'ES
.
I . | 1
ENGINEER
3ARS ON
FIV] NTINENTS
C. O. BURGE MJnst; CE.
LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class
THE ADVENTURES
OF A CIVIL ENGINEER
or THE
UNIVERc r
OF
THE ADVENTURES
OF
A CIVIL ENGINEER
FIFTY YEARS ON FIVE CONTINENTS
BY
C. O. BURGE
MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS
NIHIL EST APTIUS AD DELECTATIONEM LECTORIS QUAM TEMPORUM
VARIETATES FORTUN-SQUE VICISSITUDINES
CICERO
LONDON : ALSTON RIVERS, LTD.
BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN BARS, E.G.
1909
mwi
NOTE
A FEW of the incidents mentioned in this book
have already been described in Dalgetys Review,
the West London Observer, and in the Evening News of
Sydney, New South Wales, the editors of which have
courteously allowed their reproduction.
G749
CONTENTS
EUROPE
CHAPTER I
Dublin Military distinctions Early railways and anecdotes
Daniel O'Connell Irish stories Visit of Queen Victoria
Military displays Irish disaffection Habits and customs of
the forties Theatrical memories Albert Smith Covent
Garden Ball Modern comforts More theatrical scenes
Escape from drowning Archbishop Whately The Dean of
St. Patrick's Anecdotes Cologne Cathedral Holland
Pupilage Throwing a lover downstairs . .
CHAPTER II
Donnybrook Fair More Irish stories A riot dispersed by bayonet
charge Donati's Comet Eccentrics The civil engineering
profession Riot in Dublin Cavalry charge The Tuscarora
and a threatened sea-fight The Yelverton trial The
Serjeant's stories An eccentric Irish M.P. The limbless
Arthur Kavanagh, meeting with him and anecdotes of him
Hunting The Marquis of Waterford A wine party My
first railway accident Paris Colman's Mustard . . 30
CHAPTER III
Parliamentary work in London Anecdotes of Palmerston, Glad-
stone, Disraeli, Pope Hennessy, Bulwer Lytton, Whalley,
etc. Parliament in a roar M. Thiers The O'Donoghue
Degeneracy of the Commons Great men bora in first decade
ix
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
PAGE
of the nineteenth century An Oxford literary breakfast
The Isle of Man Its Constitution and Cats Survey diffi-
culties Plays and operas of the early sixties Overend and
Gurney smash Paris Anecdotes Theatricals Disap-
pointments An Indian appointment Career of comrades A
chain of shipwrecks Loss of the Mysterious The Devil in
Devonshire . . . . . . 51
ASIA
CHAPTER IV
Chance and its effects The broken engagement The Abyssinian
envoys Egypt Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Ceylon India,
first impressions Madras A black panther On horseback
through the jungle A Highland toast The railway engineer
abroad And his wife Approach of monsoon A tarantula
adventure Showers of insects A patent umbrella A fright-
ful catastrophe . . . 73
CHAPTER V
A native visit Travelling Jungle life Staff and postal arrange-
ments Jungle pests The engineer's work Hot winds
Jackals and hyenas Indian rivers Native expedients First
appearance of the locomotive English navvies Afghans . 92
CHAPTER VI
Village amusements and customs A swindler A tiger hunt Big-
game casualties Cheetahs A coroner's verdict Native
English Native characteristics Instance of native devotion
told to author by Lord Roberts Total eclipse of the sun :
marvellous effects The Polish prince An awkward mis-
understanding Antelope shooting The Malabar coast A
celebrated author's visit A tent collapse . . .102
Contents
CHAPTER VII
PAGE
Change of quarters Cholera Stories A famous court-martial
A Hindu's joke on his wives War telegrams The Neil-
gherries The Todas New duties Dacoits A narrow
escape A fearful accident Lord Mayo's assassination
Madras A State ball A legal complication The Taj
Mahal Government Philistinism The Marble Rocks
Delhi Lucknow Cawnpore Characteristics of natives and
of the East Bible similitudes Anecdotes . . . 1 1 7
AFRICA
CHAPTER VIII
Journey home Materialism Missing friends The smallest rail-
way in the world Stories The Tichborae case The
Queen and the Shah of Persia Engineers abroad South
Africa Teneriffe A brilliant Jew Rev. Mr. Bellew
Smoking-cabin stones Meeting Cecil Rhodes The Punch
and Judy show A starving crew The Professor's romance
Table Bay . . . . 132
CHAPTER IX
First colonial impressions A far-reaching mistake Old South
Africa Auction gambling Ostrich farming A mouse-
catching native boy Government methods Routine A
suicide The Karoo Wild beasts One in the pantry
Human wild beasts Kaffirs and Zulus A native gathering
Cetewayo . . . . . . 142
CHAPTER X
Receiving a deputation with pistols Preparations for my murder
Sworn in as a magistrate An escape Trying a murderer
Extraordinary pay-day incident Feeding the men A Zulu
difficulty An unpublished incident of the Boer War A
singular confessional Anecdotes Travelling billiards The
Governor's visit and the lady's-maid A matrimonial raid
More anecdotes Anthony Trollope Up-country customs
and scenery Sir Bartle Frere Comparison between Indian
and South African natives . . . . .156
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
EUROPE ONCE MORE
CHAPTER XI
PAGE
England again Visits Literary work ; editorship of a London
magazine Troubles of an editor Anecdotes Making new
books out of old ones More anecdotes Hansard II
Garrick Club The careworn city George Macdonald
More stories Appointment in Spain . . .170
CHAPTER XII
The Times correspondent Influence of The Times Moorish
customs in Southern Spain Spanish love-making Medieval
customs Anglican worship under difficulties Curious habits
A Spanish letter The wine bodegas A strange story of
partnership Characteristics Brigands Stories A moun-
tain expedition A donkey over a precipice Narrow escape
from death Surveying difficulties . . . .181
CHAPTER XIII
Cadiz A bull-fight Spanish humour Stories Bullets whistling
about my head Escape from drowning A philosopher
A revolt Seville Holy Week The Giralda Moorish
palaces Queen Isabella II An extraordinary forewarning of
death Andalusian scenery Decline of Spain Departure . 198
CHAPTER XIV
Cape St. Vincent Cintra Lisbon The Irish cabman Vigo
Bay of Biscay English scenery A symposium Clerical
eccentricities and anecdotes . . . .217
AMERICA
CHAPTER XV
To the West Distinguished fellow-passengers Anecdote of
Matthew Arnold New York A Presidential Election
Scurrility of the Press Autumn tints Niagara Chicago
Across the Prairies Salt Lake City a quarter of a century
xii
Contents
PAGE
ago The Tabernacle Divine Service Arguments for poly-
gamy Stories The Book of Mormon Wild cats Ameri-
can travel San Francisco Some tall tales Sandwich Islands
Honolulu Samoa Robert Louis Stevenson An Irishman
without a birthday New Zealand . . . .225
AUSTRALIA
CHAPTER XVI
Sydney harbour and city Sir Henry Parkes Anecdotes The
Bush Its fauna Camp life Strange sequel to a wish
Townships A fancy ball An ignorant tutor The greatest
bridge in the Southern Hemisphere Beauty of the site
Great engineering difficulties A catastrophe averted A
critical voyage An exciting episode Yankee stories
Australian holidays An awful railway accident A hurri-
cane Earl of Carnarvon and Lord Brassey . . . 246
CHAPTER XVII
The Scrub A brain wave Floods A drunken deputation The
magistrate's crime An ingenious election dodge Uninten-
tional jokes A drought Australian hospitality Colonial
M.P.'s Outlaws Irreverence Anecdotes Tasmania the
guileless Mount Wellington The strawberry church The
Melbourne Cup Stories The Jenolan Caves The Blue
Mountains and Robert Louis Stevenson A curious proposal
of marriage . . . . 271
CHAPTER XVIII
Horses I have known In Ireland In India An attack by
rats Instances of horses' eccentricities and humour
Horses in Spain and Australia Camels Colonial parlia-
ments A double gas bill Tales The Master of Iniquity
Stewed oysters and the shark Lectures on the Liturgy
An amusing coincidence The shortened sermon Elected
President of the Royal Society of New South Wales Uni-
versity and other lectures . 290
xiii
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
CHAPTER XIX
PAGE
A trip home Modern voyaging Eccentric fellow-passengers
The tropical sea and sky Italy and Switzerland Germany
Macbeth in Berlin Queen Victoria's death Effect in
Colonies Small weather Changes at home . . -305
CHAPTER XX
A burial at sea The returned Scotch crofter My murder frus-
trated A haunted railway station A transplanted Baptist
The magnificent resources of Australia Home at last
Conclusion . . . . . . 316
xiv
ILLUSTRATIONS
Hawkesbury Bridge, N.S.W Frontispiece
Bellary, India Facing page 1 1 8
The Marble Rocks, Jubbulpore . . . . 128
Cape Town and Table Mountain . . . . 140
A Room in the Alcazar, Seville . . . . 212
Farm Cove, Sydney Harbour 246
Fitzroy Falls, N.S.W 2 66
Hobart ... 286
ADVENTURES
OF A CIVIL ENGINEER
EUROPE
CHAPTER I
Dublin Military distinctions Early railways and anecdotes Daniel
O'Connell Irish stories Visit of Queen Victoria Military dis-
plays, Irish disaffection Habits and customs of the forties
Theatrical memories Albert Smith Covent Garden Ball Modern
comforts More theatrical scenes Escape from drowning Arch-
bishop Whately The Dean of St. Patrick's Anecdotes
Cologne Cathedral Holland Engineering pupilage Throwing a
lover downstairs.
THE life of a railway engineer most of whose
career has been spent in the wilds, naturally pre-
sents a series of incidents largely of an adventurous
character ; moreover, it is more studded with these
than that of others whose avocations or inclinations
lead them abroad, soldiers, sailors, and members of
other professions, and those following commercial pur-
suits abroad are chiefly in towns, where human nature
is to a great extent in full-dress, and where there is a
certain amount of similarity to home life and conditions.
The big-game slayer generally confines himself to his
own exciting subject, but the railway engineer has to
make the best of an ordinary life in the wild jungle,
veldt, or lonely bush, making things comfortable, by
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the construction of railways, for the people who follow
him, which done, duty calls him still further into the
earth's wildernesses to repeat the process.
Light, or what is considered to be such in the mid-
winter of the British Isles, was first seen by the
author of these notes in Dublin, when the thirties and
forties of the last century met.
The first two decades of a man's career, when the
preparatory drilling and arming for the battle of life
and all its vicissitudes are going on, are seldom interest-
ing, and I shall, therefore, pass over these with the
speed of a motor-car, but without, I hope, its self-
assertion, its dust, and its noise. The furthest I can
go back, as far as personal memory goes, in impressions
of my progenitors is to those of my paternal grand-
father, who died during my early years at a great age,
retired from the Army many years before. He had
belonged to the yist and 83rd Regiments. I remember
very little about him except his always wearing a swallow-
tailed coat as a day dress in even then old-fashioned
style, with tight trousers and a great bunch of seals
hanging out of his fob. Naturally, as my grandfather's
prime belonged to the eighteenth century indeed, the
life of his father, my great-grandfather, may have ex-
tended back to Queen Anne's time he adhered to old
ways. I do not know if he was distinguished, though
his services corresponded in time with the great Napo-
leonic wars. He left no record, not even if he was
mentioned in despatches, which distinction in Welling-
ton's time, trifling as it appears to us, was very
sparingly bestowed, and valued accordingly. Not as
now, when military and naval honours have been so
cheapened that it must be a work of art to avoid them,
and the star-bespangled bosoms of modern heroes have
become so crowded that a distinguished officer himself
Europe
told me that room would soon have to be found on
warriors' backs to sustain their decorations.
It has always seemed also extraordinary to me, though
belonging to a military family, many of my nearest rela-
tions having been, or being now, in the Army, that it is
only almost within living memory that titles and dis-
tinctions have been granted for other than political or
warlike services. Of course the slaughtering of one's
fellow-creatures is often unfortunately necessary for the
defence of others of them, but without the existence
of the equally noble callings of physicians, engineers,
and others, preserving and creating instead of destroy-
ing life and property, there would be nothing to defend.
Even when the fountain of honour began, later, to flow
outside the favoured circle, the first to feel the refresh-
ing baptismal stream were largely brewers and distillers,
to whose operations, if teetotallers be right, fatalities
are as much due as to those of the soldier. Long ago,
Cicero, that most modern and common-sensible, if I
may use the word, of the ancients, made the same com-
plaint. Scions of royalty are generally trained for one
of the fighting trades ; why not for those of peace ?
There has been recently an effort to put things right in
this matter of dubbing professional men attached to
the Army and Navy Surgeon-Captain, Engineer-Lieu-
tenant, and so on ; but this, though doubtless well
meant, appears only to intensify the evil ; honourable
callings are not made more honourable by the burden
of double-barrelled mongrel designations, half of which
are altogether inapplicable. The introduction of the
triple and quadruple expansion engine into steam
navigation has had a more potent influence in these latter
times than anything else by cheapening transport, in
adding to the comfort and happiness of millions of
human beings, and in warding off death and starvation ;
3
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
yet the names of the engineers who originated and per-
fected this invention are practically unknown, while but
I have wandered enough.
To return to my grandfather. He would never enter a
railway train, that new-fangled invention of those days.
To be blown up by a shell on the field of battle was
something, but the possibility of being scattered to pieces
by the bursting of a glorified tin-kettle was too much
for the old veteran ; and indeed locomotive-boiler
explosions were not infrequent in those early railway
days. He was unlike the courageous old woman of
those days who had ventured into a train for the first
time. After a dreadful accident in which she was un-
hurt but much shaken, she calmly asked the guard who
had come to assist, When was the train going on again.
She was so much astonished at the general violence of
the whole journey that the sudden shock of the accident
did not seem to her anything beyond the ordinary state
of things. Many stories were rife then, especially in
Ireland, of the consequences of the novelty. An old
man travelling by rail for the first time, was greatly
perplexed as to what should be his first steps. He
determined he would see what others were doing, and
he followed up, to what appeared to him to be a hole in the
wall, a smart up-to-date-looking young woman. She
happened to be going to a place called Maryvale, so she
said to the clerk inside, " Mary Vale, single." Quite
confident now, the old man approached the hole and
said, " Cornelius O'Brien, married ! " At first there
were no such things as fast non-stopping trains, they all
stopped at every station. When the more modern
system was introduced, and an express train at Broadstone
Station, Dublin, was about to be started, a porter came
along the platform shouting in stentorian accents : "This
thrain stops nowhere."
4
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Let us consider for a moment what England was, as
regards transport, before the railway era. In 1700 there
were very few roads and canals ; in 1800 things were
somewhat better, as fair roads and canals existed, but
even with these it took sixty hours to go from London to
Edinburgh, as against little over eight now. And it must
be remembered that these older journeys would have
meant also a great deal of fatigue if taken through
without a halt, the passengers sleeping in jolting coaches
and sitting up all the time. Most travellers, however,
broke their journeys at inns, and they probably took
generally twice or three times the time mentioned to
reach their destination, even if not stopped by highway-
men, whereas the traveller over the same distance now
arrives as fresh almost as when he started.
Roger Bacon, in the fourteenth century, predicted
that " carriages would move without horses and ships
without sails," but this was only a prophecy. Solomon
de Caus, a Frenchman, in 1641, proposed working
carnages by steam, and so worried the authorities of
the day that they shut him up in the mad-house of
Bicetre, so that the madness of one century is the sense
of another.
Savery later, James Watt in 1759 and again in 1784,
Cuquot in France in 1763, Moore in 1769, Evans in
America in 1773, Murdoch in 1784, and Symington in
1786, all were feeling their way to a workable loco-
motive but without success. Murdoch had actually
constructed one, and he was experimenting with it on
the high road when it got away from him and proceeded
alone at a rapid pace. The Rector of the neighbouring
parish was the first man to meet it, puffing, as he thought,
fire and brimstone, and, thinking it to be the devil him-
self, fled into the fields and nearly died of fright.
Meantime, rails had been introduced for horse-drawn
5
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
vehicles, and Richard Trevithick, who was the real
inventor of a locomotive, finished in 1 80 1, which could
draw a load, exhibited one in London on rails in 1808.
He was a man of singular genius, but of a character
and temperament which wholly unfitted him for follow-
ing up and bringing to a successful issue the several
ingenious inventions of which he was the originator.
Others followed, but George Stephenson, who usually
has the credit of the invention of the locomotive,
originated little of it, but had the sense to combine in
"The Rocket," the first really successful machine, the
suggestions of others, and to avoid the defects in previous
engines which he soon saw were fatal to success. He also
had that dogged determination and self-confidence, in its
best sense, in which his predecessor was so deficient. It
must be remembered that the idea of making a vehicle go
by forcing its wheels round, as in the locomotive and
motor-car of the present day, was quite unfamiliar to
the men of those days, so much so that Brunton, in
1813, constructed an engine with legs, the propelling
action being similar to that of an animal. After the
machine, however, had walked a few yards, she exploded
for all the world like a burst bubble company, leaving
only a few worthless assets and two or three dead people
around.
This perplexity about wheels was put an end to by
Stephenson, and finally, in 1825, the first public railway
was opened from Stockton to Darlington, he being the
engineer, the first of our special craft.
Public attention does not, however, appear to have
been attracted in any great degree to the matter till the
Liverpool and Manchester Railway was finished in
1830, and even then, and for some years after, the
general public had not the slightest idea of the future
development of railways.
Europe
Look through the writings and letters of Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Southey,Landor,De Quincey, Leigh Hunt,
Lytton, and others of the time, and there is scarcely a
word about the new means of transport which was to
have such an effect on civilization, though a great part
of their literary work was later than 1830. In that
splendid combination of humour and eloquence, Sartor
Resartus, published about that time, Carlyle speaks rather
contemptuously of the " Liverpool steam carriages."
Even in the forties, railways were still such a novelty,
at all events in Ireland, that I remember my grandmother
taking me as a great occasion for a few miles' trip in a
train. Who does not know of some little child taking
in with its whole soul some new impression, never to be
forgotten, with its wondering eyes perhaps one of the
most beautiful things in this world of beauty ? There
are, no doubt, germs which touch the mind as well as
those affecting the body, and possibly one entered then
into my small brain which led me, many years after, to
dedicate my life's energies to the design and construction
of some of the great highways of modern days, in many
lands. For it must be remembered that, crude and
inadequate as the locomotive was at first, it was, of all
inventions before or since, that which, as all far-seeing
men well understood, was to influence most not only
material, but moral and intellectual progress. Surely
Ruskin was wrong in declaiming against railways, for if
they destroyed some elements of beauty, millions of people,
on the other hand, have been by their means enabled to see
the loveliness of Nature and Art, and to gain, by greater
intercourse, access to minds of other men from which
otherwise they would have been debarred.
I may relate here some more early railway stories.
The Eastern Counties line, now the Great Eastern and
one of the best-managed railways in the kingdom, was in
7
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the old days just the reverse, the slowness of the trains
being proverbial. A friend of a director's remarking
that the line was the first one built, the latter replied,
" Well, no, it was one of the early ones, but not the first."
u But I can prove it ; your trains are mentioned in the
first chapter of Genesis, where it is stated that c God
made everything that creepeth upon the earth.' " An
old woman was travelling on the same line with her son,
and the guard, collecting tickets at the end of the journey,
objected to his half-ticket, alleging that he was over the
age-limit and should pay full fare. " But," said the
mother, " he was all right when we started, but your
train was so long a comin' that the lad has grow'd
since."
Much passenger travelling was done in pre-railway
days, and for some time after, by canal as well as mail
coach. I remember what were called " fly-boats," which
carried a great number of passengers, with handsomely
fitted up cabins and towed by a team of horses. A
great speed was attained, and the wash on to the canal
banks following the boat was very great. Dublin and
the river Shannon and many other inland places were
thus connected. People, especially in the country parts
of Ireland, were so ignorant that I remember, long before
through tickets were thought of, hearing an old woman
asking, at a country booking office, for a ticket to
America. Possibly she thought that the train would
land her there.
The first railway station ever built Westland Row,
on the Dublin and Kingstown Railway was within
a mile of our house. This was not the first railway,
however, but the one or two lines constructed in Eng-
land before it had no stations, in the present sense
of the word, the passengers getting up from and down
to the road side, as in the case of the mail coach. It was
8
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a considerable time after the introduction of railways
before travelling by road in private carriages by the
wealthier classes was abolished. They hesitated for a
long time to travel in vehicles in which they might be
brought into contact with their tradespeople, commercial
travellers, etc., and for some time only made use of them
to send their servants and luggage. When they did use
them personally they had their private carriages loaded
up on railway trucks and sat in them. But in 1847,
a countess travelling with her maid in this way was
nearly killed by her carriage being set on fire by an engine
spark while going at full speed. The maid jumped off
and was severely injured, and, the train drawing up at a
station, the mistress was rescued. The incident put an
end to the practice. The late Queen did not travel by
train until seventeen years after the first railway was
opened, and the Duke of Wellington, who was present
at the first railway accident when Mr. Huskisson, the
prominent politician, was killed, never entered a rail-
way train after that until a few years before his death,
some twenty years later, when he was obliged to do so
in travelling from London to Windsor in attendance on
the Queen. I remember one of our boyish excitements
in connection with the new method of travelling was to
slip through the railway fence and put on the rails four-
penny pieces, which have since been superseded by
threepenny bits. After the train had passed over these
they were expected to be flattened into sixpences, with
the object of getting more tops or toffee for them. This
practice could not be, in principle, distinguished from
coining or passing bad coin, but I do not think that we
thought of that. The commercial speculation by which
50 per cent profit was hoped for was not, however, on
the whole, a success, many of the coins being struck
away and lost in the ballast.
9
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
One of the early railways was worked by air, and was
located close to Dublin. A tube was fixed between the
rails, and the leading carriage (for there was no engine)
was attached to a piston within the tube, the air in front
being exhausted by a stationary steam engine at one end
of the line. The train was, in this way, sucked along the
rails. The railway was on a steep grade, so that the
return journey was effected by gravity. I frequently
travelled by these trains, which went at great speed, but
the working was found not to be so economical as by
the locomotive, so that the system was abandoned in
favour of the latter.
One of the earliest things I remember and I mention
it to show how far back memory can go, for it happened
about sixty-four years ago, and I still have the scene
vividly painted on my mind was being taken by a nurse-
maid to Merrion Square in our neighbourhood, and
mingling in a shrieking and howling crowd. Above, in
a window balcony of one of the houses, addressing them
in loud tones, was a stout, clean-shaven, red-faced man
with a bloated face. I remember the scene as if it were
yesterday. This was Daniel O'Connell, who was
described by Disraeli as probably the greatest popular
orator that ever existed.
To show the changes in customs which have taken
place since that now far-off time, I have a shadowy
recollection of a young aunt's wedding, the festivity,
for some reason, taking place at our house, when a
yellow chariot hung on high springs, such as we now
see only in old engravings, took away the married pair.
It had four horses with postilions riding one of each
pair, an equipage never seen now except in royal state
processions. A recollection of a more comical incident
occurs to me, one that perhaps would never occur out
of Ireland, and not even there now. A stately old lady
10
Europe
who might have been one of the reigning beauties
before the Union, when Dublin, with its parliament,
was more the seat of Irish rank and fashion than ever
it has been since, was sitting opposite to me at my
father's table. I suppose that I was staring at her,
wondering at the great contrast between her now closely
wrinkled face and her light brown glossy hair, so ill-
matched, when suddenly, looking at me intently, she
put up her hand, and pulling off her whole head of
hair, flung it into the air. As the idea of such a thing
as a wig was then absolutely unknown to me, I got a
great fright, greatly wondering what was going to
happen next, perhaps a similar operation with an arm
and possibly total dismemberment. I may say that it
was quite a usual thing then for old people of both
sexes to conceal the devastations of time by wearing
wigs, though, as the device hardly ever deceived anyone,
the fashion was curious.
The entry of the young Queen Victoria with Prince
Albert into Dublin took place in 1849 a g reat excite-
ment, for no sovereign had visited Ireland for nearly
thirty years. We had seats in a friend's window from
which to see the royal procession. The Queen, then
about thirty years of age, had a slight figure, and the
Prince of Wales, now King Edward VII, was a small
boy dressed in Highland costume. At night the city
was illuminated, but not as such displays are exhibited
now with brilliant devices in gas, for this illuminant
was chiefly limited to street lamps, private houses
generally using oil lamps and candles. There was no
plate-glass, and to the centre of each small pane, twelve
to eighteen to each window, an ordinary tallow candle
was fixed. No pane was without its light, for other-
wise the glaziers were considered to have an unwritten
right to throw stones and break the offending pane.
ii
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
Self-interest rather than excess of loyalty was, no doubt,
the actuating motive. Candles and oil lamps, chiefly
the former, were, as a rule, the only indoor illumination,
and a pair of silver snuffers on a tray was indispensable
in every living-room. The former was like a large
pair of scissors with a sort of box on one blade which
was the receptacle for the wick cut off. One of the
youngsters' practical jokes of that time was to fill the
box surreptitiously with gunpowder, and watch the
result when some timid person would use it.
Dublin was a great place for military displays, there
being a large garrison in view of possible rebellion, for
revolution was not only in the air in those days, but in
some foreign countries had come down very much to
the ground. The Queen's birthday, but much more
notably the anniversary of Waterloo, then well within
the memory of most people, was always celebrated by
a review and sham fight on a large scale in Phoenix
Park, and the military uniforms being much more
gorgeous than in these days, it was a magnificent sight.
All the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war
with none of its miseries were there. We used to go
in my uncle's open carriage, from which, like all others,
the horses were detached during the fight. My father
only kept a single-horse closed brougham. The great
feature was the cavalry charges delivered with swords
flashing, and at such speed and ever increasing roar
right up against the line of carriages, that it was almost
impossible to conceive that the troops could draw up
in time to avoid overwhelming us. The pedestrians
around us could not stand it, but fled. Nevertheless,
we longed for repetition. This is a curious tendency
of the human mind, and no doubt accounts for many
a desperate deed, such is the fascination of danger. I
know of a small boy who quite recently longed to be
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taken on to an open foot-bridge under which enormous
express trains, at perhaps seventy miles an hour, would
pass. These would so greatly frighten him temporarily,
with noise and smoke, that he would cling to his nurse,
crying frantically, and yet next day he would beg to be
taken again.
The Waterloo sham fight was abolished when, in 1854,
we went into alliance with the French at the commence-
ment of the Crimean War, so as to avoid hurting their
feelings, but later generations have no idea of the hatred
and jealousy of foreigners, with the spirit of the pre-
vious generation still in us, which prevailed even in the
forties. One Englishman could beat any three French-
men, and the chief reason for the three Frenchmen's
existence was that they should be so thrashed. Foreign
cookery consisted of the treatment of vile compounds of
snails and frogs ; foreign manners were superficial, and as
for religion where it existed at all it was a mass of gross
superstition and ignorance. There was little difference
between French, Germans, or Spaniards they were all
equally contemptible foreigners.
Talking of the strong Dublin garrison, the Govern-
ment used to make it appear to be still stronger by
marching regiments backwards and forwards, to and from
the several barracks within and on the outskirts of the
city. Ireland was certainly disaffected then, and perhaps
went a little too far in shooting landlords, etc. ; but it is
odd that in years when these and other agrarian crimes
were rife, the average criminality of the country was not
abnormal, nor greater than that of Great Britain at the
same time, showing that the homicidal impulse tends
to maintain averages, though breaking out in a special
direction, so that when landlords and their agents are
shot other people escape. I recall an agrarian murder
trial during which the married men of the jury, who
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
comprised most of it, each received, anonymously, a
neatly packed bandbox containing a widow's cap. Even
if the senders could be traced, no legal case could be
made out that this delicately polite action meant anything,
though the jury thoroughly knew what would happen if
an unpopular verdict was returned.
I spoke just now of the magnificence of the military
uniforms which the necessities of the subsequent Crimean
War put an end to. It impressed us children, as another
uncle, in an infantry regiment, who was home from India
used to stay with us, and we had a near view when he
dressed for a levee or other state function. The shako
was very tall, splaying out at the top like a flower-pot in
defiance of all principles of gravity, and with a ball at the
top. It must have been difficult to hold on. Both it
and the scarlet swallow-tail coat were plentifully trimmed
with gold lace, and gorgeous epaulettes covered the
shoulders, while a stiff high patent-leather collar, black
and shiny, ftearly choked the wearer. It must have been
as difficult to fight in such a rig as for a peacock to dance
a hornpipe.
I remember seeing the first Duke of Cambridge,
brother of George IV and the father of the Duke whom
the present generation remembers, reviewing some troops
in the old Linen Hall Barracks in Dublin. He was very
gorgeously attired, and being an old man he looked
every minute as if he were going to choke, with the high
black stock within the high upstanding and richly laced
collar of his scarlet coat. The private soldier was very
differently clad. The cloth of his coat, which was also
swallow-tailed, was coarse and of an ugly brick-dust
colour, while the trimmings were of common white braid.
He had, however, in common with his superior officer,
to wear the stiff black choke band inside the collar or
facings of the coat. It was feared that when the old
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Brown Bess was abolished, and the rifle became the
ordinary weapon of all infantry instead of being limited
to the rifle regiments, the distinctive dress of the officers
might cause them to be picked out. Hence the change
to practical uniformity which now exists.
Talking of clothes, these, as regards men, were always
in those days of broadcloth of decided colours black,
dark green or blue, or brown generally called snuft-
colour. Grey tweeds, such as are mostly worn now,
were unknown. The Quakers, now indistinguishable
from others, wore drab cut-away coats with turned-up
collars and broad-brimmed stiff hats, quite conspicuous
in the streets. Another distinction from the present day
was the general knowledge of horses and riding, owing
to the recent introduction of railways. It is the
exception now, except among hunting men and stable
boys.
The early Victorians are now, ever in increasing num-
bers, passing on their way to dusty death, so that to a
very large proportion of my readers some of the man-
ners and customs of the forties, to which I shall presently
come, will be of interest. I am continually reminded
of this fact, for the Institution of Civil Engineers, to
which body I have had the honour to belong now for
over forty years, sends out in its quarterly volume of
transactions, sandwiched among more cheerful matter,
short obituary notices of members passed away. Few
of these volumes appear without the name of some
friend or colleague of old, and they not only recall to
my memory some of those vanishing early Victorians,
but, Egyptian fashion, seem like so many skeletons
drawn around my longer feast of life, from the ex-
pectant bitters of youth to the walnuts and wine of
satisfied old age. These serve also to remind me that I
too, with all my deeds and misdeeds among the latter,
15
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
perhaps, the perpetration of this book shall appear
some day in this fatal record.
There has been a great change in the sixty years in
manners, customs, and dress. As to the former it is
difficult to make a comparison, though there is no
doubt that among the higher classes manners have
deteriorated. It is difficult to compare, because the
mixture of classes is so much more general now than
then. Distinction was more marked, and it was especi-
ally so in Ireland. There were the " county " people,
consisting of landowners, peers, and others, with some,
perhaps, of the Anglican clergy, and occasionally pro-
fessional men who were connected with or related to
them. Then there was the great professional class-
clergy, barristers, and the higher rank of medical men and
solicitors, officers of the Army and Navy and Civil
Service ; thirdly, there were the second class of medical
practitioners and dentists, dissenting ministers, auc-
tioneers, merchants, shopkeepers, etc. ; and lastly, the
labouring class. It was said of an elderly cousin of
mine, who, though in poor circumstances, was descended
from a distinguished statesman who was Lord Deputy
of Ireland 350 years ago, and whose full name he bore,
that he went round leaving P.P.C. cards on his friends
when his son entered a profession or business of some
kind, assuming that, after that declension from his
order, they would receive him no more. But this sad
degradation to some sort of peaceful occupation had
partially set in before that time, and was accentuated
by the employment, in the forties, of the great land-
owners as directors of the new railways, by which much
of the opposition of their class to this useful invention
was placated. If managers of the common carrier's
business, why not sellers of the goods carried ? The
first step had been taken.
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Facilis descensus Averno.
Sed revocare gradum
Hoc opus, hie labor est.
And so we have now blue-blooded barbers and high-
born haberdashers (limited), who are not above adver-
tising 48. i id. blouses to be struggled for, at summer
sales, by the dear little innocents who would think 53.
altogether beyond their means.
By the way, though this is not a record of the adven-
tures of my ancestors, having plenty of my own to
write about, it might be related that it was the daughter
of an ancestor of this elderly cousin and mine who was
the only woman Freemason. This was about 150 years
ago, when overwhelming female curiosity led her to hide
herself in an old grandfather's clock, from whence she
could hear and see the ceremonial of a masonic lodge.
On discovery she was there and then initiated. I
joined this ancient body nearly fifty years ago, and have
belonged to lodges in Ireland, India, South Africa, and
Australia.
The race of brilliant after-dinner talkers, what the
French call raconteurs, men who could tell a good story,
or even a bad one, well, seems practically to have ceased
out of the land. It is probably due to the rise of
the modern newspaper, which provides thoughts and
opinions ready-made for everybody, saving them the
trouble of thinking, and therefore of such talking as is
the outcome of thought. Certainly laziness of mind is
the inevitable result of cheap newspapers.
The gulf between the classes I have mentioned was
as deep and, except for an occasional bridge thrown
across, as impassable as that between Lazarus and
Dives, while nowadays, for good or for evil, the bridges
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
are numerous and spacious. It is, no doubt, owing to
this change that the decline in manners appears to be so
great, as one is comparing those of an exclusive caste
with those of a more mixed one.
In the old days one would never see a gentleman
smoking, not only in the presence of ladies, but even
where they were likely to come. Again, at that time,
meeting a lady with lifted hat to converse, a gentleman
would not put it on again until he either passed on or
received special permission to do so, nor would he fail
to rise and open the door for a lady leaving the room.
Not paying a formal call on his hostess within a few
days after an entertainment, however small, was un-
pardonable, and, in the absence of a reasonable excuse,
the offender would never get an opportunity of amend-
ment. These things, accompanied by an indescribable
distinction of manner, are now as extinct as the Python-
omorphic Saurian, but there was an outward gracious-
ness and lovingkindness about them which is a real
loss to our modern time.
But there were sets off to this polish. Men's talk
was often interlarded with oaths, and even very old
ladies, who were really of a previous generation, used
sometimes to season their remarks with an occasional
mild "begad." Snuff-taking has also happily dis-
appeared. I remember when there were shops in
which nothing else was sold. At hotels, ladies were
never seen in a public dining-room (always called coffee-
room I do not know why), and it was necessary to
engage a private sitting-room at considerable expense
when they travelled. Social degradation would also
follow ladies using hansom cabs or omnibuses. Smok-
ing was the exception rather than the rule, and pipes,
except among the working classes, were unknown. It
is curious that modern dress and customs have largely
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come from below. Trousers, the lounge coat, caps and
short hats, pipes, and the stable-boy dress in which rank
and fashion now ride in the park, illustrate, to alter an
old adage, the homage of imitation which the classes often
pay to the masses.
The three-bottle man was a practically extinct species in
my time, but living specimens were known. I remember
on the occasion of a ball at our house, a guest who had
arrived with his coat all muddy being politely ejected,
he having previously dined with unnecessary intensity.
Two or three decades before, such a man would have
been only laughed at, and invited again. Duelling had
become so far extinct that it was a subject for ridicule,
and when that stage is reached, the end is near. One
of our neighbours, a Major F , " went out," as it
was called, with an opponent, on what grounds of
quarrel I forget, but it was said that both parties went
by railway to the scene of slaughter, taking return tickets.
I do not remember if any one was injured.
My theatrical recollections go very far back, as my
uncle, holding debentures on the principal Dublin
theatre, the Royal, often gave his sons and nephews
his free admission tickets. Calcraft, a well-known
veteran tragedian of the old school, was the lessee, an
old instance of the actor-manager. I never could
understand this old man taking young parts, which,
however, he did well. There were many tales in con-
nection with the old Royal, which has been long ago
burnt down and replaced. One was of a Juliet in the
tomb scene, who, when lying in the supposed trance,
was seized with an intense inclination to sneeze, the
attempted suppression of which induced the most
obvious and painful contortions, and when all failed,
and explosion after explosion took place, all the more
vigorous from the previous efforts at restraint, the
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
illusion was entirely destroyed, and the whole of
the tragic business immediately following was utterly
ruined.
In a performance of Hamlet, in which, it will be re-
membered, the ghost does not appear between the first
and the end of the third acts, the actor of that part left
after his first scene, and putting a cloak over his
costume, went outside to have a drink with some others.
Shortly after, however, the Hamlet happened to burst a
blood-vessel, and there being no one to replace him,
the manager announced to the audience that another
play would be substituted. Meanwhile the ghost, all
unknowing, and letting time slip by, while getting a
little bit mixed with overdoses of whisky, looked at
his watch, hurried back, and seeing two actors on the
stage just about the time he was due, went on " in
complete steel," only to find, too late, that another play
was in hand, in which the unexpected appearance of a
ghost was altogether disconcerting.
No doubt at the later interview with the manager he
found
" No reckoning made, but sent to his account,
With all his imperfections on his head."
The visits to the old Royal gave me the opportunity
of seeing many of the great singers, instrumentalists,
and actors of the time I now speak of, and later in the
early sixties. These were Grisi, a stately creature, and
Mario, a graceful actor, but with a second-rate voice,
Tamburini, Lablache, Alboni, Catherine Hayes, Cru-
velli, and later, Titiens and Guiglini, the latter being
fat and awkward, but with a divine voice. He was
eccentric, to put it mildly, and his favourite amusement
was to fly kites out of the hotel window which, as it
was opposite our office, we could see. Charles Mathews
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was the most vivacious and versatile artist I ever
saw on the stage. A true artist, who was the character
he represented never himself. 1 shall never forget a
piece in which he took an irresistibly comic part, the
audience, in one scene, being in roars of laughter when,
suddenly, the news of the unexpected death of the
father of the character was brought to him. The
sudden change from boisterous comicality to poignant
grief, when he bowed his head and cried, " My father,
my poor father," was the very perfection of acting. An
inferior artist would have made the scene ridiculous or
maudlin.
Wieniawski, whose compositions are so well known
now, was then making his first appearances as a violinist.
He used to be nicknamed " Wine or Whisky," and
had an uncertain temper, as is often the case with the
great, and consequently generally spoiled, geniuses. 1
remember seeing him in the middle of a solo suddenly
shake his shaggy locks about his head and leave the
stage, nothing inducing him to return. What angered
him no one appeared to know. Charles Kean and his
accomplished wife, previously Miss Helen Tree, I met
at the Dean of Ossory's in Kilkenny, where he was
giving readings, and 1 also saw him act in the celebrated
Shakesperean revivals at the Princess's Theatre, London.
These were the first instances of dressing the plays
elaborately with fine scenery and really accurate cos-
tumes. Kean's father, Edmund, an unlearned genius,
was before my time, but the son was a cultivated
University man. He had a harsh voice, and as an actor
was far inferior, I believe, to the father. Subsequently,
in London, Dublin, and in Paris, I had the opportuni-
ties of seeing and hearing Sims Reeves, Viardot-Garcia,
Ronconi, Lucca, Trebelli, Nilssen, Dolby, Sembrich,
lima de Murska, and others. The latter, whom I heard
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
on her first appearance at Covent Garden, made an
extraordinary impression, but after a few years' triumph
seemed to have disappeared, and I believe died in
poverty.
Sainton, Oberthur, Vieuxtemps, Piatti, Halle, and
Remenye, are among the instrumentalists of the past
who pass through my visions of the bygone days ; while
as to actors, the list would indeed be long. I shall
only mention, besides those referred to elsewhere in
these memories, Paul Bedford, Robson, Phelps, Fechter,
Buckstone, Farren, Salvini, Sothern the elder, Helen
Faucit, Madame Celeste, Miss Glyn, the elder and
younger Delaunay, Got, Coquelin the elder, Lefebre,
Rose Cheri, Theresa, Judic, and Desclee, the latter,
without doubt, the most perfect actress I have seen on
any stage. Most of these are mere names to the
present generation, some of them no doubt forgotten ;
but there is not a performer of the present day who
does not owe to them the great debt of raising the
standard of the several arts in which they so greatly
excelled.
One of the great attractions in London of the fifties,
I think, was the lecturing of Albert Smith in the
Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, on an ascent of Mont Blanc.
He was a wit of the day, and one of Punch's earliest
contributors. The lecture relating his adventures was
most amusing. Another place, hardly ever missed by
the visitor, was the Globe in Leicester Square. It was
an immense hollow globe lighted within, the spectators
seeing the various countries' geographical features, etc.
on the inner side from a circular gallery. The building
in which it revolved was in the middle of the square.
There were two Italian operas always going in the
season, the old Covent Garden and the old Her
Majesty's, both since destroyed. At the former Pro-
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menade Concerts and masked balls were sometimes
given. There used to be a celebrated conjurer named
Anderson, who called himself the Wizard of the North.
He on one occasion hired Covent Garden for a masked
ball, and when the fun was fast and furious a fire
occurred, reducing the whole edifice to ruins. I forget
if any persons were burnt, but I remember a sensa-
tional story of the time which affected to relate the
adventures of one of the thirty pieces of silver for
which our Saviour was betrayed. All sorts of mis-
fortunes were supposed to befall the several owners
of the coin all through the centuries, until the history
was brought down to date, when finally, one of the
dancers at the Covent Garden ball, in a dispute with
his partner, threw the fatal coin to the ground in a
passion. It became red hot and burnt the floor, and,
as a consequence, the whole theatre. Truly a fine
thread upon which to hang a whole series of Hall
Caine-Corelli blood-freezing tales.
Though I have just been anticipating theatrical ex-
periences far ahead of the forties, before I leave that
epoch it would give perhaps the most vivid impression
of the changes which have occurred since if I give a
short list of the things, which we habitually use or
suffer from now, and which were practically unknown
then, taken at random : Steel pens, envelopes, note-
paper, lawn-tennis, motor-cars, bicycles, ironclad ships,
screw steamers, electric telegraph, sleeping and dining-
cars, electric light, telephones, lifts, large hotels, foun-
tain pens, garden parties, afternoon tea, tramways,
photographs, postcards, perambulators, spring mat-
tresses, plate glass, bitter beer, torpedoes, breech-
loaders, revolvers, wooden pipes, competitive examina-
tions and cramming, art colours, society papers,
illustrated magazines, hypnotism, Christian science,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
millionaires, massage, volunteers, typhoid, diphtheria,
airships, suffragettes, Salvation Army, tinned goods,
fish - knives, goloshes, waterproofs, gas heating and
cooking, sewing - machines, threepenny bits, florins,
Venetian blinds, spiritualism, weather forecasts, posters,
moustaches, wood pavements, hospital nurses, lady
helps, limited liability, Victorias, Cook's tourists, dys-
pepsia, parcel post, appendicitis, hot-water bottles, and
bacilli, and yet we got on very well without these.
In 1851 we all went to the great Exhibition of that
year in London, the first ever held.
It was on the occasion of this visit to London that
I saw the great Duke of Wellington, then in his eighty-
second year. It was at a review at the Horse Guards,
and though a good deal bent in figure through age, he
rode easily at the head of the troops at the side of
Prince Albert. It is characteristic of the Duke, whose
dispatches make good reading, that in them the word
glory never appears, though duty does so often.
I think it was then that we saw that great actress
Madame Vestris with Charles Mathews at the Lyceum,
one of the few theatres of that time which still survives,
when a play called The Cham of Events was running
a marvellous performance in eight acts, and much talked
of. At that period the performances began about 6.30,
and there were generally three plays a curtain raiser,
the main serious piece, and a farce, all lasting till near
midnight. Half-price admitted at 9 p.m. those who
could not go through the whole. There were no
posters then, playbills in shop windows advertised the
performance. In Dublin, gallery audiences were fre-
quently noisy, and when the Italian operas were occa-
sionally performed, the University students used to
give gratuitous musical displays in the gallery, between
the acts, with a regular conductor, and very good they
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often were. Favourite singers on the stage, when called
before the curtain after the opera, were sometimes re-
warded by handsome presents let down from Olympus
by a wire arrangement.
I remember one occasion when some of these students
dressed up a figure made of straw, which was taken
above, and after a " got up " row in which the cries
" Throw him over " were prominent, the dummy was
pitched headlong over in such a direction as to hurt no
one below. Great, of course, was the consternation of
the general audience before the joke was made apparent.
A well-known Dublin character of that time was a
man who, as regards his first cognomen, was nicknamed
Paganini, so called because he was deformed, having a
crooked neck giving him the appearance of the great
violinist of that name in the act of playing his instru-
ment. He was once in the hunting field, being an
enthusiastic sportsman, when, being thrown from his
horse into a ditch, some villagers came to his assistance,
and seeing his head all awry, tried to make matters
right by pulling it with all their might into what they
naturally believed was its right position, while poor
Paganini, half stunned, kept shouting out, " Born so,
born so ! "
An adventure of this period is hardly worth mention-
ing except that had it turned out differently none of the
following ones of this narrative would ever have hap-
pened. I was nearly drowned bathing alone. Though
a good swimmer, a strong tide was carrying me out to
sea, and it was only by clinging on by the barest hold to
seaweed and barnacles that I managed to save myself,
when just on the point of exhaustion. The thoughts of
those terrible few minutes are still present to my mind.
This was at a lonely spot at the foot of the wild
promontory of Howth pronounced Hothe (why in
25
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the name of common sense are the names of so many
places like this Cirencester, Reading, etc. not spelt as
they are pronounced ?)
I was confirmed, about this time, by the great Arch-
bishop Whately, the famous theologian and writer of
books on logic, under which so many of us sit and
groan at school. He was the author of many lighter
things for instance, conundrums, one of the best of
which was this : If the Devil lost his tail, where would
he go for a new one ? Answer : To a public-house
where bad spirits are retailed. At a dinner which he
gave to the Irish bishops, one of whom the Bishop of
Cork happened to be in a silent mood, the Archbishop
finding the wine not circulating briskly, said, " Cork !
you are stopping the bottle." The reply was, "True,
but your Grace is drawing me out."
A clerical notability then was Pakenham, Dean of St.
Patrick's. He used to be noted for the magnificent way
in which he pronounced the benediction, letting each
word, uttered with a splendid voice, reverberate through
the vast Cathedral, the echo of one word being allowed
to sound before he would follow with the next " The
Peace of God which passeth all understanding "
etc. etc. People used to go specially to hear it. He
also used to deliver the Commandments in such an im-
pressive and authoritative voice, with the last word of
each ringing through the building, that it was impossible
to conceive of anybody going out and committing
murder, for instance, within two or three days at least.
Pakenham was a brother-in-law of the great Duke of
Wellington, but they were not friendly. It was said
that when the Duke was Prime Minister, the Dean
wrote to him saying, " One word from you would make
me a bishop," to which the Duke, in his laconic fashion,
replied, " My dear brother, not one word, yours sin-
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cerely, etc." I heard Spurgeon also at this time a
wonderful preacher with a most musical voice.
Dublin is unique in the possession, from the Middle
Ages, of two cathedrals, for though that might be said of
London now, anciently London and Westminster were
not joined as at present. In the days I speak of, choral
services were limited to cathedrals and Chapels Royal, and
adult singers in the Dublin cathedrals, St. Patrick's and
Christ Church, were of higher standing than most of
their class, many of them being doctors of music and
noted composers. This was, if I may call it so without
irreverence, the hat-smelling epoch of the Church of
England.
In 1856 my father, who held a good position in the
Irish Civil Service, died in London, on our way back
from the Continent, where, for his health, he had gone.
On this trip 1 had the opportunity, having halted some
time in Cologne, of seeing the great cathedral there,
then without its mighty towers, since added, but what a
glorious Gothic interior ! the first of such magnitude
that I had seen. The impression has never left me, and
whenever I had the chance 1 went in among the occa-
sional kneeling figures, while the gorgeous ceremonial,
so wholly different from the bald proceedings of our
Anglican service at that time, led me to think of these
things from a new point of view, possibly the com-
mencement of a taste for liturgical study which, many
years later, 1 entered upon. The magnificent gloom of
the interior, the grey quiet of the place, coming in from
the glare, heat and noise of the busy street, the appar-
ently endless complexity of the lofty vaulting of the dim
roof, all make a deep and solemn impression on the-
mind.
We came down the Rhine by water a tedious jour-
ney, saddened by the care of the invalid to the Hague
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
and Rotterdam. Holland made another impression,
with its flats, its innumerable windmills, its dog-har-
nessed carts with their brilliantly polished brass milk-
pails, its mirrored windows, and its quaint old-time
buildings.
It became necessary, soon after my father's death, for
me to choose, or have chosen for me, some blameless
way of making my living ; and my uncle, the first one
mentioned in these pages, who was consulted, selected
the former alternative, holding that, as a rule, every-
one should select his own career if possible, having
thereby the best chance of succeeding in it. I had the
usual classic education of the period, and was also well
grounded in French. I had no taste for the Army,
and, probably owing to the sights on my travels,
already fairly extensive for a youngster, and the en-
gineering exhibits in Hyde Park in 1851, I chose
decisively the calling of civil engineer, a choice which
I have never since regretted. There were practically
no engineering technical colleges at that time, so 1
was articled to a well-known engineer of that period,
Mr. G. W. Hemans, a son of the famous poetess, who
had a large railway construction practice in Ireland and,
subsequently, to a lesser extent, in England. As I
had not sufficient means of my own to pay the entire
premium required, my uncle advanced me the balance,
which I was to repay by monthly instalments as soon
as I began to earn something for myself. When that
time came later, I paid the first month's sum, but on
presenting myself punctually with the second, to my
astonishment he refused to take it, and decided to
forgo the rest, as he said he only wanted to try me.
I believe if I had been a day late, I would have had
to pay the whole, to the uttermost farthing. He was
like some others I have met, extremely economical in
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small things, but generous in larger matters like this,
which was all the kinder, for though a rich man, he
had a large family and a considerable establishment to
keep up. According to a tradition of the family, he
seems to have changed his habits when, many years
before, he had married and settled down. He had
kept more hunters than he could well afford, and drove
his drag and four, which was supposed to be a typical
extravagance of those days.
