with its pure air, does not originated the morbid elements which express themselves in dysentery and typhus, cholera and plague. Small-pox, however, in certain places is always to be dreaded.
"2. Cholera is at present the special genesis of India.
"3. Steamers, though on the whole beneficial to the general health of the pilgrims, produce new sanitary conditions, and aid greatly in propagating the choleraic element, thus becoming a permanent and, at times, a real danger to Europe. The same is the case with railroads, but to a much less extent.
"4. All the great outbreaks in the Hejaz, notably that of 1865, when five hundred per diem died at Mecca during the Hajj, were imported, indirectly or directly, from India, and then spread over the civilized world.
"5. The problem of preserving Egypt, Syria, the Levant, and Europe from cholera is to be resolved only through the strictest surveillance, by competent men, over pilgrims bound from India to the Hejaz, and to Egypt from the Red Sea ports—Jeddah, Rais, Rabegh, Yambu, Líth, Gonfodah, Jisán, Hodaydah, Lohayah, Mocha, etc.
"6. The question is complicated by the existence of choleraic foci, which may be termed secondary and local, as opposed to primitive or original, where the epidemic has lingered, and possibly has incubated till again exasperated by occult conditions—telluric, atmospheric, or hygienic. This fact demands increased measures of surveillance. They may not be thoroughly satisfactory, but because we cannot close all the doors we need not leave all the largest open.
"7. At the period of embarking from the Red Sea ports, where bakshish is the key to most consciences, the local Health Office and the member of the Sanitary Council annually sent from Stamboul after the International Conference of 1866 should be assisted by a special commission of European physicians, who could, moreover, modify and improve the different 'Passenger Acts.'
"8. 'Long Desert,' a march of twenty-one days, is the best of cordon sanitaires, alone able to 'purge' infected caravans.
"9. Ergo, when the Hejaz is attacked by cholera the sea-road should be peremptorily closed to all pilgrims, an operation whose difficulties have been greatly and needlessly exaggerated; nor should it be reopened till after at least one pilgrimage season has passed away without accident.
"To these wise conclusions I would add a truth. All quarantinary measures are unpopular with Moslems, who regard them as inventions of the evil one, or, as the vulgar say, 'flying in the face of Providence.' Moreover, at Mecca it is every man's interest to conceal the outbreak; and there is always a danger of the earliest cases finding their way to Jeddah before the existence of cholera is suspected at the port. Indeed, clean bills have been given under such circumstances. Evidently, the only remedy for this evil is to make the special sanitary commission of European physicians meet annually at Mecca.
"Now, if such great meteoric changes can be effected by a mere riband of water let into the sand, what will happen when we submerge a great part of the African Sáhara (whose eastern limits are unknown), and thereby create a sea, perhaps, bigger than the Mediterranean? We cannot calculate the possible amount of climatic modification which such a new offset of the Atlantic might induce; and some clever men think that the Sáhara Sea is likely to affect many parts of the Mediterranean basin, and even the whole southern seaboard of Europe, with changes which may be deleterious in the extreme. The scirocco from Africa is the summer wind par excellence of the 'White Sea,' as the Arabs call it, blowing through half the year, and that half the most dangerous—if we submerge the desert, say with a foot or two of water upon rotting vegetation, what will its effect be upon the world's health?
"A new Passenger Act is, I believe, about to appear; let us hope that it will abate one part of the nuisance. At present we can never feel safe on board these crowded cattle-pens. An epidemic might break out any moment; in case of shipwreck all would be lost; and even if the screw were injured, or the main shaft were to break, hundreds on board would die of starvation.
"Each ship should be compelled to carry a condensing apparatus and cooking-ranges, calculated to accommodate the pilgrims; while one passenger per two tons (registered) should be the maximum of freightage. Before departure, the devotees ought to be severally and carefully inspected by the Port Surgeons; at Aden the health officer should take them in charge; and in case of infectious disease having appeared on the voyage, they should be quarantined at Perim or at the Kumarán Islands, off Lohayya. No one after a certain age should be allowed to embark—the Korán allows him to send a substitute; and the same is the case with the infirm and with invalids. Each person should prove that he carries at least four hundred rupees in ready money, and that he has left with his family sufficient to support it according to its station: such is the absolute order of the Hanafi school, to which all these Bengalis belong. On arriving at Jeddah, all should take out passports from her Majesty's Consulate, paying a fee of one rupee per head, and the same for visas after return: the French and the Dutch charge a dollar. Proclamations in Hindostani and Persian should be issued at the several Presidencies, and be published in the local papers every year before the annual preparations for the pilgrimage begin. I am certain that all sensible Hindí Moslems would be grateful for a measure relieving them from exorbitant charities, and from the reproach that Hindustan is the 'basest of kingdoms;' whilst we should only be doing our duty,—a little late, it is true, but better now than neglecting till the evil shall have become inveterate. That everlasting incuriousness and laissez-aller of the Anglo-Indian are the only reasons why precautions were not taken twenty-five years ago.
"I took some trouble to investigate the causes which led to the horrible massacre of June 15, 1858. This is far from being an old tale of times which will not return; it is an example of what may occur any day in the present excited state of the Moslem world. Moreover, the conditions under which it occurred are precisely those of the present moment, and an ugly symptom has just appeared.[7] The village moplah (Malabar Moslem), who murdered Mr. Conolly, has been allowed to escape from surveillance at Jeddah, to embark at Líth, and probably to return to India viâ Makalla in Hadramant. But as popular memory in England is short upon such subjects, it is necessary to give a résumé of the facts.
"The innovation of appointing European Consuls to Jeddah, the 'Gate of the Holy City,' was resented by the Moslems, both on the grounds of religion and of private interests, especially when protected foreign subjects began to absorb the greater parts of the commerce. Several ballons d'essai were launched. In 1848 an attempt was made to assassinate, near the Medinah Gate, M. Fulgence Fresnel, the famous Arabist, who was often consulted upon questions of casuistry by the D.D.'s of Mecca. The criminal was saved by a certain Abdullah Muhtásib, a Fellah of Lower Egypt, who began life as a baker, and who rose to be farmer of the octroi and Chief of the Police; thus being able to bribe and bully à discretion. In 1849, Mr. Consul Ogilvie was openly insulted in the bazar, and obtained no redress. During my first visit to Jeddah, Mr. Consul Cole had avoided all troubles by his firmness and conciliatory manners; but, after his departure, the so-called 'War of the Sherífs' (1854) suggested a grand opportunity for despoiling the Christians. Abdullah Muhtásib again appeared as the villain of the play. He was, however, arrested, and exiled to Masáwwah by the Wali of the Hejaz, Namik Pasha.
"In 1856 Abdullah Muhtásib returned triumphant from his exile, and the Sepoy war of 1857 once more offered him a tempting opportunity. Actively assisted by his son, he brought into the plot the Kadi (Abd el Kadir Effendi), the Sayyid el Amúli, the Shaykh Bagafur, Abdullah Bakarum, and the wealthy merchant Yusuf Banaji. Presently, in June, 1858, during the height of the pilgrimage, it became known that Captain Pullen, H.M.S. Cyclops, intended to carry off the Irania, an English ship upon which Turkish colours had been hoisted. Abdullah Muhtásib and his friends met at the Custom-house café, and sat, en permanence, to direct the issue of their conspiracy. At two p.m. on June 15, the ship was worked out, the boats of the Cyclops left, and the coast was clear.