There was a story of him that, one night at the
Dublin Theatre, where there was a long flight of stairs
from the main entrance to the dress circle, a cavalry
officer had been staring too hard at a lady under his
escort, so that my uncle pitched the offending warrior
from the top to the bottom. I never heard that a duel,
which was the usual thing in such cases then, followed.
To us young ones, who knew only the well-ordered
establishment of B where, though comfort pre-
vailed, the expenditure of every pound was considered,
the stories of these earlier episodes were sufficiently
surprising.
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CHAPTER II
Donnybrook Fair More Irish stories A riot dispersed by bayonet
charge Donati's comet Eccentrics The civil engineering pro-
fession Riot in Dublin Cavalry charge The Tuscarora and a
threatened sea-fight The Yelverton trial The Serjeant's stories
An eccentric Irish M.P. The limbless Arthur Kavanagh, meeting
with him and anecdotes of him Hunting The Marquis of Water-
ford A wine party My first railway accident Paris Colman's
Mustard.
THE art and mystery of civil engineering were now
to be driven into me, in the first instance by
monotonous tracing of drawings and plans for in 1857
there were no mechanical means of reproducing these
such as exist now ; designing bridges and railway
stations, as to which also there was not then the experi-
ence to lean on that we have at the present time ; the
initiation into the use of the apparently complicated
surveying instruments and their use ; and the assistance
given to full-fledged engineers in the setting out and
construction of railways and other works. These latter
operations brought me for the first time into contact with
Irish country life.
It was the period of the so-called "Donnybrook Fair"
Irishman, with his swallow-tail coat, small clothes, and
worsted stockings and battered tall hat, now never seen
off the stage. So-called, I say, because Donnybrook
Fair, long since abolished after an existence of 500 years,
was held in a Dublin suburb near the site of the present
Dublin Horse Show, and was a sort of Saturnalia of that
city's riff-raff. No typical Irishman was to be found
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there, nor would they, in general, be found in the Dublin
streets, any more than one would find Hodge in the
Strand or a Highlander in Glasgow.
Ireland, at least as I knew it fifty years ago, was so
different from any other country on the globe as to its
conditions and inhabitants, including others besides the
battered hat variety, that, perhaps, I should have included
it in my title as a sixth continent, especially as I see that,
while I write, New Zealand with its scant history and
scattered population, has, in its cocksure youth, dubbed
itself a Dominion. The Irishman takes life easily.
With all his political grievances, his poverty and shift-
lessness, he gets more value out of life than his
immediate neighbours, thanks to his greater cordiality
and aptness for intercourse. Nothing is truer than
Emerson's description of the Englishman, " This Islander
is himself an Island," while the Celt realizes much more
readily the truth of De la Rochefoucauld's maxim,
"Pour bien jouir de la vie, il faut glisser sur beaucoup de
choses."
There was, at the time of which I speak, more of the
spirit of adventure and less calculation of the conse-
quences. People were much more easily amused, and
above all, there were more eccentric people, modern
civilization tending to drive us all into the same groove,
which perhaps in making life more comfortable, makes
it much less lively. John Stuart Mill, in his book on
Liberty^ enlarges much, and with regret, on this
modern tendency. An instance of the first-named
quality occurs to me. Several of us assistants were
engaged in the north of Ireland planning out a new
railway, and at dinner one evening a dispute arose as to
the width of a dock down south at Limerick, one of the
disputants declaring that he could jump across it. A bet
against this was at once made, and to decide it, the next
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train to the south was taken. The jump, which was
across a deep walled dock in which failure to reach the
other side would probably have been fatal, was made by
the light of the moon, and a return to business made as
soon as possible. It was the jumper on this occasion
who lost the favour of his chief by two actions. One
was by throwing a too importunate tailor out of the
window, by which the unfortunate tradesman was some-
what injured, so that our friend, like Touchstone in the
play to a limited extent, had undone one tailor at all
events. However, being only the ninth part of a man,
no doubt he fell lightly. By the way, on this principle
it ought to be legal to pay only one-ninth of a tailor's
bill. The other faux pas committed by our comrade
was marrying a milkmaid.
The greed of money-making and the worship of what
Ruskin calls the Goddess of " Getting on," were not so
evident then as now, though even earlier Heine had
written
" But everything is out of gear now,
Such push and struggle, care and dread ;
Of God on high we have no fear now,
And now below, the Devil's dead."
As a probably necessary accompaniment to this absence
of care and greed there was, I think, more feeling for
others. I remember well seeing, on a Sunday afternoon,
about a hundred young men reaping a poor widow's
field of corn for nothing, thus giving up their day's rest
to help her, the priest looking on approvingly. This
was not unusual.
Flax is grown largely in these northern counties, and
the girls engaged in the culture used sometimes to lie in
wait for us and suddenly emerge with a lot of wisps
of flax, upsetting and entangling us so that we were
absolutely helpless, then only setting us free, with much
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laughter, by our paying what was called our footing, all
round.
The Irish colleens in those days used to go about
usually barefooted, but on market days, when entering
the village, they would sit down and put on boots for the
occasion, combining a doubtful addition to their comely
appearance with a certainty of torture from the unaccus-
tomed wear, from which, on leaving the town, they lost
no time in relieving themselves.
It was the crinoline period of which I am now treating,
and even these unsophisticated damsels were not
untouched by the craze, as we found that the wire
used for our railway fences occasionally took to dis-
appearing in the night time, it being useful material for
constructing these fearful and wonderful garments.
The scene shifts to the west, where, in a little country
town, I was assisting the District Engineer in the con-
struction of a railway extension, a man to whom I was
much attached. Poor Tom G , he was hopelessly,
immeasurably in love, so much so, that having no one
else to confide in, and having a very unreserved dis-
position, he told me a good deal about the absent
divinity. Long, long after, in a distant colony, he was
again my colleague, then married. The divinity, who
was a beautiful woman, so adored him that she
never spoke of him by name. It was always " he,"
and she seemed to think that Tom, being everything to
her, " he " could only mean to others what it did to her.
Alas ! it was to end soon. His work lay in the rough
interior where there was no accommodation for women,
and she lived in a distant town where, getting typhoid,
she died amongst absolute strangers before her husband
could reach her, no one knowing more than her name.
Country dentistry was primitive then. There was no
regular dentist in the town, and having an aching jaw,
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I went to a man who used to be a sort of substitute for
this necessary evil. He laid me flat on my back on the
floor, and then placed the four legs of a chair around the
middle of my body. He then sat on the chair, and
holding my forehead down with his strong left hand,
dragged out the offending tooth with a pair of carpenter's
pincers. I remember it.
But to return to the more amusing events of our
western town, and to what I shall speak of as the hot-
copper incident. Not what might be called the post-
whisky interpretation of that epithet, but connected
with actually red-hot pennies and halfpennies.
In love though he was, Tom was ever ready for a
joke. In the little corner hotel where we stayed, a
candidate for Parliament had hired rooms facing our
street, we occupying those round the corner. He, on
one occasion, was addressing from a window the crowd
below, in that flamboyant and jocular Milesian style
which alone seems to relieve the intolerable dullness of
the British Parliament, and which, if banished to Ireland
by any Home Rule Act, would make our English legis-
lature as serious as a suet pudding. While this was at
its height, we were roasting pennies on a frying-pan and
throwing them out, and the politics and the pelf, occa-
sionally much allied, became serious rivals. Realizing
without knowing it Horace's dictum, Interdum vulgus
rectum videt^ the crowd rushed round the corner to pick
up, and drop again as quickly, the fiery coins, and the
competitive struggles were as exciting as a suffragette
tussle.
I do not remember whether it was in connection with
this particular election, but it was from the safe eminence
of these hotel windows that I saw, on the occasion of a
political riot, a real charge of troops with fixed bayonets,
in which they really meant it. Below us, armed with
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pitchforks, shovels, scythes, and shillelaghs, and throw-
ing heavy stones freely, was an angry and howling
crowd, threatening an obnoxious politician who was
well guarded. Matters becoming serious, and the stones
taking effect on the troops, they were ordered to charge.
Even from where we were, the sight of the cold glitter-
ing steel in serried ranks lowered for business was
terrible. No one who has not seen such a thing can
imagine what it is like. On came the red-coats relent-
lessly, the frantic shouts and screams being almost
deafening. I have heard it said that, in actual warfare,
unless the charging ranks hesitate, or are greatly broken
by opposing fire, even disciplined troops cannot stand
before an advance like this. Needless to say that, after
a moment's hesitation, the crowd turned and fled, scat-
tering up lanes and alleys, the troops hastening their
pace and disappearing round a corner after the largest
remnant.
It was in 1858 that the great comet of Donati was
seen, and some of my older readers may remember
what a glorious sight it was. It extended over nearly
a half of the visible heavens, breaking through, while
intensifying, the magnificent monotone of the midnight
sky, a glory among glories, but greatly vaster. This
brilliant visitor could be seen for several weeks, then
gradually faded away. At one part of its progress the
tail, which fanned out considerably, crossed the bright
star Arcturus, which could be seen plainly through it.
The period of this comet, I believe, is about two thou-
sand one hundred years, so that its previous visit to
the neighbourhood of the Solar System was about the
time of the first Punic War. It is already over fifty
years on its return to space. When it comes next, what
changes k may see in the things and thoughts of
this little globe ! We shall probably have a two-minute
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radium-car service to Mars, and tastes and ideas will
be so altered that Homer will have nodded himself into
oblivion, while Shakespeare and Milton, perhaps even
Bernard Shaw, will be unmeaning names. Goodness,
that wonderful repository of all knowledge, only knows.
A prominent man of the neighbourhood where we
saw this magnificent sight was the Hon. J. P , who
may serve to illustrate some previous remarks I made
about the eccentricities of the older time. He used to
dress in black velvet with knickerbockers long before
these latter garments were used by boys or men, or
even before the name was known, and scarlet silk stock-
ings, the whole being crowned with a slouch hat and
white feathers. At the receptions held at his fine man-
sion the lights were so dim that one could hardly find
one's way about the various rooms.
Before I leave the west, I must mention an incident in
the construction of the railway on which we were engaged.
The farmers were chiefly tenants from year to year, and
consequently, by the strict letter of the law, which, how-
ever, was never enforced, were entitled to no compensa-
tion for the land required for the railway. One man,
enraged at what he thought to be insufficient payment
for the disturbance, as it was called, sought to create
another sort of disturbance by preventing the entry of
the navvies. He stood at a gap in his boundary fence
defying them and flourishing a reaping-hook in his
uplifted hand, crying out : " The first man of ye that
inters here, I will give him the contints of this." How-
ever, our party of powerful navvies had not much
difficulty in disarming him, and a bloodless entry was
effected.
Before transferring my narrative to new scenes, I
might break it here by stating that sufficient experience
had by this time been acquired to enable me to judge
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of the calling I had chosen, and which had led me to like
it more and more. The Charter of the Institution of
Civil Engineers defines the profession as " the art of
directing the great sources of power in nature for the
use and convenience of man, as the means of production
and of traffic in States both for external and internal
trade." But surely the mere material progress here
referred to is only part of the ends and aims of the civil
engineer. To intercourse between man and man and
country and country, so largely fostered by the efforts of
the engineer, we owe much of the moral and intellectual
progress of mankind. The invention of printing was
essentially a mechanical engineering feat, and history
tells us what it did. It simply unloosed the tongue of
humanity, and gave the opportunity of exchanging
thought for thought in such a way as to light up all
the subsequent centuries. Then as to methods of
physical intercourse leading up to railways, what inter-
national jealousies and hatreds have been softened by
the closer mutual knowledge of nationalities which they
have produced. The progress is certainly slow, but
may we not see in the multiplication of such works
substantial steps towards more tolerance, more hesitation
in undertaking devastating wars, and a greater approach
even to an imperfect imitation of that Divine Love which,
as described in the last words of Dante's great poem,
moves the sun and all the stars.
Since the time of which I am writing, the profession,
like some others, has got into grooves to the advantage
of the work, but perhaps to the disadvantage of the
worker. Frequently at that time schemes for harbours
and lighthouses, railways and canals, designs for loco-
motives, iron ships, etc., might be found in the office of
one great engineer. Nowadays, the man that knows
much about one of these things knows practically nothing
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about the others, and a narrow specialism cramps and
fetters the intellect. Utilitarianism, claiming the best
work from the man who thinks of nothing else and who
presumably does it best, has insisted on specialism, and
we must give way ; but if essential in business, can we
not banish it from our general study ? After all, the
smatterer, if he smatters well, is the best company of all.
I remember meeting a German literary specialist once
and there are many among that nation who may serve
to illustrate this. I became acquainted with him at the
library of the British Museum, at which, whenever I was
in London in the intervals of my absences abroad, I was
a fairly constant reader. Before I left England he was
studying there the myths prevalent in Greece in the time
of Alexander the Great. Seven years after, returning
from India, I found him again at the same place, still at
the same subject. Again, after a long sojourn in South
Africa, there he was, grown fatter and greyer, almost like
Falstaff " blasted with antiquity," but still pounding
away at his myths. When I came back from a further
absence he was gone, and whether he ever reached the
publication of the book for which alone he lived, I never
knew, or, if that great consummation had been reached,
whether any living soul was much the wiser for it.
Surely here was "much throwing about of brains."
As someone has prayed, " From the man of one idea,
good Lord, deliver us."
After the west-country work, and at intervals between
various engagements in different parts of Ireland, a good
deal of time was spent at the Dublin office. It was
during one of these times I witnessed a riot in that
city. There was a public entry of one of the lord-lieu-
tenants, and the scrimmage occurred in College Green,
which, by the by, is not, as an Irishman should say,
a green at all at all, but a street. It is opposite the
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buildings of Trinity College at that time a stronghold
of Orangeism, which the University students considered
as loyalty, as against Irish disaffection. Through the
display of flags or emblems I forget by which side
and inflamed by that spirit in which the Irishman ever
regards fighting, more as an end than as a means, the
students got into violent collision with the populace.
The viceregal procession had passed with all its bravery
and its military escort, and the disturbance arose through
the display of flags by the spectators, so that order had
to be restored by the mounted police. The din was
terrific, and the orders of the officers could hardly be
heard above it. These orders were, however, to charge,
and on came the troopers with their drawn swords
flashing in the sun. The collegians, who were assumed
to be the aggressors, made a brave show of resistance,
but the police laid about them freely with their weapons,
and one of the students was killed and many were
wounded.
It is almost unthinkable now, but the police, both on
foot and mounted, as well as the postmen, wore at that
time tight swallow-tail coats and tall hats, and in
summer white linen trousers, but the combination of
such a costume with what was virtually a cavalry charge
did not seem absurd to us then, when practically no
other head-gear was known among civilians except the
labouring class.
The unequal fight did not last long, but it created
a great deal of excitement at the time, and the more so,
as the students who suffered most were supposed by
their very opinions to be on the side of authority.
There was in the green, a bronze equestrian statue
of William III, who was considered the very embodi-
ment of Protestantism, and the scrimmage raged around
it. The following night some of the anti-English party
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drilled a hole in the king and filled him partly with
gunpowder, with the object of blowing him up ; and
had not the plot been discovered, the monument would
have become a king of shreds and patches, instead
of remaining, as I believe it does to this day, an
ornament to the city.
It was somewhere about this time that is to say,
in the thick of the American war when the warship
Tuscarora steamed into Kingstown Harbour, close to
Dublin. She was a Northerner, and she was soon
followed by a Southern cruiser, which anchored close
by. Of course, according to the law of nations they
could not fight there nor within a specified number
of miles from the coast, so they could only, if the figure
of speech be allowed, glare at and show their teeth
to each other. The excitement was to speculate which
would get away first, and on the issue of the fight
which, after the definite limit had been reached, was
certain to follow. I remember going on board the
Tuscarora, and being astonished at the sight of the
desperate cut-throat, pirate-looking men some of them
negroes on board. Everything was cleared for fight.
The great Yelverton case, which shares with the
Tichborne trial of later days the fame of being one
of the causes celebres of the Victorian Age, but had more
romantic episodes connected with it, took place in
Dublin about this time, but most of the actors in it,
and of those who excited themselves about it, have
now passed away.
Major Yelverton, afterwards Lord Avonmore, who
had been wounded in the Crimean war, had been
nursed in the Military Hospital near Constantinople by
a Miss Theresa Longworth, one of the devoted band
the first of the kind which had been organized by the
celebrated Miss Florence Nightingale. Subsequently,
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Miss Longworth, who was a wondrously beautiful,
clever, and fascinating girl, alleged that she had been
married to the Major according to the Scotch law in
Scotland and the Irish law in Ireland, the matter being
complicated by the fact of the lady being a Roman
Catholic and the alleged husband an Anglican. The
case before the courts was to establish her position
as his wife, and the evidence was startling as well as
contradictory, the most famous counsel of the day being
engaged on both sides. Perhaps there is no case on
record in which the personal fascinations of one party in
it had so much influence. It was even said that the
judge, who was a bachelor, was in love with the
plaintiff, and that his efforts to sum up impartially were
attended with extreme difficulty. Certainly the jury, to
a man, were carried away, and nearly all male Dublin as
well, the young men putting themselves into the place
of the fair plaintiff's horses and drawing her to the court
and back, while thousands of us left our cards on her to
show our sympathy, at the Gresham Hotel where she
stayed. It was a case of one of Bryon's heroines
" Then had her eye in sorrow wept,
A thousand warriors forth had leapt,
A thousand swords had sheathless shone,
And made her quarrel all their own."
Needless to say, the verdict was given unanimously
in favour of youth and beauty in misfortune, but it was
coldly reversed on appeal by the House of Lords, who
took a calmer view of the facts, and who, it must be
remembered, in justification of the Dublin verdict, had
only the written evidence and the arguments of counsel
before them, and never saw, or came under the distract-
ing personal influence of the fascinating Theresa.
Otherwise, perhaps, who knows ? It is an old story,
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and readers of the Iliad will remember how, when
Helen appeared at the Scaean Gate, before even the
aged Priam and the elders of Troy, which had suffered
so frightfully through her fatal beauty, they declared
that Greek and Trojan alike were blameless in fighting
for such a woman. Homer, unlike the modern novelist,
never describes his heroine, the whole story implies her
fascination. And so let us understand the Irish verdict
in this notable case.
I had the good fortune, shortly after, to see a good
deal of one of the leading counsel in the case, Serjeant
A , in connection with some business, and heard
interesting facts about it that had not come before the
public, and which were told with that Falstaffian
humour, harmonizing with his ample bodily propor-
tions, for which he was noted. Apart from these, his
anecdotes were endless ; but in relating a couple of what
I believe to be his here, at this distance of time, their
exact origin may be possibly misplaced. A similar re-
mark may be applied to some of the stories which follow
in this book.
A priest, who had rather the reputation of not leading
a very strict life, but was a powerful and persuasive
preacher, was holding a mission at a distant town, and
calling at a cabin and talking about his work, one of the
girls said, " O Father dear, we never knew what sin was
till your Riverince came among us."
A well-known professor of Trinity, Dublin, was so
absent-minded that his wife nearly always accompanied
him for fear of any accident or contretemps. One of his
habits was to have only one suit of clothes, which he
wore till they were threadbare before renewal. Once a
friend persuaded him, unknown to his wife, to buy
a new ready-made suit, in which, she being for once
absent, he arrayed himself to attend a meeting of the
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University Senate. After he had left, his wife returned,
and seeing the only clothes, as she thought, that he
possessed, thrown on a chair, the horrible idea came
to her mind that the professor, in a fit of absence
of mind, had gone without any to the meeting. Nor
was she much reassured when both the maid and the
college porter, in answer to her anxious inquiries, said
they did see something unusual about the professor's
appearance when he passed them. Great, therefore, was
her relief when, bursting into the Senate Chamber, she
found her husband clothed and in his right mind.
Talking of eccentrics, I have come across an unusual
number in my long career, but perhaps never so many
as during this Irish period in the various country parts
to which my duties led me. One of these was Alder-
man Delahunty, a Member of Parliament, whom I met
frequently through his being a director of a railway
the construction of which was in my charge. His per-
sonality was very striking. He wore a red, or rather
what used to be called a bag wig only partly covering
his hair, on which, where exposed, he used some inferior
dye, so that when it required renewal, which was fre-
quent, it turned quite green.
He had a most wonderful twinkle in his eye, and
such a way of telling the simplest of his stories, of
which he had many, that Heraclitus himself, the weep-
ing philosopher, would have endangered his sides in
his company.
A Romanist himself, he told us once of a bishop
and parish priest travelling together and, owing to
the crowded state of an inn where they stayed, being
obliged to occupy one room. Before getting into bed
they both knelt down to say their prayers, and the
bishop not liking his subordinate to suppose that he
could be too brief, held on for a considerable time,
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while the priest, thinking that his orisons should not
be shorter than his lordship's, persevered, and finally
they both fell asleep.
As Delahunty told his stories, you could see the
humorous idea contained in them gradually developing
in his rubicund countenance, and breaking out by
degrees all over his face. In the House of Commons,
where I suppose very few now survive that heard him
when he got up to speak, with that irresistible twinkle
in his eye, so suggestive of the coming jokes and
humour which he never could suppress even in that
grave assembly, members would laugh for minutes
together in anticipation. Curious to say, though acting
with the Irish party, he never took much interest in
their chief aims, but was something of an authority on
the dry subject of currency, thinking that if the Irish
one- pound note were abolished, all would be well.
John Stuart Mill was the god of his worship. The
alderman was one of the shrewdest and most kind-
hearted of men. He is long since dead, with " his
flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table
on a roar."
Another oddity was a man who never went to bed,
and lived, notwithstanding, to a great age, not even,
as far as I know, going there to die, like most people.
But perhaps the most remarkable rnan I met, in
one sense, was the well-known Arthur McMorrough
Kavanagh, of Borris, M.P. for Carlow. He was born
without legs or arms, yet used to write, drive, ride,
paint, shave, etc. I can personally testify to the first
three, for I have ridden beside him, seen a letter written
by him, and frequently saw him drive a spirited pair
of horses with the Marchioness of Ormonde of that
day, at whose place, Kilkenny Castle, he was a frequent
visitor. He was an enthusiastic yachtsman, and there
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used to be a story that he owed his life to his bodily
shortcomings in this way. Sharks are well known to
prefer a man's legs as a repast to any other part. Now
Kavanagh was cruising somewhere in the southern seas,
and in a place where these " sea attorneys," as Byron
calls them, abounded, he fell overboard. Instantly a
dozen hungry sharks crowded to the spot, but seeing
a man without legs they retired in disgust, and he
swam away unharmed, for that was one of his accom-
plishments.
In riding, he sat in a sort of box like that used for
children on seaside donkeys, with a skirt round his
stumps, and he actually followed the hounds. Indeed,
he rode from Russia, over the Caucasian Mountains,
to the Persian Gulf. Subsequently, I have seen him
taken in and out of the House of Commons, carried
on the back of his servant. I never heard him speak
there, but I believe that he was the only member who
was allowed to do so without standing. No doubt that
this was one of the most wonderful instances known
of human mastery over adverse physical circumstances.
Less so was the case of Sir J B , Bart., in
the next county, Kilkenny, who had a cork leg which
these contrivances not being so well made then as now
used to stick out awkwardly in riding, and seemed
almost miraculously to miss obstacles in the hunting
field, in which practically nothing stopped him. He
was one of the best billiard players I ever had the cheek
to contend against, and, I believe, met on nearly equal
terms the best chess players of that time.
I mentioned the then Dean of Ossory in an earlier
part of these recollections Dr. Vignoles, at whose
hospitable deanery I stayed occasionally. He was a
perfect specimen of a clerical type now practically
extinct, dignified, scholarly, and courteous, with great
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breadth of mind. He had a passion for curios, and
possessed a silver fork with claws like a hawk's foot and
curiously carved ivory handles, as long almost as a
toasting-fork. This, he said, had been used by Queen
Elizabeth to scratch her back with. Such were the
manners and customs in the spacious times of that
" most dread Soveraigne."
Though I had only a very limited amount of horse-
flesh at my disposal, I was enabled now and then to
follow the hounds with the Kilkenny hunt, which used
sometimes to turn out over three hundred men in
scarlet. Notwithstanding that I have had my share
in nearly every sort of field sports at home and abroad,
including big game, I doubt if anything comes up to the
excitement of fox-hunting. Once I had the rare dis-
tinction of leading the field, for the fox had crossed my
half-finished railway, and its fences, which were too
formidable even for an Irish hunter, blocked the way.
I alone knew of the gaps, hence my temporary leader-
ship. The master, Sir Henry Meredith, was all that a
M.F.H. should be, and was much liked.
Among the boldest riders was Mulholland Marum,
afterwards a popular Irish M.P. In Kilkenny, the
approach to the ancient cathedral of St. Canice and the
still older round tower beside it, was by a steep flight of
steps of great antiquity, much worn by pilgrims of old.
A bet was made that no one would ride down these
steps, which were of considerable height. Mulholland
Marum, knowing his horse, accepted the challenge and
accomplished the feat. A well-known publication wrote
of this escapade
" That great Harum Scarum, Mulholland Marum,
Rode down unharmed, the steps of Kilkenny.
Had his steed fallen down, he'd have broken his crown,
And knocked out his brains, had he any."
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The last words were, no doubt, introduced more for
rhyme than for reason, as it was well known that the
rider was as well equipped with intelligence as with
pluck.
Another Nimrod was one of those rather numerous
Irish landlords of the old days, who were generally in
debt, yet with his house full of guests, he always had a
good mount for his friends, and splendid cock shooting,
of which I had my share. His son, and heir to his
baronetcy, when going up to Dublin, would always
toss double or quits with the station-master for his fare.
Fancy proposing such a thing to an English or Scotch
railway official, or even to an Irish one of the present
day ! How they would stare, and probably look round
for the lunatic's keeper, lest worse should befall.
The south of Ireland was then full of the freaks of a
Marquis of Waterford who had been killed hunting
a few years before. It was said of him that, being
anxious to see the effects of a railway collision at that
early period not as well known as now he tried to in-
duce the directors of the Great Southern and Western
Railway of Ireland to cause two empty trains to meet
at full speed, he paying all expenses, but the directors,
not having the same sporting proclivities, declined.
Subsequently, having some grievance against the com-
pany with regard to what he believed to be exorbitant
first-class fares, he is said to have hired a large number
of chimney-sweeps and paid their first-class fares for
several months, to occupy each one a separate compart-
ment. They were to be in working costume, brushes
and soot and all. This led, as might be supposed, to
the second-class becoming more fashionable, which was
a considerable loss to the company.
I have already said that heavy drinking among the
higher classes had nearly gone out, but there were
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
traces. A party of youngsters took an old deserted
castle a few miles from the town of Kilkenny for the
winter hunting months. They had been one night
into the town at a wine party, where the flowing bowl
flowed freely, and the company became gradually as
Byron, graphically puts it talky, argumentative, dis-
putatious, unintelligible, altogethery, inarticulate, drunk
which might be termed the seven stages of intoxica-
tion. They were totally incapable of walking or riding
home, and when the host was tired of them it was too
late to hire any ordinary trap to carry them. Several
places were knocked up, but the only conveyance to be
got was a dray one of those carts which tip up in
order to empty their load. The driver, seeing the con-
dition of the party, all in a heap on the floor of his
cart, on arriving at the castle gate, and having no one
to help him, simply opened the end door and tipped his
load of men out on the ground, where, with that im-
punity with which Bacchus is said to endow his worship-
pers, they remained in happy slumbers till the fresh
breath of morning waked them up.
The engineering works with which I was connected
in Ireland were of an unimportant nature, more especi-
ally in comparison with the large works abroad with
which I had subsequently to deal. In Kilkenny, how-
ever, where for the first time I was put in responsible
charge, I built a viaduct which was rather remarkable
from its being constructed entirely of black marble, not
for ornamental reasons, but because that material was
the most accessible and cheapest.
My first railway accident happened about this time.
For some time previous, the development of railway
travelling had so far progressed in the first quarter-
century of its existence that the excursion trip had been
invented, and an advertisement induced me and some
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companions to take advantage of one to see Paris,
which, though I had been to the Continent as a boy, I
had not seen. Going by South Wales, and approaching
Swansea Station, we ran bump, smash into a goods train.
Sitting opposite to me with his back to the engine was
a portly old gentleman particularly well upholstered,
and the sudden check to our progress sent me bodily
into this soft cushion. At that period 1 was a slender
youth, as full of angles as a proposition in Euclid, so
that the old man got considerably the worst of it.
" Beg pardon," said I. " Don't mention it," said he ;
and as our carriage was uninjured, we resumed our
positions as if nothing had happened. There were
others, however, in the train who were severely injured,
though nobody was killed.
I was inexperienced in those days, or should have
claimed compensation for shock to system, or some-
thing of that kind, which reminds me of a fellow-
countryman who was hurt in a collision. He claimed
and got compensation for not only himself but his wife,
who had not been injured by the accident. "An 7 how
did ye manage it ? " said a friend. " Shure an' hadn't I
the prisince of mind to fetch her one in the head before
they dragged us out," was the reply.
Poster advertisements, such as we see everywhere
now, even defiling the most beautiful landscapes, were
then unknown, but large printed ones were beginning
to crowd the railway station platforms, though even
these had not been introduced abroad. On our return,
coming from Dover to London, after passing several
intermediate stations, a French fellow-passenger, who
was in England for the first time, exclaimed, " Mon
Dieu ! quel drole de chose, que toutes les stations se nomment
Colmans Mustard!" I shall not mention my impressions
of Paris, for no doubt they were the same as those of
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
hundreds of others visiting in youth that brilliant city
for the first time ; but I must say, having been there
so often since, there seems to have been a great sobering
down of the national character in the fifty years. The
modern Parisian is much more staid and business-like
than of old. The Palais Royal was then full of brilliant
shops devoted to luxurious ware of all kinds, which,
with the bands in the middle of the square and other
attractions, have all disappeared, and apparently have
not migrated to any other quarter.
CHAPTER III
Parliamentary work in London Anecdotes of Palmerston, Gladstone,
Disraeli, Pope Hennessy, Bulwer Lytton, Whalley, etc. Parlia-
ment in a roar M. Thiers The O'Donoghue Degeneracy of
the Commons Great men born in first decade of the nineteenth
century An Oxford literary breakfast The Isle of Man Its
Constitution and Cats Survey difficulties Plays and operas of the
early sixties Overend and Gurney smash Paris Anecdotes
Theatricals Disappointments An Indian appointment Career of
comrades A chain of shipwrecks Loss of the Mysterious
The Devil in Devonshire.
r^HE preparation of plans, etc. for Parliament called
A for much more of the engineer's energies at the
time I am now dealing with than latterly. Railways
were being pushed forward in every conceivable direc-
tion, to the great comfort of the traveller of to-day, and
the plans and estimates of proposed railway bills had
to be lodged in London at the proper office before
midnight on the 3Oth November each year, in order to
entitle them to be dealt with in the following session.
If the lodgment were attempted to be made at 12.1
a.m. on December ist it would be refused, and a year
would be lost. Not properly realizing the amount of
time necessary for engineers to survey lines and furnish
estimates of the cost, promoters often left their schemes
till there was very little time for them, the question of
raising money also causing delay. As nearly every
engineer in the country, competent or otherwise, was
in fierce demand at the same time, large fees, unheard
of since, were flying about, and though the work, day
and night, was strenuous and exciting, it had its due
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
reward to follow. London seemed to us on these
occasions a land flowing with turtle soup and green
Chartreuse, and we began to understand the great cost
of the initial proceedings of getting, or often failing to
get, a railway bill through Parliament.
I remember coming over to London with a large
party, under a temporary employer, for a work of this
kind, for we were to finish our office work in West-
minster, which, by the way, is the head-quarters of
engineering, owing to its nearness to Parliament
House. The express trains in the sixties were nearly
as fast as those of to-day, though much lighter and
less frequent, and of course there were no such things
as sleeping-cars, or refreshments except at large stations.
We were timed by our train to stop two minutes at
Rugby, but this was insufficient for our chief to refill
his brandy flask at the refreshment bar. Like Odysseus,
a man of many devices, on drawing up at the platform,
he shouted to the passing porters a terminological
inexactitude, as we should now call it, to the effect that
a frightful noise had been going on under the carriage
for several miles past, and that he feared something
was wrong. The station-master was summoned, and
directly a crowd of mechanics were under the vehicle
seeking in vain the cause of the trouble, while our
resourceful chief was quietly restoring his flask to a
temporary state of repletion, not destined, however, to
last long.
My original chief was by this time increasing his
English work, and one of his parliamentary schemes
in conjunction with another leading engineer, was that
of the Mid-London Railway, which was to follow prac-
tically the same route as the tube with the almost
similar name " Central London," since constructed. It
was, however, on the same principle as the present
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Metropolitan Railway, close to the surface. The shop-
keepers, however, objected to the temporary interrup-
tion to their business by the opening up of the street,
and also thought that owing to the public being partly
diverted from the footway to the underground line,
they would lose patronage. They forgot, however, as
has since been shown by the construction of the
Central London Tube, that by giving better access
to the street from greater distances, much more
custom would be gained than would be lost through
the local diversion of the traffic. The scheme was
therefore rejected at their instance, and the shops lost
for many years this advantage, while the public now
has the otherwise unnecessary trouble and delay of
going up and down lifts to reach the trains, instead of
having them at the foot of a short flight of stairs. It
seemed hard to us that a work which would have pro-
vided us with fairly lucrative employment for some
years, and, as the subsequent adoption and success of
the Twopenny Tube, on a similar route, shows, would
have been a public benefit, was thrown out, under a
misapprehension, after a lively debate.
Very few of these railway bills, however, were
honoured by a debate, they were mostly left to parlia-
mentary committees, in business attendance on which
I heard many eminent men. Sir William Vernon Har-
court, subsequently a prominent politician ; Sir Edmund
Beckett, afterwards Lord Grimthorpe, of church bell
fame ; and Hope Scott, a son-in-law of Sir Walter,
whose surname he assumed. For his able advocacy
of, or opposition to, railway and other schemes, the
latter was said to be fee'd at the rate of a guinea for
every word uttered. Carlyle, who was then living,
wrote, " Speech is silvern but silence is golden." In
Hope Scott's case it was speech that was golden. It
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
was said, however, that sometimes large fees were given
to parliamentary counsel to retain them, merely to pre-
vent their engagement by the opposition, so that, in
these cases, silence became golden also.
Of course, there were many opportunities also of
hearing the ordinary debates in Parliament on political
subjects of the day through the help of members. In
this way I had the advantage of hearing most of the
high-candle-power political lights of the early sixties
Palmerston, Gladstone, Disraeli, Bulwer Lytton, Lord
John Russell, then, I think, in the House of Lords as
Earl Russell, and many others. Palmerston, who
always dressed in the style of 1830, was a poor
speaker, hesitating and groping about for his words,
but as he generally discovered the right one ulti-
mately, his speeches read admirably in the Times^ where
the pauses were, of course, omitted.
A debate comes to my mind when Mr. Pope Hen-
nessy, a well-known eloquent Irish member of that
time, one of those who were " agin " all Governments,
gave a magnificent oration in favour of armed help to
the insurgent Poles against the tyranny of Russia. It
was a long speech, and to my youthful enthusiasm it
seemed absolutely convincing. The cheers it elicited
seemed to predict an overwhelming majority. The
speaker had words at command, and, as far as fire and
fluency could make it so, it was a great speech. Pal-
merston then got up and hesitated and stammered a
few words of common sense, showing how the proposal
was impossible a halting poor utterance in compari-
son and the motion was negatived, I think, without a
division. Next day, in the Times ^ about twenty lines
were given to Pope Hennessy, while Lord Palmerston
had half a column which read as if the speech were
delivered without a pause or a repetition. At that
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time, the impatience of Parliament at an unduly long
speech was shown by loud cries of " Divide ! Divide ! "
shortened into "Vide, Vide, 'vide !" sometimes so loud
as to drown the speaker's voice. This seems to have
gone out of practice.
Gladstone, whom I also heard in his prime, was, the
exact reverse of Palmerston, voluble in the extreme.
Fluency, however, does not always mean a richness
of vocabulary, often the contrary. The hesitating
speaker often has quite an army of words in his
mind's eye, and the hesitation does not always show
that he has none at command, but rather that he has
too many, from which, while the hearer is waiting, the
speaker is choosing the right one. Hence apparently
bad speeches often read better. Gladstone was a master
of finance and figures, with which he could deal for
hours with hardly a note. He was a man of integrity,
but without those inseparable twin sisters, imagination
and humour, and hence he was deficient in foresight.
It was some years after this that I happened to be
travelling in the same train that took him from Oxford,
where he had been defeated at a general election, down
to Liverpool, to contest that constituency. He looked
haggard and cast down, as well he might be, for Oxford
University was and is the most intellectually blue-
blooded constituency in the kingdom ; but his progress
in the radical direction, afterwards, and probably in con-
sequence, more pronounced, was already too much for
them. Gladstone always pronounced such words as
revenue, and similar ones, with the accent on the second
syllable, in the old-fashioned style.
Disraeli, his great opponent, put more light and
shade into his speaking. It was much slower, and he
brought down the points he wanted to make with great
emphasis. I never saw the House so enthusiastic as
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
when on the occasion of a foreign policy debate some-
body accused the Government, of which he was a
member, of placing England in a position of isolation.
After rebutting the charge, Disraeli said that England
had been many times isolated in European crises for
example, when she stood practically alone in Europe
against Napoleon, and the other nations were cringing
at his feet, and, raising his voice, he said that if such a
contingency were ever to recur, England would again
be found in a similar state of splendid isolation. This,
I believe, was the origin of that now common phrase ;
the House simply rose to him, and the cheers were
so prolonged that it was some time before he could
proceed. Disraeli was unrivalled in answering awkward
questions. The reply, generally fairly long, contained
no information whatever, and sometimes appeared to
leave the questioner more ignorant than he was before.
Many years after, just before his death, I heard of a
most pathetic incident in the course of one of his
speeches, as Lord Beaconsfield, in the House of Lords.
It was not, of course, mentioned in the newspaper
reports. He had proceeded for some minutes, when
suddenly he stopped blank, and after a moment turned
to the peer next him, and said : " What am 1 talking
about ? " Not only the particular argument, but the
whole subject of debate had escaped him, and his
neighbour had to bring it all back to him, in a hurried
whisper, before the speech could be resumed. It was
his last the old fire had gone out, and the incident
illustrated the wane of one of the most brilliant and
powerful intellects of the nineteenth century.
Bulwer Lytton, though better known by his writings
than in politics, was a most fascinating speaker, full of
the most apt quotations, classical and otherwise, and
queer illustrations with which he livened up the most
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prosaic subjects, but his action was somewhat violent.
It was he, I think, whom I heard defining a political
opponent as an honourable member possessing a great
amount of small information. Bulwer Lytton was one of
the earliest of the older statesmen to wear a beard and
moustaches. Lord John Russell, like the much later
politician Lord Randolph Churchill, was always repre-
sented in Punch, the only comic paper of that day, as a
small man ; but in neither instance was this the case,
both being little, if at all, under middle height.
The funniest thing I have heard in the English
Parliament was in a speech by a Mr. George Hammond
Whalley, who was well known, at the time of which
I write, as being under a fixed, and no doubt sincere,
belief that all the mischief in the world was caused
by Roman Catholics, and especially by Jesuits. This
member was a halting speaker, but, unlike Palmerston,
when hesitating for a word generally hit on the wrong
one, and he was never taken seriously by the House.
He was drawing attention to the case of a young girl
who, he alleged, was kept against her will in a convent,
and who, when visited by friends 3 was compelled only
by the presence of priests and fear of punishment to
express contentment ; but, he went on to say, when,
through some inadvertence, the visitors on one occasion
saw the girl in in her natural state. Here the
House roared with laughter, which went on, subsided,
and then revived and continued for such a long time that
the poor man's confusion, as far as I remember, pre-
vented him from proceeding. None of this, I need
hardly say, appeared in the brief report of the speech in
the newspaper reports, for the class of publication which
would, in the present day, have caught hold of such an
incident, did not exist then.
Talking of statesmen, I remember an instance of how
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
foresight may fail in the greatest of them, a description
which few will deny to the late M. Thiers. Mr. C. B.
Vignoles, the President, about this period, of the
Institution of Civil Engineers, was a very old man, who
had accompanied M. Thiers in 1830 when the latter,
commissioned by the French king, visited England to
see if railways, then being started in this country, should
be introduced into France. Mr. Vignoles stated in his
presidential address that Thiers had said to him on
seeing the new invention, that it might do very well in
England, but it was totally unsuited for France.
A curious sequel to this was an anecdote which, quite
recently, I heard from a peer to whom Lord Granville
himself had told it, concerning the same French states-
man. It was in the terrible time of 1870, when the
Emperor Napoleon III, being taken prisoner, the Ger-
man troops were pouring into France, helped by the
very railways which Thiers had, forty years before,
declared useless. Thiers himself, using the same means
of conveyance, was travelling over Europe from capital
to capital, day and night, to try and arrange some com-
bination of the Powers which would check Germany in
her conquering career. Finally, reaching London, un-
successful so far, and, being an old man, in a state of
physical exhaustion, he called on the morning of his
arrival on Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, to
see what the British Government would do. The
veteran statesman had hardly begun his tale of woe
when, quietly reclining back in his chair, he fell asleep
in the middle of a sentence. Lord Granville, knowing
that his Government could not help, noiselessly left the
room, giving orders that his visitor should not be dis-
turbed, and Thiers slept peacefully in the chair until
evening, when, of course, he got the reply which, no
doubt, he could not but have expected.
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I used to meet at the house of another uncle in
Dublin some of the leading Irish members. He was a
prominent barrister and doctor of laws, with a leaning
to Liberalism. These members, though generally " agin
the Government," were of a very different class from
those of the present day, for reasons into which it is
unnecessary to enter here. One was The O'Dono-
ghue of the Glens, his wife being always called Dame
O'Donoghue. He was a very handsome man, and as
to his style and title, it was said that there were only
three persons entitled to the unusual prefix the Pope,
the Devil, and The O'Donoghue. The Lord Dudley of
that period was very eccentric in appearance, wearing
long ringlets and a broad-brimmed hat.
Going to a sitting of the House of Commons recently,
I was greatly struck with the change from that of the
old time. I say nothing of its present efficiency for the
needs of the time. I only speak of its decline in
culture and in scholarship as a whole, for some excep-
tions remain. The rough speech, the want of polished
deference to the Speaker, and a number of small details
only apparent to one who remembers its well-bred past,
were especially noticeable. I refer to a time before the
late Father of the House, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman,
entered it, and therefore before any of the present
members were in it.
It has been stated as a remarkable fact that a great
majority of the most eminent persons of the nineteenth
century were born from the middle to the end of its
first decade. Could the apparition of the great comet
of 1811 have had anything to do with it? We all
know how the visit of a great comet synchronized with
Julius Caesar's end, and why not a similar occurrence at
the beginnings of other great men ? Here is the list.
Browning, Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Gladstone,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
Disraeli 5 Bismarck, Darwin, Louis Napoleon, Sir George
Grey the great pro-consul, Robert Lowe, Manning,
Wendell Holmes, Longfellow, Poe, Cavour, Garibaldi,
Abraham Lincoln, Wagner, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Mrs.
Browning, John Stuart Mill, Charles Kean, John Bright,
and Bishop Colenso. Take these away, and, intellectu-
ally, the last century would not shine, while as they
were in their prime in the sixties, that epoch may be
fairly considered an Augustan period.
Some of the above, with others, used to meet at the
celebrated Oxford breakfasts at Commemoration time,
when the feast of reason and flow of soul were popu-
larly supposed to be of a prodigal nature. However,
these men were, naturally, not always on their pedestals ;
hence the disappointment of an aspiring young man of
the time who, greedy of knowledge, had been invited
on one occasion. Now, thought he, I shall be able to
find out from Browning whether Sordello (which he had
read through twice) is the name of a man, a term in
metaphysics, or something to eat. I shall hear from
Gladstone something of the attributes, from the
Homeric standpoint, of the grey-eyed Athene, some
thunder and lightning from Carlyle on the shams and
hypocrisies of the age. But Carlyle sat in the silence
that was golden scowling at his plate, and Froude
having mentioned that he suffered from corns, Brown-
ing suggested a remedy, and Gladstone another, on
which a debate as to which was best arose, supplemented
by recommendations from others, so that this useful but
by no means ideal subject shut out all others to the end
of the meal, and the young man went away sorrowing,
for he had great expectations.
Trips to the English lakes, North Wales, Scotland,
and the Isle of Man, either on pleasure or business,
intervened between parliamentary business. In the
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latter place I was surprised to meet one morning at
breakfast at the hotel a cousin of mine from Dublin,
looking very lugubrious, as well he might. A night or
two before, dining with some other men at the Royal
Irish Yacht Club, at Kingstown, near Dublin, a bet was
made that a safe trip to the island by a half-decked
boat belonging to one of them could not be made.
The bet was taken up, and the start made then and
there at midnight, my cousin being one of the crew.
They got fearfully knocked about, the seas sweeping
over them, and carrying overboard the owner of the
boat, whom his companions were unable to rescue.
After a great deal of difficulty the rest of the party
managed to reach the island.
This curious island has a Constitution and Parlia-
ment of its own, which latter has its opening meeting
under a tree on the top of a hill. It has, I believe,
been largely reformed since I was there, but at that
time the Upper House consisted of the Chief Justice,
the General commanding the forces, the Bishop, and
other officials, and the two Deemsters, whose offices are
of great antiquity, dating back to the time of the
Druids. The Lower Chamber, called the House of
Keys, had twenty-four members, for which women
could vote, and when a vacancy arose the remaining
twenty-three elected the man to fill it, so that the ruling
party were spared the pangs usually caused by a by-
election.
In addition to this queer constitution are the queer
cats without tails. Darwinism, the idea of which had
just been started, though now a commonplace of
science, was then a heated subject of controversy. The
raison d'etre of the Manx cat was thus given by ardent
Darwinists. " You see," they said, " the primitive
inhabitants of the island fed on cats, which they, having
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
no missile weapons, caught with their hands and con-
verted into sausages. Naturally the cat with the
longest tail was the easiest caught, the shorter-tailed
animals surviving in greater numbers to reproduce their
short-tailed kind, according to the principles of heredity.
Shorter and shorter grew the tails in successive genera-
tions till they became stumps and finally disappeared,
resulting in the present tailless species."
The railway from Douglas to Peel, the survey and
plans of which we were engaged upon, was the first one
made in the island, but there were many difficulties, and it
was not constructed for many years afterwards by a
totally different set of promoters.
I may mention here one of the curious minor troubles
we had in the survey of the line. There was only one
practicable gap through the range of hills forming the
backbone of the island, and the course of the proposed
line at this place was therefore limited to this spot,
which was thickly wooded. The landlord who owned
the property here, though favourable to the project
generally, objected to a single branch of the trees being
cut, so that no sight with the spirit-level or theodolite
could be obtained through. After much persuasion,
however, we at last induced him to allow such leaves to
be removed as would leave a hole about three inches in
diameter right through the wood, for the necessary
observations which, with this embarrassing limitation,
were greatly delayed. I never had such an experience
before or since.
As I was destined soon after this to go away to various
uttermost parts of the earth, and except for comparatively
short intervals, to stay there for many years, I was
fortunate in being able to see and hear, in one respect at
all events, the best that was going on at the time. The
proprietor of the London boarding-house at which, when
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in town, I stayed had some connection with the theatres,
so that every evening he had at his disposal a number of
free tickets for them, including frequently, guinea stalls
at both opera houses, for two were then flourishing
Covent Garden and Her Majesty's the latter having
been since burnt down. These he frequently distributed
to his guests, so that I heard all the great singers and
actors of the day without drawing on my banking
account, which, never superabundant, was already begin-
ning to show weakness through the growing slackness of
engineering enterprise. There had been an outburst of
railway extension, not nearly so great as that of 1845,
though still considerable, but reaction had set in, and
engagements were becoming more and more like the
proverbial visits of the angelic host. On top of this had
come the great failure in 1866 of Overend, Gurney and
Co., the noted bankers, which brought down with it hun-
dreds of financial institutions, on which so many public
works of all kinds employing engineers depend.
It was a bad time for all, except the undertakers
burying suicides, the cobblers mending the boots of
those wandering about in search of employment, and the
Crown servants, whose salaries, like that tiresome brook
of Tennyson, rippled on for evermore.
I went to Paris to see if anything was to be done there,
but though I had good introductions, I soon found that
the Overend and Gurney smash had affected the whole
of Europe, and there was no opening. However, I
stayed for a while, to perfect my French, by boarding at
a house in the Rue Boissy d'Anglas, where no other
language was spoken, this being a rule of the establish-
ment. Here there were some curious characters. One
old militaire^ always called Monsieur le Commandant,
who remembered the first Revolution, and distinctly
recollected, as a child, seeing the head of the beautiful
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
Princess de Lamballe carried on a pike, and her body
dragged through the streets of Paris. The Queen Marie
Antoinette was then in prison at the Temple prior to
her own execution, all ignorant of the terrible fate of her
closest friend, and the proposal, which fortunately, for
some reason, was not carried out, was to make the
unfortunate queen kiss the lips of the princess's severed
head. We read in history of these frightful atrocities, but
to hear of them through the vivid and emotional relation
of an actual eye-witness, with all these horrors still in
his mind, is a totally different experience.
Another boarder was a legitimist Count who, having
lost his estates in one of the revolutions, had dropped
his name and title, simply calling himself M. L'Ami.