"Violent harangues in the bazar roused the cry of 'Death to the Infidel!' The plot burst like a barrel of gunpowder, and at six p.m. the massacre began. The Sayyid el Amúli took charge of Mr. Page, whom he beheaded with his own hand; the body was thrown into the streets to be hacked to pieces by the mob; the house was plundered, and the flagstaff was torn up. M. Sabatier, however, is in error when he reports that the English dragoman and kawwás were murdered: one died lately, and the other, a very old man, is still living.
"Meanwhile, two bands of ruffians attacked the other objects of their hate. One rushed to the French Consulate, and broke in the doors when they were closed by the kawwás. Madame Eveillard was first stabbed, and then her husband was cut down, despite the heroic defence of the daughter, Mdlle. Elsie, who, after seizing one of the chief murderers by the beard, and severely biting his arm, was wounded by a yataghan in the face. She and the lady's-maid, saved by the tardy arrival of the kaimmakám (commandant) and two Government kawwáses, were taken from the blood-bespattered home to a Turkish house. Monsieur Emérat,[8] the Chancellor, after bravely fighting for fifteen minutes, was preserved in the same way, and, sabred in three places, was led by his faithful Algerian, Haji Mahommed, to the quarters of Hasan Bey, commanding the artillery. M. de Lesseps was, therefore, misinformed about Mdlle. Eveillard saving herself by drawing the cushions of the divan over her body, and by simulating death whilst the murderers slashed at her legs. He says nothing of the kaimmakám, and he attributes the honour of saving the two lives to a negro boy and the old Algerine soldier.[9] The flagstaff was torn down, the tricolour trampled upon, and the Consulate given over to plunder.
"The other band rushed to the house of Sabá Mascondi, the richest of the Greek merchants, and therefore the most obnoxious of all the Christians. My husband well remembers this amiable and inoffensive man. He had been repeatedly warned, but he refused to believe a massacre possible till he and his party, some twenty men, mostly from Lemnos, met one evening. At length, when it was reported that the Consulates were being pillaged, three of them went out to inquire. Meanwhile the armed mob rushed in, and instantly cut down eight; the rest jumping out of the windows, and flying over the terraces and down the street, to reach the sea. Poor Sabá veiled his head, and also tried to escape. M. Sabatier heard two accounts of his death: one was that he was killed in the house of the English dragoman (an error); the other, that he was recognized in his rude disguise by the son of Abdullah Muhtásib, who blew out his brains with a pistol. This is a fact.
"The French Consul-General also relates that the Cyclops, anchored only three miles off, perceiving a tumult in the town, armed her boats and sent them to find out the cause; that the crews were fired upon, and that they returned, without further action, to their ship. It is hard to believe this. A few shells thrown into Jeddah would have cleared every street in half an hour. No justification was wanted for resenting so gross an insult, and instant measures might have saved some unhappy lives. But in those days we were still under the glamour of that most unfortunate Crimean War, and modern England does not, as a rule, encourage her officers to incur any manner of responsibility.
"The first act of retribution was on the early morning of July 25, when the Cyclops, at the distance of twenty-five hundred yards, bombarded Jeddah for two hours. This was repeated till noon on the 26th, when the new Governor-General, Namik Pasha, arrived. The people, of course, evacuated the town; a few houses were injured, a minaret was knocked crooked, and some fifteen boats were destroyed.
"Presently France, who, whatever may have been her sins of omission and commission, has ever shown a noble jealousy of her national honour, determined not to be played with after this fashion; and she sent, not a 'person of rank,' but M. Sabatier, the fittest head and hand for the work. The inapt and treacherous politic of the Porte on this occasion bears a fraternal resemblance to her manœuvres adopted after the massacre of Damascus (1860), with this difference: at Beyrout there was no Sabatier, but there was a certain trickster of the first order, Fuad Pasha, whose reckless ambition had caused the catastrophe. The Sultan appointed, as his Commissioner, one Ismail Pasha, who hastened off to the Hejaz, and, in concert with the feeble and negligent Namik Pasha, put to death half a dozen poor devils, complied a voluminous Mazbatah (procès verbale), and hurried back to Constantinople with thirty-nine 'compromised' individuals. Heavy bribes had induced him to estimate the damage done to Christian property at twenty thousand francs. 'Il était difficile de faire associer les consuls de France et d'Angleterre à meilleur marché,' is M. Sabatier's only comment upon this part of the proceeding.
"As Ismail Pasha persisted in conversation with his two fellow-Commissioners, that his part of the work had been thoroughly done, and that he was expected at Stamboul, M. Sabatier and Captain Pullen, R.N., set out in the Cyclops, with the English and French flags flying together on the mainmast, and reached Jeddah on October 12th, 1859. Here they found Commodore Seymour with the Pelorus (twenty-one guns); the corvette Assaye (ten guns); and the Chesapeake (fifty-one guns) expected. Five days afterwards, Namik Pasha arrived from Mecca; and, as the Turkish Commissioner had admitted that all the local authorities were accessories to the murder, M. Sabatier proceeded to examine all witnesses, Moslems as well as Christians. Even he, accustomed for long years to the abstruse chicanery of the East, must have been surprised to hear the Turkish authorities laying the blame upon Captain Pullen; as if a mere question of maritime and international law could have borne such fruits. Even he, so well inured to the contempt of European intelligence—which is an article of faith with all Orientals—must have been startled, as well as shocked, to see the abominable Abdullah Muhtásib sitting side by side with Hasan Bey, the wretched commandant of artillery, when the Consulate of France was still a mere shell, and the walls were bespattered with the blood of his fellow-countrymen.
"It would be tedious to relate how bravely and how well M. Sabatier did his duty. Briefly, in January, 1859, Tricoult, capitaine de frégate, appeared upon the stage, and a few hours brought the authorities to their senses. The miserable Ismail Pasha lost his head on 'Raven's Isle,' within sight of Jeddah; Abdullah Muhtásib and the Sayyid el Amúli on the Custom-house square (January 21st, 1859). The fine for the losses of the Christians amounted to 2,241,016 francs, of which 500,000 were paid to the Eveillard family, 100,000 to M. Emérat, and 100,000 to Sabá Mascondi's relatives.
"The Jeddah massacre was made the stalking-horse to bring down slave-trading in the Red Sea, which had already been abolished theoretically (1885) under the effects of the Crimean War. In June, 1869, vizierial letters were addressed especially to the Hejaz, without any effect beyond causing a disturbance; they were essentially dead letters, worth only their weight of spoiled paper. This is not the place for so extensive a subject. I will only state that the traffic still flourishes at Jeddah; that the market, till lately, was under the eyes of the British Consulate; that on representation it was removed a few yards off; that the Turkish authorities, even if they wished, are unable to stop or even to hinder it; and that the only remedy is armed intervention, serious and continued,—in fact, a 'Coffin Squadron,' like that of the Persian Gulf, stationed in the Red Sea, with 'slave approvers' all around the coast of Arabia. I need hardly say that we should demand the right of search, and that a Consul-General or Slave Commissioner, with a sufficient staff and salary, the use of a gunboat, and a roving commission, should be appointed to the Red Sea, independently of the Consul-General of Egypt, and in lieu of the trading Consul of Jeddah.