He was generally spoken of as Pere L'Ami. He had a
great hatred of republicans, and well he might, for in the
revolution of 1848 his only sister had been shot by them
in the streets of Marseilles. Though a Bourbonist, he
supported the then Emperor Napoleon III, as keeping
down the hated gens du pave, to whom, I well recollect,
his applying an apt quotation from Mirabeau, " Ce sont
deux animaux bien betes, que Ihomme et le lapin y une fois
quils sont pris par les oreilks"
The Prussian-Austrian war was going on at this time,
and many were the discussions at table between the
boarders of different nationalities, of which there was a
variegated assortment. A little black-bearded Austrian
and a heavy-looking Prussian who sat opposite to each
other naturally took much part in these. The Austrian
possessed a canary of which he was very fond, and which
he called "Arthur," and when the cat of the Prussian
killed the bird, great was the excitement. I recall dis-
tinctly the pathetic voice in which the former told me
the news that " Le chat de M.. le Prussien a mange mon
pauvre Arthur." The great war which was to culminate
6 4
Europe
in the crowning victory of Sadowa paled before the more
immediate cat-canary catastrophe, and we of the neutral
nationalities could hear, metaphorically, the rattle of the
needle-guns and the cannon's roar in the scowls and
sneers of the two hostile Germans.
The Emperor Napoleon's fte day, i5th August,
occurred during this visit, and there were unusually
splendid illuminations and fireworks at night, but very
bad management as regards control of crowds, far from
verifying Sterne's oft-quoted saying that "They order
these things better in France." For some reason, the
greater number of the many bridges across the Seine
were closed, causing frightful crushes at the open ones,
so much so that several people were mangled to death
and some forced over the parapets into the river and
drowned. Of the latter, the body of one man was
recovered later with twenty-three watches in his pockets,
so that a prosperous professional career was thus cut off
in its prime. Some of us had an unpleasant experience
of these disasters, for we had been given tickets of
admission to the roof of the Ministere de la Marine,
looking down upon the Place de la Concorde, the scene of
the guillotine executions during The Terror. Into the
quadrangular courtyard of this building were brought
the wounded and dying, who were being attended to by
the surgeons, as we passed out. Otherwise we should
hardly have heard of these accidents, for the newspapers,
which were under the censorship of the Government,
hardly noticed them, as discrediting the Emperor's
administration. Napoleon III, like a modern Augustus,
had put an end to civil turmoil, and under him material
wealth had increased, but there were drawbacks. I well
remember seeing him drive in the Bois de Boulogne with
his massive aquiline nose and heavy fair moustache and
imperial.
F 65
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
The gay city was then really gay. Spectacularly, I do
not think the theatrical displays, at all events in Paris,
were inferior, forty years ago, to those of the present
day. One of the most perfect instances of stage manage-
ment was in an extravaganza called Cendrillon^ where
one scene showed all the Prince's retainers searching
for the lost slipper. They each had lamps of different
colours, and as they moved about they formed them-
selves successively into various ornamental designs, never
going astray. Another was in Meyerbeer's opera of
Robert k Diable at the grand opera house, then in the Rue
Lepelletier. The principal character is alone in a convent
churchyard in the dusk, when the ghosts of the buried
nuns arise from their graves and gradually surround
him. First one dim white figure in the half-light in the
distance, disappearing soon, then another, and gradually
more, until in a short time the immense stage was filled
with them. One would think that Lewis Morris, in his
Epic of Hades, had been inspired by this scene, when he
wrote
" And forthwith on every side
Rose the thin throng of ghosts . . .
. . . Shapes
Of terror, beckoning hands and noiseless feet,
Flitting from shade to shade."
Suddenly the whole multitude change in a moment to
captivating sirens, dancing round the lonely man, and
luring him to the destruction which is typified by the
immediately following appearance of a swarm of goblins
and evil spirits who finally carry him off to his doom.
I have since seen many similar scenes to these, but never
anything nearly so impressive.
Of a more intellectual character was a scene I saw
later at the Theatre Franais, acted, I think, by Got
and Aimee Desclee. The whole piece was merely
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Europe
a dialogue, in which the lady never uttered more than
two words at intervals in the talk of the man. These
were " Oh, Monsieur," but that reply was so varied
each time in tone, expression, and gesticulation that
a whole volume of meaning was conveyed in each. It
was a veritable tour de force.
After a talk with M. Eugene Flachat, one of the
leading French engineers, at his beautiful place at
Asnieres, and coming to the conclusion that money
could more easily be spent than made in Paris just
then, I returned to London much discouraged. I had
a further disappointment there in connection with some
promised work in Essex, which came to nothing, so
that I became very despondent, unreasonably so, for I
had youth, health, and strength, and no one depending
upon me. Just when, however, my prospects seemed
to be at their lowest ebb, some good friends had, un-
known to me, in view a position in India for me, but
till the matter, which was in doubt at first, was settled,
nothing was told to me. I have often thought since of
how frequently in that magnificent body of literature,
the Bible, we find matter to apply to almost every con-
tingency of life. " For man walketh in a vain shadow,
and disquieteth himself in vain." Surely mine was
a vain shadow, which was soon to pass away. And
again, the lesson of that sublime dramatic scene in one
of the books of the Kings : " And when the servant
of the man of God was risen early and gone forth,
behold an host compassed the city both with horses and
chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my
master, how shall we do ? And he answered, Fear
not, for they that be with us, are more than they that
be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I
pray thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the
Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw ;
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots
of fire round about Elisha."
Needless to say, I accepted the position offered, being
unable to await better times. Forty years ago, exile to
India or the colonies was a very different thing from
what it is now, when a cold-weather trip costing little
in money, time, or comfort is frequently taken. Then
it was more or less a prolonged and expensive mystery.
As regards India, those who were destined to return
from it at all were expected to do so, yellow perhaps in
pocket as to guineas, but also of that unhealthy colour
as to complexion, and with a dilapidated temper. None
of these results, however, happened to me, but home
had to be left, possibly for ever, and professional com-
panions parted from, many of whom I was destined
never to see again, for, indeed, the same reason
which sent me abroad scattered most of them in various
directions.
One of them, a particularly able young fellow, whom
I met again over thirty years later in a state of absolute
destitution, had meantime risen as high as that was
possible in an important colony, being engineer-in-
chief to its Government. The demon of drink, how-
ever, had laid his awful hands upon him, and when I
saw him again, unable to retain any responsible position,
he had been working as a house-painter's labourer, and
getting lower still, a so-called loan of a sovereign
naturally led to my never seeing him again.
Another career, still more varied, but not through
his own fault, was that of one who went out to another
colony where, as in many of them, most public works
were in the hands of the Government. They had no
vacancy for an engineer, but the head of the depart-
ment, seeing his credentials, and wishing to retain him
for a future vacancy should it arise, asked my friend
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Europe
if he had any objection to be put on the muster-roll
meanwhile as a day labourer at a labourer's wages,
though his work would be surveying. As the colonial
workman's wage was quite as high as the salary he had
been able to reach at home before the crash of 1866, and
as in the colonies, especially at that early period, dignity
counted for nothing, he gladly accepted, and soon suc-
ceeded to the expected vacancy. Subsequently, being
of a roving disposition, he left and joined a friend on
the London Stock Exchange, where he made a great
deal of money, enjoying his houses in Brighton and in
the Midlands, keeping his yacht, etc. etc. One or two
bad speculations, however, sent all this to the winds,
and a ranch in Mexico absorbed all his energies, which,
ill adapted to this new venture, failed to retrieve his
fortunes.
It is said that Shakespeare might have transposed a
comma in his well-known adage, if he had been less of
an optimist, which would then read, "There's a divinity
that shapes our ends rough, hew them how we will."
So my roving friend found his ends, for soon he was
wandering over the face of the earth, earning a pre-
carious penny now and then in reporting on foreign
mines, etc. to his old friends on the Stock Exchange.
One of his vicissitudes was marriage and a large family,
and he had, in the course of his wanderings, lost sight
of one of his sons, who, inheriting his father's dis-
position, had gone abroad into space. At a big hotel
in Chicago, however, the father and son were simultane-
ous inmates for a night, without either knowing of it
till afterwards, the former being a visitor and the latter
being one of the "boots," to which low estate his
necessities had driven him. The last I heard of my
friend was that he was in very low water indeed, but
in the great variety show of life he may yet again have
69
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
a good turn. Such are the vicissitudes of civil engineer-
ing abroad.
Talking of careers, a near relative of mine in the
Army had a curious set of fatalities connected with his.
He was ordered to China in 1854, just missing the
Crimean war, but coming in for some fighting at the
siege of Canton. He went out in a sailing-ship which,
on its return, was never heard of more. Obliged to
take sick leave home later, he returned via Egypt, and
as the Suez Canal was not then in existence, he had to
travel by two steamers, one to Suez and the other from
Alexandria to England. Each of these was wrecked on
the following voyage. The same route was taken back
again with the same result. Then again he came home
with his regiment, when similar losses followed. The
next station was the Cape of Good Hope, the vessels
taking him there and back also coming to grief. For-
tunately total loss of ship and passengers, as in the
case of the first catastrophe, did not occur in the later
ones, but the sequences were very extraordinary, and,
happily for the shipping interests, a home appointment
supervening, the young officer spent most of his later
years in Great Britain.
In 1866, when I went abroad, many old Peninsular
and Waterloo men were still alive and vigorous, whom,
with many of their contemporaries, I was to see no
more. In customs, too, there was a great change. The
shaven face and side whisker were still largely in the
majority, a departure from which among the clergy and
barristers was unthinkable. The tall hat, though dis-
carded by cricketers, was still general, and it was a real
chimney-pot, straight-sided and lofty, not the miserable
low curved headgear which is now so called. It was so
tall that the suggestion, often followed, was good, that a
difference of opinion with a policeman would be effec-
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Europe
tively settled by blocking his hat right down on to his
shoulders, and so rendering him as useless as an ex-
tinguished candle.
Scientific knowledge, even among otherwise fairly
educated people, was limited, and many of the beautiful
mysteries of life, now dissipated, still held their sway.
There were people who could give no explanation of
thunder, except as a direct manifestation of Divine dis-
pleasure, and ideas as to comets, eclipses, ghosts, etc.
were very different from those of the present day.
Scientific men, or, as they have been since termed,
scientists, had more or less correct views about these
things, but there were many people, more especially
among the old, who had not imbibed them.
There are now hardly any mysteries left from some
points of view a real loss. It is as if something had
dispelled the haze that adds such a charm to our
English scenery by throwing its distances into the
realms of fantasy which we can fill with what dreamlike
glories we please. It is as if garish, shadowless sun-
shine were everywhere, and sunset's gorgeous draperies
had disappeared. Keats writes :
" Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy ?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven :
We know her woof, her texture ; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
Unweave a rainbow."
Illustrating the old feeling, there is the story of the
Devil in Devonshire, which, however, dates from before
the period I have now reached in the forties, I think-
but well within the range of my memory. Nowadays
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the Devil is an evil principle, a symbolical figure, and,
according to some, " the survival of the fittest," but to
many, in the old days, the absolute bodily personality of
the fiend was essential to their conception of the idea.
The fiery-red figure, with horns, tail, and hoofs, which
medievalism has pictured, still remained. One cold
winter's morning, when Devonshire lay deep in snow, it
was found, by prints left distinctly in it, that some two-
legged creature, taking enormous strides, had traversed
the country from sea to sea. Each print was distinctly
that of a hoof, and one followed the other at distances
apart of from twelve to fourteen feet. But for one fact
the track might have been made by a man on an enor-
mous pair of stilts suitably shaped at the foot ; this fact
was that the course taken by the gigantic being, which
was straight, never deviated where houses, barns, or
other large obstructions crossed its path, but apparently
went right through them, the snow being entirely un-
touched all round them. The distance covered in one
night rendered the stilt theory also untenable, and the
mystery, which was much written about in the few
newspapers of the time, has never been cleared up to
this day.
72
ASIA
CHAPTER IV
Chance and its effects The broken engagement The Abyssinian en-
voys Egypt Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Ceylon India: first
impressions Madras A black panther On horseback through the
jungle A Highland toast The railway engineer abroad and
his wife Approach of monsoon A tarantula adventure Showers
of insects A patent umbrella A frightful catastrophe.
A CURIOUS circumstance in connection with my
Indian appointment may be mentioned to show
how an apparently trivial detail may often lead to a
considerable result. There were some four or five other
appointments made at the same time by the Madras
Railway Co., who were to be my employers, and calling at
their London office, I asked by what mail steamer I was
expected to start. The reply was that either the next
one or the one after would do ; so, not having any special
reason for delay, I secured the only berth vacant in the
first steamer, the other engineers following in the next
ship a fortnight or a month later. On reaching Madras,
and stating and verifying my previous experience, I was
at once appointed to the entire charge of the only railway
construction division then vacant, the filling of which
was a matter of urgency. The rest, most of them just
as experienced and well qualified as I, but arriving later
on the scene, became only assistants to others of my
position, and in consequence they were left years behind
me in subsequent promotion, owing not so much to
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
absence of qualifications as to want of opportunities of
showing them.
A much later instance of apparent chance leading to
important results occurs to me, that of a friend whom I
shall call Professor Proteid. He had some success at
home in the particular science which he cultivated, but
his health requiring a more genial climate, he emigrated,
hoping to turn his knowledge to account in one of the
southern colonies. He went out in a sailing ship, and
as the vessel was entering the port of destination, a man
on board the steam-tug which came alongside, preparatory
to towing the ship up the harbour, was reading the local
paper. Proteid having been months at sea, and anxious
to know what was going on in the world, asked the man
to lend him the paper, which was handed up.
After reading the news, his eyes lighted on an advertise-
ment from one of the Colonial Government Offices,
asking for applications for an important appointment in
the very department of science in which he was specially
proficient. But the moment after which no application
would be received was within an hour of the time
when he saw the advertisement, and the ship was still
some distance from the quay, while he did not know
how far the office might be from the landing-place.
Proteid scribbled an application, collecting his credentials,
and almost counted the slow throbs of the little steamer
as she struggled on with the huge ship behind her up
to the wharf, where with needless care, as he thought,
the latter was gradually warped alongside. He had
only ten minutes left. Jumping ashore, he hailed a cab
and reached the office, panting upstairs and handing in
his application to the Secretary within a few seconds of
the time named. On the latter asking Proteid how long
he had been in the colony, the reply, much to his
astonishment, was, "About ten minutes."
74
Asia
The credentials were found to be better than those of
the other candidates, and Proteid was appointed. From
this favourable start he rose fairly rapidly to the head of
the department, and ultimately became one of the
leading scientific men of the Southern Hemisphere,
President of the local Royal Society, and an authority
far outside his adopted country on the subject of his
special study. A man of exceptional attainments, he
would, no doubt, have made his mark ultimately, even
if the man on the tug-boat had not been reading the
paper, but there can be no doubt that this chance
circumstance, leading Proteid to his first office, immensely
hastened the consummation.
One long sea voyage is very like another in incident,
though the surroundings and accessories may be differ-
ent ; for instance, in the old paddle-wheelers of forty
years ago there was practically only one class the first
no one of what was called respectability travelling
second, as in later times. The saloon extended from
near midships to the stern, the cabins being at each
side, opening immediately on to it, while the captain sat
at the head of the long table at meals, and was therefore
more or less in touch with all his passengers.
Though under the more rapid conditions of the
present day, love-making on board ship is by no means
extinct, it was far more favoured as regards oppor-
tunity by the slow voyages of the days of which I am
writing, and on our good ship many cases, incurable
and otherwise, of this glorious lunacy occurred.
One in particular gave rise to complications. A
gallant officer from India becoming engaged in Eng-
land, in returning preceded his fiancee to Madras,
where the wedding was to take place. She followed
with us, but there was also on board a very good-look-
ing young doctor. Whether it was in consequence of
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
, the many dark corners on deck, or the rhythmical
cadence of the swish of the sea, as the bow gently sank
into the liquid green of its depths, or the silver moon
above us in the evening, or the dazzling canopy of the
tropic heavens, or bright Venus herself, whose light in
those latitudes is so brilliant as to cast wavering reflec-
tions in the calm surface of the ocean which of
these assisted the doctor's fascinating ways no one
knows, but before we reached our destination he
was substituted for the captain. How the matter was
explained to the expectant bridegroom, who, all un-
knowing, came on board to meet the lady, I know not,
though the situation was sufficiently embarrassing ; but
as I met the doctor and his wife frequently later, it is to
be supposed that nothing of a very desperate character,
such as some of us expected, ever came off.
About this time was the memorable war under-
taken owing to the refusal of that old barbarian,
King Theodore of Abyssinia, to release British en-
voys, and to indignities offered to them. An army
under Sir Robert Napier, afterwards created Lord
Napier of Magdala, was sent to recover them, which
was done after a brilliant campaign. Before war was
declared, however, further envoys were sent, and were
on board our ship, and thereby hangs a small tale. A
fellow-passenger opposite me at dinner, one of the first
few days out, said, addressing me and those near me,
" I am told there are fellows on board going out to
negotiate with that Abyssinian brute. I suppose he
will flay them alive, or chop their heads off at least,
when he gets hold of them. Aren't they fools ? " A
man next me, with a quiet manner but determined face,
smiled and said, " Possibly ! You may be interested,
however, to hear, if that be the case, that the Queen
has made a fool of me, for I am one of them."
76
Asia
The construction of the Suez Canal, which was subse-
quent to this voyage, though facilitating travel in many
ways, has deprived the more modern traveller of the
advantage, unless he goes out of his way for the purpose,
of seeing Alexandria and Cairo. We passed through
these, crossing Egypt by land, and thus gaining our
first glimpses of Eastern life. I have never forgotten
the colossal calm of the mysterious face of the Sphinx,
backed by the eternal Pyramids, looking as if the lost
history of the great dead centuries had been enacted in
its awful presence, but would never be revealed. The
people who carved such a face as that must have been
great.
So many people go to Cairo now for the winter, that
it has become almost as cockney as Brighton of old,
and the frequency of the brown turbaned face is relieved
by others which remind one of Park Lane and Piccadilly.
Then, the all-pervading Cook, though he may have been
dreaming in his youth of future tourists led by his
guiding hand to the uttermost parts of the morning, had
not been heard of, and Cairo, though, of course, well known
to travellers and Egyptologists, was still a mystery, and
something that might be written about. That time, how-
ever, is now past, and I shall not go over well-trodden
ground in describing that dusty, donkey-crowded city,
with its jumble of Oriental and Western life.
We sped on across the desert by rail, stopping, appar-
ently for no reason, at numerous stations, where we got
out to warm ourselves at great wood fires nearly sur-
rounded by what appeared to us a crowd of Bedouin
Sheiks, having the same object in view. Winter in
Egypt at night is bitterly cold, and the railway carriages
were not then heated.
Reaching Suez, the mail steamer on which we
embarked brought us younger passengers into India,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
so to say, at once. The punkahs were going, and
Indian servants were flitting about in their noiseless way
at our slightest command. Old Indians returning to
military or civil duty, and feeling themselves getting
back to the languorous East, reclined in their long chairs
with the projecting arms supporting the occupant's legs,
and now and then was heard the cry of " Ag lao I "
" Bring fire," at which call a smart native boy would
appear with a light for the sahib's cheroot.
One moonlight night, in order to reach the forecastle
and see the phosphoric foam at the bow, and ignorant of
native habits, I walked across what I thought was
a spread-out sail or something of the kind on deck. It
appeared to be rather knobby, and became knobbier as I
went on, then stifled cries arose, evidently more in anger
than in sorrow, for I had trampled on the heads and
faces of a lot of lascars asleep, and covered up to shield
their faces from the effects of the moon effects known
at the time of David (see Psalm cxxi. 6), " The sun shall
not smite thee by day nor the moon by night." An
awful row followed, which I had to settle in exemplary
damages. But I had learnt something.
Farewell to the anaemic sun of the north, for notwith-
standing that it was the cool season, the Red Sea was
quite warm enough for us, and from fiery morn to
sweltering eve we easily fell into the Eastern customs of
letting the willing native servants do everything for us
that was possible, and at night, having screened off half
the deck for the ladies' use, we slept, as the French say,
a la belle etoile^ while, as in the Odyssey
" All night the ship clave onward,
Till the dawn upsoared."
Relief came, however, on getting into the open sea
beyond Aden, where, though the prodigal sun still shed
78
Asia
down his powerful rays, the sea-breeze from the vast
and open south tempered them considerably, and slight
exercise became possible. Point de Galle was then the
Ceylon port of call for the mails to further India and
to China, but it was not greatly different from the
Colombo of to-day, except that the hotels were less
palatial, and rickshaws, which are a comparatively
recent importation from Japan, did not then exist in
the island.
Madras was soon reached, and the novel experience
of landing in a Masula boat encountered. The mail
steamers do not call there now, owing to the landing
difficulties and to the accessibility of the city by rail
from other ports, which later times have brought. There
was no harbour in 1866, and the surf, even in calm
weather, rolls in enormous waves, breaking with a thun-
dering noise a considerable distance from the shore.
The Masula boat, forty or fifty feet long, is built for the
purpose, of bamboos and leather, and is manned by a
special caste of men trained, and extraordinarily expert,
in the navigation of it. The boat, when nearing shore,
is guided on to the top of a wave heading for the beach,
the skill of the men, with their long spoon-ended oars,
being shown by their keeping their craft, loaded with
passengers and luggage, at exactly the same speed as
that of the wave, and strictly at right angles to it, any
deviation from this leading inevitably to a capsize and
to a dinner-party for sharks. The momentum carries
the Masula boat high and dry on to the beach, when all
the occupants who do not hold on like an attack of
influenza are thrown into a jumble of other unwary
passengers and of boxes and portmanteaus, so that the
astonished traveller is literally hurled into India. All
this, no doubt, more or less distracts the new-comer's
attention from the boatmen, or he would be still more
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
startled to notice that their clothing principally consists
of a bit of string.
In this, they give the new arrival a wrong impression
of India generally, for the native costume is decorous in
the extreme, flowing robes being its usual characteristic.
The female dress is perhaps the most graceful known in
all the world, and is about as unlike that of a fashion
plate as it is possible to conceive. The sensible Hindoo
women having adopted this costume, nobody knows
when, have never changed it. The head, arms, and feet
are bare, except for jewellery, the bust covered, and
below it, beyond a gap showing a few inches of polished
bronze skin, the body is draped in a picturesque folding
garment. The sari, which is a piece of stuff several
yards long, is gracefully thrown round the whole body,
enveloping it more or less according to the season. The
colours, even among the lower orders, are always quiet
and harmonious, blues and greys predominating. The
working women as well as the men carry their loads,
often very heavy, on their heads, which gives them an
upright carriage unknown in the West. It is curious
that on the Malabar coast women of the best and most
respectable classes are wholly uncovered above the waist,
while, strange to say, the only exception to this is among
those whose lives are not so irreproachable. The men
all over India, except the coolie or labouring class, are
amply clothed, and the coolies wear everything that
decency requires.
The first impression of the natives is that one is
indistinguishable from another, their faces seeming to be
all alike, which often leads, at first, to blame being given
to one servant for neglecting orders given to another.
But better acquaintance shows that there is quite as
much variety in black as in white faces, and perhaps
more in their complexions. A squatter in Australia
80
Asia
many years later told me that there was an infinite
variety in the faces of sheep, which appear to those who
are not of the bush to be exactly the same. In fact, he
said he could see likenesses to some of his friends in
different sheep.
One of the first impressions of the native is that of
the servants at the hotel, where naturally the new arrival
makes his first stay. And the surprise is how noiseless
they are, being barefooted. They simply glide about
like ghosts, especially as they are robed in white, as all
proper ghosts are ; but, unlike them, they are good at
providing one with material comforts. In fact they are
so rapid and neat in their movements as to be easily the
first in the world in the calling of waiters. At a dinner-
party every guest brings his own servant, who stands
behind his chair, and as he is supposed to know his
master's tastes, the double object is attained of
gratifying these tastes, and of giving no trouble to the
hostess. Sometimes one is aware of a sort of half-sub-
dued contention at the sideboard. This is the struggle
between the various servants, each trying to get first his
master's favourite brand of wine or other luxury.
But to return to my story. Madras covers an enor-
mous area, as well it may, for in the European quarter
all bungalows stand in their own grounds, approached
by carriage drives, for nobody who is white in colour
walks. Even the shops at which Europeans chiefly
deal, though kept by natives or Eurasians, are like
stately mansions, and are approached through trees and
shrubbery. One may drive several miles from shop to
shop. Here you alight, and the salaaming white-robed
shop-server asks first if the sahib will take a brandy-and-
soda, which he usually does if his conscience, justified
by the probable amount of his expenditure, enables him
to do so. Of course, I am speaking of forty years ago,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
and there may be now Indian Whiteley's, Harrod's, and
Army and Navy Stores, where less generous and anti-
quated customs prevail. My purchases, however
economy being the prevailing motive were largely
done in the native bazaar, which is as crowded as the
other quarter is scattered, with the usual chaffering and
bargaining already described to death in Eastern travels.
Among other sights I went to see the Zoo, which I
mention for a special reason, as such a proceeding is
hardly otherwise worth record. I thus made further
acquaintance with various classes of animals behind bars,
which I was destined to meet not long after on more
or less friendly terms without this separation ; and here
I might say that they look much larger in the jungle
than in the cage. It may be wondered why a Zoo
exists in Madras, with sundry wild beasts freely ranging
about just beyond the outer suburbs, seeking whom
they may devour, though the country is not exactly
"yellow with tigers," a picturesque expression applied
to it by one of my new office comrades in order to test
my credulity. But the special reason above mentioned
for my visit to the Zoo was not to anticipate, but to see
there what is exceedingly rare, that is a black panther.
It was like an enormous black cat, but when looked at at
a certain angle, spots like those of an ordinary animal of
this species could be discerned gleaming through the
glossy coat.
Having made all necessary purchases, I had to proceed
up country to my district by railway as far as that
could carry me. Railway travelling in India is readily
taken to by its inhabitants, for business, pleasure and
religious pilgrimages, which are numerous. The third-
class carriages, in which males and females are generally
separated, are crowded almost to suffocation, the occu-
pants talking loudly and incessantly both among them-
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selves and to their friends at the numerous stations,
while all the colours in the rainbow and combinations
of them are represented in the dresses. High caste
men for it is a mistake to suppose that religious caste
denotes social rank are employed to distribute water
at stations to the weary passengers suffering from heat
and thirst, so that if a Brahmin requires it, there is
no fear of contamination. Ordinarily elsewhere, this
difficulty is got over by the water-bearer emptying his
earthenware pot by a stream of water into the hollowed
palm of the kneeling recipient, who thus skilfully guides
the cooling liquid to his mouth with hardly the loss of
a drop. Caste does not separate people, at all events in
Southern India, to any great degree, except in matters
of food and drink.
The rail being left, the rest of the journey for some
hundreds of miles was made on horseback through the
jungle, halting at night either at the bungalows of my
colleagues who were constructing the nearer parts of the
railway, or where these could not be reached, at what
are called ddk bungalows, which, there being no suitable
accommodation for Europeans in the intervals between
the large towns, a beneficent Government provides at
suitable points, usually near a village, where supplies
can be had.
Bullock carts carried my furniture and other be-
longings, and as, owing to their slow pace, I was
compelled to start them off each morning some hours
before it was necessary for me and my ghorawallah or
horse-keeper to leave, we were often alone, and
occasionally at fault as to our way. Much of the road
lay through tangled jungle, of the luxuriance of which
those who have not been in the tropics have no
conception. Feathery bamboo and Palmyra palms
abound, the tall areca-nut tree rising straight as an
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
arrow, without a branch, and as thin as a fishing-rod, to
a great height, then throwing out at the top its ostrich
plumes of verdure, all rising from a mass of brightly
blossomed undergrowth ; while gorgeous parroquets and
noisy mynas contribute their quota of colour and sound,
and thousands of ortolans, which the Romans thought
such a delicacy for the table, swarm above.
As the night begins to fall, the glittering fireflies dart
about like so many dancing stars, and imagination, if
not reality, peoples the forest with roaming beasts of
prey, giving an anxiety more intense than in less
infested countries, to see the friendly lights ahead
which indicate shelter and protection for the night.
But the luxuriant vegetation, and especially the tower-
ing palms, are contrary to the popular view not
characteristic of India as a whole. These are only
found within about two hundred miles of the coast,
where only also, as a rule, is the long coarse grass which
in pictures is always shown as jungle in which big game
is supposed to lurk.
The interior is largely open plains, sometimes un-
dulating, with tree clumps or topes, as they are called.
I remember after my return talking to a manager of a
diorama in England which was supposed to represent
the scenes of the great Mutiny which took place far
inland. In these, palm trees were liberally shown, and
when I pointed out the inaccuracy, the showman said
that palm trees were so associated in the British public
mind with India, that it would never do to alter it.
If this were done, he said, it would be thought that the
artist had never been to India, which indeed was
evidently the case.
The interior of the country, in my case, consisted
largely of the vast black cotton soil plains of the Deccan
and Ceded Districts where my work lay. The cultiva-
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tion of cotton in India is very ancient. Herodotus, in
the Thalia, says: "And certain trees there bear wool
instead of fruit that in beauty and quality excels that of
sheep, and the Indians make their clothing from these
trees," which also shows that in Herodotus's time the
Greeks did not know of this material.
At one of my halts for the night, at a bungalow of
one of the engineers, I chanced to meet many of my
future colleagues who had collected there to celebrate
his birthday. He was a Scotsman. Now my exten-
sive experience of that race does not at all justify the
general opinion that his countrymen, as a rule, are
miserly, or have larger bumps of acquisitiveness than
other nations, though it is stated that St. Andrew was
chosen as the patron saint of Scotland because he
was the only one of the apostles who knew where
the loaves and fishes were. However, this particular
Scotsman was miserly enough, and the extensive hospi-
tality that he was forced to exercise on this occasion
was a great trial, which, I am afraid, was the chief
object of the visit, though he did all he could to look
as if he enjoyed it. But when, after dinner, the guests
all got up to drink his health, standing with one foot
on their chairs and the other on the table, Highland
fashion, and then threw his glasses over their left
shoulders, the struggle between our host's politeness
and his agony must have been fearful. The clean
sweep of the larder, cellar, and pantry, which this
boisterous revelry entailed, was all the more disastrous
to the close-fisted Scot, as, being hundreds of miles
from any shop, he could not effect any restoration for
a considerable time. He must have devoutly wished, in
bidding a glad farewell to his visitors the next morning,
that he had been born on a 29th February, so as to be
congratulated only once in four years. The drinking
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custom just mentioned, it is said, dates from the time
of the toasts given to " King Charlie over the water "
at Jacobite gatherings in the Highlands.
Here, at my first acquaintance with the typical con-
structing engineer abroad, and after meeting him since
in many other lands, I may say that he is sui generis
among his craft. He differs in many respects from the
type I had left at home. Sunburnt, bearded, with the
pipe ever in his mouth, a daring rider, full of energy,
exhaustless in resource when difficulties arise, hospitable
to the last degree, and full of queer anecdote, he has
little tolerance for fussy namby-pambyism in his superiors
or his comrades, and expects his men to work as hard
as himself, with due allowance for the various disabili-
ties of the races with which he has to deal. Nor is his
wife, when he has one, which is seldom, less equal to
the task which circumstances have put before her.
Brought up probably among the comforts of an English
home, she is ready to endure a life such as the following
narrative illustrates, dwelling in tents or wooden huts
with gaping sides, with rough food and all kinds of
privations, yet cheerful and hopeful through it all, for
it is the home. And, as Ruskin says, " Wherever
a true wife comes, this home is always around her.
The stars only may be over her head ; the glow-
worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire
at her foot ; but home is yet wherever she is."
Such as these approach more to the ideal of Words-
worth's " perfect woman nobly planned " than to
that of the imperfect man imagined by Plato and the
suffragettes.
Of course, I have come across several exceptions to
this type, but there is no doubt that among men whose
fortunes lead them to the wild places of the earth, there
are many whose best deeds are inspired by the patient
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and hopeful women who share their trials and bid them
ever to be of good cheer.
According to the custom of the construction de-
partment of the Madras Railway, a certain sum was
granted to every engineer appointed to a district, with
which he was to build his own bungalow on his own
plan, which system worked well as long as there was no
change in the occupancy of the position. In my case,
however, an engineer had been appointed to the district
shortly before I arrived, and, having a wife and children,
with which accessories at that time I was not blessed,
had built a habitation of some size, and, curious to say,
as the reader will presently see, the existence of this
family and, consequently, the size of the bungalow was
the means of saving me from a terrible death.
This engineer was transferred at short notice to some
other duty before occupying his bungalow, and caused
the vacancy to which my early arrival in Madras
enabled me to succeed. A late arrival in India, and
almost as inexperienced as I, he had built the structure
with rough stone cemented by mud. This is good
enough for a temporary building, as this was to be,
if he had protected it all round, as is usual, with a
verandah, so that the monsoon rains could not reach
the walls ; but this had been done only in the front.
There was a large central living-room and several bed-
rooms at each side of it, the kitchen and servants'
quarters, etc. being, according to Eastern custom, in
a separate building. On my arrival I decided, quite by
chance, to occupy one of the bedrooms on the west
side, leaving the eastern wing entirely empty.
The elemental grandeur of the approach of the
monsoon, which was now imminent, has never, to my
knowledge, been adequately described, and this grandeur
appears to be most conspicuous where the total rainfall
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is the least, and where, as is generally the case, it falls in
greater quantities within short intervals. In the Ceded
Districts this is the case, the rainfall for the whole year
being very scanty, but when it does occur, coming down
not like cats and dogs, but like elephants and hippo-
potami, at intervals, for a few weeks.
The first warnings are violent whirlwinds, called in
India " devils," which, moving slowly along, catch up
the six months' dust, or any comparatively light objects,
and send them whirling up into the air to a great height.
I have said comparatively light objects, for if any structure
not of considerable stability or weight is, by chance,
encountered, some of it is sure to be carried upward.
Before I knew the local application of the term, I
remember being astonished by a friend coming to me
with the news that a devil had just carried away his
verandah. The incongruity of such a personage causing
anything to go heavenwards is sufficiently striking.
Another premonition is the swarms of insects, which,
by the way, seem to be the only creatures who live out
their life in the enjoyment of the season and hours that
suit them. Figurez vous y as the French say, the merry
mosquito, who sings as he earns his living, and carefully
resting by day in one of those particular folds of the hung-
up mosquito curtain which will be inward at night, gloats
as he wakes over his coming victim, and plunging at his
exposed surfaces, gambols about with tumultuous joy
till break of day. Or the swift tarantula spider. This
small wild beast's body is about the size of a plum, with
a head about that of a cherry, while his numerous hairy
legs are each as long as a dinner fork. He is, for his
size, surely the most rapid of the Almighty's creatures,
and can reach his destination almost with the velocity of
a rifle bullet.
I remember, if I may digress here, being, later on, at
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a fashionable dinner party in an Indian garrison town.
Ladies in smart toilettes and men in uniform, and other
delights, sat round the table, not at the small cliquy
tables of the present day set archipelago fashion, and,
" The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men,"
while the happy vintage began lightly to touch their
brains, when from the ceiling, suddenly, there fell
a tarantula on to the centre of the table with a dull thud.
While he was making up his mind where to dart, the
ladies screamed and scattered as if a bombshell had fallen,
and the effect was like that of a mouse at a meeting of
suffragettes, only more so. The creature darted at
lightning speed across the table and escaped. Truly
that fearful creature had a moment of ecstasy, if the
sense of being master of the situation affected him.
But to return to the jungle bungalow. The insects
that worried me most were exceedingly minute, and kept
falling like a mist from the thatched roof above. I got
used to this after a while as a general thing, but could
not stand it at meal times, as soup and insects, mutton
and insects, curry and insects, and beer and insects
became monotonous ; so I rigged up a spare tablecloth
tied at its four corners by cords to distant rafters, in
order to form a sort of awning over the dining-table,
which was a great success.
Following the whirlwinds, for several successive after-
noons, magnificent cloud forms roll up in masses,
portentous of storm. The scene is recalled by Edwin
Arnold's Light of Asia , where the fiends of hell obscured
nature to keep the truth from Buddha, by
"Blasts
Of demon armies clouding all the wind,
With thunder and with blinding lightning flung
In jagged javelins of purple wrath
From splitting skies."
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
These gradually pass away each evening without rain,
the heat being stifling, while that great artist, the
tropical sun, fiery in his splendour, flings about his
brush unsparingly upon the angry and retreating cloud
masses. Heavier and heavier, day by day, this happens,
when at length down comes the rain in torrential sheets,
the lightning being so incessant that, if it were calm
enough to do so, a book at night might be read by it,
while the dull roar of the thunder is almost as con-
tinuous.
The first consequence of the actual advent of the rain
was leakage from the roof, some of which, at night, fell
into my patent suspended tablecloth hung by its corners,
and when, bellying down by the weight, it was nearly full,
one of the ropes gave way, and 1 was awakened by the
crash of quite a large bathful of water deluging the
floor and running into the adjoining rooms.
But this was only a curtain-raiser, so to speak, for
the great Drury Lane sensational drama, nearly indeed a
tragedy, which followed the next night. The rain and
thunder continued, but far above their roar, near mid-
night, came a fearful and deafening crash, as it might be,
" Tremendo
Jupiter ipse ruens tumultu."
Starting up from bed and rushing to the room door, I
found the whole of the bungalow in ruins and its roof
on the ground, except the room I had just left, the
adjoining one, and the front verandah. Hearing the
noise, and frightened at the possible insecurity of their
own quarters, the servants, who were over a dozen in
number, came rushing to the verandah, which being
supported on wooden posts was the only safe place.
As there was no habitation, even of the mud variety
of which a Hindoo village consists, within many miles,
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we had all of us to crouch in the verandah, shivering
with cold, for the rain brings what seems, from the
contrast with the previous weather, excessive cold.
As the building was uninhabitable we picked up, at
daylight, the remains of the furniture, and loading up
a few bullock carts made for the nearest ddk bungalow
as a temporary refuge.
Fortunately what was termed an out bungalow,
which was to be for my use when visiting the further
end of my district, was nearly finished, and having
had it built from my own plans, I was confident it
was more stable than that which I had left. With
some additions I made this my head-quarters, and as it
was close to a native village it was more convenient for
supplies.
CHAPTER V
A native visit Travelling Jungle life Staff and postal arrangements
Jungle pests The engineer's work Hot winds Jackals and
hyenas Indian rivers Native expedients First appearance of the
locomotive English navvies Afghans.
^HORTLY after arriving at my new quarters I
kJ received a formal visit of welcome from the Reddiy
or native headman of the village, with his satellites.
Sitting all round they paid their compliments, each of
the principal ones placing garlands round my neck. All
the conversation was, of course, through my head native
clerk as an interpreter. Here I may say that, in con-
trast to most other provinces in India, in the Madras
Presidency a great many native officials and servants
speak English fairly well. This arises from the fact of
there being such a variety of languages. Tamil, Telegu,
Canarese, and others having each a limited area, so that
few Europeans learn them, and as Hindustani (Urdu) is
only, as a rule, understood by Mussulmans, who are in
the minority, English rather than the latter is the more
frequent means of communication between the Euro-
pean and the native.
The visit was embarrassing and long, for necessarily
there were few subjects in common, and my ignorance
of native etiquette prolonged it almost to desperation.
Eastern politeness in this matter assumes that the
inferior in position in this case the visitor is entirely
at the disposal of the superior, and it is for the latter to
terminate the visit by words meaning " there is leave "
that is, leave to go. You might as well be whistling
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jigs to the pyramid of Cheops and expecting it to dance,
as to get these men to move without the releasing word.
At length the clerk, realizing that I was not prolonging
the interview for mere enjoyment, gave me the hint.
Does not many a hostess of more civilized lands long
for a similar weapon by which the bores and the bored
might be as easily separated ?
In visiting his district the engineer almost always
rides, followed almost as quickly on foot by his ghora-
wallah, or groom, for he is trained to speed, and hard
riding in such a climate as that of India is exceptional.
If for any reason the horse is not available, the munchiel
is often used up country in Southern India. This is a
long bamboo pole from which a hammock is slung, and
it is borne on the shoulders of four coolies, two at each
end, four others running alongside to relieve their
fellows at intervals. The motion is the perfection of
ease, as the spring of the hammock, the resilience of
the bamboo, and the elasticity of the bodies of the
bearers combine to soften the motion much more than
the C springs of a barouche over the best paved
road. The bearers go at a slinging trot, singing a
monotonous but melodious chant, which might be
represented freely by this :
" The Lord Sahib is light, and we carry him well
Over jungle and plain, over hill and thro' dell,
We sing as we go, the ever same song,
As we all jog along, jog along, jog along."
The Telegu language, in which my muncbiel bearers
sang, is full of the sounds corresponding to our letter
U, so that when sung softly it has the effect of a ber-
ceuse, which, combined with the motion and the heat,
soon wraps the traveller in soft and dreamy slumbers.
When the Lord Sahib weighs eighteen stone, as he may
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
occasionally do, the verse begins as above, with, in that
case, one of those more or less dove-coloured lies
which are not wholly unknown in higher circles at
home, such as " 1 am delighted to see you," " Not at
home," etc. Hamlet was a true observer when he
spoke of the easiness of lying.
There are plenty of accounts of Indian life published,
but they are mostly limited to the experiences of mili-
tary men and civilians who, though travelling on duty
through the jungle occasionally, have their head-quarters
in garrison towns, while others, whose big-game killing
exploits form the subject of their books, are so occupied
with this exciting work that Indian rural life, except in
so far as it may be connected with their sport, is passed
by unnoticed.
Most of my Indian life was entirely in the jungle.
My staff at this time consisted of several clerks, two
sentries or peons in uniform and armed, who were on
guard at night, for I had charge of a chest of the com-
pany's money, and an apothecary or dresser to attend
to illness or injuries. The apothecaries, one of whom
was attached to each district, were good enough for
simple ailments, and some of them fairly skilful ; but
one of my colleagues spoke of his, in the words of
Hudibras, as one of those
" Whose deleterious med'cines
That whosoever took, is dead since."
Besides these there were inspectors of works, and tappal
runners or postmen, whose duties, as we were away
from the ordinary mail routes, were to run from district
to district with the letters for the staff, according to a
fixed time table. Each runner carried a pole, at the
end of which were bells, which had a double object.
They could be heard at a great distance, serving as a
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warning to have our mail matter ready, and raising our
expectations as to news from the dear old land at home.
A second reason was to frighten wild beasts and snakes
from the path of the barefooted runner, though I have
heard it said that in districts where a man-eating tiger
exists the bells have an exactly opposite effect, the wily
beast finding his prey by their sound.
Every member of this staff was a native, as were also,
of course, the servants, and though most of the higher-
class ones could speak English enough for their duties,
naturally there were few subjects in common on which
we could converse. The nearest European was thirty or
forty miles off, and the bungalow was several miles from
the main road by which travellers occasionally passed.
The loneliness was therefore terrible, hard work, of
which I had plenty, being the only relief. There was a
fair amount of big-game shooting, but, except on occa-
sions to be presently noted, I had no time for this. It
must be understood that those who expect to shoot big
game must give all their time to it, and a keen sports-
man will spend days and days tracking a single tiger.
Such quest was not for me. Yes, the loneliness was
terrible, such as before then or since I have never experi-
enced. Thoreau, the American recluse, in his self-chosen
retreat in the woods, said that since the astronomers
had discovered that the solar system, including the
earth, was in the midst of the milky way, he felt no
longer lonely. But I am afraid I could not bring myself
up to that extreme intimacy with the stars which the
philosopher of the simple life seems to have attained.
Occasionally there was an interchange of visits with
colleagues, but distance made them infrequent, and I
often found a sort of company in the cheery and harm-
less lizard who seemed to like sprawling upon the white-
washed wall and chirping his sympathy. Not so pleasant
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
are the eye flies, which, minute as pins' heads, hover in
hundreds about one's eyes, every now and again making
a rush at that sensitive organ, and continuing their
attentions till sundown, when they are promptly relieved
by the ever-joyous mosquito. Cobras, which sometimes
come into the houses, scorpions, leeches, and jungle
fleas have been so much written about in travellers'
tales that I shall only say, like the Queen of Sheba, that
the half was not told me. As to the last-mentioned
pests, I read the other day of a sojourner in a similar
case to mine driving a cow through his bungalow sitting-
rooms and bedrooms with the object, which was suc-
cessful, of her attracting and carrying away, at all events
for a time, some of the superfluous inhabitants. As
George Stephenson, the Northumbrian inventor of the
locomotive, said, when asked what would happen if
cattle strayed on the rails, " It would be bad for the
coo."
The white ants devoured their way through almost
everything. The leather of my boots, notwithstanding
the blacking, was evidently a bonne bouche, possibly from
the similarity to native beef-steak. Thinking to circum-
vent them, I tied the boots at night to a string suspended
from a roof beam, but they climbed the walls and came
along the beam, descending the string. The string,
however, being also toothsome, they ate it through, and
the whole fell with a crash to the ground. But the boots
were saved.
The country through which the district extended was
mostly what are called the black cotton soil plains, the
soil being as black and nearly as fruitful as ink. The
vast undulating surface covered with the diminutive
cotton plant, rolling away monotonously to the blue
distance, and broken only by small rocky hills, gave an
impression of immensity that almost amounted to the
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sublime. During the rains the black soil is absolutely
impassable for riding or driving, so that it is fortunate
they are of very short duration.
Outdoor work, riding over the district, was done from
daybreak, or gunfire, as it was called in India, to 9 or
10 a.m. in the hot season and in the afternoon, the
midday hours being utilized for office work. Fortunately,
the formation of a book club by the engineers helped
the evenings through. When the fierce hot wind blew
as from a furnace, outdoor work in the afternoon could
not be done, and it was only possible to exist inside by
shutting up everything but the windward windows, which
were covered by what are called cus-cus tatties, or blinds
made of fibre, kept wet by drips from perforated water-
pots hung above them. These cooled the winds to
bearable point. Fortunately, these winds are only
periodical, and do not begin till about 1 1 a.m., though
lasting till long past sundown, and by sleeping on the
roof or in the verandah a comparatively cool night
is obtainable. I have since made acquaintance with
hot winds in South Africa and in Australia, but, though
bad enough, they are to those of India, as regards
intensity and persistence, as skim milk is to the brandy
of commerce.
Physical geography atlases show the maximum isother-
mal line, zigzagging across the globe and touching the
regions of which I am speaking. It is not only the
great heat which disturbs sleep at night, but the cry of
the jackals, of which there are many in the cotton plains
roaming in packs. Surely it is the most dismal, heart-
rending sound known. The jackal, judging from his
mode of expressing his feelings, must be the pessimist of
the wilds. One of them begins with a mournful wail,
another follows, until the whole troop join in a dirge of
despair, the almost human character of the voice driving
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the listener almost into a state of despondency. No
Wagner could imitate it, even with an orchestra of 'cellos
and oboes. The cry of the so-called laughing hyena,
which is a more solitary beast and was often heard also
at night, is little better. I often met packs of wolves in
my rides, but they never paid any hostile attention to me.
The great characteristic of railway construction work
in India is the enormous rivers which have to be crossed,
these being often twice or thrice the width of the Thames
at London, but, unlike that waterway, having an almost
dry bed at certain seasons for several months together.
At other times of the year they often carry torrents of
water which would sweep away everything but the very
strongest structures in bridge piers. In order to econo-
mise carriage of steel and other material for the great
bridges which are thus required, their construction is
usually delayed till the line is practically completed up to
the site, when the rails are continued across the dry bed
of the river, so that the material carried by trains may
be delivered for the bridge and the works beyond. So
long are these dry periods, that not infrequently the
railway is even opened for public traffic with the trains
running through the river beds pending the completion
of the larger bridges.
It is perhaps unnecessary to say that natives, includ-
ing women, do all the construction work of the Indian
O '
railways. I had nearly as many women as men at shift-
ing earthwork, the men digging it out and the women
carrying it in baskets on their heads to where it was
required. Native artisans are also skilful, the carpenters
having an advantage over Europeans in using three
limbs in their work. Being exceedingly lithe and supple,
the carpenter seizes the wood on the bench with one
uplifted foot, which is as grasping as a Jew money-lender,
having his two hands free for the plane or chisel.
Asia
On account of the cheapness of labour all sorts of
makeshift contrivances are used instead of mechanical
power, as we know it. Man's and bullocks' work do
everything in conjunction with the inevitable bamboo.
India is unthinkable without bullocks and bamboos. A
special instance of this is the raising of water from wells
and from bridge foundations by the bullock mot. A
great bag of hides lifts the water by means of a rope
carried over a pulley to a pair of bullocks, who work
down a steep inclined plane, thus utilizing their weight
as well as their power. Another means of doing the
same work by men's weight only is the picoffa. This is
formed by a tall bamboo fixed upright, to which are
slung by ropes two or three cross bamboos bound
tightly together. The attachment is in the middle of
the cross-piece, which is thus free to swing vertically
like a see-saw. From one end hangs a bucket dipping
into the well, while an agile native, steadying himself by
a light handrail attached to the cross-bar, works the
latter alternately up and down by running along the bar,
thus lifting the full bucket, which is emptied by another
coolie into the channel, and dropping it down again by
running back along the bar in the reverse direction.
The first appearance of the locomotive in the jungle is
like that of the foul fiend himself to the unsophisticated
native. The engine appears long before the opening of
the railway, it being used by the construction engineer
as soon as the rails are laid, so as to draw wagons
carrying various materials for the works, and also
frequently ballast. Hence, as " bandy " is the generic
name for any vehicle in Southern India, the terrible
machine soon acquired its name of " Ballaster-Bandy,"
which stuck to it for all time, even when used in the
regular traffic after the line was opened. I well
remember, on one occasion, a great crowd of villagers
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
assembling at the rail end awaiting the first arrival of the
expected monster, concerning which village rumour had
been busy. It moved up quietly enough and stopped,
upon which the natives, who are as curious as cows,
thronged round it and almost under its wheels.
Here was the driver's opportunity ; so he suddenly
let off steam in all directions. The phenomenon, so
familiar to us, of the white and loud hissing steam, was
absolutely new to the unsuspecting coolies, who were
scattered like a bursting rocket.