"M. Sabatier on the occasion omitted only one step, probably because he judged that the hour to take it had not struck. He should have insisted upon Mecca being opened to the world, and upon all travellers being protected there, as they are at Jerusalem and other 'Holy Cities.' It is high time that these obsolete obstructions to the march of civilization should everywhere be swept away; the world will endure them no longer. Mecca is not only a great centre of religion and commerce; it is also the prime source of political intrigues, the very nest where plans of conquest and schemes of revenge upon the Infidel are hatched; and, as I have before said, the focus whence cholera is dispersed over the West. Shall a misplaced sentiment of tolerating intolerance allow her to work in the dark against humanity? Allah forbid it!
[We now change to India.]
"I suppose no one has any idea (and certainly no foreigner has) of the amount of diplomacy or the responsibility incurred by the Viceroy of India. The India House may well be quoted as 'the focus of politics for nearly all Asia, and the storehouse of romance of all the East.' It has to regulate our relations with all the neighbouring foreign Powers beyond the limits of Hindustan, and with the four hundred and sixty dependent Princes and Chiefs within our own Indian Empire.
"I inspected the cotton-mills. It is evident that India must become a manufacturing country, or it can no longer defend its teeming millions from famine. When this great work shall have been done, Great Britain, with one foot on Hindustan and the other in China, will command the cotton and wool manufactures of the world, and be the greatest producing power ever known.
"We now know, even at home, that India is not a country, but a continent. It contains as many races as the whole of Europe: here we have the Jangali, or wild men; the Dravidians, or old Turanian immigration; the pure Aryans from Persia, as the Nágar Brahman; the vast variety of mixed breeds between Dravidian and Aryan, such as the Telinga Brahman; and, besides these four great families, a number of intrusive peoples—Christians from Chaldea and Portugal; Jews, white and black; Rohillas ('hill-people') from the Afghan mountains; Sidis (Wásáwáhili) from Zanzibar; and Arabs, pure or mixed, the latter showing its type in the Mapillahs (Moplahs) of Malabar. After all, in Europe there are only three: the great Slav race, occupying the eastern half of the continent; the Scandinavo-Teuton; and the Græco-Latin races. Europe also speaks three great forms of language; here we have the three, Semitic, Hamitic, and Japhetic, or Turanian, with some thirty modifications of the Prakrit, which, in the hands of the literati, became, like the modern Greek spoken at Athens, the Sanskrit, or finished speech. It was the same with the Latina Rustica, not the language of Virgil and Cicero, but the quaint country tongues which branched off into the neo-Latin family.
"Again, the climate of India has a far wider range than that of Europe, even if we throw into the latter Iceland and Spitzbergen. The west regions of the mighty Himalayas, the 'Homes of Snow,' represent the Polar regions; and we run through the temperates into the tropical, or rather the equinoctial, about Ceylon. And what a richness and diversity of productions in the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral worlds, compared with the poor produce of the temperate regions! What untold wealth still hidden in the soil, and awaiting the skill and energy of the nineteenth century! What a grand field for exploration and discovery! Dr. de Marchesetti, a young Italian botanist from Trieste, assures us that the fungi, one of the most interesting families of plants, have hardly been studied at all. And how much remains for us to learn! For instance, no sword-cutter in Europe can tell you anything about the steel which makes the far-famed Khorásáni blades, miscalled 'Damascus;' and the dismantiferous regions between the valleys of the Ganges and the Krishna are in great part unexplored ground.
"On the other hand, the Kharekwasla Tank and the noble dam, built by Mr. Joyner, C.E., are well worth visiting, both on account of the intrinsic excellence of the work, and the great consequences to which such works must lead. It not only supplies the 'Monsoon Capital' of the Bombay Presidency, but it will diffuse life and plenty over some ninety linear miles of now waste ground. Travelling from Poonah to Hyderabad, you remark that the land at this season is mostly fit only for the traditional dragon and wild ass; it is, like Sind, a cross between an oven and a dust-bin. Yet where the smallest rill flows, all is life and verdure; the emerald-green topes, and the leek-green paddy fields, are a repose to the sight, a 'coolness to the eye,' as the Arabs say; and you hasten to plunge that hot and weary organ into the damp lush vegetation of orchard and field and kitchen-garden. The first step will be to supply water, as Mr. Joyner is doing; the second, to regulate its use. Here the golden fluid is wasted in a way which would scandalize the Arab, the Egyptian, the Sindi, and the 'Heathen Chinee.'
"And this leads us to notice another popular error which has gained possession of the British brain. Certain statistics, which may be correct, have taught it that India is an overcrowded land, and that its population per square mile, exceeding that of England, approaches that of Belgium. This, as with all statistics, is both true and untrue. Parts of Bengal, for instance, teem with human life; and as native wars are no more, and famines are to be turned, regardless of expense, into plenty, or rather profusion, the peasantry will end, in Kafir phrase, with 'eating one another up.' For note that the true cause of Indian famines is concealed from England. There is plenty of provision. There is an abundance of transport. But the people are so penniless that when grain rises one penny a pound, they must live on wild roots or starve.
"The statement that India is overcrowded is utterly misleading as regards the whole of India. Throughout the peninsula the lands are of three kinds, not including the jungles and forests, which cannot be touched without danger of diminishing the rain-supply. There are the fertile, as Gujerat; the wholly desert, mostly sandy and stony tracks; and the half-desert, which grows luxuriant crops only during the rains. And the latter are so extensive that with irrigation they would support at least treble the actual number of inhabitants.
"India, then, has more than one string to her bow: she will dispose of her increasing millions in three ways. Firstly, she will keep them at home and feed them by irrigation, which costs much, gives slow profits, but ends by being the best of investments. Secondly, she will export them to our other colonies, where labour is so much wanted, and where, as free hands, they will take the place of our old friend, the 'a'mighty nigger.' Sind, I need hardly tell you, calls aloud for them, and can offer the richest of soils. Thirdly, she will retrench her useless expenditure; abolish a host of local Governors who should be Secretaries; of Commanders-in-Chief who should be Major-Generals; and of Members of Council whose chief work is to spoil foolscap. Lastly, she will become a manufacturing country. She has coal and iron; she breeds millions of human beings, hireable at sixpence a day; her men can mine, and her women and children can work at la petite industrie. Despite the 'mildew' with which mildewed Manchester, pace Mr. E. Ashworth, is attempting to inoculate India; despite the timidity of statesmen, and despite the jealousy of the manufacturing mob, which wishes to buy dirt-cheap from India, and to make her pay 100 per cent. for working her own produce, we have a conviction, as we have before said, that Indian manufactures will succeed; and that Great Britain, with one foot on Hindustan and another in China, whose three hundred millions work at threepence a day, will command the wool and cotton markets of the world, and will become the greatest producing power that the globe ever bore.
"Lanauli is a place of some importance, being the locomotive station at the head of the Bhore Ghát, whilst the site upon the edge of the Sahyadri Range renders it tolerably healthy for the Europeans. Consequently, where a few huts formerly rose, the place now contains some two hundred pale faces. I saw with immense satisfaction fifty-three men of the New Railway Volunteer Corps, which numbers a total of one hundred and fourteen, being drilled by a red-coated sergeant, under the eye of Captain Buckley. This is truly a patriotic movement, and one which may prove far more important than we expect in these days, when the native powers have armies far exceeding our own in numbers. There is hardly an 'Indian officer' who does not expect another 'Sepoy Mutiny' within ten years, and yet we do little to prepare for it. Were I Viceroy, every station should have its cannon-armed and casemated place of refuge.
"Shere Ali Khan is an ill-conditioned Prince—proud, coarse, and violent. Yet there is something to be noted on the side of this little Highland chief. His hostility dates from those early days when, perhaps, we deserved scant friendship. During the Sepoy Mutiny he urged the invasion of the Punjaub upon his wise old father, Dost Mohammed Khan, whom a Russian paper reports on the throne, although he has been dead for years. The masterly inactivity which Lord Lawrence still dares to recommend, did not prevent that Viceroy acknowledging the claims of Afzal Khan, the brother who had deprecated the Punjaub invasion. Shere Ali had a pet grievance against Lord Mayo, and he was especially hurt by Lord Northcote refusing to pay his subsidy—'tribute,' the wise would call it—with the desired regularity. His relations with the present Viceroy need hardly be noticed. The truth is that a policy of alternate do-nothing, bullying, and cajoling have persuaded him firmly that he holds the road to India; that the keys of the treasure-house are in his hands. Hence he persistently refused to receive the Káshgar mission; 'their blood be upon their own heads if they come to Cabul!' Hence he admitted no English representatives, and he hardly permitted the Wakeel, or resident Agent of her Majesty's Government, to address him in Durbar. That he despises us, we cannot fail to see; nor less can we fail to feel that we have not forced him to respect us. We might have withdrawn that phantom of a Wakeel; we might also have withdrawn his subsidy or tribute, a lakh of rupees per mensem, till his manners improved; or, better still, we might have reserved it for his successor. But a high-principled Viceroy objected that such proceedings would be a 'premium upon rebellion.'
"That unhappy mission has placed us between the horns of an ugly dilemma. If we do not fight, we offend public opinion at home and abroad, in England and in India. If we do fight, we play Russia's own game. Although never committed to paper, there was an implied agreement between the two great Europe-Asiatic Powers that our Asiatic army should not be employed in European wars. The policy of the moment thought fit to throw a new weight into the scale; and Russia's comment must have been something of this nature: 'Oh! you will employ your Sepoys in Europe, will you? All right; meanwhile you shall have enough to do with them in India!' Whatever alarmists told the world, Russia has hitherto meddled mighty little with our Eastern Empire. Now, however, times have changed, and we may look out for squalls. Our Imperial 'Bakht,' our conquering star, our unbroken good luck, may yet be our shield and our defender. Not the less this Afghan war threatens to be the beginning of serious, nay, of fatal troubles, which may shake our Indian Empire to its very foundation. Behind it stand General Scindia and the Nawab of Hyderabad,—now the great Moslem power, the Delhi of the Peninsula. Behind all, terrible and menacing as the Spirit of the Storm which appeared to Da Gama, rises that frightful phantom, a starving population reduced to the lowest expression of life by the exorbitant expenditure of our rule.
"I would willingly point a moral with the state of the Sepoy army, now reduced to a host of Irregulars; with the cost of a march à Cabul against an enemy whose improved weapons have been supplied by ourselves as well as by Russia; with the Russian claim to wage aggressive and non-official war, even as we did in Turkey; with the effect which our intense sensitiveness to every step taken by Russia must exercise upon the Sultan and his Ministers; and lastly, with the possible results to England, which under the workings of a Free Trade, the reverse of free, threatens to become a Macclesfield on a very large scale. Is the prophecy of the Koh-i-noor to be fulfilled after all, and a ridiculed superstition to become a reality?
"It would be unpardonable to quit Golconda without a word concerning the precious stone which, in the seventeenth century, made its name a household word throughout Europe; and also without noticing the great diamond whose unauspicious name, Bala (little) Koh-i-noor, I would alter to 'The Nizam.' Not a little peculiar it is that professional books like Mr. Lewis Lieulafait's 'Diamonds and Precious Stones' (London: Blackie, 1874), which record the life, the titles, the weight, the scale, the size, and the shape of all the historic stones, have utterly ignored one of the most remarkable. Mr. Harry Emanuel does not neglect even the Násik diamond, which fetched only £30,000: we must, by-the-by, convert for intelligibility his 'Mahratta of Peshawur' into the 'Peshwa of the Maharattas.'
"The history of the Nizam diamond is simple enough; like the Abaïté, and unlike the Koh-i-noor, its discovery cost at most a heartache, and did not lose a drop of man's blood. About half a century ago it was accidentally found by a Hindú sonár (goldsmith) at Narkola, a village about twenty miles cast of Shamsábád, the latter lying some fourteen miles south-west of the Lion City, on the road to Maktal. It had been buried in an earthen pipkin (Koti or Abkhorah), which suggests, possibly, that it had been stolen, and was being carried for sale to Mysore or Coorg. The wretched finder placed it upon a stone, and struck it with another upon the apex of the pyramid. This violence broke it into three pieces, of which the largest represents about half. With the glass model in hand it is easy to restore the original octohedron. The discovery came to the ears of the celebrated Diwan (Minister) Rajah Chandú Lál, a friend of General Fraser, who governed the country as Premier for the term of forty-two years. He took it very properly from the sonár, before it underwent further ill-treatment, and deposited it amongst his master's crown jewels. Lately Messrs. Aratoon, of Madras, offered to cut it for three lakhs of rupees, a modest sum, considering the responsibility and the labour such operations involve; but the figure was considered exorbitant. A M. Jansen of Amsterdam, who died about a twelvemonth ago, volunteered to place it in the hands of Messrs. Costa, who certainly did not improve its big brother. This offer was also naturally enough declined. Let me hope, however, that it will not be cloven into a plate or flat slab more Indico.
"The stone is said to be of the finest water. An outline of the model gives a maximum length of 1 inch 10.25 lines, and 1 inch 2 lines for the greatest breadth, with comfortable thickness throughout. The face is slightly convex, and the cleavage plane, produced by the fracture, is nearly flat, with a curious slope or groove beginning at the apex. The general appearance is an imperfect oval, with only one projection which will require the saw. It is not unlike a Chinese woman's foot without the toes, and it will easily cut into a splendid brilliant, larger and more valuable than the present Koh-i-noor.
"I can hardly wonder at this stone being ignored in England and in India, when little is known about it at Hyderabad. No one could tell me its weight in grains or carats. The highest authority in the land vaguely said 'about two ounces or three hundred carats.'[10] The blacksmith who made the mould was brought to us, and the rascal showed a bit of wood shaped much like a clove of orange. Finally, I was driven to accept the statement of Mr. Briggs (i. 117): 'Almost all the finest jewels in India have been gradually collected at Hyderabad, and have fallen into the Nizam's possession, and are considered State property. One uncut diamond alone of three hundred and seventy-five carats is valued at thirty lakhs of rupees, and has been mortgaged for half that money.'