When railways were first introduced into India, the
English contractors thought that English navvies were
essential to their construction, and they were accordingly
imported, but it was soon found that the climate was
unsuitable for European manual work, and though the
native could not rival the white man in the amount of
work done, his wages were small enough to overbalance
this, and so white labour ceased. The English railway
navvy of the mid-Victorian period belongs to an extinct
species. He was very different from the labourer of
the present day, when railway construction has practically
ceased at home, and machinery has so largely supplanted
manual effort. He had the thews and sinews of a
prize-fighter, and an enormous capacity for work, and,
unfortunately, at times for drink. I suppose it was the
latter propensity which led to an order by the Madras
Government censuring some of the navvies for seizing
and carrying off some native policemen, whose sense of
duty led them to interfere in a drunken row. It was
only a few years before my time, and it was said that
each navvy took two constables, one under each arm,
and chucked them outside the railway fences.
Owing to a scarcity of local labour at one time, some
Afghans, Pathans, and Kandaharis were sent to me
from the North fine fellows, with almost Italian com-
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plexions, and good workers, but very quarrelsome,
being always armed with dangerous-looking knives.
Their features, or sometimes the absence of them,
showed that they usually settled their differences by
private enterprise without troubling Government legal
machinery. Apart from these little scrimmages among
themselves, with which it was wise policy not to inter-
fere, I found them easy to manage, as indeed I have
found in dealing since with semi-civilized races in
various other parts of the world, when rigid justice is
dealt out to them.
IOI
CHAPTER VI
Village amusements and customs A swindler A tiger hunt Big-
game casualties Cheetahs A coroner's verdict Native English
Native characteristics Instance of native devotion told to author
by Lord Roberts Total eclipse of the sun : marvellous effects
The Polish prince An awkward misunderstanding Antelope
shooting The Malabar coast A celebrated author's visit A
tent collapse.
TO return to my lonely camp and my village neigh-
bours. The amusements of the latter were
largely composed of dances and dramas. The dancers
are dressed much more amply and with more trinkets
than any other native women display. The plays take
place in some open village space by moonlight. The
performance is interminable, beginning early in the
afternoon and going on past midnight to early morning.
I left the first and last I ever attended at the end of
Act XIII, and it was then going as strong as a torpedo-
boat destroyer. Not knowing the language, I could not
say whether it was a melodrama or a problem play, but
probably not the former, which is inconceivable without
scenery, real cabs, water, horse-racing, etc. It seemed
to be very funny, judging by the shouts of laughter
greeting the numerous jokes.
Some of the natives play a kind of whist scarcely
differing from ours, except that the order of play is to
the right instead of to the left. Some are wonderfully
keen at chess, and I remember hearing of a good game
being played, not, however, at this simple village, by
a blindfolded native who was required, in addition to
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this mental strain on his memory and skill, to say how
many pebbles hit him on his naked back, these being
thrown at him from behind at uncertain intervals during
the game.
Ingenuity in swindling is often carried to as high
perfection in India as in the most enlightened and
Christian countries. One man went through our village
with an old Crosse and Blackwell pickle-bottle label
which had the Royal Arms engraved upon it. Exhibit-
ing this, the words of which were, of course, unintelli-
gible to the simple villagers, he passed himself off as
one of the Queen's tax-collectors, and by asking only
a small amount from each householder, and by avoiding
the more intelligent, he amassed a considerable sum
before he was found out.
One of the many travelling bands of jugglers who
visited us had, in addition to the ordinary accessories,
a full-grown " woman tiger," as it was curiously de-
scribed to me by my native clerk. The animal was not
in a cage, but simply held by two chains attached to
a collar round its neck, one at each side, the ends of
which were held taut at some distance by groups
of three or four men. It glared and showed its dan-
gerous-looking teeth, uttering angry growls, and if it
had the knowledge which Bacon says is Power that is to
say, knowledge of its own we should have had a rough
time of it. No doubt it had been caught in its inno-
cent infancy, otherwise the celebrated question as regards
the apple in a dumpling as to how it got there might
well have been asked. It was feeling its strength, how-
ever, and tugged at its chains with such vigour that,
I must own, I felt a little relieved when the performance
was at an end.
But I had a more exciting interview with a less tram-
melled beast of the same kind later, when, on an Easter
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holiday, accompanied by some European friends, we
sought him in his own haunts. We slept in the jungle
without tents the night before the fray, and while doing
so, actually had some of our provisions eaten by jackals
or other beasts of the forest. The trees were so thick
above that the sun hardly penetrated through them, and
the heat was much moderated accordingly ; but there was
room below to manoeuvre the attack which was in hand,
for in the south of India tigers are not shot from the
safe eminence of an elephant's back, but on foot. Native
trackers were employed to trace the beast's marks, and
it is extraordinary how this is done. We saw a dusty
surface covered with imprints of the domestic village
buffalo, bullocks, goats, and other animals and birds, yet
the marks of the four paws of the tiger were so distinct
to them, while so utterly confused and scattered to the
uninstructed eye, that no definite course taken by the
beast could be ascertained without the trackers' help.
We were posted in groups, each with a spare rifle held
by a coolie, while a band of natives, covering a consider-
able breadth of the jungle, with tom-toms, instruments
like tambourines, cymbals, and all kinds of music, making
day hideous, were to drive the tiger across the line of
fire, and we were to do the rest. It is said that when
looking for a tiger you feel you cannot get enough of him,
and generally when found you get rather too much.
This, however, was not our case. Long anxious hours
were passed, when at last the approaching din and the
excitement became intense, and the hand went instinc-
tively to the trigger. Never in a long life of many
dangers and vicissitudes did I feel such a stress on
every sensation within me. Was it fear ? No ! I
cannot explain the inexplicable, but there was no nervous-
ness to interfere with any emergency that might arise.
The tiger came sneaking through the undergrowth,
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looking back at his pursuers, and, catching sight of us,
lay low for a moment, then starting up, suddenly turned
round and faced the music rather than the guns, for these
animals cannot bear being driven, and if they can break
through a driving force they will do so. Two or three
ineffective shots, one from me, followed him, and the
beaters swarming up the trees in fear, the only tiger
I met face to face in the jungle escaped unharmed.
In connection with this episode, I am going to tell
what some might call a tall tale, but though the proverb
generally tells another one in saying that truth is stranger
than fiction, it seems to be certainly so in the un-
doubtedly true story which I am about to relate. It is
of a tiger battue similar to that which I have just
described, and in the same neighbourhood, though I was
not present. The accountant of the railway contractors'
staff on the next district to mine was one of the party,
and he had climbed a tree with a view of getting a better
shot. The tiger, driven by the tom-toms, happened to
pass directly under the tree. Either missing his footing
under the excitement of the moment, or owing to his rifle
catching in a branch, the unfortunate accountant fell
down right on the top of the frightened beast, who
mauled him so terribly before the others could come to
the rescue that he died shortly after.
The only other tiger catastrophe that happened to
anyone with whom I was in any way associated during
my six and a half years in India, was that when a friend,
a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, and a son of a well-
known bishop who is still living, was badly mauled when
shooting near Bellary, where I was subsequently stationed.
He fortunately, however, recovered. But a cheetah
killed a much closer friend of mine, a district judge
of the same place. This I only heard of after I left
India, so do not know details.
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
It is extraordinary what rude contrivances the native
hunters or shikarees use, or did use in those days, in
shooting such dangerous game as tigers. They had
a gun nearly twice as long as those with which we
are familiar, and only provided, like an ancient cannon,
with a touch-hole instead of a lock. To fire it, the
shikaree had to strike a light and hold it to the touch-hole,
and the wonder is that such an active animal as the
tiger ever failed to escape ; nevertheless, with old
and experienced shikarees^ the animal generally got the
worst of it.
At that time there was a reward by the Government
of three hundred rupees for each tiger slain, hence the
trade. There was also a smaller reward for the heads
of venomous snakes, until it was found that certain
ingenious natives caught them and bred them for
slaughter, so as to earn an easy livelihood, though, of
course, it was not without its risks. This scheme could
not, obviously, be carried out as regards tigers, and 1
see by the last returns that about 2150 tigers and other
dangerous beasts are killed annually in India, and about
ten times as many snakes.
Tigers were not to be found in the cotton plains,
they had to be sought at some distance, but cheetahs
used to lurk in the rocky hills which, at intervals,
spring out of the black soil plains. These were generally
shot on nights so dark that a small piece of white paper
had to be fixed to the sight of the gun, and generally
all that could be seen of the beast was his pair of
gleaming cat-like eyes, when, attracted by the bait a
tied-up goat he approached his doom.
In connection with these tiger episodes, I remember
a curious verdict of a native coroner's jury to this
effect: "ThatPandoo died of tiger eating him. There
was no other cause of death." This reminds me, though
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it is rather a hackneyed subject, to add to it some of
the experiences of my neighbours and myself, in
examples of native English which so often sacrifice
sense and meaning to the length and pomposity of the
phraseology. Three men came to me once bearing a
letter from a native inspector beginning in these terms :
"Sir, Herewith I have the honour to enclose three
bricklayers," etc. etc. Here is another specimen :
"Honoured Sir, Having been amputated from my
family for some years, and as I have complaints of the
abdomen coupled with great conflagrations of the
internals, and prostration of all desire for work, with
also the disgorging of my dinner, I hope your highness
will excuse my attendance for ten or nine more days,
and in duty bound shall ever pray for the salubrity of
your temper, and the enlargement of your family."
Another: "Respectable Sir, My wife runs off
yesterday with Chinnasawmy Naidoo; My God, how
annoying! Therefore, respectable Sir, will please
apologize to me for not resorting to office this
morning, for I go to apprehend this detestable
individual."
Slang and formal official phraseology are somewhat
mixed in the following, which was received from a
native inspector :
" Sir, I have the honour to inform you that Mootha-
sawmy and Soobaron hooked it on Friday last, and
I have replaced them by two good masons.
"I have the honour to be, Sir,
" Your obedient servant,
"MOOTHOOVERA CHETTY."
No doubt the inspector, having heard some English-
man use the slang words in the letter, which are now
out of date, I believe, thought that they were as good
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
English as those of the rest of it. On the whole,
however, the native official in Southern India has a
remarkably good grasp of English, and his caligraphy
is excellent.
The natives generally, though weak in muscle, are
often capable of great endurance. One of them, for
instance, will carry on his head the traveller's bedding,
rolled up in a bundle, for twenty or thirty miles, which
is an ordinary requirement in making a riding tour,
and will arrive not much behind the rider. Physical
and moral strength to resist a shock is, however,
generally absent. A tannicatch or low-class servant of
mine, in a fever, which a European would throw off in
a day, dreamt that he saw the devil, and he simply died
from fright ; and it is notorious that if a native receives
but a slight flesh wound from a tiger or other beast,
he scarcely ever recovers. Of course, there are many
exceptions, especially among the shikarees^ the soldiers,
and many belonging to northern races who have shown
conspicuous instances of great physical bravery, equalling
that of any white race in the world.
As an instance of this I may allude to a circumstance
which occurred in London many years later, when I was
editor of that old-established publication, Colburns United
Service Magazine. In it was published in serial form the
life of Sir Frederick Roberts, now Earl Roberts, by Mr.
C. R. Low, afterwards printed in book form (W. H.
Allen and Co., 1883). Calling, with the author, on Sir
Frederick in connection with the work, the General
related to us the incident which appears in the book as
follows :
"At the time, General Roberts's attention was attracted
by an act of devotion towards himself which should find
a place in this personal record. When turning up Picnic
Hill from the Afghan position, after vainly attempting
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Asia
to rally the discomfited Punjaubees, on turning to look
back he beheld his Sikh orderly, Dhyan Singh by name,
of the fth Punjaub Infantry, walking close behind him
with his arms stretched out to cover the body of his
master, exposed to the Afghan fire across the narrow
valley, which, as before said, was only fifty yards in
width. Officers who have served on the north-west
frontier can recall many instances of like devotion on
the part of those serving under them, whether Sikhs or
Pathans, and it is a disgraceful calumny to say that the
virtue of gratitude is unknown to the inhabitants of the
Indian peninsula."
For my own part, fully considering all his surround-
ings, I have a great admiration for the Indian native of
every class, though of course there are exceptions.
Simple, kindly, faithful, patient and cheerful even in
adversity, he excels in many qualities which are denied
to other races, while he has a keen sense of the justice
which under British rule he invariably receives.
The total eclipse of the sun of 1868 occurred when,
at my head-quarters, I was within riding distance of
totality. Only astronomers and those few others who
have had the opportunity of seeing the sun totally
eclipsed appreciate the great difference in scenic effects
between a total and a partial or annular eclipse. The latter,
even when a very small fraction of the sun is visible,
shows only a short interval of dusk or twilight, whereas
when totally hidden, the blackness of night supervenes
for several minutes. When this darkness interrupts the
blaze of tropical sunlight, as in the case I speak of, the
difference is still more remarkable. Though total
eclipses of the sun are not very infrequent, the observa-
tion of them is so hedged round with physical difficul-
ties that it is most unusual to meet with any person
outside astronomical circles who has had the good fortune
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
to have it within his experiences ; and the astronomer,
engaged as he is on perhaps the one opportunity of his
life, observing the scientific phenomena, is not the one
to note any impression not directly connected with them.
The rarity of observation is easily explained. In the
first place, when the cone formed by the moon's shadow
and projected into space strikes the earth, which event
constitutes an eclipse, the shadow in its progress, owing
to the disparity between the size of the sun and the
moon, only covers a mere strip of the earth's surface,
never more than about one hundred and seventy miles
in breadth, and frequently much less ; and, secondly,
this strip may be confined to the lonely ocean, or
possibly to practically inaccessible regions of the land.
For instance, no such phenomenon has been witnessed
in London since 1715. More than all, the observer
may, after much voyaging and labour, reach the favour-
able position only to find the whole spectacle marred by
cloud or fog.
I spoke of the great cotton plains being varied by
isolated hills. To one of these, near the village of
Adoni, the party which we made up for the purpose
wended our way, and ascended on the morning of the
1 8th August. The weather was simply perfect. Except
for some cumulus clouds near the horizon the sky was
brilliantly clear, unlike that cloudy, rainy-season sky
which, in other parts of India, baulked many of the
scientific parties that had come all the way from Europe
and America to make observations.
The beginning of the eclipse occurred about eight
o'clock, and it lasted about two and a half hours ; there-
fore totality took place between 9 and 10 a.m., when, at
that season in India, if cloudless, the sun's glare is
intense. Though the progress of occultation was obvi-
ous enough through the smoked glass which was the
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Asia
only apparatus we had, there was no very marked dimi-
nution of light until the near approach of totality, and
though, from the rate of motion of the moon and earth
being uniform, the fading and regaining of the sun's
light must have been at the same speed, the actual
impression made on the senses was very different.
Even in tropical latitudes we are accustomed to an
interval of some duration between full daylight and the
darkness of night, and the eye is trained to the gradual
change ; but in a total solar eclipse this is only a matter
of a few minutes hence, no doubt, the reality is greatly
magnified to the imagination. The almost immediate
change from daylight to midnight blackness a natural
phenomenon otherwise unknown was literally appalling.
Some minutes before total obscuration the twilight set
in, the whole landscape turning to an ashy grey, the face
of Nature becoming of a deathlike pallor, and the bold
gleaming sunlit curves of the cumulus clouds changing
in a moment to a dark and angry purple, portentous of
storm. It was the veritable Gtitterdttmmerung in its
literal sense, the twilight of the Gods. Then, like a
great funeral pall advancing majestically towards us
from the horizon, and staining the surface of the fair
earth, came the black shadow of the moon, followed by
what appeared to our unaccustomed eyes thick darkness.
To an observer down on the plain below this huge
shadow's edge, travelling at the rate of about 100 miles
an hour, would appear to rush past instantaneously, but
seen from our lofty position, commanding a surface of
forty or fifty miles, the advance of the great shadow was
comparatively slow and stately.
This was immeasurably grand, and almost incapaci-
tated us from calmly observing, in the minute or two
left to us, the silvery corona, and the crimson protuber-
ances shooting out from the sun behind the black disc
in
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
of the moon, while the whole sky glittered, as at mid-
night, with countless stars. Then, a moment after,
standing on the summit of the precipitous hill, we
could realize the words of Keats, which might have been
specially written for the time and place :
" . . . Suddenly a splendour like the morn,
Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps,
All the sad spaces of oblivion,
And every gulf and every chasm old,
And every height and every sullen depth.
Mantled before in darkness and huge shade,
Now saw the light, and made it terrible."
Quaint old Fuller why, by the way, do we so often
thus call him, for his quaintness is no greater than that
of any of his seventeenth-century contemporaries, and
he died at middle age ? says, " Should our eyes be
instantly posted out of midnight into noonday, certainly
we should be blinded with the suddenness and excel-
lencie of the lustre thereof. Nature, therefore, hath
wiselie provided the twilight, as by a bridge by degrees
to pass us from darkness to light." The bridge in our
case was so very short that we felt nearly in the condi-
tion imagined by the chronicler.
To show how different human beings may be im-
pressed by the same sight, it may be mentioned that one
member of our expedition remaining below, not being
strong enough for the exertion of the ascent of the hill,
told us afterwards that a peasant, who was steadily
ploughing near him when the eclipse occurred, never
stopped his work, not apparently noticing that anything
unusual was going on. Others, however, were not so
unobservant, as after descending from our station and
riding slowly home along the plain, we saw the blue
I 12
Asia
smoke ascending from hundreds of fields, the remains
of the propitiatory sacrifices offered up by the natives to
save the crops from the celestial wrath portended by the
darkened sun.
However, even in the uttermost parts of the earth
one does not run up against tigers and total eclipses
every day, and our jungle life was monotonous enough,
broken only by such an occasional meeting of the staff
as has been spoken of at the Scotsman's bungalow,
and by visits from chance travellers, generally of the
military or civilian classes, who preferred our hospitality
to the colder welcome of the ddk bungalow.
Once at an assembly of the former kind a Polish
prince, who was on a big-game shooting expedition,
arrived. His Highness spoke English well, but pro-
nounced it very badly, and when at tiffin he said he
had been washing himself all night, we wondered,
because for a prince he did not look so particularly
clean ; in fact, he seemed rather otherwise. However,
we came to understand later that what he meant was
that he had been watching all night up in a tree, to cir-
cumvent some dread beast of the field.
This reminds me of a more lamentable misunder-
standing involving also a strange coincidence, which I
came across years later in Australia. In this case, the
mispronunciation was due to the Australian variety of the
English language, which again recalls a Swiss hotel
notice that I heard of lately, " English spoken, American
and Australian understood." A doctor, making his long
rounds in the Queensland bush, used occasionally to
take his wife with him. Visiting at the house of a
deceased farmer, who had treated his wife like a house-
hold slave, giving her no recreation, and both the death
and the ill-treatment being forgotten by the doctor's
wife, the widow said to her, " Oh, Mrs. Brown, I have
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
had a sad loss since you were here last." To this the
latter replied, thinking she said "saddle horse ": "Indeed,
how glad you must be, you can now get about and enjoy
yourself." There is many a true word said in mistake.
Another occasional diversion was antelope shooting.
The Indian antelopes are very wary, and they " wind "
their pursuers at incredible distances, but it is possible
to get fairly near them when approaching from the lee-
ward. However, the usual method in the Deccan is to
approach on horseback armed with a short carbine, or
even a revolver, from a little off the windward direction,
sufficiently so to escape the quarry's notice until pretty
close up. Alarmed, the herd head for the wind, as they
invariably do, and by riding rapidly across their approach-
ing course they may be almost intercepted, as nothing
will change their course. The great difficulty is, of
course, to hit when both rider and antelope are at full
speed, no matter how close together they may be. It is
a most exciting encounter, and I have seen whole herds
escape, owing to the aiming difficulty.
About this time, either on business or holiday, I for-
get which, a visit was made to the Malabar coast, the
glorious tropical vegetation of which is one of the sights
of India. The cocoa-nut, bread-fruit, palmyra and areca-
nut trees, and countless others with their rich under-
growth and hanging draperies, " the boundless contiguity
of shade," the green magnificence, that peculiar tone of
dim mystery beyond the brown pillared trunks, entwined
with knotted cords of parasites, and starred with count-
less blooms, so dense that the way through seemed
almost impenetrable all was surpassingly lovely. In
these regions there is, during the monsoon, a steady and
almost continuous drizzle, with a moist heat which,
while giving a hothouse growth to all vegetation, ener-
vates all human energy.
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Asia
To the latter effect was probably due the following
incident. A well-known author visiting India at that
time, passed through this beautiful district by rail. He
was my fellow-traveller during the whole of the
daylight time a few hours only of this part of the
tour. A stout man, exhausted, no doubt, by receptions
and meetings, he lay on the carriage seat opposite me,
emitting mighty snores, but nevertheless the splendidly
graphic description of these very woodland scenes that he
was unconsciously passing through was not absent from
the resulting book, which he wrote on returning to
England. Like the hare, he had one eye open, or, as he
does not actually say he saw for himself, he made an
undoubtedly vivid and accurate second-hand tale of
what he might have seen. The result of a picturesque
imagination is certainly better than that of dunderhead
experience.
Of all the most uncomfortable, nasty, never-to-be-
forgotten, brutal calamities of the lesser sort, the collapse
of a tent in storm and rain, while you are in it, is the
worst. This I did not escape when engaged on some
work away from head-quarters. The Indian tents are
substantial, roomy affairs in comparison with the colonial
kind. They are square, with double walls and roof for
protection against the sun, the space between the walls
being used for bath, stores, etc., while the floor is
carpeted or matted, and the furniture fairly complete.
To provide against " devils " and other winds, the guy
ropes are not tied to pegs, which, when the ground is
softened by rain, would soon give way, but great holes
are dug in which are buried many-branched boughs of
trees, and to these the ropes are secured. The friction
being great, the ropes would break before the boughs
would move. During a demoniacal dance of the ele-
ments in a monsoon burst, the tent, drenched with rain,
"5
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
fell on me in the middle of the night, and soaked with
wet and nearly all my temporary belongings utterly
ruined, and papers and books saturated, I had to be
dragged out from the debris. With all the subsequent
difficulties attendant on trying to get through the deep
cotton soil to far-away shelter, I realized that, though a
house falling down was much more dangerous, the tent
catastrophe was far more calculated to give rise to what
might be called an unparliamentary condition of mind
and speech. It would have taken a Commissioner of
Oaths to do justice to the subject.
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CHAPTER VII
Change of quarters Cholera Stories A famous court-martial A
Hindu's joke on his wives War telegrams The Neilgherries
The Todas New duties Dacoits A narrow escape A fearful
accident Lord Mayo's assassination Madras A State ball A
legal complication The Taj Mahal Government Philistinism
The Marble Rocks Delhi Lucknow Cawnpore Character-
istics of natives and of the East Bible similitudes Anecdotes.
FATE, in the shape of orders from head-quarters,
now changed my fortunes to a new sphere of
labour, as the parsons term it that is to say, to the
town of Bellary, then a large civil and military station.
Here I was to be in charge of the construction of
a branch line to that town, including a large terminal
station and one of the great river bridges so char-
acteristic of India, a first experience of this kind.
It was a change socially, with many advantages, for
I was to be amongst European society, in its Anglo-
Indian sense, and especially that including the tenderer
sex, for in the jungle ladies' visits were of the angelic
description, in a double sense. But I had to set up
a buggy and put not only my outdoor servants, but my
manners into livery, so to say, giving up my previous
free and unconventional life, " exempt from public
haunt."
The Bellary period was perhaps one of the pleasantest
in my varied career, with youth, good health and spirits,
agreeable society, congenial work, and, comparatively
speaking, money in plenty ; and if it were not for the
unbridled ferocity of the climate for eight months of
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the year, all things were smooth. But this drawback
was great, and there never was a truer saying than that
of Montaigne, " The gods sell their good gifts to
men."
Cholera was raging furiously in the station at that
time, and the poor young Tommy Atkinses were carried
out to the cemetery, a little beyond my bungalow, one
after the other in grim procession to the solemn strains
of the Dead March. But this phase soon passed, and
being an honorary member of more than one of the
military messes, giving and receiving dinners, playing
rackets, which was the game of the day, and going
to garrison races, existence went easily enough. Talk-
ing of the latter, an amusing episode was a race ridden
by the two fattest men of the station, a corpulent
major and a portly judge, neither of whom would have
felt out of his surroundings at a cattle show. They
were arrayed in correct jockey costume, and the finish,
which was exciting, was made at a walk, the animals
being unable under their loads to go faster after being
round even the short course.
The stout major was the principal character in the
following incident. He was at a large dinner party,
and whether owing to the heat, the food, or the cham-
pagne, he fell asleep after the ladies rose, and the men,
seeing him so comfortable, left him, and he was soon
forgotten in the crowd. On the native servants coming
later to clear the table they ventured gently to rouse
him, but springing his folded arms violently back, with
some vivid language, the major sent them sprawling to
the floor. A second attempt leading to the same result,
they left him, and he slept on peacefully after the other
guests had gone and the household had retired to rest.
Awaking later, and thinking he was in his own bachelor
quarters, he groped his way through the door and
ix3
Asia
called out for his servant, roaring, " Boy ! Boy ! " at
the top of his voice. This brought the disturbed
hostess out on to the landing, en deshabille^ and the
major, completely flabbergasted at what seemed to him
an unexpected and untimely visit, cried, " Good
gracious, Mrs. Dumbledyke, what brings you here at
this time of night ? " Then he began to realize a situa-
tion the relation of which became the mess story of the
season.
Here is another ludicrous event, this time happening
to myself. I was dining with a friend and his wife, in
those funereal habiliments which modern custom has
decreed must accompany evening festivities. Artificial
light covers many sins, and an old dress suit is often
worn, without attracting attention to its shininess, until
absolute rending of the garment takes place. My suit
was of this kind, and sitting rather suddenly down in a
low chair in the verandah of my host well, I shall not
proceed with further details, which perhaps the least
intelligent of my readers can fill in for himself. It is
enough to say that the ordinary requirement, if possible,
of polite society, not to turn one's back to a lady, had to
be very carefully attended to during the whole of the
rest of the evening, the efforts to do so being fortunately
minimized by the fact of my being the only guest. I
could not help thinking, however, that the manoeuvres
to attain my object must have been obvious, and that
the hostess had a good laugh afterwards.
One of the most curious coincidences of the many I
have heard occurred here. There was stationed in
the garrison a certain Colonel Lilley, who had several
daughters, of all ages, famed for their rather expensive
and conspicuous dress. They sailed into church one
Sunday morning rather late, when the second lesson was
being read, and just at the pronouncement of the
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appropriate sentence, " Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin, and
yet I say unto you that even Solomon, in all his glory,
was not arrayed like one of these."
Needless to say, though it was in another part of
India that the great Mutiny occurred a few years before,
I met several who had gone through that strenuous time
in the north. Among others, a lady who, cut off from
her friends, had ridden several miles through country
swarming with hostile natives, and whose experiences,
had they been written, would have made one of the most
exciting tales possible to conceive. Her dauntless
courage would have shamed many a man in similar
plight.
" Mediisque in milibus ardet,
Bellatrix, audetque viris concurrere virgo."
And yet this plucky woman would faint at the sight of
a cat.
Talking of the Mutiny, there was a good deal of
precaution in my time, in the way of shutting the door
after the abstraction of the horse, or rather perhaps, I
should say, to avoid a second depredation. Some of the
principal railway stations I built as fortifications, with
loopholes for rifles, tanks in roof for water supply, etc.,
so as to enable Europeans, who might have to take
refuge there, to stand a siege. Also, when I subsequently
visited Delhi, I found that when the European troops
attended church they took into their pews with them
their loaded rifles and fixed bayonets a curious accom-
paniment to prayer.
A notable court-martial took place about this time in
Bellary, so notable that it was the subject of leading
articles in the Times. A martinet colonel, it was
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alleged, was very tyrannical to his men ; in fact, it was
said that, noticing one of them yawning on parade, he
ordered the man to be put to bed with a guard over him,
in order to have, as he said, his sleep out a kind of
treatment probably more exasperating than being put in
irons. A young lieutenant was especially the object of
these attentions, and in a sudden fit of irrepressible
resentment at some capricious order on parade, threw
down his sword and refused to obey. Trial by court-
martial and dismissal from the service followed ; but
public sympathy with the delinquent was so general, for
he was a great favourite, that the home authorities
subsequently, I believe, reinstated him, but transferred
him to another regiment.
Bellary was a very peculiarly situated town. In the
midst of an extensive plain rose a smooth rock four or
five hundred feet high, something the shape of half an
elongated egg, some miles round, and completely bare
except for an ancient fortress on the summit, in which
was confined, all the time I was there and for many
years before, a notable rajah who had committed some
gross offence. At the foot of the rock, nearly all round,
clustered the various barracks, bungalows of officers,
civilians and others, public offices, shops, etc. One of the
shops was kept by a Eurasian named Abraham, and was
situated in one of the clefts of the great rock, so the
establishment was invariably alluded to as " Abraham's
bosom."
Once a party of officers and others, including myself,
went to an entertainment in the native quarter given by
a wealthy Hindu. He had a good supper with excel-
lent wines, including champagne, or " Simpkin," as it
used to be called in India I suppose derived from the
native pronunciation of the word. But, of course, caste
prevented the host joining us in the disposal of this
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good fare. One of the things provided to amuse us
was a galvanic machine which he had imported from
England as a great novelty. Being wealthy, he had a
great number of wives, and, though strictly speaking
against custom, he brought them into view in the room
for the purpose of illustrating his new hobby. There
they were making a long row, covered with jewellery,
and, joining their hands together, he sent several shocks
through the lot, to their intense alarm and perplexity at
first, and subsequent great amusement, when they got
more used to it.
The Franco-German war of 1870 was going on at this
time, and the general commanding the Bellary district
used to receive daily telegrams as to the leading events.
Copies of these he used to send round by a mounted
orderly to the leading European residents, so those of
us who had this privilege were quite up to date in this
respect.
After my work in Bellary was finished I was trans-
ferred to the charge of a big length of the open railway,
but before proceeding to my new position I had to
recruit for a time in the hills, and went up for a
delightful sojourn in the Neilgherries at the highest
point, Ootacamund. Existence there, in a physical
sense, was glorious, equalled by none of those numerous
climates in which, before or after, my lot was cast.
Otherwise, the irksomeness of doing nothing but riding
about, for I had taken up one of my horses, and playing
billiards and rackets, rather palled.
One of the most interesting things in connection with
the Neilgherry hills is the existence of tribes quite
apart in origin, language, customs, and appearance from
the ordinary natives of the plains, even with all their
countless varieties in these matters, the Todas in par-
ticular, whose villages I visited. This is a very fine
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race, light in complexion, especially the women. They
have fine figures and eyes and intelligent faces, and such
a Jewish type of countenance that some people have
thought them to be descendants of the lost tribes of
Israel. This is supported by the fact that their religion
has a monotheistic element, and they believe in the
immortality of the soul. They have, however, no tradi-
tions. They carry no weapons, and have gentle manners
and pursue pastoral occupations only, tending buffaloes.
They are a very peculiar race in practising polyandry,
the man being restricted by their laws to one partner,
but she may have several. It is curious that in my
wanderings I should come across subsequently the
Mormons, who take the opposite view of matrimonial
relationships. The Todas are a diminishing race, and
when I was among them did not number more than six
hundred families.
The scenery of the Neilgherries, or Blue Mountains,
is magnificent, and the camellia, rhododendron, dog
rose, jessamine, and strawberry grow wild. Notwith-
standing the cold climate, tigers, bears, elephants, and
other animals of the plains are to be found. There
used to be a most comfortable club at Ooty, as it is
generally called, at which I stayed, and where there was
good company.
The work which was now to be mine was of the least
interesting character to be found in the whole of civil
engineering operations. It was simply being at the head
of a large staff of inspectors and others keeping in
repair the numerous works included on a hundred or
more miles of railway finished and in working, my head-
quarters being again in the jungle, and even more lonely
than before, as now passing travellers went through by
train, not needing hospitality. Moreover, I had to
give up my dear old horses of which I had kept
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previously three or four as my inspections were now
to be carried out by train and by trolly instead of in
the saddle. The latter vehicle is a light four-wheel
one, with an awning for protection from the sun, placed
on the rails, and pushed by two coolies, one running on
each rail, which their bare clinging feet makes easy.
Two other coolies sit up or run alongside to relieve
their mates when tired. The trolly is easily and
quickly lifted off the rails and put on one side when a
train is heard or seen approaching. The rail in India is
a favourite resting-place for snakes, the iron becoming
fiery hot in the sun, so that the cold-blooded creatures
seek it for warmth, while the slowness of the trains and
the vibration they cause enable the reptiles to escape
with dignified ease. Notwithstanding the enormous
number of natives killed by snakes in India over
twenty thousand annually I never came across a case,
though scorpion stings were very common. The
severity of these vary very much according to the sus-
ceptibility of the person attacked, some being nearly
fatal, while in other cases recovery was only a matter of
a day or two.
The slowness of the trains just referred to may be
realized by the fact that I remember a case of dacoits
(robbers) jumping on to the goods trucks of trains
travelling at night, lifting the tarpaulins, and throwing
the lighter goods overboard, then jumping off and
carrying away their plunder.
The principal diversion from the monotony of life
and work was the fighting with other departments of
the railway. In the construction of the line there is
only one's own branch and chief to deal with. On
maintenance work, the engineering, locomotive, and
traffic branches are in continual contact and frequent
conflict. The rule is that we that is, our own branch
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are always right. An engine goes off the rail.
Angry correspondence ensues as to whether the rail,
whose maintenance in proper position is the business of
the engineering department, caused the derailment, or
some defect in the engine itself, which is in charge of
the locomotive branch, and as the catastrophe itself
destroys nearly all evidence, there is generally no satis-
factory verdict.
A narrow escape from physical annihilation also varied
the monotony. The chief engineer, in inspecting the
several divisions, used to run over the line at a tremen-
dous speed sixty or seventy miles an hour in his
special train, this being done to test the smoothness of
the line. There was only as is the rule in India one
line of rails, trains passing each other at stations, where
there are two lines at least. At the top of a steep
gradient was a station where some empty trucks were
lying on a siding, but, through some negligence, badly
braked. A high wind rose at night and set them in
motion on to the main line, where, without the know-
ledge of the station staff, and favoured by the down
incline and the wind, they were soon going at a fearful
speed. Our special inspection train was temporarily
shunted into a siding at the station below the incline,
and ready to start up it. When we were just ready to
go on to the line down which the runaway was ap-
proaching, we heard the sound of it, and it dashed
through clear of us at a terrible speed. If we had left
a minute or two sooner we should have been in small
pieces in a moment from the effects of what the Ameri-
cans call, graphically, a butting collision, and there
would have been a good spurt of promotion, for we
had several bigwigs on board.
This was a most uncomfortable as well as a lonely
life. Where work was too far to be reached by trolly
I2 5
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the train had to be used, and as there were only one or
two of these daily each way, a start often had to be
made after midnight, and after perhaps doing the busi-
ness of half an hour, there might be half a day or more
to wait for a return train. Frequently a night had to
be spent away from head-quarters, and there being no
hotel, a station waiting-room had to be used with one's
mosquito-curtained bed set up at night on the platform
for coolness. This is often a necessity for railway and
occasionally other officials, so that travellers by rail in
India are not surprised, as they would be, no doubt,
elsewhere, to see the platforms at night occasionally so
occupied.
A constant source of anxiety was the possible washing
away of bridges by floods in monsoon time. When
news comes of this, possibly at night, the maintenance
engineer has to start off", probably in tropical torrents of
rain, to the scene of disaster, to take measures for the
rapid restoration of railway communication ; and in such
weather he goes to bed with the imminence of dis-
turbance hanging over him as badly as that of a doctor
or a watch-dog. Such happenings were not infrequent
in my case, but nothing on so large a scale as that which
occurred in the next division, where, during this time,
a large bridge spanning a river twice as wide as the
Thames was washed away in the night. Gangs of
watchmen patrol the lines to give warning, but, in this
case, they went to shelter themselves from the storm,
and no signal being given, the night mail train from
Madras to Bombay, with its hundreds of passengers,
leapt into the roaring torrent without one left to tell
the tale.
It was when out on one of these inspection journeys
that an inspector met me with the news of the assassina-
tion of the Viceroy, Lord Mayo. This startled and
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Asia
grieved all people in India down to the class a very
numerous one there which, like the ploughman already
alluded to when the eclipse was described, do not think
of anything beyond the work which they have im-
mediately in hand.
Three months in Madras, relieving temporarily a
high official there, was a pleasant change in duties and
in social surroundings. As to the latter, the luxuries
of the Madras club, said to be the best in India, and
a State ball given by the Governor, Lord Napier of
Merchistoun, remain chiefly in my memory. At the
latter, the aged Prince of Arcot was the chief guest; his
dress, more especially his turban, was a blaze of diamonds
and other jewels, and when to the tune of "The Roast
Beef of Old England," Lord Napier, in his plain official
uniform, took him on his arm to supper, according to
etiquette, instead of a lady, the contrast was sufficiently
startling.
I think it was then that occurred one of the most
curious legal complications that I have come across in
my wanderings. It must be remembered that in India,
the Courts administer English, Hindoo, or Mohammedan
law according to the religion of the litigants, in matters
where religion or custom is in question. An English
barrister married to an English wife, having proclivities
similar to those of Henry VIII, was anxious to supplant
a Katherine of Aragon by an Anne Boleyn, who was a
fascinating European barmaid. But, like his proto-
type, he wanted to do all, however questionable it might
be, strictly according to law. As no grounds for
annulment or divorce existed, the barrister conceived
the idea of embracing the Mohammedan religion and
inducing his Boleyn to do likewise. Then marrying
her, polygamy being legal for Mussulmans, he had a
Tudor-like satisfaction that all was square. But as
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Napoleon at Waterloo forgot Blttcher, so the barrister
forgot the rights of Katherine, who at once sought the
aid of the law to secure her position. She, being
Christian, could not legally be obliged to share wifehood
with another, while at the same time the conversion of
the husband to another religion, notwithstanding its
motives and its legal consequences in marital latitude,
were just as legally incontestable. I forget what was
the result, and thus can leave my readers to speculate
over it.
My next leave was spent in an extensive trip to Bom-
bay, Calcutta, and the north-west provinces, including
Jubbulpore, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Agra, and
Delhi. I cannot accustom myself to the new-fangled
spelling of these places. To speak of these well-known
tourist haunts and their glorious monuments would be
outside the scope of this work, and, moreover, super-
fluous, after the descriptions of Sir Edwin Arnold, and
of those brilliant globe-trotters Sir F. Treves, Messrs.
Sidney Low, Ian Malcolm, and others. I shall only say
that, seeing subsequently almost every really great build-
ing in the world, the Taj Mahal at Agra stands in the
memory, mystic, wonderful, as if clothed in white
samite, the pearl without price, the peerless. Close on
the other side of the Jumna rises the lovely tomb
of Itmad-ood-Dowlah, the description of which is gener-
ally included in tourists' tales ; but what has not been
noted was a gross act of Philistinism on the part of the
Government. During the Mutiny, not many years
before my visit, the English soldiers, while occupying
the building, picked out with their bayonets many of
the precious stones with which the walls are inlaid.
Instead of proper restoration, or of neglect, which was
the only proper alternative, the Government actually
filled the gaps with sealing-wax. Goliath, the greatest
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Asia
Philistine on record, would hardly have been equal to
this.
The marble rocks of Jubbulpore are not always within
the round trip at so much per head, hotels included, of
the time-saving tourist. I have vividly before me the
deep green waters of the head of the Nerbudda, and the
forest-crowned, brilliant white marble cliffs rising from
and reflected in them. Among the dripping waterfalls and
open glades, with tangled brakes, where the dazzling sun
never penetrates, one looks for dryads and water nymphs,
instead of the slimy alligators of which I have never
seen such numbers together as in this place. Especially
large monkeys abound also here. There is, probably,
nothing anywhere else quite like this wonderful scene.
Enlargement on the scenes of the Mutiny, the foot-
steps of which I traced, fresher than when followed by
the more well-known writers I have mentioned, is open
to the same objection of repetition of their stirring
narratives. The bullet indentations on the stonework
of the Cashmere Gate at Delhi, the place of Home and
Salkeld's forlorn hope, the riddled copper ball of the
church tower inside, and the narrow street in which the
gallant John Nicholson fell, were all engrossing scenes.
Later, I attempted to realize the frightful Cawnpore
massacres on the bank of the sacred Ganges, where the
women and children, wearied by suffering and looking
forward to release, met their terrible fate.
An exhausting journey, although in the cold season,
for day after day in the train, brought me back to the
monotonous round of duty. For though I have met
with some excitements, as recorded in the foregoing
plain tales from the plains, they count for little in the
long years passed through, especially those in the jungle ;
for I have neither time nor taste for shooting, its only
diversion.
K 129
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
Macbeth said, just before he met his fate, and appar-
ently anticipating it :
" I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun."
Shakespeare, of course, put the sun as a figure for life
itself in this case, for, apart from the context which
shows it, nobody is likely to be weary of the sun in
Scotland. In the more limited and direct sense,
I began to be weary of that powerful luminary.
What the Germans call Wander-lust^ the true fans et
origo of the British Empire, was upon me, and also
a longing desire to see my people at home again, this
perhaps being the strongest incentive of all. These
influences coinciding with a quarrel with head-quarters, I
resigned my post and left India for good.
But my departure was not without kindly memories,
especially of the often depreciated native, who, accord-
ing to his lights, has many virtues and good qualities,
intelligence, faithfulness, patience and kindly good
humour, of all of which I have had many instances.
Long residence in the East and its opportunities from
my business of coming into contact with Orientals has,
with me, as with many others, led to a more intelligent
understanding of the Bible, many parts of which with-
out these are more or less obscure. Later, in a colony
which I shall not designate more closely, I heard of
a canon of the church enlarging on a journey of Jacob's,
when he pictured to his congregation that patriarch
taking up his carpet bag on leaving home. Another
preacher, referring to the Nativity, spoke of there being
no room in the inn, thinking, as was evident from
the tone of his other remarks, that the word room
had not its only original meaning of space, but the
entirely modern one of a definite apartment. One
could see that he had in his mind a trim hotel bedroom,
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with an iron bedstead, dressing-table, etc. In these
cases a former bishop was said to have been hard
pressed for candidates for ordination, and to have taken
them out of the highways and byways of society,
with practically no examination ; for the ignorance, un-
usual with the Anglican clergy, of which the above are
true samples, was rather more than that of mere
Oriental customs ; but a residence in the East would
have prevented even these. There is no doubt that the
magnificently dramatic episodes of the Old Testament
can be much better realized by one who has lived in
lands similar to those in which they took place.
AFRICA
CHAPTER VIII
Journey home Materialism Missing friends The smallest railway in
the world Stories The Tichborne case The Queen and the
Shah of Persia Engineers abroad South Africa Teneriffe A
brilliant Jew The Rev. Mr. Bellew Smoking-cabin stories-
Meeting Cecil Rhodes The Punch and Judy Show A starving
crew The Professor's romance Table Bay.
THE journey home through Italy and France
was without incident, and was over well-trodden
lands, so that, generally speaking, nothing need be
said about it. But two things may be noticed, one
illustrative of a change in public manners. At the San
Carlo Theatre in Naples the well-dressed audience fre-
quently hissed violently any singer who failed to execute
a note or roulade with the perfection they thought it
required. Thirty years later, at this and other Italian
opera-houses, I had the opportunity of noting that this
custom, so disconcerting to the performer and annoying
to the audience, had entirely disappeared. The great
sight in Paris was the ruins of the Tuileries and the
Hotel de Ville, after the fantastic tricks before high
heaven of Messieurs les gens du pavt of 1870.
In the old days, when abroad meant abroad, and not,
as it does now, just round the corner, so to say, with
frequent fast steam services to get there, fashions in
remote places were antique, and the returning wanderer
looked like a figure in an old engraving, necessitating
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Africa
an early and costly visit to the tailor. But there were
other changes to be noticed, though covering a longer
period than that of my absence, say, between the fifties
and the seventies. The later epoch was pre-eminently the
age of materialism. The Prussian supremacy of blood
and iron, the tendencies arising from the teachings of
Haeckel, Huxley, and Tyndall, and the earlier aspects of
Darwinism led chiefly to this phase. The Mysterious
was out of fashion.
" This age that blots out life with question marks,
This nineteenth century with its knife and glass,
That make thought physical, and thrust far off
The Heaven, so neighbourly with men of old,
To voids sparse sown with alienated stars."
With the mysterious went largely the imagination and
its companion humour. There were no successors to
Hood, Dickens, Barham, and the earlier Lever. Dr.
Whewell, whose manifold attainments included that of
ingenious twisting of words, was asked once to find
rhymes to certain Old Testament names, the result being
" The great and good Sennacherib
Of many a foe, could crack a rib,
But failed with old Jehosophat,
For why ? because he was so fat."
The Huxleyite of the seventies would severely object
that Sennacherib was not good, nor was there any evi-
dence of his physical strength, that he did not live in
the time of Jehoshaphat, and that there was nothing
whatever to show that the latter was stout. Yet a man
recently told me that he always read serious books as a
change, because life was so comic ; but then, he was a
Member of Parliament.
The home-staying citizen is less aware of these
changes. They are too gradual. The Londoner sees
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
so many friends come and go that few are missed.
Coming from a long sojourn abroad, and meeting an
old acquaintance, you are, figuratively, ready to fall on
his neck with joy, when you are greeted with, " Hallo !
Haven't seen you for some time ; good-bye," and he is
off. It strikes one like a cold shower bath. But many
old friends were gone. It was as if a shell had burst
in the middle of the old coterie, hitting most of those
around.
Anxious to get again into harness, I was not for long
a strap-hanger, and accepted an engagement in North
Wales, on what was then the smallest railway in the
world, the Festiniog line, the rails of which are only
two feet apart. This wonderful railway, then the only
one of this character, though it has been much imitated
since, especially in France, could turn round extra-
ordinarily sharp curves, owing to the facility which was
given to it by its narrowness. Hence, even in the
hilly country which it traversed, it is able to keep its
rails fairly close to the ground surface and avoid many
of the heavy cuttings and tunnels which would have
been necessary for a wider and therefore straighter line.
The original Festiniog line, on the extension of which
I was employed, was built with its tunnels and bridges
only just large enough for the tiny engines and trains
to go through, so that travelling on the footplate of the
engine, as I often did, I was obliged to duck my head
at each bridge and tunnel, otherwise that important part
of me would certainly have been left behind. The ex-
tension, and probably since the original line, was built
according to the Government regulations, which provide
ample width in all structures of the kind so as to avoid
accident. The chief thing I remember about this visit
to North Wales is the reading in one of the churches of
a clergyman who stammered frightfully. I hope and
Africa
suppose that such a thing would not now be possible.
Impatience and a sense of irreverence could hardly but
follow the invocation
" O Lord, op-op-op-open Thou our li-li-li-lips."
Other work followed that in North Wales, and I was
in the old life again, occasionally at Parliament where
many of the old figures were prominent. Palmerston
was gone, and Robert Lowe more to the front, with his
white hair and red eyes an albino. A fine classical
scholar, he was, as Home Secretary and Chancellor of
the Exchequer, credited with crushing, in a few biting
phrases, deputations which he did not like. A sort of
anticipatory tombstone inscription was written of him
about this period. It ran
" Here lie the bones of Robert Lowe.
Where his soul's gone to, we do not know.
If to the realms of Peace and Love,
Farewell to happiness above.
If, haply to a lower level,
We can't congratulate the Devil."
The second Tichborne trial was before the Courts
about this time, and created more excitement, it was
said, than any other since that of Queen Caroline. The
carriage of the claimant, followed by sympathetic crowds,
passed our office daily on his way to the old Westminster
Courts. There was not nearly so much romance about
this trial as that in the Yelverton case already spoken of.
The visit of the Shah of Persia was also an event, as
he appeared in public processions, etc., clothed with all
the glory of Solomon, his diamond-covered head-gear
being especially conspicuous. It is said that the late
Queen said to him : " I believe that your Majesty's
ancestors worshipped the sun" ; to which he replied,
" And so would your Majesty's, if they ever saw it."
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
The engineering work which I now undertook was
spasmodic and badly paid. It is a curious fact that, in
the civil engineering profession, if a young man once
goes abroad for any considerable time he is forgotten,
and loses his status at home. He is generally dependent
on higher members of the profession for employment.
These arc fully provided with assistants, who, having
been able to tide over depressions, have remained with
him or others. The wanderer, therefore, must either
stay abroad or, if he comes home, must seek in London
each time another post beyond these isles. Such a one,
therefore, rarely reaches eminence at the head-quarters
of the profession, which London undoubtedly is. This
is perhaps natural and of course there are high
positions abroad, though neither in rank nor emolument
vying with those at home. But employers and the
public to some extent suffer, as there is no comparison
between the experience gained by an engineer who has
had to deal with the much larger works, and with the
victories over their difficulties in the colonies, in India,
and other far-off* regions, and that acquired in the
construction of the comparatively insignificant under-
takings at home.
But to the travelling engineer himself there are
compensations. He acquires a mind charged with
broad cosmopolitan ideas ; he gets some conception of the
fact that there are some creatures in God's earth who,
if not moulded in the type of John Bull, have some
excellences which he does not possess ; and he obtains a
sort of stereoscopic view of life, seeing to some extent
around it its lights and its shades and its realities, from
a more comprehensive standpoint than that of the home
dweller.
It was not surprising, therefore, after what has been
said, that I found myself again on the sea, having
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Africa
accepted an appointment under the Government of the
Cape of Good Hope on the construction of the narrow-
gauge railways there. This was long before South
Africa became prominent in imperial politics, before the
Zulu war and the first Boer war, and, of course, many
years before the last one. Diamonds had only recently
been discovered, and as to gold, Johannesburg was
unknown, its site being the wild veldt, traversed only
by the pioneer Boer or the springbok.
The month's voyage of those days was more tedious
than that to the East, for it was without break, except,
if it might be so called, a far-off sight of Teneriffe.