"Let us now estimate the value of the Nizam diamond. For uncut stones we square the weight (375 x 375 = 140,625) and multiply the product by £2, which gives a sum of £281,250. For cut stones the process is the same, only the multiplier is raised from £2 to £8. Thus, supposing a loss of 75 carats, which would reduce 375 to 300 (300 x 300 = 90,000 x £8), we obtain a total value of £720,003.
"Allow me briefly to compare the Nizam diamond (uncut 375 carats, cut 370) with the historic stones of the world. The list usually begins with the Pitt or Regent, the first cut in Europe. When the extraneous matter was removed in unusual quantities, it was reduced to 136¾ carats, valued from £141,058 to £160,000. The famous or infamous Koh-i-noor originally gauged 900 carats; it was successively reduced to 279 or 280 (Tavernier) and to 186¼ (= £276,768) when exhibited in Hyde Park; its last treatment has left it at 162½ carats. Then we have the Grand Duke's or Austrian, of 139½ carats (= £153,682); the Orloff or Russian (rose cut) of 195 (193?) carats; and the Abaïté, poetically called the 'Estrella do Sul' (Star of the South), weighing 120 carats. The 'Stone of the Great Mogul,' mentioned by Tavernier, is probably that now called the Daryá-i-noor: it weighs 279 9/16 carats, and graces the treasury of the Shah. The nearest approach to 'The Nizam' is the Mattan or Laudah diamond of 376 carats. Experts agree to ignore the Braganza, whose 1680 carats are calculated to be worth £5,644,800: the stone is kept with a silly mystery which makes men suspect that it is a white topaz.
"And now to notice the diamond diggings of India, and especially of Golconda, their ancient history and their modern state. I will begin by stating my conclusions. Diamonds have been found in the Ganges Valley: they are still washed as far north as Sambalpúr, and in the Majnodi, an influent of the Mahanadi, on the Upper Narbada (Nerbudda), on the line of the Godaveri and on the whole course of the Krishna. The extreme points would range between Masulipatam and the Ganges Valley; the more limited area gives a depth from north to south of some 5º (= three hundred direct geographical miles), beginning north from the Central Provinces and south from the Western Gháts, a breadth averaging about the same extent, and a superficies of ninety thousand miles. A considerable part of this vast space is, I need hardly say, almost unexplored, and the sooner we prospect it the better. The curious reader will find the limits laid down in the 'General Sketch,' etc., of British India, by G. B. Greenough, F.R.S.
"The history of the diamond in India begins with the Maharabháta (B.C. 2100). The Koh-i-noor is supposed to have belonged to King Vikramaditya (B.C. 56), and to a succession of Moslem princes (A.D. 1306), till it fell into the hands of the Christians. Henry Lord's 'Discovery of the Banian Religion' quaintly relates how 'Shuddery' (Sudra), the third son of Pourvus (Purusha), 'findeth a mine of diamonds,' and engenders a race of miners—this is going back with a witness, teste Menu. At what period India invented the cutting of the stone we are yet unable to find out; the more civilized Greeks and Romans ignored, it is suspected, the steel wheel. The Indian diamond was first made famous in Europe by the French jeweller, Jean Baptiste Tavernier (born 1605, died 1689), who made six journeys to the Peninsula as a purchaser of what he calls the Iri (hira).
"Tavernier's travels are especially interesting to diamond-diggers, because he visited the two extreme points, north and south. He began with 'Raulconda,' in the Carnatic, some five days south of Golconda (Hyderabad), and eight or nine marches from Vizapore (hodie Bijapur). In 1665 the diggings were some two hundred years old, and they still employed sixty thousand hands. The traveller's description of the sandy earth, full of rocks, and 'covered with coppice-wood, nearly similar to the environs of Fontainebleau,' is perfectly applicable to the Nizam's country about Hyderabad. The diamond veins ranged from half an inch to an inch in thickness, and the precious gangue was hooked out with iron rods. Some of the stones were valued at two thousand, and even at sixteen thousand crowns, and the steel wheel was used for cutting. He then passed on to the Ganee diggings, which the Persians call Coulour (hod. Burkalún), also belonging to the King of Golconda. They lay upon the river separating the capital from Bijapur. This must be the Bhima influent of the Krishna, and the old jeweller notices the 'corracles' which are still in use. The discovery began about A.D. 1565 with a peasant finding a stone gauging twenty-five carats. Here, we are told, appeared the Koh-i-noor (nine hundred carats), which 'Mirzimolas,' or 'Mirgimola,' the 'Captain of the Mogols,' presented to the Emperor Aurungzeb. The sixty thousand hands used to dig to the depth of ten, twelve, or fourteen feet, but as soon as they meet with water there is no hope of success. Tavernier then records the fact that the king closed perforce half a dozen diggings between 'Coulour and Raulconda, because for thirty or forty years the yield of black and yellow had given rise to frauds.' The Frenchman's last visit was to 'Soumelpore' (Sambalpur), 'a town of Bengala, on the river Gowel,' a northern affluent of the Mahanadi. The season for washing the diamantiferous land began in early February, when the waters ran clear; other authors make it extend from November to the rainy season; and the eight thousand hands extended their operations to fifty kos up-stream. Gold and the finest diamonds in India—locally called 'Brahmans'—were found in the river-bed and at the mouth of the various feeders.
"So far Tavernier. In 1688 and 1728 the well-known Captain Hamilton ('New Account,' etc.), in his twenty-ninth chapter, treating of 'Maderass, or China-Patam,' describes the diamond mines, evidently those of Partiál in the Northern Circars, as being distant a week's journey from Fort St. George; and he records the fact that the Pitt diamond was there brought to light.
"The precious stone was practically limited to Hindustan and Borneo before A.D. 1728, when diggings were opened in Brazil. At first the new produce was rejected by the public, till it found out that many Indian stones from the New World were sent to Goa, and thence were exported to Europe. Still the general view was not wholly wrong. The specific gravity of the diamond averages 3.6, and the difference of oxide in the crystallized or allotropic carbon does not exceed a third place of decimals. This, however, makes all the difference in lustre; and, even in England, we have lately found out that a small brilliant of perfect water, hung to the ear, for instance, is far more effective than a stone much superior in size but inferior in quality. The public, perhaps, do not remember that as far back as 1868 my study of the formations which bear the Brazilian diamonds enabled me to forecast that the gem would be found in a variety of places where its existence had never been suspected. Thus, to mention no others, they were washed in the Cudgegong river, near Rylston, New South Wales; the Australian Diamond Company failed, however, probably by bad management, to pay its expenses. It has been otherwise with the South African diggings, which began with the Vaal river; the stones are inferior even to those of the Brazil, yet they have reduced the value of the latter by one-third. When another great revolution or other political trouble shall occur, the diamond will recover its old market price.
"'The diamond mines of Golconda,' says Mr. Briggs (ch. vi.), 'derive their name from being in the kingdom of Golconda, and not from being near the Fort. They are at the village of Purteeali (Partiál), near Condapilly, about one hundred and fifty miles from Hyderabad, on the road to Masulipatam.[11] The property of them was reserved by the late Nizam when he ceded the Northern Circars to the English Government. They are superficial excavations not extending ten or twelve feet deep in any part. For some years past the working of them has been discontinued, and there is no tradition of their having ever produced very valuable stones.'
"This résumé is so full of errors that we cannot but suspect that they conceal some design. The historian must have known that the Pitt diamond, one of the finest and most perfect of its kind, was produced at Gáni Partiál, and that the Koh-i-noor came from the so-called 'Golconda mines.' Again, Partiál, on the north bank of the Krishna, some fifty miles from the Bay of Bengal, is only one of many diggings in the vast area which I have before laid down, some being still worked, and the others prematurely, we must believe, abandoned.
"The student will do well to consult that valuable volume, the 'Geological Papers on Western India' (Bombay, 1857), edited by my old friend, Dr. Henry J. Carter. Here he will find detailed modern notices of a multitude of mines. John Malcolmson, F.R.S. (p. 6), treats of the diggings at 'Chinon on the Pennar,' and the Cuddapah mines (p. 6). Of the latter Captain Newbold says ('Geological Notes' p. 375), 'The diamond is found in the gravel beds of the Cuddapah district below the Regur,' the black, tenacious, and fertile soils of Central and Southern India. The same scientific officer, who died too early for his fame, describes (p. 67) the yield of Mullavelly (or Malavilly), north-west of Ellore, as 'occurring in a bed of gravel, composed chiefly of rolled pebbles of quartz, sandstone, chert, ferruginous jasper, conglomerate, sandstone, and Kankar, lying in a stratum of dark mould about a foot thick.' Both these geologists inferred the identity of the sandstone of Central with that of Southern India from the existence of the diamond at Weiragad, a town about eighty miles south-east of the capital. Malcolmson declared that the 'celebrated diamond mines of Partel (Partiál), Bangnapilly, and Panna, occurring in the great sandstone formations of Northern India, as well as the limestones and schists associated with them, exhibit from the latitude of Madras to the banks of the Ganges the same characters, and are broken up or elevated by granite on trap rocks, in no respect differing in mineralogical characters or in geological relations.'
"The Rev. Messrs. S. Hislop and R. Hunter, who visited and described the Nagpur mines, object to this assertion, and endeavour to prove that the 'diamond sandstone of the Southern Maharatta country is a conglomerate, reposing upon the arenaceous beds, which have never yielded the precious stone, nor are there any data to prove that the conglomerate derived most of its materials from that source.' Dr. Heyne contributed an excellent description of the mines of Southern India, especially those of Bangnapilly (p. 689); of Ovalumpilly, six miles from Cuddapah (p. 691); and of others in the Ellore district. This experienced geologist concludes, 'All the diamond mines which I have seen can be considered as nothing else than alluvial soil.' Major Franklin ('Geological Translation,' second series, vol. iii. part i.), who visited the mines of Pannah in Bandelkhand, before Victor Jacquemont's day, makes the diamond sandstone, between the Narbada (Nerbudda) and the Ganges, belong to the 'New Red'—apparently an error. Others have described the diggings east of Nagpur (Central Provinces) as having been opened in a matrix of lateritic grit. Dr. Carter ('Summary of the Geology of India,' pp. 686-691) connects the 'diamond conglomerate' with the Oolitic series and its débris, and he offers (p. 688) a useful tabular view of the strata in the mines of Bangnapilly, described by Voysey, and Pannah or Punna, by Franklin and Jacquemont. The most important conclusion is their invariable connection with sandstone.
"Dr. Carter's volume quotes largely from the writings of Mr. Voysey (Journal As. Soc., Bengal, second Report on the Government of Hyderabad), a geologist who maintained the growth of the diamond as others do of gold: he declared that he could prove in alluvial soil the recrystallization of amethysts, zeolites, and felspar. During his last journey from Nagpur to Calcutta he visited the diamond washings of 'Sumbhulpore,' in the Mahanadi valley, and he describes the gems as being 'sought for in the sand and gravel of the river,' the latter consisting of pebbles of clay slate, flinty slate, jasper and jaspery ironstone of all sizes, from an inch to a foot in diameter.
"We possess fortunately a modern description of the diggings, which, I have said, were visited successively by Major Franklin and by Victor Jacquemont. M. Louis Rousselet ('L'Inde des Rajahs,' Paris, Hachette, 1857), in his splendid volume (pp. 440, 443), gives an illustration and an account of the world-famous mines of Pannah, the Pannasca of Ptolemy (?), a little kingdom of eastern Bandelkhand erected in 1809. The Rajah sent a Jemadar (officer) to show him the diggings, which are about twenty minutes' walk from the town. The site is a small plateau covered with pebble-heaps; and, at the foot of a rise somewhat higher than usual, yawns the pit, about twelve or fifteen or twenty feet in diameter (about one hundred and eighty feet deep). It is pierced in alluvial grounds, divided into horizontal strata, débris of gneiss and carbonates, averaging thirteen metres. At the bottom is the diamond-rock, a mixture of silex and quartz, in a gangue of red earth (clay?). The naked miners descend by an inclined plane, and work knee-deep in water, which the noria, or Persian wheel, turned by four bullocks, is insufficient to drain; they heap the muddy mixture into small baskets, which are drawn up by ropes, whilst a few are carried by coolies. The dirt is placed upon stone slabs, sheltered by a shed; the produce is carefully washed, and the silicious residuum is transferred to a marble table for examination. The workmen, each with his overseer, examine the stones one by one, throwing back the refuse into a basket; it is a work of skill on the part of both men, as it must be done with a certain rapidity, and the rough diamond is not easily distinguished from the silex, quartz, jasper, hornstone (corundum), etc.
"Tradition reports that the first diamonds of fabulous size were thus found, and the system of pits was perpetuated. When one is exhausted it is filled up and another is opened hard by—a deplorable system, as one hundred cubic metres must be displaced to examine one, and around each well a surface of twenty times the area is rendered useless. Moreover, much time is lost by the imperfect way of sinking the shaft, which sometimes does not strike the stone.
"This diamond stratum extends more than twenty kilometres to the north-east of Pannah. The most important diggings are those of the capital, of Myra, Etawa, Kamariya, Brijpur, and Baraghari. The mean annual produce ranges between £40,000 and £60,000—a trifling sum, as the stones are the most prized in the world, and sell for a high price in the country. They are pure and full of fire; the colour varies from the purest white to black, with the intermediate shades—milky, rose, yellow, green, and brown. Some have been found reaching twenty carats, and the Myra mine yielded one of eighty-three, which belongs to the crown jewels of the Mogul. Of course, the real produce must be taken at double the official estimate, despite all precautions; such is the case everywhere. The Rajah has established an approximate average amount, and when this descends too low, he seizes one of the supposed defaulters and beheads him or confiscates his goods. He sells his diamonds directly to Allahabad and Benares, and of late years he has established ateliers for cutting. These are the usual kind, horizontal wheels of steel worked by the foot.
"Evidently here we have a primitive style, which has not varied since diamond-working began. Good pumps are required to drain the wet pits. Instead of sinking a succession of shafts, tunnels should be run along the veins of diamond-bearing rocks. Magnifying-glasses and European superintendence would improve the washing. I need hardly say that the yield would double in the hands of Brazilians or South Africans.