This peak, covered with snow, was quite visible at one
hundred miles* distance, though its base was enveloped
in haze, the pure white cone shining brilliantly in the
soft southern air, and, except for its form, like a pearl
hung in the grey-blue distance. But for its unchanging
shape for a whole day, it might have been thought to be
a fleecy sunlit cloud a sight to be remembered.
On board was a Jew of brilliant attainments and
conversation, not quite the same type of that gifted race
that has been so conspicuous in South Africa more
recently, for his gifts were of a more intellectual than
commercial order. Without any special religious lean-
ings, he had an enthusiastic adoration for the Bible as
literature, and, being kindred spirits in the latter respect,
we found that we had both been occasionally attending
the church in Bloomsbury where the celebrated divine
Bellew used to preach. An extraordinarily handsome
man, not old, but with snow-white hair, his reading of
the Bible was one of the finest elocutionary displays that
I have ever heard. It has always seemed to me that it is
a pity that short episodes from the Old Testament are
not more often dramatized in the words of the text.
With competent actors, it could not be irreverent. The
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
Bloomsbury church used to be packed to overflowing,
with not even standing room. This clergyman, show-
ing no tendencies whatever in his preaching or services
towards Roman Catholicism, subsequently suddenly
resigned his benefice and adopted that faith.
Some smoking-cabin tales might be introduced here.
A child who had had difficulties in school connected
with the spelling of the word " psalm," being asked by the
doctor what was the matter with its mother, who was
suffering from spasms, replied, " It were them things as
they sings in church, sir."
An absent-minded bishop who had been staying a few
days with his brother's family, on leaving kissed the
housemaid and gave five shillings to his niece.
Two Englishmen visiting the Devil's Glen in the
county Wicklow met an Irish peasant on the road, and
thought that they would chaff him. " I say, Pat," said
one, " this is the Devil's own place, I suppose ; now if
you and I were to meet him, which of us two do you
think he would take ? " " Shure, your honour, he would
take me, for sartin." "And why, now?" "Well,"
said the Irishman, "you see, it is this way, sir, he'd be
sure of your honour at any time."
Enjoying such stories as these, and leading in many
practical jokes on board, was a broad-shouldered youth
with fair curly hair, who, though he had a year or two
previously visited the Cape for his health, this being his
second voyage, looked as hearty and was as high-spirited
as any young fellow could wish to be. Little did any of
our fellow-passengers, including probably himself, guess
that his name was to be known a few years later all over
the world as Cecil Rhodes, the Empire builder and
educationist. He had already then made some money
from the recently started diamond fields, but the enor-
mous fortune from the same source, which probably had
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some damping effect on his careless, happy nature, had
not come to him then. With him was a young friend
with a different destiny. He was possessed of that
unhappy but not infrequent combination, a beer income
and a champagne taste, as the Americans say, so that,
belonging to a crack cavalry regiment, and coming to
the end of his resources, he had to sell his commission
and seek his living as best he could. Informed by
Rhodes that there was no such thing known at the Cape
as a Punch and Judy show, he bought the necessary
equipment from a retiring showman at home, and with
it on board accompanied his friend to South Africa,
where he was to exhibit his performance in Cape Town
and up to the diamond fields. I never heard what
subsequently became of him.
One of the excitements of the voyage was meeting,
between Madeira and Teneriffe, a small brig showing
signals of distress. Steaming up alongside, we found
about half a dozen haggard and exhausted men on
board Spaniards who had been without food for some
days. Their voyage across the Atlantic had been length-
ened by bad weather, and their provisions having run
out, the poor creatures looked fearfully emaciated ; and
to see how they pounced on the loaves, etc. with which
we supplied them was something not to be forgotten.
They did not want anything but food, and they soon
sailed away, no doubt thanking us in their own language,
which no one on board of our vessel understood.
In such a voyage as this, to one of the colonies
which shall be nameless, a curious development in the
careers of two friends of mine took place. The London
Agent-General of the colony was charged, simultane-
ously, with the selection of a Professor for its University
and of a Matron to a large public institution. This
being done, the Agent asked the Professor if on the
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
voyage he would look after the lady, who was booked to
go by the same steamer. Naturally connecting the office
of Matron with age and experience, he readily agreed,
thinking of it as a nominal duty. The Matron being
separately told that a University Professor would take
care of her, thought that in the keeping of a probably
grave and spectacled dry-as-dust Professor she would be
quite safe. However, meeting on board for the first
time, the mutual discovery was made that, as is not
uncommon with colonial appointments, the Professor
was under thirty and the Matron much younger. The
sequel, though not fiction, may be guessed by any ex-
perienced novel-reader. The pair took care of each other
so well that in a short time after the voyage the Matron
was transferred to another and smaller institution the
Professor's household.
The approach to Table Bay is very impressive. In
the centre stands the celebrated Table Mountain, with
the straight level top which gives it its name, and its
frowning deeply scored precipices merging, lower down,
in soft green slopes dotted with groves of the rich
dark green Scotch firs, which are so numerous about the
city. Gradually, as the eye follows downwards, white
dwellings interspersed among the trees grow closer
and closer, until the crowded city with its steeples
and towers nestles below, along the busy wharves
and the bright blue bay itself. The mountain is like
some great battlemented fortress standing grimly over
and protecting its people below. On the right of
the main mountain, with a winding climbing road be-
tween them, is the Lion Hill with its double summit,
on the bare green declivities of which gleam, in the
brilliant sunshine, the more maritime suburbs. Beyond,
on the left of the Table, and butting against it, rises the
Devil's Peak, jagged and splintered as to its top, with
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Africa
its slopes riven by deep gorges and tumbling streams,
while at the base, buried in the most luxuriant foliage,
mostly of rich, velvety, deep green firs, lie unseen,
" deep in the shady shadows of a vale," most of the
lovely outskirts of this charmingly surrounded city.
Here are Newlands, Rosebank, Rondebosch, Wynberg,
and Constantia, the latter being the place where the rich
sweet wine of that name is grown.
From time to time, when certain winds blow, a soft
cloud, white as snow, gathers over the beetling forehead
of Table Mountain, and hangs down in graceful folds
over its vertical face. This is appropriately called the
Table-cloth, and is a forerunner of the dreaded south-
easter, a wind which raises clouds of dust, and it is even
said that good-sized pebbles fly about like grapeshot on
these occasions.
141
CHAPTER IX
First colonial impressions A far-reaching mistake Old South Africa
Auction gambling Ostrich farming A mouse-catching native
boy Government methods Routine A suicide The Karoo
Wild beasts One in the pantry Human wild beasts Kaffirs and
Zulus A native gathering Cetewayo.
ENDING at Capetown is a struggle. The coloured
races have, as a rule, none of the northern com-
petitive spirit, but it develops acutely when rivalry to
carry the traveller's luggage occurs. Why do the
heathen so furiously rage together when one lands at
such ports as Colombo and Capetown ? It is hard to
say, but so it is, and astonishment is increased when
one's various belongings are found complete in the
hotel hall after the many vicissitudes of boat-landing
and customs examination.
This was my first colonial experience, and one of the
first things that struck me was the absence of what
might be called the official dignity and reserve of home
and of India. Here, the engineer-in-chief, though
a cultivated high-class professional man, received me in
his shirt-sleeves, the weather being hot. An Indian
official in like case, though having the lightest of gar-
ments, would certainly have had them on.
The Cape railways were, as I have said, on a narrow
gauge, though not so narrow as that of the Festiniog
line of which I have already spoken. The rails were
3 ft. 6 in. apart, instead of 4 ft. 8|- in., which, with few
exceptions, is the gauge adopted throughout Europe
and North America. Indeed, in the United States,
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where several different gauges formerly existed, not
only the insufficiency of the smaller ones, but the in-
convenience of diversity, was found to be so great that
many years ago millions of money were spent in con-
verting the lines to the wider gauge. To the ordinary
passenger the mere difference of one line from another
in respect to the distance between the rails seems
a small thing, and where such lines meet he only sees
the very minor inconvenience of having to change from
one carriage to another ; but with the carriage of goods
it is a very important matter, affecting the cost of
transport in a material degree. In the South African
interior, as in many other countries outside Europe,
raw materials of various kinds are, and will be for
years, the chief produce to be taken to the ports.
These are almost all light-weighted, such as cotton,
wool, skins, grain, etc., and a small narrow wagon,
such only as can run safely on such a narrow railway,
cannot be piled up with the quantity of light stuff
which, but for its own small width, it could easily
carry. It would be top-heavy and capsize. Hence
even a non-professional reader will understand that,
in order to obtain economical transport, the lighter
the nature of the load the broader should be the
wagon. Moreover, everyone familiar with business
and who is not in these busy days ? knows that
economy is best obtained by working every machine to
its full power, inasmuch as there are usually a number
of fixed expenses which must go on whether much or
little business is done. This is eminently so in the
railway business, and the excess in cost of hauling
a big train over that of a small one is insignificant in
comparison with the fixed charges of railway working
as a whole.
Sir Charles Gregory, then consulting engineer in
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
London to the Cape Government, was hostile to the
narrow gauge on those and other grounds, but, like
many other half-informed bodies who pay highly for
advice and then do not take it, the local authorities
knew better, and the mistake was made.
Unfortunately, this bad beginning has led to nearly
the whole of the railways of Africa since following suit,
so that the cost of the entire produce of the Continent
for all time will be increased. The economy of the
smaller line in first cost of construction, which practi-
cally only applies to the few mountainous parts passed
through, is a mere trifle in comparison with the loss
which will affect the whole of the enormous mileage that
will ultimately form a network of railways all over Africa.
Railway projectors should surely " think in continents."
But to my story.
Posted to a division in the nearer part of the western
province, which is the most populous and the most
Dutch, I was soon hard at work at the construction of
the beginnings of the main line which now stretches
nearly into Central Africa, and will ultimately form the
Cape to Cairo Railway, the later dream of the youth from
whom I had just then parted. This nearest western
province district is perhaps less known to many than
those further inland, the participants in the South African
war passing through it hurriedly by rail to the front,
many hundred miles beyond.
There is perhaps no country on our planet which has
undergone such changes in a few decades as the southern
corner of the Dark Continent. A pleasant twilight of
general simplicity and contentment reigned over it for
many years, and up to about a quarter of a century ago,
when it was destined, owing to certain developments, to
come into the garish light of day. Mr. H. G. Wells,
the well-known writer, in a recent romance, In the Days of
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the Cornet^ imagines the sins and injustices, as he con-
siders them, of the present social organization of the
world to be swept away, not by any great moral regenera-
tive force, but simply in consequence of the earth
passing through the tail of a comet. A sort of green
haze envelops the earth, which has the effect of cleansing
and purifying the moral atmosphere, so that greed
and falsehood pass away, and with them all the crime, and
the extremes of wealth and poverty which cover the
present earth as with a garment. It is a conception
worthy of Dean Swift himself.
Let us apply it, in a reverse sense, and imagine the
brilliant comet of gold and diamond discovery to have
swept through the fair regions of South Africa, and by its
sordid influence blurred those old virtues of trust, con-
tentment, and peace which they had possessed of old.
Through the finding of these glittering baubles we have
the place full of the comforts, certainly, of modern
civilization, but with them greedy millionaires, war and
rapine, political contentions, race hatred, labour troubles,
costly living, and all that is hostile to the simple life of
the former time. That simple life, as the writer saw it
over thirty years ago, is to a large extent gone, never to
return. Long before that, when the Suez Canal was as
yet unknown, and the Cape was a stage on the journey
to India, it had some connection with the outer world.
Indian officers took the opportunity of spending their
leave there, to recruit their health in its genial climate,
and several of them, charmed with its many natural
beauties, spent all their retired lives there, while not
infrequently charms of another sort led up to marriages
with members of the old Dutch and French families. A
society mostly centred about Capetown was thus set up,
which, though generally poor, was courteous, hospitable
and refined.
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
The diversion of traffic to the East by the opening of
the overland route, and later by the Suez Canal, left
these quiet folk more to themselves, so that in many
respects, at the transition time which my story covers,
life became still more unsophisticated. Regarding the
country, the Dutch word " Boer," it must be remembered,
was simply farmer, not implying ignorance or uncouth-
ness as our word " boor," which has the same origin.
Ignorant, as a rule, the Boer undoubtedly is, though
of course there are many exceptions, but they come
from, generally speaking, a higher social origin than
most other colonists, for in many instances their an-
cestors were Huguenots of high degree driven from
France and Holland by the religious persecutions of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pedigrees of
some of the Cape families exist showing direct descent
from the noblest families in Europe, but in most cases
the names are sufficient evidence. Small farmers may
be found having the proud names of Montmorency, De
Villiers, Du Plessis, Joubert, Roux, De Retz, Van Ree-
nan, and others of equal note, and it is characteristic
that a comparatively small number of names is found
among a fairly large population, indicating isolation and
consequent intermarriage. The strenuous determina-
tion, the spirit of self-sacrifice, and the personal courage
associated with these ancestral names are still found
among these simple farmers, as we know to our cost by
the numbers of our equally devoted men laid low in the
recent war, and by the large amount of money spent
before they were forced to give in.
The Boers work hard, rising in summer at 4 a.m.,
but sensibly dividing the hot days into two. At midday
they have their principal meal, and then, during the heat
of the day, they literally go to bed, shutting doors and
blinds for a fairly prolonged sleep. As the sun begins
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Africa
to decline the Boer and his family rise and take to
their work with renewed vigour.
The country passed through by the construction works
which I had in hand at first was gently undulating with
lofty mountains not far off on either hand, these show-
ing, whether from their formation or not I do not
know, the most brilliant rose-colour tints under a
declining sun that I have ever seen. The country was
generally treeless, except where intersected by water-
courses, a line of foliage indicating their presence.
Nestling among these trees, generally spreading oaks,
lies the homestead solidly built of stone, with heavily
thatched roof and many gables, which give the place
quite an old-world look, rather than that with which we
generally associate colonial dwellings. Inside, the old
Dutch formality is indicated by the table in the living-
room being strictly in the middle, and the straight-backed
chairs being ranged at equal distances, with their backs
to the wall, to which position they are carefully restored
after meals. Hospitably invited to join one of these,
the guest must wait patiently while a grace, probably
of linked sweetness, but certainly long-drawn-out, is
recited by the host, another of equal extent closing the
function.
Cookery, as a rule, is on a higher level than in the
more English colonies an easy supremacy certainly.
For instance, the making of coffee, which is preferred to
tea, is generally better understood than among the
English at home or abroad, and there are many tasty
Cape dishes which should be better known at home.
The villages, hidden away among oak trees, are
models of rural picturesqueness, the white deeply
thatched cottages, the streets lined with green plots and
old giant trees for the Cape settlement is old make
up model garden cities. At the side of each street runs
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
swiftly down a clear rivulet of sparkling water, the old
Dutch settlers having located their hamlets on such
gentle slopes that water from a spring above the
site thus gravitates through it, bringing the cool and
cleansing element to every man's door.
The prevalence of Roman-Dutch law tends to prevent
the accumulation of property in few hands, and the rich
from getting richer and the poor poorer. By this, the
real property of the parent at death must be equally
divided among his children, with due provision for the
widow. Hence it is necessary to sell the property in
order to divide the proceeds. Auction sales, therefore,
are very frequent, and have given rise to a curious
custom, unknown, as far as I am aware, elsewhere ; and
the excitement which I have seen at some of these
functions is only equalled by that of a foreign gaming
table, for it is gambling pure and simple. A clerk
stands under the auctioneer's rostrum, in the principal
room of the farm-house, with a plateful of sovereigns
before him, and as house, lands, cattle, and furniture are
put up, the auctioneer offers one, two, five, or even ten
sovereigns for a bid, according to the gradations in the
bidding, and the value of the article on sale, the coins
being handed over then and there. In this way bidding
is so stimulated that the cost of the distribution or bonus,
as it is called, which is charged against the estate, is
amply covered by the enhanced value received. The
gambling consists in many persons making a regular
business of attending such auctions, without any
intention or desire of buying anything. Such a one
bids freely, however, in exchange for the bonus, trusting
to others to outbid him, which indeed generally happens,
his skill consisting in knowing when to stop. He
makes an easily earned living in this way, but now and
then he is left unwittingly the last bidder, and is saddled
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with a bedstead or a pair of horses he does not want,
and has to resell, most probably at a loss.
All these customs and habits are still to be found in
the remote country, but if reports be true, the town life
is greatly changed since, for the chink of money has
been heard in the land. Capetown society, for instance,
was simple and friendly in character ; most people knew
each other, and met at Government House and other
functions, there being always a military and naval force
to add their attractions to social gatherings. The few
strangers that came soon ceased to bear that character if
they possessed the necessary credentials. The same
description might be given, to some extent, of the other
large ports, for, besides the villages already spoken of,
there were then no inland towns whatever, in the usual
sense of the term. Now most of this is changed. The
farms and villages remain much as they were, for the
intensely conservative Cape farmer and his compatriot
in the village change slowly, but the seaboard towns
have grown to large dimensions with large alien popula-
tions and faiths. Railways have been pushed inland,
and, far beyond points which were only reached by the
explorer and the lion hunter a generation ago, there are
now busy inland towns with up-to-date refreshment
rooms, where the traveller, in his express train, halts on
his way to still busier centres of population such as
Kimberley and Johannesburg. In all of them palatial
hotels have raised their unsightly heads, convenient and
perhaps indispensable to modern commerce as it now
exists, but quite out of harmony with the old South
Africa which presents itself to my memory. Perhaps
one instance out of many will best illustrate the change.
There was no theatre in Capetown then, nor, as far as I
know, in the whole of South Africa.
The western province, in which my work lay, is the
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
country of ostrich farming, in which a farmer friend of
mine had a curious and ludicrous experience. The male
birds are very savage at the time of their adolescence,
this attribute often being its first evidence. A Kaffir
boy was driving some young birds into shelter when
one got restive, and seemed as if about to attack him.
The ostrich attacks kicking forward with his powerful
claw, and with such force and speed that I have heard
of a man on horseback trying to get away, and only
escaping by throwing himself oft and springing over a
high fence. His leg was badly wounded, and his high
boot and even the hard saddle were cut into strips.
However, to return to my tale. The farmer, wishing
to save the boy, approached the ostrich in order to con-
trol him, but soon found that the bird was becoming
dangerous, so that he tried to get behind him and to
stay there till help came, by catching hold of the bird's
tail. It was like the old dilemma if you have hold
of a tiger's tail, which is better, to hold on or to
leave go ? In this case the ostrich danced round at
such speed that my friend, still holding on, was flying
round, with his feet off the ground, so violently that,
after two or three turns, he had to let go, and was
hurled by the centrifugal force several feet away, where
he was sent sprawling on his face. He thought now
his hour was come, but the ostrich, far more frightened
than he was at this round dance, went off into space at
motor-car speed, so far that it was not till after scouring
the veldt with two horsemen for two or three days that
he was recovered. The dancing alone would not have
scared him, for it is one of the pastimes of these curious
birds that they often waltz round just like human beings
at a ball, except that they do not do it in couples.
They are quite quiet under cover, and are therefore
driven into sheds to be plucked.
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The ostrich is by no means such a fool as some
people think him to be. He never, as is commonly
said, hides his head in the sand, thinking to be thus
safe from danger. The error arises from what is, on
the contrary, an act of great wisdom. In the veldt the
long erect neck and head of the bird are most con-
spicuous objects. Consequently when he wishes to
conceal himself he sits down and stretches his neck and
head along the ground, but his eyes and ears are as open
as those of a burglar at work.
The allusion to a Kaffir boy just now reminds me of
a smart black boy whom I had as a servant, so agile
that he could catch a mouse in his hand, springing
round the room after it under chairs and tables like
a cat.
Except for my marriage, about this time, there were
no incidents worthy of note during the hard-working
period when the division of which I was in charge
was being completed. But when the line was open for
traffic I note an event because it is so unusual, that is,
a case of the appreciation by a Colonial Government of
its officers' services. I say unusual, though, personally, I
have not had much to complain of in my long experience
of colonial employment. But I have had a good deal
to do with recommendation of subordinates in regard
to their positions and emoluments, and I believe such
employers lose a great deal by not sufficiently recog-
nizing lights and shades in the capacities of those
serving them. One man, in a responsible position,
may save his salary twenty times over by some in-
genious design or suggestion. Another will not trouble
even to think, and does his duty like a mill horse,
and often not nearly so well. Yet the differences in
their respective rewards are so insignificant that the
better man sees no object in making use of his powers,
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
and the Government loses the benefit of them. It may
be said that such men may find more encouragement in
serving private companies or employers, who generally
know their business better, but in many of our colonies
practically all public works are carried out by the
Governments, and to be better treated in his profession
means that he must migrate not always a practicable
or convenient expedient.
The exception to be noted as leading to this disserta-
tion occurred on the completion of my length of rail-
way at an early date, at the express wish of the Govern-
ment, this being carried out without contractors, con-
trary to usual home practice. A banquet was held in
the town to which the line had reached in honour of
the occasion, at which a Cabinet Minister was the chief
guest. In his speech, to my great surprise and satis-
faction, he announced the intention of the Government
to hand me a cheque for a hundred guineas in addition
to my salary in recognition of my exertions to attain
the desired end. This was a bold departure from the
hidebound routine prevailing generally with not only
Governments but large private companies, which, for
most of my professional life, I was destined to serve.
However, long experience in official positions has taught
me that this much-abused routine is practically un-
avoidable where a very large staff of employees has
to be dealt with, though, no doubt, it is often
pushed to unnecessary and sometimes ridiculous ex-
tremes.
A case occurs to me which might have been incor-
porated in Gilbert's satire on this subject in The Mikado.
It is unavoidable that, in large businesses, many letters
are sent away in the name of the chief of an office,
but signed for him by an assistant, the former perhaps
never seeing them or even knowing their contents.
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Letters of censure, however, should never be so dealt
with, as in the following case.
A colleague of mine being obliged to report his head
clerk to the engineer-in-chief for some irregularity, a
reply was received, signed by a deputy, stating that
owing to certain extenuating circumstances no further
punishment would be given than a severe reprimand,
which was directed to be administered. My colleague
being then away, the letter was opened by the incriminated
clerk himself, who, acting for his principal, forthwith
proceeded to reprimand himself severely as clerk, and in
the former character replied that he had had the honour
to receive the instructions and had severely reprimanded
Mr. Z. accordingly, and then signed the letter for
his principal. Whether this vicarious way of doing
business had anything to do with the further career of
the clerk it is impossible to say ; but the reprimand was
not of much effect. He went from bad to worse, and,
finding himself in financial difficulties owing to gambling,
was discovered one morning in his office chair dead from
self-inflicted shots through the head.
After the completion of the portion of the line which
was the cause of my reward, there came a transfer a long
way up country, to what is called the Karoo, a desolate
and almost uninhabited region with a glorious climate,
though rather hot and dry in summer, so much so that
our corrugated iron-roofed wooden house had to be
covered with bushes held on by wires, so as to keep
the sun from the iron. Snakes were unpleasantly pre-
valent, and on one occasion when walking with my wife
side by side, she would have stepped on a dangerous
one had I not made a very sudden and forcible move-
ment to arrest her. Tarantulas, though not as large as
the Indian ones, infested the houses, but their speed
was rather too much for the black boy. Troops of
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
baboons used to come down from the kopjes, but they
did not trouble us except for some nervousness about
our first-born, who used, occasionally, to wander from
the house ; nor did the so-called tigers, really leopards,
these rarely coming down from the hills. Springbok
were there in herds most graceful animals. They
travel at great speed, mostly in single file, and when they
meet a small depression a foot or two wide, each one,
one after the other, springs high into the air, covering,
perhaps, twenty feet in the leap with wondrous grace
and agility. This gives them their name. On one
occasion, attracted no doubt by the scent of some
provisions, a tiger cat, of which there were many about,
got into the pantry of the house of one of my assistants.
It broke nearly everything in the place, including prac-
tically all the crockery, before it was shot. As, apart
from the loss, there was no shop within some hundreds
of miles, the glittering language of the owner's heart, if
not of his lips, may be supposed.
Talking of snakes, some people have strange tastes.
A Cape civil servant used to keep quite a number of
them in his office, some of them of a deadly character.
They seemed to know him, crawling all over his desk
and papers, and even coiling themselves round his neck
and body. It was noted that his visitors were limited
to those whose business was of an urgent nature only,
and that they went away directly that was finished.
But the worst wild beasts with which I had to deal
were human. In order to induce labourers to come
into such a district, wages at high rates were offered,
and even then the white men were, to a large extent,
the most cut-throat-looking rascals that I ever had
to deal with ship deserters and others of all nations,
Greeks, Italians, French, and English. Besides these,
were imported Zulus, Kaffirs, Basutos, who were
Africa
specially sent with their headmen from the eastern
provinces and Zululand. Some of these had come
across country under the leadership of a Captain R ,
a rollicking Irishman who had gained their confidence,
and spoke some of their languages fluently. He trusted
them so much that he was unarmed on his long journey,
only carrying a shillelagh or knobkerry, as it is locally
named.
On arrival of his party at the town where the Karoo
districts began they were met by the Minister for Native
Affairs. He made them all sit round in a circle under
a spreading tree, and made a speech to them in their
native language, they every now and then giving grunts
of satisfaction as he assured them of the fatherly care
which they would receive. I shall not easily forget the
scene, the two or three white men, and, squatting round,
the hundreds of lightly-clothed savages eagerly listening
and, through their chiefs, occasionally putting in a
question. Camped on the works, the chiefs or head-
men did nothing, but were necessary for keeping order
among the tribes for which each was responsible, fore-
men having to be separately employed to direct the
work. The Zulus were splendid men physically, and
worked well. At each throw of the shovel they shouted
in concert, " Cetewayo ! " with a long stress on the
penultimate syllable. He was then their king with
whom we afterwards contended in the Zulu war.
CHAPTER X
Receiving a deputation with pistols Preparations for my murder Sworn
in as a magistrate An escape Trying a murderer Extraordinary
pay-day incident Feeding the men A Zulu difficulty An un-
published incident of the Boer war A singular confessional Anec-
dotes Travelling billiards The Governor's visit and the lady's
maid A matrimonial raid More anecdotes Anthony Trollope
Up-country customs and scenery Sir Bartle Frere Comparison
between Indian and South African natives.
IN the last chapter it was stated that I had in addition
to the natives a large number of white men em-
ployed, most of them, as I have mentioned, the off-
scourings of their respective nationalities, though, of
course, there were many exceptions.
These white men were, some of them, so turbulent,
that I well remember the picture of my colleague in
charge of the next district sitting at his office table
with a loaded revolver in each hand well displayed,
while receiving a deputation of some aggrieved work-
men, and I found some Greeks sharpening their evil-
looking knives at the grindstone in the yard of my
workshops, with the intention, as I afterwards heard,
of making some holes in me. This misfortune was
only averted by a better understanding of the reason
of their grievances, of which, however, I knew nothing
at the time.
In order that I should have authority in dealing with
such people as these, I was sworn in before the Chief
Justice as a magistrate, there being none within a con-
siderable distance, and I had many cases before me,
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while I was obliged to build a small lock-up in which
those I committed for trial could be confined till an
opportunity for removal occurred. This was a small
stone building containing rooms, each with a strongly
locked door, and in place of a window a narrow slit
eight or nine feet from the floor, about seven or eight
inches wide. Owing to the narrowness of the latter,
combined with its height from the floor, I thought
escape was impossible, yet a native culprit got out
through one of these holes during the night, and we
never caught him. In one case where a murder had
been committed, I had, for want of evidence, to dis-
charge a man whom I feel morally certain, to this day,
to be the criminal. The fatal stab was given in a
drunken crowd, and no one could give any clear state-
ment as to who did it. There was only evidence of
previous ill-feeling, but this was insufficient.
Needless to say, the monthly pay-day was an anxious
time, in which the men were filled up first with money
and, in many cases after, with drink, leading to various
scrimmages and general violence. The paymaster, who
was specially sworn in as a magistrate, travelled up
from Capetown, accompanied by an armed escort, to
pay the men. He travelled in a four-horse conveyance,
followed by several vans containing hawkers, who had
thus the opportunity of selling their wares to the men
after receiving their wages.
On one occasion, the paymaster had paid the wages
at my head-quarters and on the line ahead, when about
midnight I was awakened by his unexpected return.
By some mistake his money had run out, and to face
the next head-quarters camp without it was as much as
his life was worth. I gave him all that was in my
local chest, which was not much, and then, at my
suggestion, we went round, in the middle of the night,
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
to all the temporary drinking saloons and the hawkers*
vans round my head-quarters, and in exchange for
Government cheques, which the proprietors were only
too glad to get in exchange, we collected as much cash
as would see us through the emergency, the money
being, of course, the same as that which the paymaster
had paid out the previous day. This gave the time
necessary to obtain a further supply of cash, and prob-
ably averted a serious riot.
Struck by the number of hawkers' vans which usually
followed the pay-cart, I suggested to the Government
that some arrangement might be made with the Cape-
town banks, so that one or more of them should have
carts with clerks following up. In this way, such men as
chose to do it might have the opportunity of lodging some
of their wages, by which system, I am sure, great good
might have been done. But nothing came of it. This
reminds me of a deputation which waited on Arch-
bishop Whately, to whom I referred in the early part
of these memories. They set forth their grievances
and the remedies by the Government which they
proposed, on which that sagacious prelate replied,
that the course recommended was so sensible, so prac-
ticable, and in every way so suited to the needs of the
occasion, that he was quite sure that it would never
be adopted.
There was no general contractor to do the work, as is
usually the case with similar construction at home.
Acting for the Government, I employed labour direct,
as a rule, but in some cases small contracts were given
to groups of men with a leader, and a rough-and-ready
way of arranging for these was by a sort of Dutch
auction, as many of the men could not read nor write,
and could not understand the nature of a written agree-
ment. The auction would probably be held out in the
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open, on the site of the work to be done, one man
bidding, say thirty pounds, on the part of his gang,
another twenty-eight, and so on till the lowest bid was
made. Of course, some of the men were not very
experienced as to what it would cost to carry out the
work, and discretion had to be used not to allow the
bids to get too low through the eagerness of the con-
testants to get the work, as the men had generally no
capital to fall back on, and failure to complete the con-
tract would ruin the men and cause expense in many
ways to the Government.
All these men, white and black, had to be fed by the
Governmentj there being no provisions to be had other-
wise in the desert, and this was, of course, considered
in their wages. A contractor was employed for this,
who delivered meat, bread, tobacco, sugar, tea, etc. to
the gangs all along the line daily. In dealing with this
a characteristic incident arose. The ration contractor
asked permission to deliver double rations on alternate
days during winter, when the meat, etc. could easily be
kept, and seeing then no objection I consented. I
found, however, that the Zulus could not be got to
understand this arrangement, and ate the whole of the
two days' supply on the day on which it was delivered,
so that they had nothing the next day, consequently the
daily delivery had to be resumed, or there would have
been a disturbance.
When I look back on these and other incidents in
dealing with semi-savage peoples, black and white, with
all their perplexities and dangers, I cannot help wonder-
ing at the magnificent impudence born of that little
knowledge which is so dangerous, of some Fleet Street
writers and their " Constant Readers," in their safe and
comfortable quarters, when they tell colonists how to
manage their own affairs. But after all, perhaps, news-
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
papers feel bound to tell their constant readers only what
they want to hear. For instance, a story, possibly
untrue, was told to me quite lately, of a returned
wounded soldier during the Boer war, going to a London
editor, thinking that the publication of the story of his
mishap would be worth money. This was a very graphic
account of the storming of a kopje held by the Boers,
The British troops, he said, took two hours to go up,
and two minutes to come down, the narrator during the
latter operation having got a bullet in his hind-quarters.
The editor did not think that it would suit.
But to return to the older time. Far away as we were
from civilization, the Government had to provide a
doctor and a small hospital for each district, while we
were visited by an Anglican and a Roman Catholic
parson, towards whom the district engineers afforded a
willing hospitality. A curious result of the no doubt
necessary administration of the diocese to which the
Roman priest belonged, occurred more than once. A
broad river adjoining my camp was the boundary of the
diocese, we being just outside of it. He could carry out
anywhere all his ministrations except receiving confes-
sions, which duty could not be performed outside his own
diocese unless, I suppose, in cases of emergency. The
wife of one of my assistants belonged to his flock, and
she and the priest had to go over to a point beyond the
centre of the broad river bed, which was almost always
nearly dry, where, under the shelter of a rock, the con-
fessions were duly made and the absolution given.
The reverend father was an eager and accomplished
whist player, one of that kind who carries cards about with
him in his pockets, and would play all night if he could
get anyone to stay up with him. I do not know if this
jovial old padre is still alive, but if beyond the realms
of whist, in view of his frequent eagerness to establish
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his long suit, his epitaph might well include the well-
known tombstone phrase, " In joyful expectation of the
last trump."
Our doctor was an Irishman, who had a professional
friend of the same nationality occasionally visiting him,
the latter doing a great deal to dissipate the monotony
of Karoo life by his humorous tales.
The following I think was his.
That singular phenomenon, an economical Irishman,
in buying spurs, asked for a single one at half the price
of a pair.
" An' what, sorr, will ye do with wan spur ? " said
the shopman.
" Shure, ye omathawn, if I get wan side av me horse
to go, the other side has got to go wid it."
The doctor had some good Irish bulls, which, as a
rule, do not arise from stupidity, but from thinking too
quickly. For instance, as was said in a colonial parlia-
ment, " The only way to prevent what is past is to put a
stop to it before it begins."
An Irish temperance lecturer, after instancing the
awful end of a drunkard, added : " He had neither wife
nor child ; good thing for them, wasn't it ? " And
finally, An Irishman and his supposed friend, seeing
each other at the opposite side of the street, and cross-
ing to shake hands, both discovered that it was neither
of them.
To relieve the monotony of existence, the engineers,
doctors, and other officials provided a joint billiard-
table, for which a special shed was built successively at
each head- quarters, about twenty-five miles apart, the
table being moved forward as the completion of the line
advanced, so as to keep near the greatest number.
Occasional visits to colleagues on business or pleasure
gave many opportunities for enjoying a game.
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
On one occasion it was announced that the Governor
of the colony would inspect the line, accompanied by
his wife. There was no accommodation for the party
beside that afforded by our wooden huts, but by a little
rearrangement of rooms there was no trouble in provid-
ing for Sir Henry and Lady Barkly ; the only difficulty
was Lady Barkly's maid, as to whom great perplexity
arose. This was got over at the first head-quarters
beyond civilization by putting up a special hut of one
room for this important female's use, but the sensible
Lady Barkly, probably foreseeing difficulty, prudently
did not bring her. However, ever after, the little out-
buildings put up at each station for possible extra guests
were always termed " Lady's Maids," and very shortly
they were in full use, as the following shows.
Practically all the staff were bachelors, more or less
eligible in the mating sense. A high official's wife,
pitying their loneliness, conceived the idea of taking a
bevy of pretty girls over the line for an excursion.
This, of course, was only for a week or two's amuse-
ment ; there was no ulterior view oh, dear, no ! not at
all. Nothing of the kind. They came up, and picnics
and all sorts of diversions being arranged, all went
merrily. Some said, however, that there was method in
all this frivolity. Whether this was the case or not,
every single girl of that lively party was shortly the
wearer of an engagement ring. The staff, who were
wholly English, fell simply annihilated before the rush
of colonial fascination, and our bachelor community
became a married one almost as rapidly as a Chicago
pig is converted into sausages. If the Jameson raid,
which followed this one a few years after, had been as
well organized, history might have been different.
On such visitations as these the servant difficulty was
great, for even when obtainable their quality was only
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what is called commercially "fair to middling." We
grew our own vegetables, and once our u general "
came saying that the French beans gathered would not
be enough for dinner. Told by her mistress that the
quantity should be quite sufficient, what was our sur-
prise to see that she was justified, from her own stand-
point, for she had podded the beans like peas and cooked
only the seeds. Another, a man this time, was called
Jack Snake, a bite from one of these reptiles, though
not killing him, having left his brain in an apparently
dazed condition thereafter, and he was always bungling,
though a willing soul. In his time, we were expecting
several to dinner one evening as they passed through,
and, inspecting the arrangements, found that the table
had been laid with all the knives on the left and the
forks on the right of each person's seat. On this mis-
take being pointed out, Jack Snake proposed, in order
to save time, as the food and the guests were ready, to
turn the table end for end, which he thought would
make all right without touching the knives and forks.
Generally speaking, the Government officers were
capable and efficient men, but, as in all services, there
were exceptions. One of the latter, whose services
were being dispensed with, I met when travelling to
Capetown on business. It was in a small roadside inn,
in which, being crowded, he and I were obliged to
occupy one bedroom. He had too faithfully followed
the perverted maxim, to drink is human, to get drunk
is divine, and was then in an advanced state of delirium
tremens. I thought it prudent to hide my razors,
which I was glad I had done, when he insisted on keep-
ing the candles alight all night, for, not being able to
sleep, he walked up and down the room till morning,
muttering threats to all sorts of people. As he was
a powerful man and hardly responsible for his actions,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
I did not have much of a rest myself that night. 1
think that he was one of the two heroes of the follow-
ing anecdote. The two, somewhat fuddled, were
coming from a dinner, driving themselves in a Cape
cart, which is a two-wheeled vehicle drawn by two
horses. One, noticing that the reins were rather slack,
and that the horses were wandering from side to side,
as if they also had been to the dinner, called to his
companion to keep the animals better in hand, when he
was astonished at the reply, " Why, I thought you
were driving." The reins were, in fact, held by neither.
It was at the public table of a village hotel near this
that a colleague of mine met that prolific and entertain-
ing author, Anthony Trollope, who was then touring
South Africa. It happened that there was at this
establishment a very well-known and popular black
waiter called Anthony, and happening, when waiting,
to be at the back of the greater Anthony, someone
opposite said, "Anthony, my boy, just pass us the
potatoes." The great author, not knowing of his name-
sake behind, and probably not realizing that anyone
could possibly fail to recognize him, whose visit was
the topic of the colony, bridled up and said, " Sir, my
name is Mr. Trollope."
A trip further inland revealed the more primitive
habits of the up-country Boers, whose farms are great
distances apart, perhaps fifty to a hundred miles. This
reminds me that they seldom talk of miles in the Cape
interior. The usual travelling pace by driving is about
six miles an hour, including what are called outspans,
that is to say, short rests or feeds at intervals. Some-
times the halt only consists of unharnessing the horses
for a roll in the dust, which they thoroughly enjoy, and
which appears to give them renewed vigour. Distances
are therefore always spoken of in measures of time.
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Africa
For instance, if a farm is forty-eight miles away it is
said to be eight hours distant.
One of the queerest of these up-country customs in
the outlying farms in that of people, especially the old,
keeping their coffins ready-made in the loft in view of
the inevitable grim visitor when he comes. The reason
for this is clear, when it is realized that the materials
and workmanship of this necessary article may not be
had possibly within two or three days' journey. It is
characteristic of the fortitude and grim determination
of this race that they can live cheerfully under such
a weirdly furnished upper story.
This trip took us through vast dry inland districts in
which the mirage was especially prominent. Constantly
spreading out before us were wide sheets of calm water
in the surface of which trees, rocks, and bushes beyond
were distinctly reflected. There could be positively no
mistake about it, clear and distinct as it could possibly
be, with occasional islets or tufts of grass, equally re-
flected, appearing above the water. Nevertheless, on
driving up, the whole sheet of water would gradually
vanish like Creusa's ghost
" Tcr frustra coinprensa mantis efRigit imago,
Par levibus ventis."
Returning easterly towards the coast, we passed
through the magnificent Meiring's Poort, one of the
finest bits of scenery which I have seen. The road,
alongside of a small stream, which it crosses and re-
crosses many times, winds through the pass in the
mountain range, high perpendicular walls of rock rising
up sheer on either side, the passage being scarce wide
enough for the babbling stream and the winding road.
So narrow is it that, except for about an hour at mid-
day, or when a turn in the kloof exposes it to the
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
morning or evening sun, the latter's rays never pene-
trate below. The waterfalls tumbling through clefts
on either side and fringed with forests of ferns
break the quiet silence of the scene and join the main
stream which, like a silver chain, threads through the
glen. The brilliant reddish colour of the rocks and
the narrow rifts through vertical precipices standing
up on each side were almost exactly like the pictures I
have since seen of the approaches to the ancient city of
Petra between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, leading to
its celebrated rock-carved palaces. The South African
scene, however, was on a much vaster scale, and it is
difficult to realize the enormous number of centuries
which have been occupied by the little stream cutting
through the rock so as to make such a deep chasm.
The Montague Pass lower down is of a quite different
character, the road falling more rapidly down the side of
the mountain far above the bottom of the gorge. From
it are beautiful and extensive views.
The transport riders, many of whom with their long
teams of oxen often as many as twenty-four to a
wagon we met on the journey, are a curious race,
knowing each animal and its disposition, every-one
having its name. If there be a specially stubborn and
self-willed beast, he is generally called " Inglischmann."
They are very dexterous at picking out and reaching an
individual bullock, with the attention of the long whip-
lash.
One of the curiosities of the country, which is often
met with on a tour like this, is the mantis, an insect
something of the shape of a gigantic grasshopper, and
called the praying insect or Hottentot God. It is
so named from its constant attitude of prayer, standing
with its arms raised in the posture of a saint on a tomb.
A visit to Capetown after our return brought me into
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contzct with a notable personage, the late Sir Bartle
Frere, then Governor, whose policy had such an effect on
the fature of South Africa. He had been Governor of
Bombay, and had held other important posts in India
during the Mutiny, where his forcible action prognosti-
cated his firm rule at the Cape. Such a strong man was
he that, since the time of William IV, he was the only
one at the head of affairs in any part of the British
Empire who actually dismissed his ministers, this
happening at the Cape. He also committed this country
to the first annexation of the Transvaal. Nevertheless,
this vigorous pro-consul had the shyness of a child
in social gatherings, which defect, during his career, he
must have had ample opportunities of mastering. It
was common knowledge, but I had an unusual oppor-
tunity of noticing it, for I had gone to one of his
receptions with the Dean of Capetown, and, there being
some mistake in the time at which our conveyance was
to call for us, all the guests had gone, and we were
alone with His Excellency for a short time until the
vehicle turned up. He seemed to be quite embarrassed
at what, after all, was a not very terrible situation, and
he looked relieved when the welcome grinding of the
wheels was heard in the carriage drive.
Before my departure from South Africa, which I shall
presently deal with, I would like to say something about
the natives in comparison with those of India, especially
from the labour standpoint with which I have had so
much to do. Many people at home think all black
men to be much the same all niggers a contemptuous
name which, by the way, I do not think I have ever heard
applied by white men to black ones in either country,
though the impression at home is otherwise. There are,
I believe, in India many more languages and dialects than
in Europe, signifying the number of types, so I must be
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
regarded as speaking generally only. The natives there,
belonging to an ancient civilization, have among them
handicraftsmen of practically every kind, some of them
very highly skilled. From any village you can get
a silversmith who, sitting in your verandah, workis up
anything you please. Give him a few rupees, and he will
melt them down then and there, and manipulate them
into delicate rings, bangles, or brooches, of his own
design. Send to the same village for a durzee or tailor
and, sitting tailor fashion in a corner of the verandah, he
will turn you out any garment you want, from material
supplied, in as good style as that of a city firm. Then,
where are to be got better cooks, when the poor material
they have to deal with is considered, and their two or
three rough utensils ? Turning to the rougher trades,
such as masons, bricklayers, and blacksmiths, they are
little inferior to European ones, except in physical
strength. The labourer is hard-working, though gener-
ally his bodily powers are limited, and if he often takes
a day off for more or less sleep, this is due to that cause,
and because his wants being so few, five days' pay
is sufficient to support him. His domestic requirements
are so few that the women do navvy work as well as the
men, so that the family wages are thus much increased.
Though physically weak, the endurance of the Indian
native is remarkable, as they walk with a load on their
heads for incredible distances, and as groom, in the case
of a fifteen or twenty mile ride, will follow on foot almost
as fast as, in that climate, his master will care to ride.
The Kaffir, though having some good qualities, is
a complete contrast to all this. He has a splendid
physique, but he is not only born but lives and dies
tired. He has no perseverance and leaves his work at
the slightest excuse, often when on works taking up his
few belongings and decamping, sometimes without even
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asking lor any wages then due to him. He has prac-
tically no trade except looking after cattle, and fighting,
the latter, as we know only too well, being the only
business that he takes up in earnest. Thus, in his own
country, he finds Indians and Chinamen imported to do
much of his work for him.
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EUROPE ONCE MORE
CHAPTER XI
England again Visits Literary work : editorship of a London maga-
zine Troubles of an editor Anecdotes Making new books out
of old ones More anecdotes Hansard II Garrick Club The
careworn city George Macdonald More stories Appointment in
Spain.
FATE seemed now thoroughly to have made up her
mind that my life was to be that of a rolling stone
which was destined to gather no other amount of moss
than a cosmopolitan experience of the ways of the
world.
My up-country district was now approaching comple-
tion, the next one to be undertaken being much further
inland, and having been five years in South Africa, I
obtained leave for a short visit home with wife and
children. However, I was destined never to return.
This was much to my regret, as I liked the place, the
climate, and the people, with some of whom I was now
connected by marriage and by friendship. But Dis
a lifer visum.
After a short stay in England I was so far on my
way back as to have my heavy baggage delivered at the
docks and passages partly paid, when suddenly news
arrived that the Cape Parliament had decided against
any further railway extension for the time. This meant
that I would probably find my engagement terminated
on my return to the colony, with no other engineering
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Europe Once More
opening to be looked for there, so I arranged terms
with Sir Charles Gregory, the engineering representative
of the Cape Government in London, not to go back.
Some years later, when railway extension revived, Sir
Charles asked me to go out to the colony again, but
having other business in hand then I could not do so.
Some visits to relatives and others in the country
followed ; in one case I met an elderly cousin, whom I
mention as an instance of vigorous old age, as he hunted
three times a week nearly up to his death at eighty-four.
Another visit was to a former assistant of mine who had
preceded me home, and had married the daughter of a
Sussex baronet. He lived near the latter's place, and it was
on the lawn of this fine mansion that we were initiated
into the mysteries of the then novel game of lawn
tennis.
Engineering work was more slack than when I re-
turned from India, and in addition there was the fact, to
which I have previously alluded, of a civil engineer's
absence abroad for some years causing him to be forgot-
ten at home. Casting about for the good that sometimes
idle hands find to do, I took up some occupation at
working up what was then a new patent in connection
with the electric deposition of certain metals, and with
it some literary work. This latter was not absolutely
new to me, though I have not mentioned it previously.
I had contributed to periodicals before I went to India
and after, and now, buying a half share in that well-
known and long-established magazine, Colburris United.
Service , I became its editor, being assisted, as regards
naval matters, by the late Admiral, then Captain Bedford
Pirn, M.P. for Gravesend, and in military affairs by an
experienced writer, an Army colonel of distinction, who
ably continued the policy of the magazine. In this
position I had to read, mark, learn, and digest MSS.,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
reading all sorts of scrawls and scribbles, for that
heaven-sent blessing to editors, the typewriter, was
then unknown. Talking of scribbles, the printer of
the magazine, who also had printed some of John
Stuart Mill's books, told me that his copy was in
execrable writing, blotted and interlined and full of
erasures, scrawled over backs of envelopes, half-sheets
of paper, and all sorts of scraps, and often unnumbered,
a complete contrast to the finished article as it left the
press, perhaps the clearest and most limpid prose known
in English literature. I had to reject, to cut or extend,
like an editorial Procrustes, giant and dwarfish contri-
butions, to sniff out libels, to worry with mixed meta-
phors and solecisms, to detect and often to condone
plagiarisms, to value accepted work, and generally to
exorcise literary microbes of all kinds, besides inter-
viewing the rejected and the dejected, and, as Thomas
Hood wrote when in a similar position, in addition to
taking articles, I thought articles, dreamt articles, and
wrote articles to fill up yawning gaps.
While engaged on this work, I had the opportunity
of meeting or corresponding with many literary men,
and more especially those of both Services whose pens,
if not mightier, were more in requisition, in those
piping times, than their swords. Among them were Sir
Frederick, now Field- Marshal Earl Roberts, on whom
I used to call at Clarges Street, Piccadilly, where he
lived, and whose life, written by Mr. Charles Low,
appeared as a serial in the magazine, being afterwards
published in book form ; Captain, since Admiral Sir
Cyprian Bridge ; Lovett Cameron, the noted Central
African explorer ; Sir Sherston Baker, Bart. ; Mr., now
Sir T. H. Laughton ; Professor Holland, who was
Professor of International Law at Oxford ; Mr., since
Sir William White, Chief Constructor of the Navy ;
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Europe Once More
Colonel Knollys ; Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thomas
Symonds ; Mr. Laing Meason, the war correspondent ;
and many others.
I recall a story told me by the last named which, as
far as I know, has never been published. He was in the
Franco-German war, representing his paper on the
German side, when one day he was surprised and taken
by some French franc s-tireurs, who, it is well known,
were simply guerillas, not particularly trained in the
usages of war. Recognizing a foreign accent in his
French, they would not believe or could not understand
his story, and tying him hand and foot were about to shoot
him as a spy. In this awful and wholly undeserved
predicament, a sudden thought came to him, one of
those inspirations which only dire extremity brings forth,
and he pleaded that a priest should be sent for from the
neighbouring village to hear his confession and give
him absolution in his dying hour. This they agreed to,
and to the more intelligent cure, the supposed spy
explained his position, and he was saved to continue his
graphic accounts for the benefit of the English reader,
and to become one of my best and steadiest con-
tributors.
Besides editing and contributing to the magazines, I
wrote for other publications. A little paper called Fact
was edited by a retired major who subsequently suc-
ceeded me in editing Colburn, and he was very greedy
for facts for his journal. One I gave him which I
could vouch for, as witnessed by a naval connection of
mine who was present. He, with others of the Fleet,
was at a fancy ball at Lord V 's in the south of
Ireland, where one of the guests came attired as a con-
ventional Irish peasant tail coat, knee breeches, grey
stockings, battered tall hat with a pipe in its band, etc.
etc. But this was not all, for he had brought right into
T 73
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the ball-room a pig, which he thought he was going to
restrain by a rope, tied Irish fashion, to his hind leg.