"The precious stone is still brought for sale from the nearer valley of the Krishna to Hyderabad. It occurs, I was assured, in a white conglomerate of lime locally called gar-ká-pathar, which must be broken up and washed. As it is found in a region of crystalline rocks, common sense would suggest tracing up the material to the places where it may have been formed; but this is never done. During our week's visit I was consulted by two Parsee merchants concerning the rudimentary tests of scratching and specific gravity. In fact, at Golconda, where the finest gems used to be worked, no one, strange to say, can now recognize a rough diamond.
"The 'Highlands of the Brazil' (ii. 113) has given a detailed list of the various stones associated with the gem; and specimens of the cascalho, or diamond gravel, the tauá, the canga, etc., have been sent to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by Mr. Swinton. It is advisable to remark that this association has everywhere been recognized. In Borneo we are told that 'the diamond is known by the presence of sundry small flints.' The gem-yielding pebble-conglomerate of India, not usually a breccia, as was proved by Franklin, Newbold, and Aytoun (loc. cit., p. 386), contains quartz and various quartzose formations; garnet, corundum, epidote, and Lydian stone; chalcedony and carnelian; jasper of red, brown, bluish, and black hues; and hornstone, a kind of felspar, whilst 'green quartz indicates the presence of the best stones.' Fossil chert is yielded by the limestone, and the highly ferruginous and crystalline sandstone produces micaceous iron ores, small globular stones (pisoliths?), and almost invariably fragments of iron oxide. Finally, there are generally traces of gold, and sometimes of platinum. At Hyderabad I was assured that such was the case on the Krishna river; but none of my informants had any personal knowledge of washing. Finally, Dr. Carter's 'Geological Papers' convinced me that the sandstones of the diamond area will be found to resemble the itacolumite—quartzose mica slate or laminated granular quartz, of Brazilian 'Minas Geraes.'
"These considerations convince me that diamond-digging in India generally, and especially in Golconda (the territory of Hyderabad), has been prematurely abandoned. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the machinery for draining wet mines was not what it is now; and the imperfect appliances led to the general belief that all the deposits were purely superficial. Doubtless some were in the alluvial soil of the most recent rocks; but M. Rosselet's account shows that deep digging may still be practised to advantage. Voysey also saw the 'sandstone breccia' (diamond conglomerate?) of Southern India 'under fifty feet of sandstone, clay, slate, and slaty limestone.' The Brazilian miners ('Highlands,' ii. 121) have only lately learned to descend one hundred and eighty feet; and they find some of their best stones at the lowest horizon. The Vaal River and other South-African washings, opened in 1868, soon reached sixty feet.
"Immediately about the Golconda Fort the rocks, almost wholly syenitic and granitic, supply only quartz, chalcedony, carnelian, and amethyst; but we had heard of chance diamonds being picked up by the accolents of the Krishna river, and Sir Salar Jung, with his usual liberality, proposed laying a dák for us to Raichor. He was ready, in fact, to meet a wanderer's wishes in every possible way. I presently, however, learned from good authority that only crystalline rocks, like those which we had seen in the Golconda tombs, are produced by this central section of the Krishna, and that itacolumite must be sought elsewhere. Evidently the precious stones have been rolled down from some unknown distance; and to follow the 'spoor' demanded more time than I could command.
"It would be wasting paper to insist upon the benefits of reviving the ancient industry. But India is slow, deadly slow. In her present impoverished state she wants an energetic cultivation of every branch of industry. She does nothing; worse still, she rages against those who advise her to be up and doing. There is a fatal lethargy in her air. England administered like Anglo-India would be bankrupt in a week. And, locally speaking, diamond-working is a necessity. Hyderabad is not a rich country, and her trade is well-nigh nil. But she has coal that wants only a market; and if to the 'black diamond' she can add the white diamond, her future prospects are not to be despised. The first step is, of course, that of 'prospecting,' of systematically reconnoitring the ground, with the aid of a few experienced hands imported from the Brazil and South Africa. If the search be successful, a company or companies would soon be found to do the rest. For me it will be glory enough to have restored the time-honoured 'mines of Golconda.'
"We left at the week's end the country of 'our Faithful Ally,' greatly pleased with the courtesy and hospitality which seem to be its natural growth. And I have a conviction that, despite the inevitable retrograde party of all native states, the codini of the East, the warlike Zemindars, the 'dissolute vagabonds,' the 'Pathan bravos,'and the 'cut-throats and assassins' of the Press, this realm has become, since 1859, the 'greatest Mohammedan power in India.'
"The return journey to Bombay gave time for other reflections. At present our 'enormous dependency, India, the most populous and important that ever belonged to a nation, and conferring a higher prestige on the ruling race than has ever been conferred by any other subject people'—as the judicial Trollope has it—is, has been, and, under present circumstances, ever will be, somewhat neglected by the general public of England. No home Britisher can interest himself even moderately in such a colony; it is too distant, and it can hardly be brought nearer by local parliaments and similar institutions. Although 'taxation without representation is tyranny,' we are not yet prepared to grant, what eventually must be granted, Representative Government. We are therefore driven to seek some other course.
"Again, at Hyderabad, as in India generally, we are living upon a volcano which may or may not slumber for years. See how of late all soldiers have come round to the same opinion concerning the 'scientific frontier.' All, in fact, are tacitly agreed to treat our Empire in India like an army; with supports, reserves, with outposts, vedettes, and similar martial appliances. The remedies hitherto proposed for the natural disaffection of the great native powers, kept as they are in a state of quasi-tutelage, appear to be mere quackeries, likely to do harm rather than good. For instance, to make the energetic Indian prince more powerful within his own jurisdiction would be simply to arm him against ourselves.
"But why not at once admit a certain number of seats in the House of Lords? Of those who claim salutes of twenty-one guns, there are, besides four foreigners, three Indian princes, the Nizam, the Gaikwár, and the rulers of Mysore, who all happen at present to be minors. Amongst those honoured by nineteen guns we find Scindhia, Holkar, and Udepúr; whilst Jaipúr, with twelve others, has seventeen guns. Of course, it would be necessary to limit the number to six or seven, but the hope of eventually rising to the dignity should not be withheld from Chiefs of lower grade.
"Nothing would tend more directly to conciliate the princes of India, and to make them our firm friends, than to admit them to the highest dignity of the Empire—to a House where they would doubtless hasten to sit; where they would learn their true interests, and where they would find themselves raised to a real, instead of a false equality with the ruling-race.
"Mr. Sowerby addressed a letter (April 25th, Broach) to the Times of India, entering into a discussion with me on the Diamonds of Golconda, to which I replied as follows:—
"'The Undeveloped Resources of India.
"'To the Editor of the Times of India.
"'Sir,—Amidst the hurry and worry of departure, I failed to find a spare moment for noticing the valuable communication dated Broach, April 25th, and bearing the name of your distinguished correspondent Mr. Sowerby. The calm and quiet of my present home, the "Minerva," allow me leisure à discretion, and perhaps some of your readers may not be unwilling to see how much may be said on the other side.