All went fairly well until the music and dancing began,
when owing to these, or to the unusual sight of so much
" quality " around him, the pig got excited, and rushing
round, the rope got entangled among the dancers' legs,
many of whom were soon sprawling on the floor.
I learnt while at this occupation the great business of
making new literature, so called, out of old. Many an
hour did I spend at the British Museum library compil-
ing information for articles, and seeing there the great
army of authors making new books out of old ones.
This sort of literary Bovril is, of course, necessary, as
the public has thus brought before it suitable summaries
from various sources which it has no opportunity of
collecting for itself; but to call such compilations
literature is rather an abuse of terms, originality, which
is the essence of it, being as invisible, but not nearly so
effective, as a microbe. There was some truth in
Disraeli's apparent paradox that books are the destruction
of education.
" The rain, it raineth every day,
On the just and the unjust fellah,
But more upon the just, because
The unjust takes the just's umbrella."
This doggerel, said to be by a humorous bishop, which
I came across the other day, reminds me of a City adven-
ture, if I may call it so, of this period. Hitherto I had
been able, metaphorically, to wear in my button-hole the
whitey-brown flower of a moderately blameless life, but
as far as suspicion goes I was now nearly to be deprived
of it. In fact, I was the object of a stop-thief chase
along the most crowded part of Fleet Street, which, of
all places, is supposed to be the head-quarters of all that
is honest and true.
Europe Once More
I was lunching in an eating-house in that neighbour-
hood. By the way, why do we Frenchify this good old
intelligible word ? The Savoy, Prince's, or Carl ton of
our days are nothing more. Why not call them so ?
In the old eating-houses two or three diners were
separated from the others by high partitions, as if, as
much as possible, we should feed in private. I remem-
ber in India, in building a large railway terminus, I had
one native employed whose caste required that nobody
should see him eat, so he was allowed to build himself
a small hut, about five feet square, of the stones pre-
pared for the building, inside which he retired at meal
times. Much more absurd, because not part of his
religion, was the old-fashioned John Bull idea of segre-
gation in dining.
But to my story. Half " through," as the Yankees
say, a man opposite, who was entirely through, paid
his score, rose, and, taking my umbrella from the stand,
went away. Happening to look up a moment later I
missed my property from the group, and acting on the
spur of the moment, jumped up to follow the man who
had just left, and at the door, seeing him some distance
up the street, gave chase. Meantime the waiter, as-
suming that I had eaten the best part of a lunch and
had gone without paying for it, was after me in a
moment, crying, " Stop him, stop him ! " But the
object of my chase being overtaken, and his inadver-
tence acknowledged, the matter was explained, and I
was exonerated.
One of my contributors, an American by birth,
though the author of several brilliant French novels,
was married about this time. The bridegroom had
been supplying me with several chapters of a serial
which he told me he had not written himself, and he
would not then disclose the name of the author, who
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
was simply designated by initials. The story created
some sensation, and there was some curiosity as to the
identity of the writer. After the marriage ceremony,
which took place at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, a sump-
tuous breakfast was given at a neighbouring hotel, not
like that poor substitute for it of the present day,
chiefly an exhibition of plate and jewellery extorted,
by a remorseless custom, from more or less unwilling
victims, and flanked by the unsubstantial sandwich and
trifle of the light refreshment order. There were a
good many good talkers and speech-makers present, and
just before the speech which 1 had to contribute, Captain
Bedford Pirn told me that he was commissioned to
inform me of the fact, with the view to my disclosure of
it, that the writer of the mysterious tale was the bride,
a beautiful compatriot of the bridegroom.
Talking of speeches, a debating society existed then
at Hampstead, where we lived, discussing all things,
human and Divine, a much rarer institution then than
now. Captain Bedford Pirn and other prominent men
were occasional speakers. At one of our meetings a
young man came in and joined in the debate, showing
extraordinary powers of oratory, and quoting liberally
from classic and other authors ; in fact, eclipsing all of
our members. After his speech he slipped out, and on
inquiry no one knew who he was, and the mystery
remains. He appears to have entered in the train of
one of the members, passing in surreptitiously as one of
the visitors entitled to be so introduced. A sort of un-
classed brilliant comet sweeping through and departing
from our smaller orbit or could it have been the ghost
of one of the members of the noted Kitcat Club, who used to
meet at Hampstead with Addison,Steele,and others nearly
two centuries ago, or of any of the other intellectual cele-
brities for which, in later times, the place has been noted ?
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Europe Once More
The term " Hansard " is well known among parlia-
mentarians in England and the colonies as the volume
containing verbatim reports of speeches, but many,
especially abroad, do not know its origin. Luke Han-
sard was printer to the House of Commons in the early
part of last century, and his sons and successors
have since had charge of this important work. I was
introduced by a member at this time to Hansard II, a
courteous old gentleman well past middle life, who, no
doubt, could have told many a strange tale. With my
experience, then and since, of many of the debates in
the mother and daughter parliaments of the Empire,
some of which official duty compelled me to hear, I have
often thought of how the business of this harmless
family has been the channel for such torrents of turbid
twaddle as some of the deliberations of our legislators
might well be named.
I used to dine occasionally with a friend, an old
General, at the Garrick Club, which originated, I believe,
among actors and playwrights, but had by that time
widened its doors to others, many military men belong-
ing to it. The cooking was sublime ; in fact, so much
so that dining there one evening and hearing that the
Civil Service Stores next door was all in a blaze, the
General told the excited waiter to come and tell us when
the danger was so great that we must leave our table,
not before, and all the excitement in the meantime did
not divert his attention from the fare before us, which
indeed deserved all of it. The club, however, was not
injured. Par parenthese, why are not cooks, like other
artists, made peers and baronets ?
Business in this portion of my career drew me daily
to the City, and I have never lost the impression, not
experienced, I think, anywhere else, except perhaps in
New York, of the anxious careworn faces of the men,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
young and old, rich and poor alike, which one meets
in that great centre of business. Mostly, I suppose,
men fairly well off, having regard to the average, but
with brows wrinkled over, striving to be better off,
illustrating what Oscar Wilde called the strange poverty
of the rich. The theory of compensations, as it has
been called, certainly fits in with my experiences, those
in the worst circumstances being often gifted with the
happiest lives. The old Arabian tale points a true
moral. The King fell ill, and the wise men said that the
only thing to cure him was to wear the shirt of the
happiest man in the kingdom. Search was made, and
after much trouble the man was at last found, but he
was so poor that he did not possess a shirt.
A great intellectual treat at Hampstead was the hear-
ing of the lectures of the late Dr. George Macdonald,
the novelist, on Shakespeare's plays. The personal
appearance of the lecturer was remarkable, a great lion-
like head with profuse and shaggy grey hair. I do not
think these lectures were ever published, and to the
notes I took of them I owe a great deal in the prepara-
tion of lectures which many years after I delivered on
Macbeth^ As Ton Like //, the ideal womanhood of Plato
and of Shakespeare, and others.
The parson officiating at the wedding referred to a
few pages back was a contributor to the magazine, and
his memory was quite a storehouse of clerical anecdotes
of the humorous class, which he had picked up, and
some of them which follow remain in my memory.
In fact, whether it is owing to the solemnity of their
ordinary functions, or to the kinship of the sublime and
the ridiculous, I do not know, but clerics seem to
appreciate humour more than other men. Rabelais,
Fuller, Sterne, Sydney Smith, Barham, Deans Ramsay,
Pigou and Hole are conspicuous instances.
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Europe Once More
At a harvest in which sheaves of corn and other
things attractive to the bovine palate were plentifully
distributed through a country church, a cow, attracted
by these, entered during the service, and before she
could be stopped got into the centre aisle. This being
too narrow for her to be turned round, she had to
be driven by the churchwardens right up to near the
chancel and ejected through the vestry.
The rector at one of three meetings of a confirmation
class commenced : " The week before last we took c the
World,' last week we spoke of c the Flesh,* and this
week we go to * the Devil.' '
The following is a reflection, not undeserved, upon
the way that the magnificent old-world diction of the
book of Common Prayer is often slurred over by the
clergy. A Wesleyan housemaid in a bishop's family,
going to an Anglican church for the first time, which
happened to be when the collect for Ash Wednesday
was read, said, on return, that she did not like the
service at all, for the minister had said : "Almighty and
Everlasting God, who hatest nothing but the 'ouse-
maid "
Theatricals were at this time tending towards the
more all-round excellency in acting which, derived from
the French, was rapidly superseding the " star," or what
might be called the " Jupiter and Venus," system.
Henry Irving and Ellen Terry were in their prime, but
one considerably outshone the other. To go to another
branch of the art, the Vokes family were inimitable in
what might be termed farcical gymnastics. There was
a scene in a play acted by them representing the cabin
of a ship which was supposed to be heavily rolling.
During the whole action of the scene, the characters
representing passengers, stewards carrying loaded trays,
and others kept swaying as they walked, one always
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
at the same time, in the same direction, and to the same
extent as the others. It was thus impossible for the
audience to avoid the illusion that the whole stage was
rolling, and I am sure there must have been sometimes
cases of sea-sickness among the spectators.
But these pleasant times were to cease, and the time
came when the rolling stone was to have another shove.
Nearly all except very high-class literary magazines
were then reduced to the price of one shilling, the price
of Colburn being still half a crown. Hence, it was not
getting on financially as well as it might. Failing to
induce my co-proprietor to risk the reduction in price
to the lower sum, I sold out ; but my expectation of the
reduction being a wise course, though temporarily caus-
ing a loss, was correct, for later proprietors lowered the
price, and the magazine has had, I believe, a prosperous
career since. The name " Colburn " in the title was sub-
sequently dropped.
My surviving parent having died since my return
from South Africa, thus diminishing the links with the
old country, I went abroad again. Returning to my old
profession, I accepted an appointment with a firm which
I may call Messrs. Woodhouse, Crimper and Lee, con-
tractors, who had the concession for the construction of
a railway in Andalusia in the south of Spain.
1 80
CHAPTER XII
The Times correspondent Influence of The Times Moorish customs in
Southern Spain Spanish love-making Medieval customs Angli-
can worship under difficulties Curious habits A Spanish letter
The wine bodegas A strange story of partnership Characteristics
Brigands Stories A mountain expedition A donkey over a
precipice Narrow escape from death Surveying difficulties.
I JOURNEYED to Spain overland, and from Paris
to Madrid had the company of the then corre-
spondent of The Times in the latter city. I lunched with
him at one of the Puerta del Sol restaurants, he leaving
immediately after to keep an appointment with the
King of Spain, father of his present Majesty, while I
continued my journey southward. I mention this not
because it happened to be my closest association with
a real king, but to illustrate what an influence, at that
period, The Times had in European politics. It used
to be said, a few generations ago, that the European
Powers consisted of England, France, Prussia, Austria,
Russia, and Baring Brothers, the great bankers, the
latter standing for the money, without which the
bayonets of the others could do little. At the time
I speak of, The Times might have been added to the list,
for public opinion had begun to have some consider-
able share in foreign politics, and The Thunderer, as
The Timej was called, represented that opinion not only
in England, but, to a considerable extent, abroad. It
was the time of the great Blowitz, the Paris corre-
spondent of The Times, whose lightest word might
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
harrow up the diplomatic soul of Europe, and make
statesmen's hair to stand on end.
Spain is, in many respects, the most interesting
country in Europe, chiefly on account of its backward-
ness in civilization. It is intensely conservative, retain-
ing far more than any European State the customs and
manners of centuries ago. We all try to realize in the
vivid pages of Green, Froude and Macaulay, or of
Pepys and Evelyn, the feelings and thoughts of those
who lived in the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts,
but it is generally a failure. We are too much sur-
rounded with the things and thoughts of the present
day. But going to Spain, especially to the remoter
parts, as I did, we are thrown practically right into the
past, and live in the midst of it.
The conservatism that gives rise to this is due to the
influence of the Moors, who occupied Spain for so
many centuries, and have left their unmistakable stamp
upon every feature there language, customs, buildings,
dress, and upon the national character. This I was all
the more able to appreciate, having lived so long among
Eastern peoples previously.
A few of these customs I may mention, prefacing
my account by stating that I am speaking of the south
of Spain, where the Moorish influence was greatest.
The Spaniards, who are generally good riders, mount
their horses on what we should call the off-side ; they
often sit cross-legged, wear handkerchiefs under their
hats turban fashion, and summon their attendants by
clapping their hands. The Spaniard's complimentary
expressions, and they are many, are all tinged with
Oriental extravagance. When you visit him he in-
variably says, " My entire house and establishment are
at your Grace's disposal." If you admire his horse, he
immediately rejoins, " It is yours." If you pass a
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Europe Once More
peasant on the roadside, eating his midday meal of
bread and onions, he at once asks you if you will share
it with him. All this hospitality, which, of course, it
would astonish the natives greatly to accept, is essen-
tially Arabic in origin.
Spanish politeness, no doubt, comes from the same
source. You address your servant as " your worship,"
and a lady by first saying, " I am at your worship's
feet," to which she replies, " Kiss my hand," but these
actions are not gone through. If you refuse alms to
a beggar in the street, the phrase in which it must be
done is, " Pardon me, for God's sake, your worship,
my brother," which, contrary to our proverb, " Fine
words butter no parsnips," appears to console him. In
addressing people in Andalusia the surname is seldom
used except on letters. I was always spoken to as Don
Carlos, and as there were several on our English staff
of the same Christian name, it was occasionally con-
fusing. Young unmarried ladies are addressed, even
by mere acquaintances, whether male or female, by
their Christian names alone without prefix. A married
woman is alluded to as the Sefiora de Don Ricardo, or
Don Miguel, as the case may be. To the unmarried
woman beyond a certain age, the word Dona is prefixed
to her Christian name. There are, of course, now no
old ladies in England, they have disappeared absolutely,
but in conservative Spain there are a few ; but even
there the premature use of the word Dona is extremely
dangerous. A safe rule is not to apply it to ladies
apparently under sixty.
Women are greatly secluded in the south of Spain,
as in Moorish countries. In many theatres a separate
gallery is set apart for females, though they are not
excluded from other parts ; then the graceful mantilla
which the ladies wear instead of bonnets or hats, as in
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the rest of Europe, is a survival of the Yashmak or
hood which covers the face of the Eastern lady, only
the eyes in the latter case being seen. It is curious that
when the Moors left the temptation to show their faces
was stronger to the Spanish woman than the conservative
instinct which led them to retain intact so many of
their other habits, so that the Yashmak became a mantilla.
No unmarried woman except of the very lowest class
will venture into the streets alone ; but, curious to say,
the company of a child, for example in the case of a
nursemaid, is sufficient for propriety.
There are many of these customs applicable only to
the rough times of old now past and gone, but which
the persistent conservatism of the country still retains,
though the object of these is gone. For instance, the
better class of town houses are built round a central
space or patio, as it is called, sometimes open to the sky,
but generally glazed over, this being ornamented with
fountains, statues or palms. The opening to the street
is by a strong though generally ornamental iron-barred
gate which in former times would not be opened to a
visitor until his friendliness was ascertained. The lower
windows facing the street are also barred with iron, and
this leads me to a custom which is not limited to Spain,
though they have a peculiar way of practising it. This
is love-making. The lover is not allowed by the eti-
quette of the country to come inside the house of his
sweetheart, even when the parents are favourable to his
suit. He therefore stands every evening in the street,
talking to her through the bars of the window inside
of which she sits, no matter how shivery the weather
might be. These affaires de cceur go on, of course, in
all countries, but as you go along the streets of an
Andalusian town in the evening, you become aware,
more than in any other country, of the extent of the
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Europe Once More
business. This is all right and very picturesque and
romantic as long as love runs smooth, but another cus-
tom appears when the lady tires of her lover, or prefers
another. In that case she absents herself at the usual
time, and instead hangs up a pumpkin in the window,
in which the Spanish Romeo recognizes his conge, and he
either goes home philosophically or, perhaps, to another
window.
I went to a show in one of the larger towns, which
illustrates the Spaniard's love for horseflesh, a distinctly
Arab trait. It was on the annual feast of St. Anthony,
who is the patron saint of animals, a stage being erected
at one side of the public square, or plaza, on which a
number of priests stood. Nearly all the best horses and
mules of the district, gaily dressed with coloured rib-
bons, were ridden or driven round the plaza and past
the stage, where they were blessed by the priests and
sprinkled with holy water in presence of large crowds.
This picturesque ceremony had developed, or degene-
rated it might be said, even then, to a large extent into
a kind of horse show, assisting the sale of the finest
animals, which are thus shown off, and their paces
tested.
Medieval customs are held to not less tenaciously
than Moorish. The watchman still goes round at night
singing a melodious cadence, consisting of an invocation
to the Virgin, the hour of the night and the state of
the weather, "Aw Maria purissima las Doce Serena /"
From the last word being so frequently used, the men
are called " Serenos." It was said that in a southern
town in which snow had not been known within the
memory of man, there was a slight fall one night, and
the ignorant watchman sang, after intoning the hour,
" A lot of feathers are falling from the sky." The
Serenos are dressed in long cloaks and slouch hats,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
carrying a lantern and an ancient halbert, just as the
watchmen are equipped in staging Much Ado About
Nothing. When a foreigner goes to Southern Spain, the
singing of these Dogberrys, which is singularly melo-
dious, keeps him awake, but he soon becomes used to it.
Except for warning evil-doers that the representative of
the law is approaching, and thus enabling him to escape,
there seems to be no object, except pure love for an-
tiquity, in the retention of this old custom, banished
everywhere else, as far as I know.
Spanish medical practice in the early eighties had
not got to the length of providing medicine bottles,
and in the little town where we lived it was necessary,
when going to have a doctor's prescription made up, to
take a tumbler with you, into which the chemist poured
the medicine required. In fact, everything in connec-
tion with the art of curing disease was equally primitive,
and anything like sanitation was hardly known. It will
scarcely be believed, but as late as the time I speak
of Spanish doctors still bled their patients in many
cases.
An amusing case of out-of-datishness, if I may coin
the word, was when we imported from England a
case of groceries, which had to be examined in our
presence at the Custom House. A tin of washing-
powder being one of the contents, it was solemnly
inspected and handed round to several functionaries,
none of whom could understand our explanation of the
use of it. They had never heard of such a thing, and
they argued and talked over it for such a long time and
so suspiciously, that I believe they thought it was dyna-
mite. It was all we could do to keep our countenances
otherwise dignity would be ruffled, and official un-
pleasantness and delay would surely follow.
Curious to relate, for such a non-progressive country,
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Europe Once More
Spain was the first to introduce the postal system, but
some medievalism survives with it. For instance, the
postman in coming to the door, cries " Peace," to show
that he is not a marauder, and in handing the letters
evokes a blessing by ejaculating A've Maria Sanctissima !
The Spaniards always want to put off things, so much
so that Manana (to-morrow) is always on their lips.
Nothing can be done to-day, notwithstanding their wise
proverb, For la calle de Manana se llegar a la Casa de
Nunca (The street of to-morrow leads to the house
of never). For any business transaction, the Andalusian
official is, I believe, the slowest man in the world. The
purchase of postage stamps in a small town is an ex-
ample. Asked for one, the postmaster will probably
first light a cigarette with a view of considering the
matter, then, after some thought, will fetch a step-
ladder, and search on a high shelf for an old tin box,
and after some selection take out a sheet of special
stamps required. After examining them closely, he
finds that a pair of scissors is necessary to separate them,
for there is no perforation, and this he goes to fetch in
another room. After a very painstaking count of the
change, you are fortunate if, in ten minutes or a
quarter of an hour, you at length get your stamp.
When a person is dying, the sacrament is carried to
him through the streets with a small procession, a bell
being tinkled, when everyone in the street or in the
houses within hearing falls on his knees. I remember
being at a dinner-party given by an English wine
merchant at a town in the sherry country, nearly all the
guests being of the same nationality, when the little bell
was heard in the street. Immediately all the servants
paused in their duties and dropped on their knees by
the window.
The Spanish Government is tolerant towards religions
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other than the State one, but it is difficult for them to
control the ancient prejudices of the more ignorant
classes ; hence, when the English residents in the town
where part of my time in Spain was spent, got facilities
for holding an Anglican service in a room in some
barracks, we were advised by the authorities to have no
music so as not to attract attention and possible disturb-
ance. It felt rather like being an early Christian.
But this ignorance goes, as is natural, with much
simple-mindedness and honesty, not found perhaps in
more tolerant communities. As an instance, milk is
delivered in the towns by the cows being driven round
to the door of each customer, and there milked into the
family jug direct; so that what I have heard, in other
lands, called " Moses " or the little prophet (profit)
taken out of the water, does not come to the Spanish
dairies. I also remember a custom, based on strict
equity, of paddocks of oaks being hired to pig owners,
the rent being based on the difference of weight of the
pigs when put in to eat the acorns, and that of the same
when fattened up and removed from the paddock for
sale.
But as in other less primitive countries there are
exceptions to this general honesty. A bootmaker,
whose shop was close to our office, simple-minded him-
self, had an experience of one of these exceptions. A
customer was trying on a ready-made pair of boots,
and had a good fit on, when suddenly a man from the
street entered, and picking up the customer's old boots,
which were on the floor, ran away with them down the
street. Their owner, acting apparently on a natural
impulse, sprang up, having the new boots on, and sped
after him, followed by the encouraging shouts of the
shopman. His sympathy, however, gradually cooled
down when he found that his customer never returned,
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and he realized that the two men were accomplices, and
that he had lost his goods without having even the old
ones in exchange.
An idea of the simplicity and courtesy of the Spanish
lower orders may be gathered by the following literal
translation of a letter received from my camp man-
servant :
" My very esteemed owner,
"After saluting you with these bad formed
letters, I wish you much happiness in company of your
dear wife and family and will be glad if they are
enjoying good health. Mine is good, thank God, for
what you wish to command, that will I do with much
pleasure and gentle good wish.
" Mistress ! If you have a mind to return to the
farm house, I put in your knowledge that it is required
one sieve to pass the soup and the mash and fifty thou-
sand things that we are short of, one frying pan and
pepper and flour and tea.
"Without more, the news from here are the usual,
we are all good. Without more, you will receive
regards for all the family from this your servant that
is so. Senor Don Jose Rcbsiras.
" If you wish to write me, put on the envelope, Senor
Don Joseph Rebsiras, Castano, Cortijo of the Widow
Magro Cualgrevillos. You will excuse the trouble."
And with all this simplicity and relative poverty, the
Spanish peasants are as happy as any I know, while
those of other lands with more than twice their wages
and comforts are often grumbling, and might be con-
sidered like the Latins of Horace
" O Fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint agricolas."
The wine bodegas, as they arc called, in the town
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already referred to, are interesting places to visit, though
one sometimes is led, by the customs of the place, into
indiscretions. The visitor is courteously invited to
taste the various samples of wine which are lifted out
of the casks by an instrument like a long-stemmed
pipe, in which the bowl and stem are set at a very
small angle. As there is much mixing of liquors, and
more taken in small doses than the visitor is aware of,
his thoughts, words, and deeds when he leaves are often
not so well regulated as might be desired. Some time
before some of us went through the principal one, it
was said that a very high personage of that epoch had
gone through, accompanied by a very high feminine
personage, and the estimate of the divinity which doth
usually hedge such high personages was slightly lowered
when they were being conducted to their carriage to
depart.
But it is time to return to my story among these
scenes. And first might be mentioned the curious
circumstances which brought together the two chief
members of my employer's firm. This story, related
to me by one of them, illustrates from what small
causes important results may spring. Woodhouse was
a prominent railway contractor, and was travelling in
Hungary in a train in which, as befitting his important
position, he had a reserved compartment. The rest of
the train was full to the doors, there being hardly even
standing room, owing to some local fete further on.
The train stopped at a small country station where
Crimper, then unknown to Woodhouse, endeavoured to
occupy one of the only vacant places in the engaged
compartment. Woodhouse strongly protested, but
Crimper, with apologies, insisted on his right to enter,
there being no other room and his business brooking no
delay. The stationmaster was called, but the train was
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late, and the driver was whistling impatiently, so the
train moved off with Crimper in possession. The
language of the pair became rapidly massive and ex-
plosive in character, but the carriage roof was strong and
nothing could be done. Throwing the intruder out of
the window was out of the question, for apart from legal
consequences and the loss of dignity to the great man,
the other was much the greater of the two physically.
So, like the muttering and the gloom of a retreating
storm, each sat in his far-off corner growling and glaring at
each other. Suddenly came a severe jolt, nearly knocking
them off their seats. Involuntarily Crimper cried out,
" What a shocking bad slack ! " Now slack, it may be
explained, means in the railway engineer's technical
language, a depression in the rails caused by the careless
maintenance of the level of the line by the men who are
constantly employed to keep it in order. " Awful," said
the other. " But you must be an engineer." " I am,
indeed," was the reply. "And are you doing any
business about here ? " And so on and so forth, until
peace was entirely restored in talking about their business.
Not only this, but Crimper being an attractive person-
ality, the older man quite took to him during the rest of
the long journey, and asked him to dinner to meet his
daughter whom he was about to join at an hotel at their
common destination. This invitation was accepted, the
young people met, and so on and so forth, until some
months after Crimper became Woodhouse's son-in-law,
and subsequently his partner. Thus the former, from
being an insignificant atom in a nebula of the engineer-
ing firmament, became a star of, at least, the third or
fourth magnitude, in sharing a large and lucrative
business. And all because a careless workman had failed
to put a shovelful or two of gravel into a hole.
The first two things to be done in our new work were
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to learn the language and to procure good saddle horses.
As to the first, our staff were chiefly English with some
French and Spanish assistants. Spanish is not difficult
to learn, but the Andalusian idiom varies much from the
pure Castilian, and consequently the dictionary often
proved of little avail. Added to this, our dealings at
first, both in business and domestically, were chiefly with
the lower class, so that we acquired expressions and pro-
nunciation which, when meeting the better class, we had
to live down.
As the route of the proposed railway had to be
fixed, the formation of survey parties was the first work,
and as interpreter and foreman over the men under
my directions I had a Frenchman, until able to do
without him. Having also a Frenchman among our
superior staff", I found great difficulty in separating the
two languages. Domestically the difficulty was greater,
and there being no interpreter and absolute ignorance of
each other's language, in addition to which circumstance
the servants' was a patois, communication was only
possible by signs. For instance, in ordering a shoulder
of mutton, through the cook, it was necessary to
point to your shoulder and to imitate the baaing of
a sheep.
The Spanish cookery is the worst in Europe, except
possibly the English plain variety. There is a proverb
that God sends meat and the devil sends cooks. I think
a special contingent of the latter were dispatched to
Spain. These and other troubles, however, we soon got
over in the flat we had rented, which, by the way, reminds
me of a curious custom, which is that, in Spain, the rent
of houses and flats is fixed at so much per day : for
example, ours was, I think, 12 reales, or 2s. 6d. An Eng-
lishman would value a house by the rent paid for it for a
year, but this would give no idea to a Spaniard, who
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would have to divide the amount by 365 to arrive at a
comprehension of it.
The necessity for good riding horses and baggage
mules and donkeys was specially great, as in Southern
Spain there were, at that time, practically no roads.
Leaving a village or even a town, generally walled round
as in the Middle Ages, there being no suburbs, the
country would be reached at once, and to travel to the
next town except, of course, where there was already a
railway it was necessary to take to the saddle and follow
a bridle path. The baggage would follow slung across the
backs of mules or donkeys, and children would be
loaded up also in this latter fashion in panniers or baskets,
one on each side. I call to mind one journey of this
kind, where two children, one older and therefore heavier
than the other, were so arranged. As the mule had to
be driven with its lop-sided cargo, till some place was
reached where stones were available to adjust the balance,
one little one, who kept heeling over, was heard to say
in plaintive tones, " Oh, Mammy ! I wish we was
twins."
While at the survey work it was necessary to lodge
in ventas (country inns), cortijos (farm-houses) or in
tents. Once, I had the loan from the owner of a fine
country mansion which was empty, owing to the fact
that the country was infested with brigands, and he
was afraid that he should be carried away for ransom if
he occupied it. I was safe because, I suppose, they did
not think that I was important enough to be worth a
ransom good enough for them. Obscurity is occasionally
an advantage.
The officials are said to be sometimes in league with
these picturesque ruffians, and a short time before I
went to the district, an instance occurred. A quantity
of Government money was being sent by train to a
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certain town. Near it, the brigands had placed a tree
across the rails bringing the train to a standstill, and
proceeded to seize the plunder. But the authorities
had been warned, and a guard of soldiers who ac-
companied the train dispersed the robbers, and shot a
number. When the bodies of the latter were picked up,
one of them was found to be that of the mayor of the
town. After all, robbery of Government money is not
confined to Spain, and brigandage is no worse than
swindling in the City. In fact, it is rather better, as the
amount involved is not generally so great, and there is
no pretence of honesty about it.
There is a great deal of smuggling on the coast.
The mayors of two adjoining seaports were deeply
"in the swim," as it is called. The one pretended to
expect a raid by a band of smugglers, and asked the
other, officially, to lend him his carbineros (coastguards).
While these were absent, the mayor of the undefended
town connived at landing a quantity of goods without
duty being paid, the profit being divided between the
two officials.
There is no engineering work perhaps so fascinating
as fixing, in mountainous country, the route of a rail-
way, so as to get the maximum of advantage in avoiding
steep inclines and sharp curves, which are such sub-
sequent impediments to the economical working of the
line, and the minimum of cost in tunnels, viaducts, etc.
Of this we had plenty, and to test a new route which
had been suggested a large exploring party went out
to find the best passage across the precipitous Sierras
which intervened between the towns that the railway
was to connect.
We were to spend about ten days, and we carried no
tents, sleeping in the open at night, one of us being on
watch turn about for four hours each, to give the
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alarm in case of brigands turning up, and to see after
the security of the horses and baggage animals. A
roaring wood fire was made, maintained by the watcher,
and the rest of us slept with our feet towards the fire,
radiating out like the spokes of a wheel. We lay on
our waterproofs, but, except for the last night, we had
no rain.
Needless to say we had some adventures. One was
the loss of one of our pack donkeys with his load, some
of it grocery, spirits, etc. Many of the mountain paths
are cut out of the side of the rock, with only room for
the animal and one half of his load, the other half pro-
truding more or less over the edge of the precipice. It
is very easy to see that should the inner pack be wider
than usual, or that there be a protuberance of rock or
tree on the inside, contact with it may easily send the
beast over. Something of this sort happened, and over
the poor animal went to his destruction. We could
only reflect that it was not the first ass who was undone
through whisky. To avoid such catastrophes, and to
give himself room, the sagacious mule in these places
generally walks on the very verge of the path, about
six or nine inches from the edge, and as he is so
accustomed by habit to this, he will also do it without
a load, or when ridden, as mules often are, so that the
rider's outside leg overhangs the often dizzy height,
and the feeling is very uncomfortable. Trying to
induce the beast to travel further in is hopeless, and,
in fact, it is really safer to leave the surefooted animal
to his own sweet and very decided will. I do not
know what would happen if we had met a similar party
coming the other way. We did not, and of course
such a condition of the path did not occur often.
In all these excursions only the best riding is safe,
and the southern Spaniards are exceptionally good
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horsemen. The horses clamber up or slide down pre-
cipitous paths which no rider would think of attempting
to negotiate in any other part of the world. He simply
lets the rein loose, leaving the untrammelled and dexter-
ous animal to his own devices, and he clings on by his
knees, with hands grasping the mane if necessary, when
a very steep ascent is made, so as to prevent himself
going over the stern. To try and guide the horse
would be fatal he knows best what to do. The native
saddles, owing probably to these contingencies, have
great peaks in front and behind, and stirrups like coal-
scuttles ; but we generally used English saddlery.
It was due, no doubt, to this great dexterity in our
horseflesh that our lives were saved in the adventure
which I am about to relate. We had halted for lunch,
sending other baggage forward. There was a strong
wind, and to get shelter from it a spot was selected pro-
tected by some high rocks and thick bushes, between
which and the edge of the precipice looking down into a
deep garganta (gorge) there was just room for ourselves
and our tethered horses. We had just comfortably settled
down when a peculiar roaring noise was heard above
that of the wind, but we thought nothing of it till some-
body remarked that he thought the day, which had been
rather cold, was getting warmer. The noise rapidly
increased, and, the horses getting restless, we began to
realize that not only was there a bush or prairie fire, but
it was close upon us ; and it is almost incredible with
what speed this travels. There was on one side the
fierce fire roaring on to us, and the precipice on the
other. It just happened, owing to the direction of the
wind, that the fire was nearer to us, facing the gorge, on
the left than on the right ; hence the only escape was in
the latter direction, where the conflagration, approach-
ing at an angle, would not reach the edge of the cliff so
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quickly as to our left. To loosen the horses and mount
with great difficulty was the work of a moment or two
with difficulty, for the animals, smelling the fire, were
almost ungovernable from fear. Full speed, as far as it
was possible, along the edge of the precipice through
rocks, trees, and all sorts of obstructions, was our only
chance. The least delay or a fall would have been fatal,
the imminence was so great. In a few minutes, how-
ever, we gained more open ground, and we were saved.
This notable trip came a day or two after to an end with
no disaster beyond the poor donkey's untimely fate.
But the general route, when selected by means of
these interesting explorations, had to be surveyed in
detail, and the difficulties in carrying out field work of
this kind with delicate surveying instruments were often
great indeed. The line as proposed would sometimes
follow along the side of an almost inaccessible precipice,
where in places the engineer, in order to maintain his
position, had to be tied on to a tree-stump while taking
observations, or had to place a man crouching at a lower
level so that his back might form a footstool while a
sight through the instrument was being taken.
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CHAPTER XIII
Cadiz A bull-fight Spanish humour Stories Bullets whistling about
my head Escape from drowning A philosopher A revolt
Seville Holy Week The Giralda Moorish palaces Queen
Isabella II An extraordinary forewarning of death Andalusian
scenery Decline of Spain Departure.
AFTER many months of hard work a holiday fol-
lowed, which was spent in that white wonder of
the world
" Fair Cadiz, rising o'er the dark blue sea ! "
in which blue water did we bathe deliciously under the
summer sun. In lovely Cadiz the bombardment of
which by Drake, called by him the singeing of the
King of Spain's whiskers, seems almost to have been
a sacrilege we had a brief descanso, as the Spaniards
call it. It was at Cadiz that I saw my first bull-fight,
and indeed my last, for that which I saw subsequently
at Lisbon, being forewarned as to its character, could
hardly be called more than a sham-fight.
Well do I remember that sunny Sunday afternoon,
the day par excellence for the display, when I wended my
way to the great oval ring to which the highly coloured
posters led me. It was something like those uncovered
arenas or amphitheatres of which the ruins may be
seen in Rome and Pompeii. On one side, centred by
the Alcalde's box, were the seats row above row on the
shady side occupied by the rank and fashion of the
town, the ladies with the white mantilla which Spanish
custom has decreed shall be worn at bull-fights only, in
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contradistinction to the usual black. Ladies are not
only not ashamed to be seen at these cruel shows, but
throng to them with as great avidity as Englishwomen
go to a cricket or polo match. I well remember how
the dark eyes of one of these senoras glittered with
excitement as she described to me, and induced me to
see for myself, the wild charge of the bull and the
dexterous movements of the toreros.
Opposite the gentlefolk, right in the sun, and cheaper
on that account, were the seats for the many, with their
wives and children. The Spaniards are not generally so
demonstrative as their continental neighbours, but all
the exuberance they possess is reserved for and set free
at the Corrida de Toros. The bull-fight begins by the
entry of all the toreros in the gorgeous traditional
costumes of the ring, splendid specimens of active and
muscular humanity. This is preceded by their con-
fessions to a priest, in view of a possible " regrettable
incident." A procession round the arena follows,
during which salutation is made to the Alcalde, who
thereupon throws down to them the key of the cell in
which the bull has been confined the previous night.
This ceremony is said to be a survival in Spain of the
Roman occupation when, in the gladiatorial combats,
the competitors came forward and, addressing the
throned Emperor or his deputy, said, " Ave Ctesar !
Morituri te salutant /"
After this preliminary all the toreros retire, except
the picadores and the chulos, being those who take part
in the first part of the three sections into which each
bull-fight is divided. The picadores, armed with long
lances, are mounted on broken-down horses, and the
most cruel part of the proceedings is in connection with
these. The lance being used by the right hand, the
bull is naturally attacked from that side, and, as it would
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be otherwise impossible to induce the horses to approach
a ferocious bull, their right eyes are blindfolded, so that
they rush unconsciously on to their fate. The chulos
are on foot and unarmed. They have only a red scarf
or cloak, by which, carried on the arm, they constantly
divert the attention of the bull when the picadores are
hard-pressed.
The bull is not of the familiar English type, heavy-
bodied and short-horned, but of a much more active
build, and with long and dangerous-looking horns. He
is driven in from the country the day before the fight,
and is kept in a completely dark cell until liberated for
it. Half blinded by the unaccustomed glare and mad-
dened by the shouts of the excited crowd, he lashes his
tail and charges at full speed the first assailant that meets
his eye. If the latter be a chulo^ his wonderful agility
enables him generally to escape ; but if a picador^ the
onset of the bull is so violent that usually horse and
man go down, the horse probably mortally injured.
Quick as lightning the agile chulos divert the bull's
attention from his second charge, and a series of
wonderful manoeuvres follows. Hair-breadth escapes
succeed with great rapidity, attack and defence alternat-
ing according to the vigour and temper of the bull,
and if these are conspicuous, horse after horse goes
down with varying injuries, occasionally, but not often,
the man being also hurt. The barrier round the ring
dividing the arena from the spectators is double, there
being a space of four or five feet between the two
fences composing it, and when very hard pressed the
chulo, if near enough, springs over into this space. On
the occasion of my visit, not only this occurred, but the
bull, an unusually light and active one, followed over,
and the nearer spectators, who were only separated from
the enraged beast by a fence similar to that over which
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he had already sprung, fell back on their supports, as
friendly cables say when a military force is utterly
routed. Danger from drowning, fire, and digestion by
wild beasts has been my occasional lot, and though
several feet above injury on this occasion, I have rarely
felt more excitement than during the first part of this
corrida.
At a signal from the Alcalde, the first phase is ended,
and the men and surviving horses retire, this movement
being often greatly accelerated by the close attention of
the bull. Next the banderilleros appear. These are on
foot and are armed with a number of banderillos or short-
barbed javelins, decorated at the non-business end with
many-coloured streamers of ribbon. The bull, wounded
by the spears, and panting with excitement, stares at
them as suspiciously as an Englishman does at another
to whom he has not been introduced. One of the party
faces the animal, and holds his weapon aloft, challenging
him to come on, and generally on he comes accordingly,
with a vengeance. Lightly springing aside, the torero
plunges one of his javelins in the bull's shoulders, and
enraged at his failure, the infuriated animal turns round
to see another tormentor waiting for him in another
direction, when he charges again and again.
Not infrequently, the attack of the bull is so violent
that the banderillero cannot lodge his dart, and has
enough to do to escape from instant death. Maddened
by pain and loss of blood, the bull frequently leaps from
all fours high into the air, and charges blindly into space,
while the shouts of the spectators, who throw their hats
into the arena in token of applause when any specially
dexterous feat is performed, drive him to frenzy. Great
indeed would be the loss of human life in the first two
parts, were it not for the ease with which, as a rule, the
bull's attention is diverted from the attack on one man
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to that on another, and the cool and trained way in which
this is done must be seen to be realized. An untrained
man entering the arena at this time would meet his fate
without delay.
In the third and last part, when, it must be remem-
bered, the bull's energy is a good deal exhausted, the
matador enters alone, armed with a sharp, straight rapier
and carrying a scarlet cloak on his arm. There are many
exciting phases in this part of the fight, the loss of
energy in the beast being more or less matched by the
reduction in number of his assailants to one. Indeed,
the flourishing of the scarlet cloak is often needed to
arouse the bull to his full fighting form. Finally, watch-
ing his opportunity, the matador plunges his sword up to
the hilt between the animal's shoulders, and the valiant
beast, overcome by numbers and skill, after a few ineffec-
tual struggles, sinks dead to the ground.
Teams of gaily dressed mules are now driven in
to drag away the dead horses and bull, and the arena is
swept for the next fight. Byron mildly refers to this
horrible carnage as
" Such the ungentle sport that oft invites
The Spanish maid and cheers the Spanish swain."
Five or six fights and the deaths of as many bulls and
of many more horses occupy an afternoon ; but the men
seldom suffer, owing to their splendid skill. On the
occasion of my visit only one man was slightly wounded.
Horrible cruelty, no doubt, this is to modern minds, but
my reading of history and my experience have taught
me that cruelty, and insensibility to pain and to value of
life, are quite distinct things, the latter varying much
more than the former with the refinement which civiliza-
tion brings. For example, the prayers and devotional
books of early Christianity, some of the former still
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adorning our services, are full of loving-kindness and
altruism, yet the history of Hypatia and others shows
how these early Christians tore each other to pieces with
very little scruple. There is no reason to suppose that
the people of Shakespeare's time were less affectionate
and good-hearted than we are ; in fact, his and others'
plays show they were quite our equals in these respects,
yet there is no doubt that the wholesale slaughter in
some of his plays, then evidently expected and enjoyed,
is only tolerated now because they are Shakespeare's.
No modern author dare introduce such carnage. Our
own more immediate ancestors were, no doubt, just as
kindly natured as their descendants of to-day, yet they
freely hanged their criminals for small offences, or put
them in the pillory.
I do not defend the bull-fight, but its existence in
Spain is to be explained by the insensibility to pain,
which is a necessary accompaniment of their backward
civilization, rather than by want of kind-heartedness, a
quality of which I know by experience they possess as
much as any other people. Sensitiveness is a consequence
of advanced civilization, and I believe the time will
come when we shall commiserate slight bodily injuries
at which we now laugh, and shall probably shudder at
the cutting of a cabbage.
The Portuguese bull-fight, one of which I saw later at
Lisbon, is a very different affair, no loss of life occurring,
so it is utterly contemptible from the Spaniard's point of
view, owing to there being no danger. The bull's horns
are padded, and a fall being the worst accident, the best
horses are used. The dresses also are quite different,
being those of the picturesque mid-eighteenth century
period. The dexterity displayed, however, is very
conspicuous, and there is much opportunity for skilful
and graceful horsemanship.
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In connection with bull-fighting, I may relate here an
incident. Among my surveying staff I had a man of
very eccentric habits who had been a soldier servant to a
Spanish officer in garrison in one of the Spanish
colonies. Not being able to enjoy the real thing, the
officers got up an amateur bull-fight in which my man
Barca, totally untrained for the function, was to be one
of the performers. The bull quickly gave him, in
Lowell's poetic language, a heavenly lift, but he came
down on the top of his head, and ever after his actions
were strange and unaccountable, especially when cattle
were near, as they often were in our operations. After
his experience, one would have thought that when Barca
saw anything like a bull or cow coming, he would sud-
denly realize that he had forgotten something at home.
But no. There was all the difficulty imaginable among
his mates to prevent him going straight for the animal.
Such was the peculiar disarrangement of his brain which
the adventure had caused.
The Cadiz visit came to an end all too soon, and the
work had to be resumed. The Spanish people have a
certain grave humour, instanced by that great work,
El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quizote de la Mancha, to give it
its full title. But this must be read in the original to
appreciate its perfect savour, not an easy task, the
language being so archaic. It is the frequent recitation
of the Bible that has prevented the great change in
English which has occurred in the French and Spanish
languages since the sixteenth century, a change which has
practically barred the older literatures of those countries
to readers of the present day.
My Spanish assistant, Angel Perez, was full of this
divine gift, as shown by the following story he told me.
Don Angel was a musician, and had formerly played in
the orchestra of one of the provincial theatres, the con-
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ductor of which was greatly disliked by the instru-
mentalists. He was bald and wore a wig, and Don
Angel during an afternoon preceding an evening
performance, attached a fine silk thread to the curtain
pole with the other end of the thread reaching to the
conductor's seat, a fish-hook being attached to it. When
the orchestra assembled he managed, by pretending to
look for some music over the conductor's shoulder, to
hook the string on to the wig. When the overture
concluded with a great clash of instruments, the curtain
went slowly up and with it the wig, leaving exposed the
bare cranium of the unfortunate maestro, and creating
quite a furore of amused applause and cries of Otra vez !
(encore), which so disgusted him that he took to his
bed for weeks with a severe illness.
There is a sort of familiarity in the Spanish provincial
audiences between them and the actors and musicians
which I have not known elsewhere, the former shouting
their opinions freely. On one occasion the reverse
happened. I heard a singer whose voice was not equal
to a certain very high note, not even attempting it, and
who addressed the conductor in the middle of the song,
saying quite simply, " No puede, senior" (I cannot do it,
sir), which was evidently an ad misericordiam appeal to
the forbearance of the audience as well.
Don Angel's sister was a nun in a convent near
Madrid, about which he told a queer story. In Philip
IV's time there was at this retreat a beautiful nun who
had been the object of the King's attentions previous to
her taking the veil. Here he tried to follow her ; and
to avoid his importunities she was reported to be ill,
and subsequently to have died. A mock funeral was
gone through, and the King, in his great sorrow, ordered
Masses to be said for her soul and a bell to be rung
periodically. The nun, however, lived to a green old
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age, hearing every year during her life her own death
bell, which Don Angel informed me was still periodi-
cally tolled.
We went to a private entertainment to see the
graceful dances characteristic of Andalusia, the bolero,
fandango, and others with castanets, and the manage-
ment of the fan, the movements of which are a distinct
language. For instance, it is said that a senorita can
convey a message such as " Come to my window
to-morrow night at eight ; mother is away," by a few
dexterous twists of the wrist and opening and shutting
of the fan, but this may be an exaggeration. Asked if
this fan language was easy to learn, the reply of one of
the dancers was a simple and expressive " Segun "
(according to) that is to say, it depended on the
learner, which was most true.
Ignorance of a language leads sometimes to queer
results. A young English girl came on a visit to one of
our party, and an excursion to an old abbey being
arranged we all rode there. A Spanish cavalry officer
whose barracks adjoined the building was one of the
party, and he and the fair visitor rode together, neither
of them knowing the other's language. Some one
had told the latter it was a polite thing to say occasion-
ally, " Tiene usted una Novia, Seftor ? " of which, of
course, she knew not the meaning, which is " Have you
a sweetheart ? " And she kept going at the embar-
rassed young man with the repetition of this searching
question till he was glad to find his horse so restive that
he felt obliged to procure for her another cavalier who
understood French or English, in which she was at
home.
Arrived at the barracks, we were initiated into the
rough, if hospitable, ways of a Spanish cavalry mess.
Here we were regaled with slices of raw bacon and
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sherry, the latter being served in a single wineglass,
which was refilled and passed round from one to another.
The manoeuvres of those who could not stomach the
raw meat, in order to get rid of it without observation,
were curious. And the privates 1 meal which we saw
going on in the barrack-yard was in the same rough
style. A puchero or large earthen bowl of soup was
placed on the ground, and each soldier came up in turn
and dipped his tin can into it. The marching of the
soldiers can hardly be so called. It was like, except for
the very untidy uniform, the progress of a hooligan
football crowd.
In Southern Spain the women of even a superior
class are often very imperfectly educated, or, at all
events, were so at the time of which I speak. We
were coming from a musical church service with the
sisters of the cavalry officer just referred to, a lieutenant
in the Spanish Navy being another brother, when the
music being discussed, none of the senoritas seemed ever
to have heard of the names of Beethoven, Mozart
or Rossini.
But to return to adventures by flood and field. One
of a mounted party inspecting the country, I was riding
a very fresh horse, and thought that I should calm him
by giving him his head, so went forward at speed,
leaving the rest. Just after, I heard some curious
whistling noises about my head, but being busy with
my plunging animal I took no notice. When he was
nearly pumped I drew rein and went leisurely on to our
destination for the night, ordering the necessary accom-
modation at the venfa, not, of course, expecting my
companions for half an hour or so. However, many
hours elapsed before they came and told their story.
Just as I went forward and left them, Crimper's horse
fell into one of those deep crevices which a previous
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heavy rain had scoured out in the path, and sticking
fast, could not be extricated without much help. They
wanted all the assistance they could get, and not being
able, against a strong wind, to attract my attention
otherwise, they drew their pistols, with which they were
always armed, and fired after me, aiming so as just to
clear me, in order that I should hear the bullets whist-
ling, if not the reports. But, as I have said, to no
purpose. By getting help from a farm-house, however,
the horse was at length released without serious damage.
I blessed my stars that in this case my friends were
good shots ; otherwise they might have hit me.
A later incident might have ended the changes and
chances of my varied career through my own fault.
Coming home one day from a surveying expedition
with some men and mules, we came to a torrent swelled
with recent heavy rains and running and foaming with
great violence. The men tried to dissuade me from
riding across, thinking that the force of the torrent
would carry horse and rider away, when we might be
drowned in the deeper waters lower down. But having
confidence in myself and my horse, I determined to
cross. However, chiefly to satisfy them, I allowed them,
at the suggestion of Manuel, my faithful foreman, to
fasten a long light rope round my waist, they holding
the other end, so that if, by any chance, the horse were
carried away, they might pull me back ashore. I told
them to be sure to let go when they were certain that I
was through the deep and rapid part, as the rope was
not long enough to reach entirely across the water.
But the best-laid schemes gang aft agley, and so with
this. Great boulders here and there obstructed the
rush of the mountain torrent, making it all the more
violent between them. The bottom was rocky and
uneven and full of dangerous holes, while the turbid
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state of the water gave us no chance of seeing to what
footing the next step would lead us. Now we were
almost swimming in deep pools, and again trying to
make head, almost capsized by the terrible pressure of
torrential water. Stumbling and struggling, my gallant
horse, Pompey, put his whole strength to his work,
but for a moment or two it was a case of touch and go,
and I would have felt grateful, if I had had room in my
mind for any such sentiment at such a crisis, to the
faithful Manuel for his thought of tying me to the
shore.
A single step into a hole or a stumble would have
decided the contest between us and the flood in its
favour ; but fortunately it was not to be, and we were
just getting into rather quieter and shallower water,
but still somewhat tumultuous, when I felt the rope
tightening and tending to pull me over the horse's tail.
Shouting to the men to let go the rope was not of much
use with the roaring waters between us, but trying to
get Pompey round to ease the strain on the rope, I soon
saw that the men had let go. A knot, however, at the
end of the rope, which had not been observed, had caught
between two rocks, and there was a sort of pull-devil-
pull-baker between me, held by the rope, and Pompey,
who, of course, could not understand the situation,
striving to get ashore. In the struggle the rope, which
was a thin one, got round his neck as he turned, and in
endeavouring to disengage it, while the horse was
throwing his head about, the rope got round one of my
fingers, giving it a severe wrench. There was nothing
for it now but to dismount in the water and to cut the
rope with my pocket-knife, setting us free. The men,
who were not so well mounted, followed later, when the
water had subsided. It was not until the next day,
when my finger began to get very painful, that I rode
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
into Gibraltar to see a doctor, who pronounced it
broken, so I was let off easily from a great danger.
The faithful Manuel was a philosopher, much given
to what we should call chaff. He had learned a few
words of English, and on one occasion we passed some
peasants at work whom he addressed : " Can you spik
Ingliss ? " Of course, receiving the reply : " No com-
prende, Senor" " Pobrecitos / " cried Manuel, in pitying
tones, an almost untranslateable epithet, implying under
the circumstances, "What a miserable poor lot of
wretches not to understand the only language worth
speaking in the world," only a word or two of which,
however, he could manage for himself. It was meant
more, no doubt, for us, in a sarcastic sense, than for
those to whom he spoke. By the way, the lowest
class of Spaniards address each other as " Senor"
The ordinary men of Manuel's class get only about
is. 8d. a day, living principally on bread and onions,
and generally they are as happy as the day is long.
There was, however, some scarcity even of this poor
fare at one season, and an Anarchical Society called the
Mano Negra incited a sort of attempt at a revolt, when,
close by where we lived, a baker's shop had to be
guarded by cavalry.
An Easter holiday was spent in Seville, principally to
see the religious processions of Holy Week, of world-
wide celebrity. These consist principally of a great
number of heavy platforms passing along the streets,
supported beneath by men partly concealed by hanging
draperies. On top of these are representations in
carved wood of scenes of the Passion, Gethsemane,
the Crucifixion, etc., some of the figures being of great
antiquity and many clothed, especially that of the
Virgin, with very costly embroidered robes, one of
which is said to be worth ^2000. The streets are
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very narrow, so that there is not much room for the
crowd, who are a good deal crushed against the walls,
while women from the upper stories throw down roses,
and sing hymns to the Virgin. Penitents in white
conical caps, and Roman centurions and lictors march in
front and rear. The great cathedral is the scene, of
course, of much of the ceremonial, which is probably
the most magnificent display of Christian ritual known.
The site of the church was originally that of a temple
of Astarte, subsequently during the Moorish occupa-
tion that of a Mosque, traces of the latter being found
still in the ancient Gothic building now standing,
though some of this has fallen since the date of my
visit. More than any other of the many great
churches I have seen before and since, the interior of
Seville Cathedral gives an impression of magnificent
gloom, produced by its great height and its few richly
coloured windows, and no doubt also owing to the
entry of the spectators from the sunny streets of the
South, so often absent from the Northern Gothic
church surroundings. The idea also that the worship-
per stands on ground consecrated to the adoration of
the Supreme Being under different conceptions for over
nineteen centuries adds much to the solemnity and
interest, not only of the hallowed site itself, but of the
grand ceremonials still held within its walls. This
church is unique in one of its services, namely, the
dance before the High Altar, which takes place two or
three times a year. Dancing formed a feature of
Divine worship among the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans,
and even among the Early Christians. At Seville the
ceremonial is gone through by boys dressed in the
costumes of the early seventeenth century, but its
origin is much older. Though it is called the dance of
the seises, or sixes, the number of the boys taking part
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in it is now much greater. The prevailing colours in
the dresses are blue and red, half of each. The music
is in a minor key, and the movement of the boys is
slow and solemn, and is accompanied by the castanets.
A graphic description, with the music, of this strange
ceremonial was given in The Wide World Magazine of
December, 1899, by Mr. Herbert Vivian.
On Good Friday, in Seville, all the churches from
noon to three in the afternoon are kept in complete
darkness, except for the faint glimmer of the light
before the High Altar, which is totally insufficient to
dispel the gloom. Going into one of these churches
to hear the preaching, which goes on continuously for
the three hours, you are apt to stumble over some
kneeling worshipper in the dark. Outside, the solem-
nity of the day is accentuated by no vehicles being
allowed in the streets, no bells being rung, everybody
appearing in mourning, and the troops carrying their
arms reversed, as at a funeral. All flags also are half-
masted. Nowhere, not even in Rome itself, is the
universal grief of Christendom more intensely
typified.
Close by the cathedral and rising high above it is the
ancient Moorish tower of the Giralda y to the top of
which, though so lofty, a mule can be ridden. This is
by means of a spiral incline within its walls. On the
top, added by the Christians after the expulsion
of the Moors, is a gigantic figure of Faith ; but
curious to state, notwithstanding the virtue it is sup-
posed to represent, it forms a weathercock, shifting
with every gust of wind. The medieval ecclesiastics
had a humorous vein, which often expressed itself in
building, and it is possible that this figure was meant
to show sarcastically the state of those unstable persons
who are described in Holy Writ as being affected by
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every wind of doctrine. Another instance of this 1 re-
member in Paris, where the ancient pulpit in the church
of St. Eticnne du Mont was supported by a carved figure
of Samson wielding the jawbone of an ass. Surely this
could not have been done by any monkish architect with-
out some thought of the delivery of sermons by his
brother ecclesiastics and those who were to succeed him.
The magnificent Moorish interiors of the Alcazar
were duly visited, a source of real artistic enjoyment;
but this is not a guide-book, so I must refrain. Here
in Seville I saw the then Dowager Queen Isabella of
Spain walking with a small escort in the Detictas y the
fashionable promenade of the city. This notable lady,
now dead, who had been celebrated in early Victorian
times as a great beauty and the central personage of
many European political events of the day, was not at
all distinguished in appearance in her old age. In fact,
she was dowdy.
Not long after this Easter diversion, a gloom was
cast over our party by the death of our popular chief,
Grimper, which I mention specially because it occurred
under circumstances which seem to have been a sort of
foreboding of the event. He was a man of stalwart
proportions and great energy, but had been suffering
from the effects of blood poisoning, following a kick
from a restive horse. He took very little notice of his
ailments, however, and no one imagined, up to the day
of his sudden death, that there was much the matter
with him. The house where he lived, and in which
the office work of the contract was carried on in the
little wine-making town, was, like most others there,
built in the Moorish fashion, with a patio or courtyard
in the middle, the dwelling rooms being all around,
sometimes, as in this case, in several stories. The
patio, which had a glass roof, was used as an office.
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
The chief had a valet, Miguel, who had a most
gloomy aspect and disposition, always making the worst
of things. One morning Crimper, not feeling very
well, had remained in bed for breakfast, and wishing to
give some instruction sent for me from the patio
underneath. Going into the room, he asked me how
he looked, for, he said, "Miguel has been telling me
that I look wretched, so much so, that I told him that
he might as well go away and order my coffin at once,
if he had nothing more cheerful to say." I assured
him, truthfully, that I could not see much the matter
with him, so that, after going through the business, he
jokingly called out, as I went downstairs, "I say, old
fellow, do you see that coffin coming up ?" Curious
to relate, his coffin did come up that very day. I had
hardly settled to my work on returning to the office,
when I was called suddenly upstairs again to help, as
pillows and restoratives had to be fetched for the dying
Crimper, who, after a struggle and a whispered refer-
ence to his wife and children away in England, passed
away that same forenoon. Spanish law requires burial
within twenty-four hours, hence the coffin appeared the
same day.
The work on which we were engaged was not affected
by the death of Crimper, whose successor in the local
management of the contract was soon appointed ; but
shortly after, the whole enterprise fell through on
account of some financial failure. The line, which was
partially made, was completed some years after with
some variation in its route by other concessionaires, but
our party was broken up and the works were stopped.
It was a great regret to leave Spain, and especially the
lovely scenery of Andalusia with its rugged sierras and
its soft valleys clothed with the rhododendron and its
blushing flowers, and the deep green myrtle, bathed in
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almost continuous sunshine. The outdoor life among
such surroundings was something worth living. Also,
I liked the people, especially those of the so-called lower
class simple, frugal, kindly, and the most temperate in
their habits of the many races I have come across.
Curious it is that in the wine-making countries the
most sobriety prevails. Val de penas, a sound wine, is
plentiful and cheap, but though we used to see large
numbers of the peasantry with mules carrying loads of
grapes across their backs into the bodegas^ I do not
remember any case of drunkenness among those on their
return to the Campo.
Sad it is to see the falling-off in the glory of Spain.
In the days of Ferdinand and Isabella and down to those
of Philip II she colonized the great new world, contended
on equal terms with France, overawed Holland, and was
almost on the eve of the conquest of England. Now
she is of no account in the councils of Europe, and with
difficulty maintains her place as a third-rate power.
During the early part of the century just passed, she
was nearly the cause of European war over the question
of the beautiful queen whom, in her old age, I saw at
Seville ; and later, the succession to the throne of Spain
was the nominal cause of the great Franco-German
struggle of 1870, but she had no voice herself in either
question. It has been stated that her intolerant religious
system has been the cause of Spain's decline, but she
was never so great as when she was at the height of her
intolerance. Others say, and I have heard this theory
put forward by Spaniards themselves, that all the most
energetic blood of the country went out of it to seek
their fortunes in the New World three hundred years
ago, leaving behind them the worst of the race. If this
were true, we should find in the South American republics
of to-day the worthy successors of the men who fought
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
Drake and Raleigh, but are they so ? Moreover, the
same argument should be justified by a declining England,
which has also been bled by her colonies, though in more
recent times.
The English staff departed in various directions, we
leaving in a small steamer bound for London from Cadiz,
to which the ever faithful and almost weeping Manuel
journeyed, at his own expense, to see us off. We left
sadly, looking back, like Lot's wife, on the receding
scenes of many a pleasant social time, and wished that
our farewell to dear old Spain was hasta luego (au revoir),
instead of, as it had to be, Con Dios (good-bye).
Some time ago, two friends of mine met after a
separation of over twenty years, and recalling the old
days, one said : " Do you remember that dinner we had
one summer's evening at the c Star and Garter/ looking
down on the richly wooded Thames below?" "Ah !
yes," said the other, "and that saddle of mutton we
had ! Do you know, I have often regretted since that I
did not have a second helping." Well, this little talk
illustrates what we felt about Spain. We could have so
much enjoyed another slice.
216
CHAPTER XIV
Cape St. Vincent Cintra Lisbon The Irish cabman Vigo Bay of
Biscay English scenery A symposium Clerical eccentricities and
anecdotes.
AGAIN we were adrift on the world, bound for
the centre of most engineering possibilities
London. The first excitement of the voyage was
passing quite close under the high beetling promontory
of Cape St. Vincent, standing with its brown deeply
scored cliffs over the ever moaning surge of the blue
Atlantic. A straggling and lonely convent crowns the
summit far away from any other habitation, and, to the
surprise of our few passengers, the sound of the deep
whistle of our steamer brought forth from one of the
convent windows a white arm and handkerchief, which
was waved in friendly salute while we passed. This
little interchange of courtesies, our skipper explained,
took place at every one of the occasions when, during
daylight, he passed on his regular voyages between the
Spanish ports and London. He had never seen close
the fair recluse, whom he called his Spanish sweetheart.
Next we steamed into the Tagus to Lisbon, passing on
the left the purple peaks which drew from Byron one of
his masterpieces of description
" Lo ! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes
In variegated maze of mount and glen.
Ah me ! what hand can pencil guide or pen,
To follow half on which the eye dilates,
Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken
Than those whereof such things the bard relates,
Who to the awestruck world unlocked Elysium's gates ?
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
The horrid crags by toppling convent crown'd,
The cork trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
The mountain moss by scorching skies imbrown'd,
The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
The vine on high, the willow branch below,
Mix'd in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow."
It was amidst all this loveliness that, a hundred years
ago, was signed the convention which raised such anger
in England, that, as the same poet put it
" Britannia sickens, Cintra ! at thy name."
At Lisbon we went to an exhibition, and to a bull-
fight, the mild character of which has already been
described. At the former were the then King Dom
Luis and his son the Crown Prince Dom Carlos, who, as
king, was recently assassinated. It was about this time
that a great lady of the Court dared the Prince, who
was a patron of the bull-ring, to face on foot the bull
with unpadded horns. The challenge being accepted,
some exciting manoeuvres took place, during which
Dom Carlos slipped and fell, but recovered himself
while the bull was paying attention to another chulo.
Finally, the exasperated beast, turning again to the
Prince, made a furious charge. The latter ran for his
life to the barriers, vaulting over them just as the bull's
horns crashed into the woodwork beneath him ; and thus
a life was saved, only to be sacrificed later to the bullet
of an anarchist.
The Portuguese language is, in print, very like
Spanish, and a fair knowledge of the latter makes read-
ing Portuguese quite easy ; but it is another matter to
speak or understand the spoken tongue, the accent and
inflexions are so different. Calling a cab to return to
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the ship, an endeavour was made to tell the cabman
where to go, when he at once said, in a brogue so rich
that it seemed to overflow on to the pavement, "An
shure it's to the quay that your honour wants me to go,
isn't it, now ? " How an Irish jarvey came to set up in
business in Lisbon I probably asked at the time, but
have now forgotten.
A brief call at the picturesque bay of Vigo preceded
our entry into the much-maligned Bay of Biscay. It is
the fortune of wanderers like myself to meet many dis-
illusions, and the Bay gives rise to one of these. It is
popularly supposed to be the terror of those who go
down to the sea in ships and do their business in the
great waters, and to be in the habit of reeling to and fro
and staggering like drunken men. But I have been
many times across it, and have never seen it anything
but as mild as a labour leader in office. Other disillu-
sions have I had for instance, that the tiger of the
jungle is not a pestilent scourge which should be exter-
minated at almost any cost. On the contrary, if we
exclude the man-eaters, which are a very small percent-
age of the whole, the tiger is a most valuable auxiliary
to the Indian small farmer in helping him to get rid of
deer and wild pig which destroy his crops, and if he
now and then takes a bullock or a goat in preference,
surely the labourer is worthy of his hire. As to the
tame village buffalo which supplies the village dairy,
she is more than a match for the royal animal, who
knows it too well to attack her. The mention of wild
animals leads me to a reference to another disillusion of
my life that is the manners and customs of the well-
known Savage Club. True, I have been there only
once or twice, but when I have, what struck me most
was the decorous quietness, not to say solemnity, of the
place.
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
Arrived in England at last, with all the world
before us to choose from, the oars had to be
rested on awhile. After all, there is a witchery about
English scenery to be found nowhere else in the world.
After familiarity with all the gorgeousness of tropic
lands, and the profuse colouring of American autumnal
tints and the vast panoramas of the Blue Mountains of
Australia under the fierce sunlight of the South, to be
seen later, the calm restful peace of English meadows
and groves comes as a blissful relief. Is there anything
in nature's colouring anywhere like that of the brown-
green haze which lies under the spreading boughs of
great elms in drowsy summer-time ? Through this
glimmering haze the blue distance, softened by the greys
of the moist air, is dimly seen, and
" Soft mossy lawns
Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
Fragrant with perfumed herbs and eyed with blooms
Minute yet beautiful ....
Silence and twilight here, twin sisters, keep
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,
Like vaporous shapes half seen."
So sings Shelley of such a scene as the wanderer
looks forward to as the white cliffs rise before him.
No hard, dry, brilliant atmosphere of other lands could
breed such soft tints as these, half hiding such lovely
mysteries.
Then, is there any green so green as is to be found in
the fields of the old country, as all colonists, and, wonderful
to say, also Americans, affectionately call this country.
The lawn of St. John's College, Oxford, would be hard to
beat in this respect. All this intense greenery is said to
be due to our damp climate, but the rain in England is
as a drop in the ocean to that of many tropical lands, so
that the explanation must be due to the greater diffuse-
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ness of the rain and the more frequent seclusion of the
scorching sun.
Nevertheless, all countries have their own separate
charms, enriching the wondrous world in which we live.
The lilies of all lands toil not neither do they spin, but they,
nevertheless, have their vocation, teaching us, wherever
we may be, what beauty is, drawing our thoughts from
too much care for our own toiling and spinning, and
showing us that we do not live by bread alone. Keats
speaks in one of his letters of that beauty of Nature
which was the Deity of his poems, as being the great
exalter and comforter of life. " The sky is our crown,
the air our robe, the earth our throne, and the sea our
music," that mighty minstrel who, like David, can
sound his harp and refresh us with its melody, causing
any evil spirit which may be upon us to depart from our
souls.
But the great city, not the fair country, was chiefly to
be our present pied-h-terre. We were destined for most
of the time to look upon
" The weariness, the fever, and the fret,
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan."
When the new arrival comes, after a long absence
from what, in our insufferable and impudent self-
sufficiency, we call outlandish places, to the nevertheless
ever fascinating London, dirty and muddy below and
above though it be, the first thing he is made to feel
aware of is the air de mon village style of his clothes.
His hat is too long, his coat too short, his collar down
when it ought to be up, and so on. These difficulties
got over, and being clothed in our right civilized mind, a
quiet suburb was selected to serve for a resting-place
until the morrow of fresh woods and pastures new should
dawn. Time was passed in writing professional papers
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
for engineering societies, and painting on student days
at the National Gallery. Adventures, which are the
subject of this book, do not usually come to the London
sojourner, so that this period may be passed over
quickly.
I joined what was called a symposium, a weekly
informal gathering largely of the local clergy, Anglican
and Nonconformist, who seemed to sink their differences,
or at all events leave them aside, during the discussions
which were our object, on questions of philosophy and
religion not involving sectarian matters. No definite
subject was fixed for any evening, but it was allowed to
arise as it might. The members were mostly young
men, some since becoming prominent, and one especially,
the Rev. Robert Horton, then fresh from Oxford, who
was feeling the wings by which subsequently he was
to rise in the intellectual atmosphere to his present
eminence. One of the Anglican clergy, a rector with
a rapid utterance, was noted for giving out the banns
with a misplacement of a word, owing to this rapidity,
which had a curious effect on the meaning of the
formula. He would say, after enumerating at great
speed the bachelors, spinsters, etc., " If any of you
know any just cause or impediment why these persons
should not be respectably joined together in holy matri-
mony, ye are to declare it." The adverb used instead of
u respectively," which could not be uttered so quickly,
seemed to imply that the unions announced were
necessary to set matters right. The mention of banns
reminds me of another parson who was very absent-
minded, and whom I heard say, after reading out several
names, John Mathew Thompson, bachelor, and Mary
Wilson Jack, spinster, but he stopped after the word
Wilson, looking dreamily round the church, thinking
perhaps of his sermon, then, apparently to make up time,
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Europe Once More
pronounced the last two words " Jack Spinster "
together, without any pause between them. The con-
gregation naturally wondered what a " Jack Spinster "
was. It was said that this rector used to marry, as far
as the banns were concerned, bachelors to widowers and
spinsters to widows. I remember when a child thinking
that the announcement, "This is the third time of
asking," meant that the bachelor had asked the lady
three times before she would accept him, and used to
wonder at his persistency and her hesitation.
Talking of rapid utterance, if I may digress so much
in time and space, a Chairman of Committees of the
Melbourne House of Assembly excelled anything I ever
heard in this accomplishment, even in stage patter sing-
ing. Having, like other parliamentary chairmen, to
repeat frequently the formula, "The question is that
the motion as amended stand part of the bill, those
who are of that opinion say Aye, those of the contrary
say No," and then there being no Noes, " I think the
Ayes have it." The whole of this would be pronounced
as one word, thus
Quesismoshasmenstnptothbilthosthapinseaycontnothkthaysavit.
This without once omitting a syllable, after perhaps
twenty repetitions representing the clauses in the bill
under consideration. Surely a clear case for the phono-
graph.
But to return to our parsons. The feasts of intellect
and flow of philosophy which constituted our symposia,
were not all of solid roast beef and port. There were
entrees of easier digestion and sparkling wines. There
was the curate's story of his dream. The lectern of the
church, which was the scene of the dream, was in the
not uncommon form of an eagle standing upon a brass
globe. He dreamt that he was reading the lessons,
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when suddenly the bird flew from its perch and soared
up among the groined arches of the roof, nobody, as
is usual in dreams, appearing astonished in the slightest
degree at this performance. After sailing about for a
while, the eagle slowly descended, and mistaking the
old rector's shiny bald head for its own place, settled
upon it with great gravity.
The Bible naturally formed the subject of many of
our talks, how, for instance, the well-known expression
" mess of pottage," supposed to be a quotation from it,
never appears in it, either in the Old or New Testament,
in any old translation, in the Prayer Book, nor in any
formula or article of the Church. The question is,
where do we get it from ? Once, I gravelled no less
than a Bishop on this matter.
It was a layman who remarked on the appropriateness
of the text, Joshua vi. 4, "And the priests shall blow
with the trumpets," and in illustration of the worldly
wisdom and the comprehensiveness of the Scriptures,
quoted the description of the host's duties at a dinner-
party, in Ecclesiasticus xxxii., which would apply to a
fashionable party of the present day.
224
AMERICA
CHAPTER XV
To the West Distinguished fellow-passengers Anecdote of Matthew
Arnold New York A Presidential election Scurrility of the
Press Autumn tints Niagara Chicago Across the prairies
Salt Lake City a quarter of a century ago The Tabernacle
Divine Service Arguments for polygamy Stories The Book of
Mormon Wild cats American travel San Francisco Some
tall tales Sandwich Islands Honolulu Samoa Robert Louis
Stevenson An Irishman without a birthday New Zealand.
THE beginning of the longest of my exiles was
now at hand. Hearing that the Government of
New South Wales were about to spend ^15,000,000
in the construction of new railways, I determined to
see if my services could be made available in that
distant part of the world. Hitherto, my going abroad
was in view of a certainty, agreements being made in
London and passage provided, but circumstances had
changed since, and the colonies had so far been self-
provided with skilled professional assistance, that though
gladly welcoming volunteer additions when pressure
arose, they were not obliged to secure it in London as
formerly. Hence the expense of the voyage had to be
incurred and the risk undertaken that at all events, in
a Micawber-like spirit, something would turn up in a
new country.
" Thus with imagin'd wing our swift scene flies,"
and we were soon on the ever-restless sea, this time on
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the North Atlantic, for by travelling to our destination
westwards across America and the Pacific new countries
were to be seen, and I had always longed to see the
Great Republic of the West, here being my opportu-
nity, while new turns were to follow in the variety show
of my life.
The steamer we travelled in from Liverpool to New
York was one of the largest in the world at that time,
though it would appear quite insignificant beside the
ocean liners of the present day. And in a figurative
sense some of our fellow-passengers were like the ship,
for they turned out to be some of the greatest people on
the planet, as the Yankees might say. We had Madame
Adelina Patti, with her husband and rather extensive
suite, the American millionaire of the day, the chief of
the Salvation Army, and the champion prize-fighter of
the world. The millionaires were at that time bright
particular stars in the social firmament, and not as now
forming a sort of milky way.
In the latest Cunarders now running there are two
regal suites containing each six magnificently decorated
rooms for kings and queens ; but it is to be supposed
that when the genuine article is not occupying these
glorious quarters, kings of the pork, soap, or whisky
variety keep them aired. These special cabins being
unknown at the time I speak of, our millionaire, though
an object of interest, did not disdain to breathe the
same atmosphere as that inhaled by less gorgeous folk
on board. It was pretty, as old Pepys would have said,
to hear, as I did, this particular Crcesus discoursing one
day on the curious chances of the world how to some
men come wealth and comfort and to others adversity,
quoting Cowper's lines
" God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform."
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America
I wonder did he think it mysterious that he should be in
the former condition ? Probably, for he seemed quite
unassuming in his manners and disposition in fact,
quite an attractive personality.
Matthew Arnold had been a short time previously
the guest of a cultured American family in New York
State, some of whose members were fellow-passengers of
ours, and some tales of him were told. One of these
illustrates the difference of meanings attached by the
Americans and English to certain words, those of the
former being probably the original sense in England
when America was first colonized, and surviving there.
This was the use by Arnold in conversation of the word
" nasty," which is an unmentionable outcast in American
polite vocabulary. The poet and essayist of sweetness
and light and culture had to live this down.
When I speak of the unfavourable impression made
upon us by New York City, it must be remembered that
that impression was made many years ago, when rough
cobble-stones in the chief streets made the transit
through them by conductorless omnibuses almost
unbearable, and the rough-and-ready manners of the
people were new to us. As to the last adjective, how-
ever, the shop and office assistants did not appear to be
nearly so quick in their movements as those of London,
this being the more surprising as Yankee go-aheadedness
is proverbial. Then, though this might have happened
in any civilized place, though the adjective indicates one
of life's greater ironies, we lost in New York nearly all
our jewellery, which was stolen during conveyance of
luggage from steamer to hotel, and never recovered.
New York was in the turmoil of a Presidential elec-
tion Cleveland versus Elaine when we passed through
a novel experience. Every man, woman, and even
child seemed to take an absorbing interest in the result,
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the streets being crowded even all night. What struck
us was the scurrility of the Press after the dull respecta-
bility of the English newspapers at that time a scur-
rility that may have been intensified by the political
excitement of the occasion. This was accompanied by
an apparent calm indifference of the persons attacked.
No one even appeared to dream of taking a libel action
which, at home, would be the inevitable result of some
of the epithets applied to prominent men. One para-
graph I remember, in which an editor spoke of a rival
as a writer who could cram more lies into a square
inch of print than anyone he knew of. Evidently
there were some among his own friends who were
fairly skilful in this accomplishment, but not having the
finished style of the object of his description.
Some happy chance decided that November should be
the period of crossing America, for never does the
foliage look better than at that time. In the late fall,
as it is picturesquely termed, the splendid drapery of
the forest shows the gracious colouring of the closing
year, from the mellow browns and brilliant crimsons
down to the golden yellows of the maples and sumachs,
almost every conceivable tint that was ever found in
sunset sky, land or sea, being set out in contrast to the
rich dark green of the intermingled pines. The banks
of the Hudson River, which we skirted for about 150
miles to Albany, seemed to afford the finest stretches of
this forest scenery, but there were glorious repetitions
now and again all the way to Chicago.
Arrived at Niagara, we boarded, with other travellers,
an omnibus to cross the river to the Canadian side to
stay the night there. The bridge, which appeared in
the moonlight to be a frail structure of wire, hung over
the vast boiling and surging abyss of the river just
below the falls, which we thus saw under the silvery
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America
glimmering light of the moon at its full. It is said that
Niagara disappoints at first, but the anticipation must
be great that would bring this to pass. It is incon-
ceivably magnificent to the first view, ever and always.
Our fellow-travellers in the omnibus were praising the
consideration of the driver in keeping his horses at
a slow walk, while we, spell-bound, drank in the glorious
scene of the great mass of falling water, and looked
down on the seething foam swirling dangerously in the
awful chasm below. But after we got to the other side
he calmly told us that the bridge was so frail that if he
had not crept over it so slowly we should have broken
it and been dropped into the torrent below. It was
just as well that our emotions in crossing were not dis-
turbed by the prospect of this possibility. There is
something in a paternal government, after all, that
looks after our safety. In England, public officers
inspect and guarantee the safety of public structures,
but in America at that time, though much improvement
has taken place since, competition was supposed to be
sufficient for protection. For example, if the works of
a railway were unsafe, the damages incurred by accident
would lead either to amendment or the establishment of
a better rival line. American legislation is largely on
these lines. There is no penalty, as in England, for
jumping off or on a train in motion. The Yankees
say, if a man likes to risk his life in that sort of way,
why should he not be allowed to do so ? It is his own
affair.
The hotel close by the Canadian Falls, where we
stayed, vibrated continuously from the shock of the ever
falling mass of water and its thunderous sound. In the
East of the Holy Scriptures there is no Niagara.
Where, then, did Ezekiel and St. John get their
splendid similes of the voice of God being as the
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sound of many waters ? The voices of nature are
wonderful and various. I have already spoken of the
almost human cry of the jackals, a long wail of hopeless
despair, such as we could imagine rising from those
entering Dante's gate of the Inferno
" Through me men pass to city of great woe ;
Through me men pass to endless misery ;
Through me men pass where all the lost ones go.
Ye that pass in, all hope abandon ye ! "
The soughing of the wind through the pine forest no
other trees give the same effect is a sound of ineffable
and intense sadness, but the voice of many waters is
a sound of resistless power which, more than any other
manifestation of nature, even than the crash of thunder,
because more continuous, gives to the imagination the
semblance of the words of the Eternal.
The falls were seen in splendid weather, by sunrise,
noonday, and sunset, as well as by moonlight, and in
the former the ever-shifting delicate vaporous rainbow
hung glimmering above the waters. And yet in the
presence of all this sublimity one of those standing
near, as we gazed, said : " Why, it's only a lot of water ! "
It reminds me of many years before, when I went to see
the ruins of Melrose Abbey, and a rich Glasgow pig-
jobber, also there, said: "It's a braw fine place, but it
seems vara much out o' repair, mind ye."
At Niagara visitors are generally induced to put on
waterproofs, which are provided for the purpose, and
by descending steps, to pass under between the wall of
rock over which the cascade falls, and the green sheet
of water falling over it from above. Though the effect is
curious, it must be said to be thoroughly disappointing,
besides being dangerous from the slipperiness of the
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America
rocks to which the spectators have to cling, while the
damp vapour penetrates the skin and throat so much,
that one of our party got what would now be called
influenza, and a delay of several days in the next
stopping-place Chicago had to be incurred.
In this latter rather interesting city, the inhabitants
still appeared to be suffering from fear of a repetition of
the great fire of thirteen years before, for in many of
the great buildings, and they are great as regards
dimensions, light iron stairs are constructed on the
outside to enable the dwellers to escape, and in
all the bedrooms of our gigantic hotel ropes were
coiled up to be let down outside of the windows.
But owing to the height of these, there would be
in case of fire a choice of something like that implied
in the proverb of that between the frying-pan and its
surroundings.
In the vestibule of the great dining-hall, in which
probably four or five hundred took their meals daily,
stood a couple of negro servants taking the visitors* hats
and coats, etc., and it is one of the wonders of the
world how these, without the assistance of tickets,
manage to restore to each his own as the diners pass
out again. It only shows what the human brain can do
if it has only one thing on which to bestow its attention.
As we had stayed in a comparatively small hotel in New
York, this was our first experience of one of the monster
caravanserais which were then unknown outside the
States, but are now in every moderate-sized city all over
the world.
Another new experience was that of the sleeping-
car, at that time solely an American institution. I do
not know how it is now, but then there was no division
between the men's and women's accommodation, and
the traveller had to climb into his berth fully dressed,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
close his or her curtains, and unclothe in the attitude of
an inverted picture hook.
Here began our five or six days' train journey across
the great continent of the West, occupying during the day
what were called parlour-cars, heated to suffocation, and
getting out into the biting cold of November on the
prairies to feed in lonely wayside stations. On the first
long day, we drew up in the middle of the interminable
desert, with no station or habitation of any kind within
view on the vast plain. Several of the passengers got
out to stretch their legs and, notwithstanding the intense
cold, to breathe some fresh air, but none seemed sur-
prised at the long halt which was getting rather tedious.
Asking one of them why we did not go on, he said :
"Wai, guess we're waitin' for something to turn up";
which was strictly true, for being a single line of rails,
and there being at this point a loop or siding which I had
not previously observed, our train was waiting until an
expected one from the opposite direction should arrive
and enable us to proceed.
Day after day was passed through this apparently
uninhabited region, though at one or two stopping-
places were seen, besides the white railway employees,
two or three ragged-looking loafing red Indians, not at
all the noble savage of Fenimore Cooper. They are
allowed to travel free on the railways, but they were not
then the only deadheads, as free ticket-holders are called,
for in America at that time anybody in the most remote
way connected with a railway official could get a free
pass, such as the first cousin of a station-master, and all
ministers of religion, if so facto, travelled free. This
privilege must have been greatly abused by unscrupulous
persons who could easily dress the character. I under-
stand that these liberal arrangements have since been
greatly modified.
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America
Omaha and Cheyenne City were the only places which
seemed to show any signs of habitation in the long
reach from Chicago to Ogden, at which point we had
arranged to diverge from the main route a few miles
southward to visit the Salt Lake City.
It is a far cry from Florence, the great shrine of human
intellect of the past, to the brand-new city of the
Mormons, or of the latter-day saints, as they prefer to
call themselves, yet in some topographical respects they
are not unlike. Both nestle in a fair valley surrounded
by hills, though round the western city they are so high
as to culminate in snow-capped peaks which shine like
dazzling silver points in the rarefied air, and blush to
crimson at the first kiss of the all-conquering sun.
Water has been well described as the eye of landscape,
and, despite its name, any comprehensive view of the
many-wived city excludes the great Salt Lake. But
notwithstanding its blindness in this respect, the capital
of the Mormons affords a noble prospect, due chiefly
to its magnificent background, for its buildings are
commonplace, even if the peculiar elongated dome-
covered tabernacle be included in the general view,
conspicuous among the rest.
The journey was so timed that we had a Sunday in
the city, and so had the advantage of attending a
Mormon service at the tabernacle. The building, which
has, I believe, been since superseded by another, was of
oblong shape with semicircular ends and a dome-shaped
roof. It was capable of holding ten thousand people, and
its acoustic properties were unrivalled. The whole of the
raised dais occupying the semicircle at the northern
end of the building was filled by those taking part in the
service, in which the general congregation were only
auditors. This raised portion was furnished with a long
table placed in a line with the diameter of the semi-
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circle, and covered with a white cloth, on which were
numerous silver chalices and salvers. Behind this was a
row of raised seats for the bishops and elders who
officiated ; in this, if we regard the table as an altar, the
Mormons, whether they know it or not, follow the
ritual of the Primitive Church. Above and behind these
were ranged reading desks, and, centrally, the great
organ which was built by the saints themselves in the
city, and was then the second largest in America. It
certainly was of exquisite tone, and played with great
taste and skill. The seats for the congregation faced
the dais and were intersected by numerous aisles.
The first service,' of which there are generally two
every Sunday, begins, in order to give time to the
country folk to come in, at 2 p.m., when a hymn is sung,
accompanied by the organ and a string-band led by a
conductor. This is followed by extempore prayers and
other hymns, during one of which latter the bishops and
elders break up and bless the bread, which is then
carried round in the silver salvers by the vergers, and
distributed to everyone, including even the babies, who
are always brought to church. The babies howl
vociferously during the earlier part of the proceedings ;
in fact, the cherubs continually do cry, so that the first
sermon, for there are two in each service, can hardly be
heard. Par parenthese, I may remark that, interviewing
next day one of the preachers whom we heard, and
remarking on the splendid acoustic properties of the
building, he said that these had their drawbacks, for
they helped the babes and sucklings as well as the
preacher to carry on the proceedings. The second
preacher has a great advantage, as by the time his turn
comes the infant saints are mostly asleep. Water is
used instead of wine in the Communion, and during the
distribution the first sermon is preached.
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America
The preachers are supposed to be called on un-
expectedly by the presiding bishop. The sermons we
heard, especially the second one, were of a very high
order ; so good, in fact, that it was difficult to believe
that, as to the call, there was not some little under-
standing beforehand. There was no allusion in either
sermon to polygamy, which was then in full swing in
Utah, though since suppressed by the United States
Government. Nor was there, during the service, any
reading of the Bible, or of the Book of Mormon, which is
the Scripture of the Saints. The hymns sung were
those of the Ancient and Modern edition of the
Anglican Church. The congregation sat during the
entire service, except when they stood at the final
blessing.
A brother they are all brothers and sisters walked
home with us, endeavouring to convert us. He was
Scotch, and came from Glasgow. Among other things,
he said that he had been the means of introducing
sparrows into the State from home, and that they had
multiplied to an extraordinary extent, whether through
a more extensive range of polygamy than they were
used to in Scotland or other cause was not stated. I
visited too the eloquent preacher of the second sermon,
who was also editor of the leading local newspaper and
the author of a book called Mormon Doctrine quite a
leading light. He told me he had formerly been an
Anglican, and was born a Bow Bells man. He referred
me to his book for the arguments for polygamy, the
principal one being embodied in the following paragraph
copied from it :
"In the case of a man marrying a wife in the
everlasting covenant who dies while he continues in
the flesh and marries another by the same divine
law, each wife will come forth in her order and
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
enter with him into his glory. Is there any reason
why this should not be so ? Is not each of these
wives entitled to her position in eternity by virtue of
the sealing power which made her part of the man ?
Why should one enter into the exaltation of the
celestial world, and the other be relegated to single-
ness and servitude ? They all become one in the
patriarchal order of family government ; and if
this be the case in heaven, why should not similar
conditions, so far as possible, exist on earth ? Is earth
holier than heaven ? If a man receives from the Lord
more wives than one under the sealing ordinances of
celestial marriage, where is the moral wrong? They
belong to no other man, but are his by mutual
consent of all the interested parties, and they live
together in the marriage state one as much as the
other."
The Elder also pointed out the sanctioned practice of
polygamy in the Old Testament, and the absence of
general prohibition in the New Testament. Of course,
polygamy was taken quite seriously by the Mormons
of that generation, though I fancy for practical reasons
most of them only had one wife, but the practice has
given rise to some droll stories. One was that the
manager of a theatrical touring company visiting the
city, thought he would get some patronage by giving to
one of the leading citizens a complimentary ticket,
which included the members of his family ; but when
the performance was about to begin, it was found that
all of the rows of the reserved seats were filled by the
family, and there was no room for anybody else.
I was talking to a Gentile lady on this subject, and
asked her if she married a Mormon and her husband
had added a second wife to the establishment, what
would happen? "Guess," she said, "there would be
music in that house."
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America
The population of Salt Lake City seemed to be mostly
bishops not the prim conventional shovel hat and
gaiter sort, but a free-and-easy kind, clothed in well-
worn tweeds with soft hat and questionable collar. At
the hotel billiard-room I heard :
"Say, Bishop, a fine cannon tharn ! It was so, Bishop,
but guess I can do better nor that anyhow 1 " and so on.
There were what were called wet and dry billiards, in
the former case the losing prelate or brother standing
drinks.
I dwell on the Mormons because the state of things
then existing is now of the past, never to return.
Though the railway reached them, their geographical
isolation from the rest of the States was then prac-
tically complete, while polygamy, which the central
government, whose laws it violated, found impossible
to suppress, formed a moral isolation not less con-
spicuous. For instance, the presidential election had
just been determined when we passed through, but
there was no interest in it ; only a single paragraph in
the Monday paper referred to it, but that item showed
the intensity of this interest elsewhere, and as it is
characteristic, I give it here. It is dated from Detroit :
" Cleveland's victory shakes the earth and makes
half of it tremble with defeat, while the other half
cry and shout with gladness and victory. The air is
wild with tumult here to-night. Cannons are pealing
forth rounds of thunder, deafened by the cheering of
the multitude ; fireworks illuminate the sky, sending
out crimson darts, balloons dropping rockets of fiery
colours. The Phalanx banners, transparencies and
torches presented a glorious appearance. The Campus
is crowded from the Opera House to the City Hall
with enthusiastic democrats, becoming so dense it is
impossible to penetrate to reach the Opera House.
The broom procession marched up the avenue double
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
quick, each man carrying a broom, and into the Opera
House, which was soon filled up, and thousands that
could not gain admittance surrounded the platform in
front of the building and thus held a double rally.
As the procession entered the building they sang
' Ma, Ma, where's my pa ?
Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha ! '
which was greeted with rousing cheers."
The quaint phraseology of this paragraph is a type of
American announcements of that time. I remember
seeing a notice up in a shop window in Salt Lake City :
" In God we trust, all others Cash ! "
It is curious that the Book of Mormon, a copy of
which I possess, does not inculcate polygamy, and
though said to have been translated into English in the
last century from buried plates discovered in America,
is written in Tudor English, apparently in imitation of
the Bible. The translation of the latter, however, is
in the language of that era, simply because it was the
ordinary phraseology of that time. There was no
special sanctity about it then, nor is there now, beyond
that which has since been attached to it from over three
centuries of Church use. Why, therefore, did Joseph
Smith, the originator of Mormonism, who was also the
translator, adopt this archaic language of the sixteenth
century ? Most of us, no doubt, think that the want
of the age is not new religions, but a greater amount of
acting up to the old ones. Though from these and
many causes we may look upon the Book of Mormon
as a forgery, it has many good precepts, and the latter-
day saints have in many ways proved their zeal and
their faith for which they have fought and exiled them-
selves in hardships almost as great as those endured
for any religion. They are a simple-minded race, as a
rule, and have turned a desert into a garden. Let us,
238
America
therefore, follow St. Paul and think no evil, one of the
greatest texts of the greatest Book.
Resuming our long journey, we crossed the Western
Mountain ranges and at length reached the milder
climate of California. Shortly after we left the plains,
however, the negro conductor came through the car
taking a list of our names, the reason being, as he
cheerfully told us, that in case of an accident the news-
papers might give a correct list of those smashed up.
It was a custom at that time in America to run what
were called wild cat trains. The reader should be re-
minded that in countries where, like Western America,
there are, in general, single lines of rails, it is, of course,
only possible for one train to pass another at certain
places at a station or elsewhere, where the railway is
widened into two lines for the length of a train a sort
of refuge siding so as to allow one to get out of the
way of the other. The time-table is so arranged,
supported by the use of signals and telegraphs, as to
prevent two trains approaching each other in opposite
directions on one length, which would otherwise result
in collisions. What is called a wild cat train dispenses
with these precautions, the driver running on chance of
reaching the refuge siding before one meeting him passes
it. If this fails, what is called a butting collision is
likely to happen, especially on the Western Mountains,
on the steep gradients of which it is so difficult to stop
going down hill.
Wild cats were rather plentiful in the West, so that
the conductor's duties in taking the names were, per-
haps, not altogether useless, but they had a sobering
effect on the passengers, and caused some of them
frequently to look out of the windows, ostensibly to
admire the scenery, but with an arriere penste of
curiosity as to what might possibly turn up in front of
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
us. Signals, too, were not numerous. We passed
over a swing bridge that is, one which is placed across
a navigable river and can be swung open to let through
a vessel with masts or funnel too high to go under it
when closed. In most countries where this occurs
there is an elaborate system of signals which are actuated
by the swinging open of the bridge, and which show to
an approaching engine-driver at a considerable distance
from the bridge that he must draw up till another
signal is shown indicating that the bridge is closed
again, when he may go on over it. In our case, the
bridge being open, a small hand-flag was stuck in the
sand quite close to the bridge. A light breeze of wind
might have blown it over, and then the convenience of
having the names left at a previous station for publica-
tion in case of accident was obvious. No wonder that
in railway newspapers of the time there was a regular
heading of " Railway Accidents of the Week " at the top
of a rather lengthy paragraph. But a very substantial
improvement has been made since in providing against
accidents in America, and what has been stated above
does not in any way represent the condition of things
now.
The Sacramento River in California was crossed by
a huge steam ferry, our train, with three others carry-
ing goods, being run on to a large pontoon which took
us to the other side where the trains were run on
shore. This was the precursor of several train ferries
in other parts of America, and since in Denmark. It
is also now proposed for connecting England with the
Continent between Dover and Calais.
San Francisco was a much more attractive city than
either New York or Chicago, and it can well be be-
lieved, even from our few days' experience at the end
of November, that California possesses one of the
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America
finest climates in the world, the range of the thermo-
meter being in general only about 20 degrees, 45 to
65 degrees, and the State is a champion fruit and
vegetable producer. I extract the following informa-
tion from a local paper, but whether the reporter had
a pair of strong magnifying glasses with him is not
stated. He speaks of seeing an onion 21 Ib. weight,
a turnip which equalled in diameter the top of a flour
barrel, a cabbage which measured 13 ft. 6 in. round the
body, a beet 63 Ib., carrots 31 ft. in length, another
turnip of 100 Ib. weight, and refers to a dinner of
twelve persons at which there was a potato larger than
an ordinary hat, of which all partook, leaving at least
one half untouched.
I suppose there must have been some foundation for
these vast statements, but they somehow remind me
though no doubt they should not, being in a respect-
able journal of a lecture which I once heard on Egyp-
tian archaeology. In speaking of the engraved clay
tablets on which the ancient Egyptians used to write their
letters, the lecturer stated that in the excavation at one
buried town a tablet had been found which was de-
ciphered as an invitation to dinner from a citizen in
a neighbouring village to one in the town. This state-
ment of the recovery of a friendly note of many
thousand years ago rather opened the eyes of the
audience ; but there was more to come, for the lecturer
went on to say that shortly after, in an excavation in
the neighbouring village, was found a tablet containing
the answer. We left the hall feeling that after that we
could believe anything. Hence the belief in the cabbage
aforesaid and its corpulent companions.
The wonderful progress of California in its sixty years
of settlement is typical of the American's methods. The
early failure of cotton, silk, tobacco, rice, and tea, and
R 241
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the phenomenal success later of fruit and other products
illustrates this. He tries everything that has any possi-
bility of success, makes many failures of which we
generally hear little, and a few great successes of which
we hear much, but being ahead of his rivals, these
latter more than compensate for the former. The
cautious and conservative Englishman waits for others
to break their bones over experiments, and then when
success is quite assured, takes the matter up solidly and
forcibly, and, in the case of machinery, constructs it
with such strength that it is obsolete long before it
is worn out. But his smart cousin by that time is a long
way ahead of him ; while the German, slow to originate,
but wisely educating himself into a technical efficiency
far beyond either of them, steps in to perfect Anglo-
Saxon inventions, and becomes a formidable rival.
One of the great sights of San Francisco used to be the
seal rocks on the Pacific coast. I say used to be, for not
long after our visit a vessel containing dynamite blew up
close to them, and I believe shattered them to pieces, as
well as a hotel on the mainland opposite. These rocks
were so crowded with seals that the rocks themselves
seemed to be in constant motion, and the barking and
grunting were incessant.
The harbour of San Francisco is the most beautiful I
have seen, and this is a large order, for, either before or
since, the following, which have more or less pretensions
in that way, have come within the scope of my wander-
ings : Dublin Bay, Milford Haven, Bombay, Bay of
Naples, Cadiz, Lisbon, Vigo, Gibraltar, Genoa, Hono-
lulu, Auckland, Sydney, Hobart, and Capetown.
The Californian harbour runs parallel with the Pacific
coast, from which it is separated by moderately high
hills, and through these the comparatively narrow
entrance called the Golden Gate appears to have been
242
America
cut, as with a knife, by the hand of nature. The land-
ward side is backed by the splendid and lofty mountains
of the coast range. San Francisco being on the Pacific
side of the harbour close to the Golden Gate on the
south side, is a fine point of view for this glorious
scene.
Between the high brown cliff-like walls of this mighty
gate, beside which our ocean liner seemed like a toy boat
on the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, we steamed
away to our fifth continent. By the way, Australia is
now always termed by its people a continent, but in the
geography of my earlier years it was more generally
known as the island of New Holland.
Again came the awful loneliness of the ocean for ten
long weary days, the air warming up sensibly on every
successive one, until at last the Sandwich Islands rose, as
it were, out of the red sunset. We came to the quay of
Honolulu at nearly midnight, and to show what a soli-
tude the inhabitants of these isles of the blest enjoy, it
being made known that we were to leave at sunrise, all
the shops and hotels in the town were specially opened
all night for us, so that the innocent natives should have
the full opportunity of despoiling those who go down to
the sea in ships, as is their nature to, all over the world.
It was as if, as Coleridge says
" We were the first, that ever burst
Into that silent sea."
The wan faces of the Europeans and Americans, the
luxuriant vegetation topped by the nodding palms, and
as we sailed away the fierce sun, even in these December
days, reminded us that we were entering the tropics, and
after steaming mostly through calms for another week or
so, anchored for a while among the intensely tropical
Samoan Island group. The natives, who surrounded us
243
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
in canoes, seemed physically a very fine race, with rich
copper-coloured skins.
Subsequently, these beautiful islands, it will be re-
membered, were the last home of the novelist and
essayist, Robert Louis Stevenson, with whom I had the
sympathy arising from the tie of a common profession,
for he was originally trained as a civil engineer.
Here he wrote some of his later works, and after
a four years 1 residence, died at Vailima in December,
1894. He had taken much part in troublous politics of
the islands, and on his death his body was taken by six
sturdy Samoans, by whom he was much beloved, to the
summit of the precipitous peak of Vaea where he had
wished to be buried. So he is at rest for ever, among
the scenes he loved so well.
Just before arriving in New Zealand we had to cross
the meridian 180 degrees west and east, the antipodes of
longitude, and in order to keep time with the world's
almanac had to lose a day that is to say, to go directly
from Saturday to Monday; but as the captain's birthday
would have been on the missing Sunday, and it would
have been lost if, to use an expression appropriate to
my nationality, the omission had been celebrated on the
Sunday, it was decided to leave out Saturday instead.
All of us, therefore, who did not return in the reverse
direction lost a day, never to be recovered unless in the
little pieces of the extended days of our return to the
old country, possibly years later, while those who re-
mained at the Antipodes never got it back at all. For
us there were only 364 days in that year, a sort of true
leap year, for we jumped over a day a missing
Syllable of recorded time."