"'The Madras Government would have done better to send a few experienced diamond-diggers to the Cuddapah country, instead of "driving the unfortunate diamond-seekers away from the fields;" but we have already heard something concerning the modicum of wisdom with which the world, even in Madras, is governed. Of course, untrained prospecting and ignorant working end, as a rule, in "the most abject poverty, wretchedness, and starvation." Thus we explain the Spanish proverb, "A silver-mine means misery, a gold-mine ruin." The "Garimpeiro," or pick-and-pan adventurer in the Brazil, could hardly keep himself alive on manioc and tobacco, where the wealthy English companies, which took his place, filled their coffers. With the diamond the same is the case, and hence I have been able to draw up a "rose-tinted" account of the diggings in Minas Geraes. Capital and skilled labour succeed where the desultory attempts of untaught men breed nothing but failure. My "projects" are simply to place the true state of the case before the English capitalist, and to enlist the sympathies of individuals and of the public; it would be a profligate waste of labour to attack the vis inertiæ of the Indian Government, and bepreach the caste whose dharma it is to work the machine. It is hardly possible to believe that, whilst the diamond has been found in spots scattered over the enormous area, say, of five hundred direct geographical miles in depth, bounded north by the Mahanadi and south by the Krishna, the mineral resources of vast and almost unexplored tracts, like the highlands of Orissa, should continue to be neglected. And, although an attempt to revive the diamond-mines of Sambalpore resulted, I am told, in failure, my advice would be to begin with the oldest diggings, which, as Tavernier shows, were systematically abandoned after reaching the depth of a few feet, because the owners ignored the art of pumping. Even if the deserted spots be so worked out as not to yield a single gem, they will make an excellent practical study of the formations in which the stone may be expected to occur elsewhere. My principal difficulty will be the utter unfamiliarity with the subject which belongs to the class whose interests are most concerned. The first attempt brings me the following answer: "I will give my opinion of the undertaking when I have studied the details; but Golconda is an ungodly place to invite the British capitalist to." As regards preliminaries, a friend, whose touching modesty induces me to withhold his name, writes to me: "The success in finding minerals and gems to the east of the Gháts is simply a question of prospecting; and the more prospectors the merrier. Why, there must be now ferreting in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, little short of half a million of skilled hands. Geologists are valuable only so far as they indicate formations likely to prove fertile; the real work must be done by prospectors."
"'I am far from thinking, with Mr. Sowerby, that, in a hopeful matter like this, of development of wealth, "native rulers will always take their cue from the paramount power," however rigidly our official seal is affixed to the mineral treasures lying dormant in the land. One of the commonplaces of the theoretical English writer is the exceeding Conservatism of the East: practically I have found the reverse. True, the Bombay "Kumbi" rejected the ridiculous windmills by which the late Dr. Buist proposed to abolish the cheap and all-sufficient water-wheel; and thus he incurred the vehement displeasure of that perfervidum ingenium, who had, they said, a monetary interest in the matter. But show the Hindú and Hindí (Moslem) that the novelty will pay or will save money, and they will adopt it as readily as almost any nationality known to me. What nonsense has been written and read about the failure of Indian railways, because nothing could persuade the Brahmin to ride side by side with the pariah! The truth is, caste remains powerful as long as it pays; in the inverse condition it is a name, and nothing more.
"'But practically it is very little matter whether the Government of H.H. the Nizam take or take not the cue from the groovy and torpid rule which distinguishes British India in this section of the nineteenth century. That it will grant free and liberal concessions I am persuaded. Still, after all, the diamond-diggings in the Krishna Valley, though far-famed for their produce in days gone by, are a mere line of trenches compared with the depths of field which lies behind them.
"'Upon the subject of iron-making in India, Mr. Sowerby and I must agree to differ. Of course, stone may be too rich for smelting purposes; my travels have shown me mountains of iron, in the United States and in South America, which are, perforce, neglected for poorer ores. But the common charcoal-smelted metal of the Brazil is preferred by the English mining companies—for instance, at São João d'El Rei—to stampers of the best English steel; and I fail to see why the same should not be the case in India, when replanting of trees shall become the rule, and when the woods and forests shall be properly managed. In my former letter, however, I alluded especially to sword-blades and other costly articles, in which the least thing thought of is the value of the raw material. Mr. Sowerby asserts, "Not a single attempt has been made to manufacture arms in India on a European scale and on European principles, but it has ended in financial failure." Yet, further on, we are told that a "native smith of Salem makes the best of hog-spears and hunting-knives." European principles, I presume, mean the use of coal, whilst the native preferred charcoal. And why should the Brazil succeed so admirably with its thousands of little Catalan furnaces, and India fail? Evidently the quality of the fuel is, in both cases, the vital condition of success.
"'The specimens of Hyderabad coal shown to me at the Nizam's capital were of thicker formation and of superior quality to the "brown coal of Southern Austria," which is more lignite. And yet the latter pays, even for steamers, when mixed with a certain proportion of Cardiff. There is a demand for coal almost throughout the ancient kingdom of Golconda, where the land has been ruthlessly disforested; and there should, methinks, be little difficulty in inducing the people to abolish in its favour the use of "gober" and other fuels to which their poverty drives them. Here the only want is evidently cheap and easy transport; and with this object I proposed Mr. Worsley's "wooden idea."
"'Your distinguished correspondent throws undue stress, it appears to me, upon the fact that these cheapest of tramways have been known in England for centuries, and have been supplanted by light iron rails. Because the latter are found cheapest in England, argal, as the grave-digger said, they should be adopted in India. But the mine-owners in the Brazil, where wood is hard and abundant as in India, still work with wooden rails; and in both countries the state of the thoroughfares, especially beyond the main lines of traffic, is like that of England two hundred years ago.
"'Upon this subject the modest friend before quoted writes to me as follows:—"I shall be much obliged if you will give me all the information you can about Worsley's wooden railways. I have five hundred acres of excellent timber at a point of the Tasmanian north-west coast, three hundred and fifty miles from Melbourne. I am within two miles of a shipping-place, and I shall have to make five miles of tramway with wooden rails, as is always done in this neighbourhood" (italics mine); "but the ordinary flanged wheels are used, and they drub the rails horribly. I understand your description of the rails, but I cannot gather from your letter to the Times of India what sort of wheels Mr. Cayley Worsley proposes to use. Could you send me a plan, or tell me where to get one?"
"'Mr. Worsley supplied me with a sketch-design of his invention or modification, but as it contains novelties perhaps unknown to Mr. Sowerby, whilst allowing me to put the public in possession of the outline of his scheme, he naturally enough insisted upon the details and the plan being kept secret. I have therefore referred my valued correspondent to the inventor himself, whose private residence is No. 62, Belgrave Road, London.
"'Finally, when Mr. Sowerby roundly asserts "it is rather too late in the day to teach us anything new in making cheap tramways," I presume that he has seen or has read about the "Pioneer," lately invented by my friend Mr. John Hadden, C.E., and exhibited during last December at Mr. Lee Smith's office, No. 6, Westminster Chambers, and the "Economical," belonging to Mr. Russell Shaw. If not, he would do well to master the subject, and then he will probably conclude with me that what has been done in tramways (as in other matters) is a very small part of what remains to be done.
"'Yours, etc.,
"'R. F. Burton.
"'Aden, at Sea, May 18th, 1876.'