In the case of voyages in the opposite direction that
is to say, eastwards across this meridian an extra day
244
America
must be interpolated to keep time with the world. It
is said that an Irishman, which he wasn't at all at all, as
he would say, being born on the ocean, was launched
into this sea of troubles on the day following the 29th
February of a leap year when the ship in which his mother
was a passenger was crossing the 180 degrees meridian
eastwards. His natal day was therefore the interpolated
3Oth February, which for him never occurred again.
So though he lived to a great age, he never had a subse-
quent birthday.
We only spent half an hour in New Zealand, at
Auckland, to exchange mails, and there was no adven-
ture, so I have no claim to include it in the "conti-
nents " of my title, for though New Zealand is not
generally so called, I have no doubt that those who live
there have such fairly large ideas of its importance and
necessity to the rest of the world as to consider it in
that light. All, however, must admit that it is a fruit-
ful and beautiful portion of the earth.
I will mention, in passing, a Maori definition of a
gentleman which I heard later, and taking it as referring
only to the externals of that indefinable personage, it
is exceedingly apt : " Gentleman-Gentleman don't care
damn what he do. Pig-Gentleman very particular." A
forcible way of expressing the care taken of the " pig "
variety to avoid anything which might betray his
inferior upbringing, while the other, having nothing to
betray, takes no care accordingly.
The transit from New Zealand to Australia is across
perhaps the least pacific part of the Pacific Ocean, and
we felt its ever restless waters
" Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea."
245
AUSTRALIA
CHAPTER XVI
Sydney harbour and city Sir Henry Parkes Anecdotes The Bush
Its fauna Camp life Strange sequel to a wish Townships A
fancy ball An ignorant tutor The greatest bridge in the Southern
Hemisphere Beauty of the site Great engineering difficulties A
catastrophe averted A critical voyage An exciting episode
Yankee stories Australian holidays An awful railway accident
A hurricane Earl of Carnarvon and Lord Brassey.
WE now came to the notable harbour of Sydney of
which its inhabitants are so justly proud, it
being so deep and extensive as to be sufficient to shelter
all the fleets of the world. It is so full of indentations
and harbourlets, that though the main navigable surface
is little over a mile wide and some eight miles long,
there are over two hundred miles of water frontage
along its shores. Wooded hills, among which pictur-
esque dwellings nestle, surround the bright waters of
the harbour, broken only where the city itself skirts its
edge waters which are flecked with the white wings of
the yachts which seem to dot the surface like so many
butterflies.
But it is the view of the city itself and its environs
from the heights on the opposite northern shore of the
harbour which is one of the most fascinating imagin-
able. Take one of them Gore Hill the prospect from
which takes in the town and also the rich undulating
country to the westward, the whole view covering nearly
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Australia
a semicircle of which the spectator's eye is the centre.
Photography, in this as in many other similar places,
is altogether powerless to represent the effect. It gives
brutalement) as the French would say, the actual objects
before us in their exact proportionate and perspective
size, hence the foreground is magnified beyond its im-
portance, the middle distance is insignificant, and the
far-off features diminished almost to nothingness. On
the other hand, in the image printed on the eye direct,
the imagination, warmed by the charm of the main
objects of attraction, discards the foreground, and in-
vesting the more distant points each with its own
interest, magnifies them to the mental vision, and a true
proportion is established. It is for this reason that the
photo postcard, which is supposed to make all the world
pictorially kin, fails so badly. Fair nature demands a
tete-a-tete^ not a love letter.
Seen from Gore Hill, to the left and beneath us is the
many towered and domed city bathed in the bright sun-
shine of the south, and reflecting its life and business
in the shipping on the calm waters that separate us from
it. These, dotted with smaller craft, contract more
immediately below us into rivers of which, further, we
get only glimpses through the dark foliage.
" And silver white the river gleams
As if Diana, in her dreams,
Had drop't her silver bow
Upon the meadows low."
The ordinary monotonous greyish blue-green tones
of Australian trees are mitigated by the presence of a
large proportion of exotic firs, orange-groves, and
orchards, so that rich browns, greens, and russets
prevail, melting into the quiet greys, purples, and blues
of the gently swelling mountains of the distance. Cloud
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
shadows fleck the broad expanse, which is further varied
here and there by thin wreaths of rising smoke, suggest-
ing life and habitation. The brilliant atmosphere,
similar to that of sunny Italy, adorns and caresses this
glorious scene, and when the golden evening brightens
all the west, brings out and intensifies every outline of
tree and building.
At that period the electric light was not in general use,
but since then the waters of the harbour at night sparkle
with the saloon lights of the hundreds of steam ferry-
boats gliding in all directions to and from the city and
the numerous residential spots on the shores of the
harbour, the city with its reflected lights shining like a
jewelled casket.
So far as I know, no city possesses such a variety of
beautiful suburbs as Sydney. They nestle round
eminences from which the bright blue waters of the
winding harbour and its ever passing vessels are
conspicuously in view. The beauty-spots, however, are
fast disappearing, the trail of the villa builder is over
many of them, and smug prosperity has to be paid for
by the destruction of the picturesque.
The time for seeing many of these scenic attractions
of Sydney was soon, however, to cease. As a precaution,
I had provided myself with letters of introduction to the
Governors of most of the Australian colonies and other
important people, from influential friends at home, but I
had not got one to the Governor of the colony to which
I actually happened to come, it appearing at that time to
be the best opening. However, the time had gone by
when letters to Governors were of much use, and one's
own legs, after all, are the best to stand on.
One of the introductions, which, however, was of no
use as regards self-advancement, was to a noted man of
that time, Sir Henry Parkes, perhaps the only really far-
248
Australia
seeing statesman that Australia has as yet produced.
He initiated federation, but it is not so sure, had he lived,
that it would have been carried out in the way in which
it has been done. He went out in his youth to
Australia and began by making and selling toys, ending
by making laws, which in many cases were just as break-
able. Being subsequently, as will be seen, in a Govern-
ment department, I came to know how often the
Government broke their own laws. For example, the
legislation concerning the construction of public works
by the State bristled with safeguards of various interests,
but it was a common thing for the Government to dis-
regard them if nobody objected. A very bad example
by the rulers to the ruled.
Parkes was a very able man, wholly self-educated,
but his Jis were amongst the unemployed, he could
never find work for them. I heard him give the most
crushing reply to a political opponent that I have ever
known at home or abroad. When he was Premier,
the Leader of the Opposition brought up a vote of
censure on the Government, and occupied some hours
in a speech in support of it. At the close, Sir Henry
Parkes quietly rose and said that if the hon. member
had called on him in his office that afternoon, he would
have gladly helped him through and given him a list
of the mistakes that the Government had really made,
and which were much more serious than the worst of
the long list which the hon. member had been able to
discover.
Parkes went home to England once or twice, and
spoke at several country towns in favour of his adopted
land. It was said that in nearly every one of them he
started his address by pointing out that forty years ago
he had left that particular town for Australia with a
half-crown in his pocket, and his luggage in a bundle at
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
the end of a stick cut from a hedge. Having thus
established a sort of pride in having produced the great
Austalian statesman, the audience became at once
sympathetic and his way was much smoothed.
A full-length portrait of Sir Henry was exhibited in
one of the galleries in Sydney, the pose chosen by the
artist being an easy one, the figure having one hand in
his trouser pocket. A spectator having said that it was
a fine work, the attitude being most natural, his com-
panion said he did not think it at all natural, for " see,"
he said, " he has got his hand in his own pocket this
time." However, this last remark was a libel, for Sir
Henry Parkes was always poor and died so.
I had not been long in New South Wales when the
Government offered me an appointment which I ac-
cepted. There, generally, nearly all the important civil
engineering works are carried out by the State, which,
of course, implies that it is the chief employer of the
profession.
My first duty was to go up country into the Bush, in
which I soon found myself camped with an assistant en-
gineer and some men, engaged in a survey of a route for
a proposed railway. The Bush was strikingly different
from any forest country I had hitherto seen. Except in
the comparatively small cultivated patches, since that
time however much increased, the whole country,
including that used for sheep-runs, is, as a rule, covered
with trees, every one of which, except to a forest expert,
is virtually the same. They are also evergreen, or more
correctly, ever bluey-green, so that the added variety
of dress due to season, which comes periodically to
the already great variety of form of European and
American trees, is absent. The Australian gum is ever
the same, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, while
its thin drooping leaf sheds little or no shade. The
250
Australia
trunk only serves as a shelter from the fierce rays of
the sun. However, in this terrible monotony there is
something sublime in the thought of its immensity,
considering that, with little variation, luxuriant on the
coast, stunted in the interior, the same sort of landscape
stretches across over two thousand miles of the earth's
surface.
The main relief from this appalling sameness is
where, here and there, in order to stimulate the growth
of the grass for the sheep, the trees are what is called
ring-barked. This operation, which consists of cutting
a ring of bark away from near the base of the trunk,
kills the tree and the leaves fall off, but the trunk and
branches remain for many years, and as many of the
gum trees have pale grey stems, the effect is to give
the impression of a gaunt crowd of skeletons with out-
stretched arms, weird and desolate in the extreme.
Perhaps it is for this reason that Australian birds never
sing, they scream and croak. The noise of a flock of
cockatoos, of which there are vast numbers in the Bush,
is something to remember. The black cockatoo, which
is comparatively quiet and not gregarious, only appears
just before bad weather. Where he is at other times
is unknown. But of all the noises in the Bush, that
made by the so-called locusts is the most deafening.
While they are at work no one can hear himself speak.
There is a sort of cuckoo whose note is only heard at
night, and it is said that the original one was an im-
portation from home, and, their ideas being intensely
conservative, they still utter their cry at a time when
it is daylight in Europe, disregarding their Australian
surroundings of the darkness of night.
The animal world of the Australian Bush is, as is
well known, different from that of all other countries,
the kangaroo, wallaby, opossum, native bear, wallaroo,
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
kangaroo rat, and paddy melon, the latter being not,
as might be supposed, an Irish fruit, but an animal like
a small kangaroo. All these, with the iguana, a sort of
tree-climbing lizard but almost as big as an alligator,
were seen in plenty during our operations in the field,
as well as many dangerous snakes. In the country
further inland, with which I became acquainted later,
were the graceful emus which are so seldom interfered
with, having no commercial value, that they are quite
tame and scarcely deign to move at the approach of
man.
But the most extraordinary creature, now becoming
extinct, though at that time fairly plentiful, was the
platypus, which I have heard compared to a tailor, viz.
a beast with a bill. This amphibious animal-bird-fish-
reptile has the head and beak of a bird, four legs like
a mammal, but with web feet like a duck, and lives
mostly in the water, while the skin is like that of a seal
with a valuable fur.
Nor must I forget the laughing jackass, which is not
a donkey that brays a beast unknown in Australia
but a bird that laughs. It is preserved owing to its
hostility to snakes. One of these birds seeing a snake
flies to a high branch and laughs as if its sides would
split. Hearing this miles away, other jackasses fly up
and they pounce down together on the unfortunate
reptile and soon kill him, after which they all fly to
an adjacent tree and laugh together a paean of joy and
triumph. Another bird, whose proper name I forget,
is popularly called " More Pork," as he is continually
uttering this somewhat greedy phrase. But, of course,
all these cries are only occasional, and do not break
much the monotony of the lonely Bush, so that there
is not much pleasure in these pathless woods.
Sometimes coming in from tramping in damp ground,
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Australia
on taking off your boots you find them and your socks
drenched with blood. This is the effect of leeches, the
bites of which are not noticed in walking. The mos-
quitoes are nearly as troublesome as those in India,
especially near the coast, and the common fly in the
Bush sticketh closer than a brother, and there is more
of him. As to snakes, those who have been much in
Australia always look down from habit, even when
crossing the harmless fields of England.
The Australian is much more easily satisfied in his
camp equipment than the European in India. A small
single tent without carpet, a chair or two, a table
fashioned out of provision cases, and two logs cut from
the bush supported on props sunk in the ground, with
canvas bags stretched between for a bed, is enough for
him. Then as to his food, what can be said of a man
who drinks boiled tea with his breakfast, boiled tea with
his lunch, boiled tea for his afternoon tea, and boiled tea
with his dinner ? And notwithstanding this indifference
to the whims and necessities of " Little Mary " the cook,
or the man who is curiously so called, of the Australian
camp is the great subject of contention. Many were
the messes, savoury or otherwise, which were brought
up to me for judgment from the men's dining tent to
decide some difference as to its quality.
The district was one which was called populous,
yet on the whole length of about thirty miles of the
proposed railway there was only one squatter, at whose
hospitable mahogany we often sat. The life of these
dwellers in the wilderness has no attraction for me,
though some seem to enjoy it, and some of the wealthiest
of them seem to have no recreation such as books,
billiard tables, and such other means of obtaining it as
is possible in the far country, nothing but the care of
and thought for sheep all day. If you cannot talk sheep,
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
you are out of it. Truly Shakespeare says that the
shepherd's life is a vile life. Thinking of the general
class of the squatters, among which there are many ex-
ceptions, however, the pregnant saying well applies, that
any fool can make money, but that it takes a wise man
to spend it.
Besides the squatter, there was a small farmer, or
" Cockatoo " as such a one is locally called, in the district,
whom I mention on account of a singular incident in
reference to him. He could talk about some things
besides sheep, and in conversation on the enjoyments of
life, remarked to me that he would like to live a thousand
years. That very night he was struck with paralysis and
died within a week.
Our next move was to an up-country township to
take charge of the construction of another line ; and
here I would remark that, having seen since a vast
number of Australian country towns, the deadly,
drab, dreary, dull similarity of one to the other I never
saw equalled except in a sack of peas. At a later period,
some of my duties involved fixing the site of new
townships in the then uninhabitable Bush at suitable
distances on projected railways, and as they were to be
on the terrible chessboard plan, and would no doubt
be built in the usual formal style, my artistic conscience
must bear the weight of having assisted in the extension
of such hideousness. The style consists of straight
wide streets, flanked with brick barrack-like houses
roofed with corrugated iron, with verandahs painted
with yellow and red stripes covering the footways, and
supported by posts at edge of the latter, the court house,
banks and hotels being slightly more pretentious than
the ordinary shops.
I had also sometimes to name the projected town,
and in one case, some of the adjoining land belonging
254
Australia
to a squatter named Lord, I proposed to recommend,
in my report, the name for the township as " Lorno-
swair," in the hope that this very well-fitting, though
disguised designation, would escape notice until the rail-
way was made and opened, when the porter, shouting
out the name, would probably for the first time cause
its meaning to be realized. However, thinking that I
had no right to prejudice the place in the ears of the
future inhabitants, I forbore.
But to get back to my first experience of an up-
country township, several of the inhabitants of the
place and the squatters of the immediate neighbourhood,
having called on us, we determined, in conjunction with
another official, to give a fancy ball, hiring the town
hall and adding some refreshment tents for the purpose.
The costumes were fairly good, but the manners and
customs were unsophisticated in the extreme. A large
number never answered their invitations, but neverthe-
less came, and many, evidently expecting no one to
receive them, rushed past us into the centre of the hall
before we could attract their attention. The usher
made some curious mistakes, such as announcing, in a
loud voice, a Breton peasant as a British pheasant.
The caterer, never having heard of claret cup, and
mistaking instructions, issued it neat with strong ad-
ditions of brandy, but no soda water, and a good many
of the guests regarding this as the newest fashion from
the old country, from which they knew we had recently
come, said nothing about it, till the scattery condition
of their talk and actions showed the real state of
affairs.
One of the most curious sojourners in the village
reminded me of that long but exceedingly wise proverb
of the Japanese :
2 55
Adventures of a Civil Engineer
He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool.
Shun him !
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is humble.
Teach him !
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep.
Wake him !
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man.
Follow him !
It was the first of these lines which applied to the
man in question, who, ignorant as he was, followed the
occupation of a tutor. He took up on one occasion a
copy of Gary's Dante from my table, and, speaking of
the name of the poet as if it was in one syllable, said
that it was his knowledge of Italian which enabled him
to appreciate the work. But the first line of the pro-
verb was better illustrated by a story he told us in
which he gave himself away in an unusually liberal way.
It appears that in New York he had been usher in a
girls' school, the mix up of the sexes in educational
matters in the States being a feature of their system.
In this capacity he was put in charge of about a hundred
nearly grown-up girls on an excursion to the seaside.
They were as high-spirited and muscular as suffragettes,
and he was " small and of no reputation," as the Psalmist
says, so that when he gave an order that they did not
like, they made a hole in the sand and put him into
it, covering him with leaves and dancing upon him. All
of which we could well believe.
At this time it became necessary, in order to complete
an important link in the railway system of Australia, to
build across the wide river estuary of the Hawkesbury,
a bridge of such magnitude that it was, when completed,
the largest work of the kind in the Southern Hemi-
sphere, and it holds that supremacy still. One of its
piers is sunk to a greater depth below water than any
other in any part of the world. The bridge would take
256
Australia
about three years to build, and the position of resident
engineer in charge of the construction of the work was
offered to me, and accepting it, I handed over my
previous position to another, and moved to the site of
the proposed bridge.
Its construction, which was carried out by American
contractors, involved a great number of exciting inci-
dents, which will be the subject of some of the following
pages.
The situation of the bridge is one of great beauty,
steep wooded shores and leafy islets surrounding it on
every side, the river being noted as one of the beauty-
spots of the island continent, and is largely visited.
Many of the travellers who now daily pass over the
enormous structure, the growth of which I had then to
supervise, are asleep after a hot and dusty journey ;
others are indifferent, or are buried in the superior
attractions of a shilling shocker ; only a few look out
and see the beautiful scenery which discloses itself as,
in mid-air, the traveller crosses the estuary ; while still
fewer bestow a thought on the great mathematical
research which was required to design the form and
dimensions of this spider-like structure, any failure in
which would drop the train and its occupants into the
dark waters of the flood beneath. Nor do they think
of the three years of hard work comprised in the
erection, crowded with the vicissitudes and anxieties
which beset all works of the kind. The passengers in
a great ship like the giant Cunarders have something
like a week in which they are continually brought to
think of those who have toiled with brain and hand for
their safety, comfort, and convenience, but even a long
bridge is passed over in a couple of minutes at most,
and there is an end of it to the traveller.
Of course, it is not only engineers and other con-
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
structors of mechanical aids to civilization who are
forgotten in this way. Many a great literary work is
run over by its reader with as little attention to its con-
struction as in the case of the mighty bridge, and without
a thought of the labours of the writer who, apart from
the brain power used up in its composition, has had
probably much trouble and worry in hunting up and
verifying his authorities. Libraries have had to be
ransacked for statements, localities, dates, quotations,
which many a thoughtless reader probably assumes
are lying ready for use when called on in some odd
corner of the author's brain.
Much thought and investigation had been given to
the question as to where the estuary should be crossed,
and eventually a point was chosen where the river was
about four times the width of the Thames in London,
the route of the railway being adjusted to this arrange-
ment. It would be out of place to give in any detail a
description of this great bridge, which I wrote in
the Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers,
London; but to understand the somewhat remark-
able incidents which occurred during the erection of the
work it is necessary to give a brief outline of the general
design.
The lowest part of the structure is forty feet above
high water, so as to allow small steamers and other
vessels navigating the river to pass underneath. There
are seven spans of steel-framed girders, 416 feet each,
the piers to support them being of stone, above water,
resting on concrete under water ; and it was the fixing
of this concrete that was one of the great difficulties of
the undertaking, for there was 40 feet of water and 120
feet of soft mud to be got through before the hard
bottom, necessary for the stability of the foundation,
was reached.
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It was obviously impossible to dig down by divers to
this depth or to make what is called a coffer-dam round
the site of each pier and pump it dry, as is usual in
foundations of a shallower depth. It was therefore
determined, after much consideration, to construct on
shore, for each of the six pier foundations, a great steel
cylinder closed in at the bottom, to float it out to the
site, and, by a method presently to be described, to sink
it down to the bottom of the river, and further down
through the mud to the hard bottom, by filling and
weighting it with the concrete which was to form the
foundation. The steel cylinder, or caisson as it is tech-
nically called, was only meant as a temporary casing for
the concrete, and after it had fulfilled its purpose of
holding the half-liquid concrete together during sinking
might rust and decay in time, the hardened concrete
remaining as the permanent support of the pier above.
It was, however, clearly impossible to float out and sink
a cylinder 150 feet high, which would be necessary for
the completed work, so that it had to be made in short
lengths, and as soon as the top of the first length was
down to water-level, more steel plates were added, and
continued to be added while the sinking was going on
and until the bottom was reached.
To understand the shape of the caisson and the
operation of sinking it, the reader should imagine for
the bottom length a top hat without its crown and brim,
and inside it three vertical tubes each about the diameter,
proportionally to the hat, of a small coffee-cup. Unlike
the cup, however, the tubes must be supposed to be
bottomless and splaying out like a trumpet-mouth below,
so as to meet the bottom edge of the hat, forming a
sharp edge. Such, on a very large scale, was the bottom
length, or shoe as it is called, of the caisson. This shoe
was floated out slightly weighted with concrete, to the
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exact site of the pier for which it was destined, and from
the hold of a ship anchored alongside, more concrete in
a liquid state was poured into the space between the out-
side of the tubes and the sides of the caisson, the weight
of this concrete causing the shoe to sink to the bottom of
the river. This done, the next thing was to get the
structure down through the mud, and in order to do this,
the mud had to be got out of its way. It was for this
purpose that the tubes were provided which, it will have
been noted, were as yet not filled with the concrete which
was all round them. Specially shaped dredging buckets,
or grabs as they are called, were then let down inside the
tubes, and from their peculiar action forced their massive
jaws into the mud and drew it up by means of steam
hoists, this going incessantly day and night concurrently
with the concrete filling and weighting, until the great
mass was sent down to its final resting-place, in one case
1 62 feet below the water-line. The tubes, which were, of
course, built up simultaneously with the sides of the
caisson, were then filled with concrete, so that there was
a solid mass of this material from the hard bottom up to
the water-level, upon which the stone piers above water
were subsequently built. In this bridge, therefore, what
is visible to the spectator, large as that is, is only about
half of the entire structure, the other half being sunk
under water.
The manoeuvring and sinking of such an enormously
weighty mass to its final true position, which was the
task of the contractors, was a process requiring great
engineering skill and resource, first, to tow it out success-
fully to its site, secondly, to get it into its true position
before sinking, and thirdly, to guide it downwards in a
truly vertical direction. Usually, the first of these three
operations was the easiest, as favourable conditions of
wind, currents, and tides could be chosen before the
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voyage was undertaken from the shore, nearly a mile
away. But on one occasion, after starting, a high wind
arose, and as the floating shoe exposed a large surface
to its influence, the ordinary towing steamer and others
brought up to help, were unable to prevent it being
carried away towards the ocean. Wires were dispatched
to the nearest port to send up more steamers, but mean-
time the wind moderated sufficiently to enable the
caisson to be taken into a cove near the mouth of the
river and secured by anchors and hawsers. Here she
remained till wind and tide enabled successful navigation
to the bridge site to be effected. Had the shoe been
carried out to the ocean, it would have puzzled the
ancient mariner himself if he had met it. Surely such
a thing was never seen on land or sea, and whether it
would have been reported upon as the great sea serpent
seen at last, or the Flying Dutchman's phantom ship, it
is hard to say. The complacent traveller now crossing
the bridge in his comfortable car little knows that two
hundred feet below him, and forming the base which
supports him, is a craft which was once floating about at
the mercy of the winds which nearly wrecked it.
The next operation, that of locating the shoe in its
exact place before sinking, had to be done by a series of
elaborate observations by instruments on shore and
trigonometrical calculations of an intricate kind, direct
measurements across such an expanse of water, of
sufficient accuracy, being impossible. The importance
of each pier being in its true place to an inch will be
understood when it is remembered that the great girders,
one thousand tons in weight and 410 feet long, were
to be afterwards placed upon them, and if the ends of the
girders did not fit into the bearings prepared for them
on the top of the piers, owing to the latter being out of
position, great complications in the work, heavy expense,
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and delay would have resulted. But even if the position
of the caisson when at the bottom of the river were
mathematically accurate, the sinking of it truly vertical
so as to maintain the accuracy through over one hundred
feet of mud was perhaps the most difficult work of all.
There were six of these caissons to sink, and the anxiety
involved in contriving the various devices to overcome
the tendencies to deviate from the vertical was extreme.
It must be remembered that the weight was so enormous
that there was no chance of remedying any displacement
by lifting the caisson and re-sinking.
But if this was anxious work, far more so was the
placing upon the piers, when completed, the pairs of
great girders which had, during the sinking of the piers,
been put together on the shore. In ordinary cases the
erection of such work as this would present no diffi-
culty. A temporary wooden scaffolding or staging
would be erected between the piers, and on this would
be brought, piece by piece, the steel bars forming the
girders, when they would be put together and the
staging removed to another span. Here, however,
owing to the depth of the water, the softness of the
mud, and the strength of the current, this procedure
was impossible. The plan adopted was to construct
and float in shallow water adjoining the shore an im-
mense pontoon of timber, somewhat less in length than
a span of the bridge, and to erect on it a scaffolding up
to the same height above low tide as the top of the
bridge piers were over low water. This done, while
still at the moorings along the shore, the girders were
put together on the top of the scaffolding with their
ends projecting. When this was complete, and when a
favourable condition of wind and current existed, the
great craft with its top-heavy load was towed out by a
sufficient number of steamers to the span for which that
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particular pair of girders was destined. The operation
was so timed that on arrival between the piers high
water would occur. The whole construction would then
gradually sink with the falling tide until the projecting
ends of the girders rested in their places on the piers,
and the pontoon and staging sinking further would
become free from their great load and be towed back
to shore to serve the same purpose for the other sets of
girders seven in all.
The towing out of the enormous and top-heavy
structure in each of the seven cases was an operation
requiring special skill and great readiness of resource,
as a sudden change of wind might carry the whole out
to sea or on to the rocky shore, and, in a very literal
sense, there was no plain sailing. In one case, which
would take up too much space to detail, a situation
arose through the sudden shifting of the wind in which
two equally risky alternatives for avoiding the appar-
ently imminent destruction of the whole pontoon and
its load presented themselves to the engineer in charge
of the operation. A third course, however, suddenly
struck the engineer which involved a rapid change of
all the tackle, and notwithstanding the difficulties of
giving unexpected orders in a high wind, the manoeuvre
succeeded and the craft was saved.
Perhaps the most exciting of all the many con-
tingencies which occurred during the construction of
the bridge was the adventure on the voyage of the
span at the south end of the bridge. The site was, of
course, close to the shore, and quite near to the latter
were many sunken rocks. The pontoon with its load
was successfully navigated to near the site, and all was
going merrily as a wedding bell, when great delay
occurred in trying to warp her round. The hitherto
rising tide had begun to turn, and before the manoeuvre
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was complete one end of the pontoon got aground on
a sunken rock, the rest of it being in deep water. For
many hours all efforts to draw her off failed efforts
stimulated by the possible serious consequences of
failing to do so, for with the tide still falling the float-
ing end would gradually sink more and more, the
other end remaining stationary ; and unless the slope at
low tide was still insufficient to cause it, the great girders
of one thousand tons weight would slip off into the
deep river. In such case they would be utterly lost, not
only by smashing themselves to pieces, but by being
sunk in one hundred feet of mud, and nothing that
could be done would have held them back. Moreover,
if the whole vessel with its load had slipped off,
destruction would equally have occurred, as the top-
heavy character of the loading was only suitable for
quiet movement, and not for the violent plunge down-
wards into the water which this result would have
caused. The loss in a moment of time would have
been enormous, besides causing serious delay in the
opening of the bridge. The engineers and contractors*
representatives stood by on shore absolutely helpless,
only trusting in the possibility of the tide turning before
the steepness of the inclination of the girders would
have been too much for their stability. Their hearts
almost stood still as the time for low tide indicated
by the almanac approached. The situation seemed
desperate ; great creaks and groans were heard as if the
mighty structure was straining all its muscles, so to
speak, to save itself, when, just as it was thought that
all was over, the witching time of low tide arrived, the
crisis was passed, and the girders still held fast. A few
inches less of water and the newspaper posters of the
world would have been blazoned with the disaster. As
the tide rose, the pontoon again lifted itself level, and
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Australia
when high water occurred she was afloat end to end,
and was safely brought into position.
The engineers who had immediate charge of these
operations were naturally Americans employed by the
American contractors. I have had many dealings with
English, Indian, French, Spanish, and American civil
engineers, and for infinite resource in emergencies, for
boldness of conception, for grasping successfully the
skirts of happy chance, the latter seem to me to stand
unrivalled. It is true that in America they have magnifi-
cent failures such, for instance, as the recent one of the
Quebec bridge ; but for each of these they can show
many great successes. It may be well said of nations,
as it has been of individuals, that they who never make
mistakes never do anything, and though it would be
absurd to apply the latter to engineers of other nations,
yet their fear of making mistakes too often leads them,
if not to nothing, at all events to a second place in the
great race of engineering progress. Great engineering
works outside America are doubtless carried out with
solid and enduring success ; but they are usually a
steady advance on something already achieved by previous
gradual progress, seldom a new departure.
Some of the Americans who were associated with the
bridge works, had that peculiar Yankee gift, not es-
pecially of humour, but of humorous expression. For
instance, one of them, hearing the wife of one of the
staff saying that she was a physiognomist and could
read, fairly accurately, peopled moods and ideas from
their faces, said to her husband, " Guess you try to
arrange your coun'nance some, when you come home of
an evenin'."
A man visiting the works from up-country, say-
ing that the chief things wanted in his township out
west were a good supply of water and some decent
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society, was answered, " So ? Vur like hell seems to
me your place, sure."
These remind me of a much later episode, when a
friend of mine walking down Piccadilly accidentally trod
on the skirt of a gloriously attired lady, who before
apology could be made, turned round and said in the
accents of the West, "An whar are ye slingin' your
hoofs to ? "
Two startling events not specially connected with the
bridge occurred in its neighbourhood during its con-
struction a fearful railway accident and a hurricane.
As to the first, the river scenery was beautiful, and
it was a favourite excursion ground on the numerous
Bank Holidays in which the Australian indulges himself.
Not only does he take all the usual English ones, shutting
up shop completely on all of them, but adds several,
such as New Year's Day, the anniversary of the es-
tablishment of his particular colony, that of Australia,
the King's birthday, the Prince of Wales's birthday,
Good Friday, Easter Eve, and what is called Eight
Hours Day, which is the anniversary of the establish-
ment of eight hours as a legal day's work for manual
workers. Besides these, the Government offices close
for half a day on the numerous occasions when there is
a great race or cricket match going on in the neighbour-
hood. But the railway accident of which I am about to
speak was on a holiday outside of all these the late
Queen's Jubilee.
The country all about was hilly, and the railway for
five or six miles approaching the river was on a steep
down grade to the small station on its bank, overlooking
which, and close by, was our wooden house. The line
was a single one doubling out into two tracks at the
station, and a little beyond the latter was the wide and
deep river, as yet unbridged. A little after midday,
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Australia
while we were at lunch, a queer rapidly increasing sound
with loud steam whistles in rapid succession was heard,
and rushing out, we saw a terrible sight. Down the
steep grade at a fearful pace, apparently eighty or ninety
miles an hour, came a long excursion train full of pas-
sengers, the driver of which had clearly lost control of
the brakes. Unless stopped, the whole train with its
living load was bound to run over the end of the rails
beyond the station into the river. But a hardly less
frightful contingency was inevitable, for two trains
stood in the way one a train full of passengers waiting
for the arrival of the expected one in order to start back,
and the other a train of empty trucks on the second
track but some distance beyond the station, and close to
the water's edge. The pointsman whose duty it was
to turn the ordinarily slowed-up approaching train into
the line on which, further down, the empty trucks
stood, manfully stuck to his post, though the train,
swaying from side to side at its excessive speed, was
not unlikely to leave the rails at this spot, the line
curving abruptly to one side. Though standing only
about a yard from the train, he held firmly to his lever,
till every carriage passed him. Had he failed, the slaughter
which immediately followed would have been at least
doubled, for then the runaway train would have crashed
into the standing one which was full of people. How-
ever, there lay beyond the empty trucks, and to our
horror the train, with all its living freight, smashed into
them, the engine turning a sort of somersault and
plunging into the river, while the carriages heaped
themselves one over another and telescoped, the awful
screams of the unfortunate passengers being hardly
drowned in the explosions of the gas reservoirs under
the carriages. An inspector of mine who was on the
engine was waving his handkerchief as a farewell as he
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passed, knowing, no doubt, his doom. Eight people,
including him, were killed on the spot, and a great many
severely injured, many for life.
It was the work of a moment to rush down to the
station and give what help I could, and I soon found my
vocation, which was to stand against the door of the
telegraph office restraining the rush of the passengers
who had escaped severe injuries and who wanted, natur-
ally, to telegraph their safety to their relations and
friends. These I had to let in one by one ; but the
telegraph clerk, totally unnerved by the calamity, broke
down and was unable to work his fingers. Fortunately,
one of the passengers, though actually in the accident,
was equal to the occasion, and having the necessary
knowledge, took up his duties. Meantime, the whole
of the little community connected with the bridge works
was employed in trying to extricate the victims and in
carrying them away to temporary shelter, some of them
screaming with pain, while others were past this stage,
either dead or in a state of collapse. Strange to say,
there were many altogether unhurt. There was no medi-
cal aid within thirty or forty miles, and the sufferings of
the injured must have been great. The memory of this
fearful scene will never leave me.
The other event was the hurricane which nearly blew
us to " smithereens." Our wooden house stood on the
top of a hill commanding a lovely view, but being
highly exposed, was more suited for that purpose than
for resisting a storm. Moreover, large trees stood all
around us, which were rather a danger than a shelter,
for like most Australian trees their trunks were bare,
and if blown down would crush our little dwelling as if
it were an empty match-box. There were warnings,
however, of the coming storm, and I had time to have
strong wire ropes connecting the middle of the trees to
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Australia
windward with the bases of those further off. Then all
the doors and windows on that side had to be secured
much more strongly than their fastenings could effect,
for if one of these blew open the wind would get in and
lift the roof off. Hence all the heavy boxes, desks, and
heavy furniture had to be piled up against the closed
doors and windows.
While this was going on, the wind began to surge
and howl. " The voice of His thunder was heard
round about : the lightnings shone upon the ground, the
earth was moved, and shook withal." Soon the walls
to windward bent inwards like so much cardboard, but
did not give way, while the corrugated iron roof, though
holding on, was so displaced that the rain poured in so
that we had to make successive movements to keep dry.
This condition did not last long, however, as regards
the floor, which was rapidly becoming covered with
water, driving us to standing on tables and other things
which were not used for the barricading. I happened
to have some augers in the house, however, and we
proceeded to relieve the situation by boring as many
holes in the floor as we could, by which we hastened
much the running off of the water. One extraordinary
feature of this wind was its sudden cessation in the
course of a minute to a dead calm a most weird effect.
The damage done by this storm all along the coast,
even to stone and brick houses, will long be remembered,
so that we thought that in our temporary wooden hut,
we got through it wonderfully well.
We had many notable visitors to the bridge, including
engineers from England and the sister colonies, and
from New Zealand. Also the late Earl of Carnarvon,
who had been Secretary of State for the Colonies, and
whose cultivated conversation, as I took him about in
my steam launch, I well remember enjoying. We
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
talked Ruskin and about what he then still alive
would have thought of our spoiling the beautiful
scenery all around us with hideous railway cuttings,
and the monstrous red steel skeleton of the great
bridge stretching from the green wooded groves of
the picturesque Long Island to those of the northern
shore.
Another visitor was the present Lord Brassey, who
would naturally look upon the scene with other eyes,
being the son of the well-known railway contractor.
The bridge was opened by the Governor of the
colony, Lord Carrington, in the presence of about
eight hundred guests from all the colonies, and at the
inevitable banquet which followed, speeches were made
buttering, on both sides, politicians whose share in the
work was infinitesimal, and never mentioning anyone
who had anything to do with its construction. A
stranger hearing them might think that the bridge rose
ready-made like Venus from the froth of the sea, or
that it required as little preparation for the work as is
supposed necessary for the duties of a Member of
Parliament.
270
CHAPTER XVII
The scrub A brain wave Floods A drunken deputation The magis-
trate's crime An ingenious election dodge Unintentional jokes
A drought Australian hospitality Colonial M.P/s Outlaws
Irreverence Anecdotes Tasmania the guileless Mount Welling-
ton The strawberry church The Melbourne Cup Stories The
Jenolan Caves The Blue Mountains and Robert Louis Stevenson
A curious proposal of marriage.
THE great bridge being finished, I was engaged for
the few years following in bush or scrub work,
largely in the saddle, in investigating the necessity for,
and the routes of, various proposed railways, and later,
when promoted to a position immediately under the
Engineer-in-Chief, in superintending the location and
construction of the whole of them.
I distinguish between bush and scrub. The former is
that which spreads over the most of Australia, where
the trees are never so close that the bush cannot easily
be ridden through, and even driven through, by tracks
which are gently sinuous so as to avoid the trunks.
Scrub, on the other hand, is dense forest, through which
it is difficult even to walk. The ordinary traveller gets
through this country by roads or bridle-paths which are
cut through it, but the exploring engineer must keep
for the most part to his route on foot with an axeman to
clear his way. Even with the latter he gets caught and
entangled with the dense vegetation of the sub-tropical
north, where the scrub prevails.
There is a wire-like creeper full of small spikes which
hangs across from tree to tree nearly everywhere, and
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
which catches hold of and binds one as a cobweb
entangles a fly, so that when so caught there often
arises a great rivalry between the heat of one's body and
that of one's language. These creepers are called in
Australia " lawyers," why I do not know, for they bleed
you, get round your legs and arms, and as soon as you
free yourself from one entanglement you find yourself
in another. It is a libel on an honourable, if lucrative,
profession, as it is well known that such things are
unheard of in dealing with its members.
There is another parasite in the scrub which has
much more grateful functions. It is a long tube-like
structure about two inches in diameter hanging in grace-
ful festoons from tree to tree. I forget its name. Its
peculiarity is that if it is cut through with an axe a
deliciously cool stream of pure water runs out as from a
broken water-pipe, a glorious refreshment to the tired
struggler through the scrub. How the water gets there
and how it keeps cool under a burning sun is hard to
understand ; the pity of it is that the scrub in which it is
found is always in a well-watered part of Australia near
the coast, not in the dry, parched-up west, where the
water would be of so much more value.
Another plant whose habitat is in the scrub is the
stinging tree, a most innocent-looking growth with a
leaf something like that of a laurel, with nothing dis-
tinctive about it to warn the explorer, yet a touch of
this harmless-looking leaf stings like a combination of
hundreds of nettles, making him scream with pain.
Curious to say, though protected by his coat, a horse
suffers far more than a man from contact with this
venomous plant.
It was while riding through country which was partly
scrubby that the sole instance, in my comparatively
long life, of the result of what is called a brain wave
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Australia
occurred. I had ridden far in a very hot sun, and
suddenly got so faint and giddy from the effects of a
slight touch of it, that I had to dismount and rest
under a tree for about an hour. The man who was
with me got a large leaf from the scrub and put it over
my head and under my hat, this being one of the best
protections against sunstroke, and I was thus enabled,
with the declining sun, to mount and ride to the town-
ship which was to be my quarters for the night. Judge
of my surprise when a telegram from my wife at head-
quarters, about four hundred miles away, was handed
to me, bearing the words, " Is anything wrong ? Wire
at once." No intimation of any mishap could possibly
have reached her. It cannot be explained otherwise
than by brain wave. The curious part of this was that
I was not in the least liable to be affected by the sun,
even in India, where its force is so much greater, so
that no fear or expectation of such an incident could
have influenced the message.
One of the first journeys of this kind was about six
hundred and forty miles in length, in the saddle, when
I was much delayed by floods which spread over miles
of country. I was about half-way through when the
numerous rivers began to rise, owing to heavy rains
in the adjoining range of mountains. One evening I
could hardly get to the little inn which was to be my
shelter for the night, the water nearly reaching to the
saddle-girths. The principal danger was that of the
horse getting into holes or depressions which, of course,
he could not see.
In this inn, which stood on a rising ground above
the flood-level, I had to spend an idle week, cut off
by the flood which spread for many miles around.
Fortunately, there were sufficient provisions in stock,
for the people of these parts never know when they
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Adventures of a Civil Engineer
may be in want of them, owing to this cause. I had
to go to the stable in a boat when looking after my
horse's comfort.
This flood reminds me of a story told me of a lady
new to Bush life, at an up-country station, whose
husband was away, looking after his sheep. He had
forded a river which rose before he returned in the
afternoon. The wife, anxious about his being late,
rode out to an eminence to get a view, when she saw
approaching at some distance a man almost divested of
all clothing, gesticulating and shouting. Riding back
at speed to the homestead, she ordered men out to
seize the maniac, as she thought him to be, but he
turned out to be her husband. In Australia it is a
common practice when crossing a river in flood for
a man to take off his clothes and strap them to his
horse's saddle ; then horse and man swim across side
by side, when, on reaching the shore, the man reclothes
himself and mounts. On this occasion, however,
whether by accident or owing to the horse having a
sense of humour in playing a trick on his master, the
animal escaped with the clothes. Hence the situation.
I had hardly gone a few days more on my journey
after the subsidence of the waters, when reaching a
large coast town, the river on the banks of which it
stands rose in its might, and the town was flooded, all
traffic in the streets being stopped except by boating.
The gasworks being flooded, there was no light
except that afforded by candles and a few oil lamps,
and the inhabitants had to live for several days in their
upper stories, those who had these giving shelter to
others whose houses had only ground-floor rooms.
Mails were also stopped. To show how emergency
will bring out character, a bank clerk boarding at the
hotel, as these officials often do in Australian country
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Australia
towns, went nearly out of his mind for fear of being
drowned, though there was really no danger whatever.
This flood delayed me nearly another week, and I
came to the conclusion that, except red tape and whisky,
there are few things more harassing to the progress of
engineering science than too much water all at once.
Talking of whisky in this connection, I must relate
what happened to me on a subsequent occasion.
I had to fix the course of a new railway, and with
it the sites for stations in the towns passed through.
Coming to one of these, the mayor called on me and
asked if I would receive a deputation that evening of the
leading citizens, so that I should hear their views as to
the site to be fixed upon. Agreeing to this, a large
room in the hotel was secured, and at the time when
the deputation was due I waited for a long time, but,
no one arriving, I went to bed at last. Next morning
his Worship appeared and explained the matter with-
out a smile on his face. It appeared that fourteen
citizens had collected at a neighbouring hotel some
time before they were to come to me, in order to discuss
how the matter should be placed before me. Drinks
were ordered, and I may say that, in Australia, when
one in a company stands a drink all round, it is de
rigueur that the others should do the same, this being
locally called " shouting." Thirteen drinks, therefore,
or thereabouts, followed, and when the time arrived
for the deputation to see me, eleven out of the fourteen
had become incapable of stating their views in an intel-
ligible manner. Hence the mayor thought that he
and two others, who had been either more moderate or
were better examples of the survival of the fittest, were
not sufficient in number to impress me as a representa-
tive body, so the deputation fell through possibly
literally so as regards part of it. The leading citizens
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never appeared, so the site had to be fixed without
their assistance. It has been said, in reference to the
acts of a Ministry, that ten wise men can easily add up
into one fool, but if so, what is the sum arrived at by
adding up eleven fools ?
I had, in the course of my country investigations, to
do a good deal in the way of deputation receiving, and
fairly soon became quite an adept at acquiring from them
a good deal of information while imparting none to them
of any moment.
I think that it was at the same town that the following
happened during my visit. Land agents, petty trades-
men, cattle dealers, and many of similar occupations, are
often made magistrates in the country parts, often in
exchange for political services to the Government which
appoints them. There is a law in the colony against
card- playing in public -houses after midnight, and it
happened that the police surprised a party of offenders
and arrested all of them but one, he being the magistrate
before whom they duly had to appear in the morning.
Quite unembarrassed by the awkwardness of the situation,
he gravely commented on the seriousness of the offence,
and let his late companions off with a caution.
I spoke just now of floods. The noted one of the
Darling River in the north-west of the colony in 1893
will not be easily forgotten. Latterly our light railways in
New South Wales were purposely constructed level with
the surface of the plains, so that a severe flood from any
neighbouring river might rise above them without wash-
ing them away, the running of trains in that case being
simply stopped till the waters subsided. As on many of
these branch lines the traffic was so small that there was
only one train each way about three times a week, no
great inconvenience resulted. The earlier lines were,
however, constructed sufficiently high to overtop possible
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Australia
floods, and in 1893 tne Bourke Railway, which was of
this character, extended through flooded country for
hundreds of miles across the western plains.
The Darling River on this occasion so overflowed
that it became virtually some sixty miles wide, the
passengers in the trains being often out of sight of land
on one or the other side of them. This, of course, would
be impossible in a country which was not as level as a
billiard table. An illustration of this is found in the
fact that, with one exception, on the plains of Argentina,
the railway to Bourke has the longest stretch of uninter-
rupted straight line in the world. This straight extends
for about 124 miles.
It must not be supposed that all my earlier career in
Australia was in the country parts, though much of it was.
In fact, I have seen more of the State in which I lived
than most of its natives have had the opportunity of
visiting. By the way, the word "native" is used in
Australia not to denote the blacks, who are almost
extinct except in Queensland, but white men born in the
colonies, as distinct from immigrants. The blacks are
called Aboriginals. Much, however, of my time was
spent at head-quarters and in the capitals of the neigh-
bouring States in connection with inter-colonial railway
affairs. Lengthened periods were occupied at the
former between the country and inter-colonial trips,
these latter becoming less frequent as, advancing in the
service ultimately to the position next to the chief of my
department, the head office became the chief seat of my
duties.
One leave of absence was spent in the altogether
delightful climate of Tasmania, where so many of those
fagged out by the summer heats of Australia go to
recruit their energies.
For convenience sake, however, I group together the
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following occurrences in the country, though they were
scattered over nearly the whole of my stay in Aus-
tralia.
Politics are everywhere becoming such a low-down
game, that I almost hesitate to relate an incident that
may serve as an example how a candidate for parliament
can dodge himself in on a minority of votes. In the
course of my travels, at an up-country election, where
the constituency was large in area, but with a very
scattered population, an ingenious would-be legislator,
whom the majority did not want, nevertheless got in in
this way. His name was, let us say, Blackstone, and
that of his opponent T. Jones, the latter being very
popular and sure to succeed unless some scheme were
devised to prevent him doing so. Blackstone, there-
fore, just before the nomination, induced, or possibly
bribed, one of the numerous other Joneses in the country
to be nominated. The greater portion of the electors,
who were widely scattered, knew nothing of the second
Jones' candidature, hearing only of the two rivals, Jones
and Blackstone. When, therefore, the names of T.
Jones and C. Jones appeared with that of Blackstone on
the ballot papers, many of those who wanted T. Jones,
voted in error for C. Jones, not noticing the nomination,
or perhaps not knowing the initials of their favourite, so
the Jones vote being thus divided, Blackstone sailed in
at the head of the poll.
Unintentional jokes are sometimes perpetrated, and
one I came across in a country township sets me think-
ing of others in my varied career. This was by two
individuals who joined in a partnership as, curious to
say, drapers, their names being respectively Adam and
Eve.
Very many years ago, in London, I remember that a
clergyman named Tooth got into trouble, and also into
Australia
the ecclesiastical courts, for making use in his church
of the ritual, to which everyone is accustomed in these
days. A preacher in a sermon at the time, speaking of
the case, which attracted much public attention, said :
" I need not mention the minister's name, it is in every-
one's mouth."
Talking of the fitting name to occupations, I re-
member in London, years ago, Messrs. Death and
Coffin, who were doctors, and in a colonial town,
Muddle, a solicitor. Surely these had to live down
their names.
One of the most violent contrasts in my experience
was perhaps that between the sight of the magnificent
teeming luxuriance of the tropical jungle on the Malabar
coast of India, and the scenes of drought which I was
destined to see in the inland districts of Australia. The
vast brown expanse of the " famine-murdered land,"
bare of all vegetation, with its stunted tree stems and
the skeletons of rabbits lying about in millions, dead
after gnawing the bark of the trees which they had
destroyed, was terrible to see. I recall almost riding
over a gaunt sheep much of the form of a greyhound,
unable to run, and its falling over a rut in the ground,
and being too weak to rise again. At this time the dry,
hot, exhausting west wind sweeps the plain, scorching
the skin. Shelley would have penned a different ode
to the west wind had he been to Australia.
In some of these dry districts water has been pro-
cured from artesian wells, which, though hardly sufficient
to irrigate the land, is often enough to save men and
animals from the fearful death of thirst. The water
springs up in a fountain from four thousand or five
thousand feet below the surface, and is often very hot.
I remember bathing in a pool fed by this water which
was at a temperature of 1 10 degrees. The surrounding
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air at that particular season, being quite as high, it
could well be borne, but in winter it would be difficult
to stand it. The water, however, soon cools on ex-
posure to the ordinary temperature.
I was never actually seriously lost in the Bush, or
" bushed " as it is called, though I ought to have been,
to make these memories properly thrilling ; but it is a
very easy thing to do, especially in flat country, without
compass or the sun, which, fortunately from this point
of view, seldom deserts one in Australia. It is difficult
to keep a straight course, for having to clear trees and
stumps direction is lost, and it is also well known that
both men and horses tend unconsciously to the left, the
right legs, as a rule, being more vigorous than the
left. In the absence of sun, the experienced bushman
can always find his bearings, except in the very dry
country, by examining the tree trunks, moss forming on
them on the side from which the prevailing winds and
rains blow. This is an infallible guide where it exists.
Whether temporarily lost or not, the unfailing hos-
pitality of the Australian forms a grateful ending to
a long ride or drive in the Bush. I do not want to
underrate its sincerity or thoroughness in the least,
when I say that existence there could hardly go on
without it. It is a necessity of the country. There
are some half-way houses or roadside inns in the more
inhabited districts, but, as a rule, there are no hotels
except in the towns, which are often much further apart
than a day's journey. H
